One of the less-discussed aspects of the economic meltdown is that it exposed the fraudulence of how most of us are securing our futures. Whereas most first-world nations (Canada, Australia, the U.K., France, Sweden, etc.) provide for their citizens’ primary and secondary educations, lifelong health care, and retirement pensions, the U.S., in large measure, denies any responsibility thereof.

Instead, we developed throughout the last three decades a system of stock market-based plans to cover people’s retirements (401Ks and IRAs) as fewer and fewer employers offered pensions; college costs (529 plans), as they skyrocket well beyond six figures for a four-year degree; and are dabbling in Health Savings Accounts, where you invest your unused health care dollars and see them grow to cover the ever-burgeoning costs of medical care.

Had the Bush administration and your GOP elected officials, such as ex-Sen. Coleman, had their way, the federal government would have cut back already meager Social Security and Medicare outlays, but let folks invest them in the markets to offer returns well beyond what the government could.

So much for the fantasy.

My family’s 401Ks (which we have invested in for about fifteen years) have less value than if we had just stuck that money in a box in our basement after paying income taxes and forgoing the company match. Our college savings has been decimated. My wife’s stock options are worthless.

And consider us lucky. We have managed to hold on to our jobs, our health insurance, and our home. But I don’t feel so fortunate to be an American these days.

If I was a Canadian or Aussie, I would know that I did not have to gamble in the market (and for all but the insiders, it is just a big casino, and I say that as someone who covered the casino industry for three years) to provide my kids with a college education, secure our health care, and retire in some semblance of dignity.

The rap on those nations was that you could not “create wealth” there because of the draconian taxation on those with high incomes. Those societies were indolent, obsessed with leisure, and non-entrepreneurial. They would never have invented the twenty-four-hour sports cable network, erectile dysfunction pills, or iPhone apps that simulate forty-six different farts (see second half of Bill Maher's transcript for a very wise disemboweling of our culture.).

The U.S. is a can-do place filled with people who think they are one gimmick from striking it rich (flipping houses, say?) or God finally granting them that lottery win, so let’s keep those taxes low on the wealthy. What a crock of shit we’ve bought into.

We’re at a crossroads in America. We’re on a trajectory to become Argentina, a second-world country where insiders and the beneficiaries of a corrupt system live well, and everyone else is subject to wild economic swings, currency devaluations, and goes bust once a decade.

If we instead aspire to an economy and system that mirrors our neighbor to the north, where people don’t think as much about being rich and don’t worry as much about working hard but being left unable to care for themselves or provide their children with a future—we need to restructure our economy in massive ways. It’s not socialism, but it’s a more humanized, less depraved form of capitalism.

Which of us wouldn’t choose that option right now? Seems like a no-brainer. But that’s not accounting for all the no-brainers out there.