Opinion | Is America Still No. 1?

If I’m looking forward 50 years, isn’t America still, in the context of the whole world order, a place to have a certain kind of confidence in? We know what healthy is. There are only three things any country has to do in order to be healthy, and this is throughout history. First, educate your children well in terms of their capabilities, the quality of their ability to be productive, and their civility. No. 2, have them come out to a country in which there’s order and that people work together to be productive, so that there’s broad-based productivity and prosperity. And don’t get into a war — don’t get into a civil war, or don’t get into an international war. That’s all you have to do. Then you can look at the fundamentals of that: Are we educating our children well so that they can be productive and capable and they’re civil with each other, that we have a civil population? Do we have an environment where there is productivity and we can get along? I think we have terrible circumstances. The gaps in education, the gaps in these things and civility are real problems. So I think that it really comes to that. It’s basics: Do you earn more than you spend? What’s your income like? What is your balance sheet like? These are basics. You know those basics. So if we can have those basics, yes, I thank God that I grew up in the United States, because, oh my God, it was unbelievable. It was the place that anybody from anywhere in the world could come and truly be a citizen. So it had that real meritocracy. And I grew up in a lower-middle-class family. My dad was a jazz musician. I could go to a good school. And I think of that creativity and all the wonderful things — broad-based education; a middle class, that we had, a middle class — and we had those things. And so I’ve seen the difference. And so I know what the fundamentals are. And I look at measures and I’m worried about that.