US has become a country 'of the rich, by the rich, for the rich:' scholar

WASHINGTON - The United States has become a country of the rich, by the rich and for the rich, which failed to promote the general welfare and will produce more global tension, a famed US scholar has said.

The deepest crisis of the United States is political -- the failure of America's political institutions to "promote the general welfare" as is promised by the US Constitution, wrote professor Jeffrey D. Sachs, director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University.

"American politics has become an insider's game to favor the super-rich and corporate lobbies at the expense of the overwhelming majority of citizens," Sachs wrote in an opinion article published Tuesday in the Arab News.

Diverged from the path of social democracy and sustainable development, the United States charged ahead on a path marked by "political corruption, oligarchy, an ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor, disdain for the environment, and a refusal to limit human-induced climate change," the professor said.

Decades of political corruption and social neglect resulted in social cleavages in the United States, leading to "an epidemic of deaths of despair including drug overdoses and suicides, declining life expectancy and rising rates of depression, especially among young people," he said.

Besides, "America's turmoil has disturbing international implications," Sach noted, adding Washington's bipartisan belligerence will only produce more global tension and new dangers of conflict, not security or real solutions to any of the urgent global problems.