This is an urgent, data-driven collection of essays from AEI scholar Nicholas Eberstadt that confronts America's paradox of unmatched wealth and power alongside rising discontent, examining the birth rate crisis and demographic decline, millions of men without work, welfare dependency, the education crisis, and mass criminality, and revealing a "New Misery" that challenges what Americans think they know about the nation's health as it approaches its 250th anniversary.
As the US approaches its 250th anniversary, American discontent bubbles beneath the impending celebrations
Less confident in their own institutions and increasingly dissatisfied with their country’s international commitments, Americans are venting their frustration both at home and abroad. Yet this disaffection rumbles at the same time the US has achieved unparalleled wealth and unmatched global power. Why the disconnect?
In this landmark volume, Nicholas Eberstadt answers that pressing question. Drawing on decades of extraordinary scholarship, he lays out the nation’s “human arithmetic” in demographic, social, and economic terms.
He demonstrates that 21st-century America, for all its marvels and blessings, is nonetheless beset by a “New Misery”: the practical and moral dilemmas of wealth in the absence of well-being. New social afflictions hide in plain sight—among them the astonishing flight of millions of men from the workforce and the surge in criminality, with over 20 million former felons living in our midst.
In America’s Human Arithmetic, Eberstadt offers a compelling and frightening diagnosis of modern social dysfunction. He shows that the United States’ best years may yet be to come—but not if Americans are unwilling to face the challenges their human arithmetic lays bare.