America can’t keep running on empty forever. There’s barely enough fuel to the engine to get to and from work. What remains of work. We have an technologically awesome dashboard, all the digital bells and whistles, while the tires continue balding and the framework is coming apart at the seams. America now has difficulty managing necessary day trips when once it couldn’t build enough infrastructure fast enough to accommodate those who wanted to drive as far and wide as their small but serviceable paycheck, promising the possibility of eventual affluence, could afford.

That economic highway has become a byway to an ever increasing toll road controlled by the 1%. The wealthiest nation around can’t make ends meet, even to do maintenance of its previous grandeur.

The 1% used to at least dress up the public sector sufficiently so a privileged lifestyle could adequately endure the indignities of societaln coexistence.

Somehow, the American ideal of success has become one where when you do finally purchase that dream car it still can’t escape the dismal reality of unavoidable potholes, or elevated highways approaching the tipping point of eminent collapse.

The 2016 election cycle races ahead, busy in all the usual mischief and foolery, to arrive at electing a new designated driver in charge of either maintaining the status quo or, just maybe, actually attempting some visionary leadership towards heading in a more progressive direction.

Rather than cursing what we have for a set of wheels going nowhere in a hurry, perhaps we should concentrate on scrapping the road-weary vehicle we find ourselves stalled in. Periodically getting out and pushing, while others drag their feet, ain’t getting us very far.

Americans need to ignore well intended but distracting traditional calls for incremental change. The usual arguing points are what put us in a tailspin from which we are barely recovering. Unfettered capitalism brought Detroit to its knees. Plainly stated, truth is that America’s automakers survived by the grace of a socialist remedy that we still refuse to give proper props to.

Socialist. Why is it that Americans are so fearful of that word? Why is America so fearful of so many things, but especially the concept that we might do better as a nation, be stronger as an economy, if we pulled together rather than struggling alone, neighbor fighting neighbor for fewer and fewer opportunities, business and labor opposition stifling commerce rather than benefiting from true teamwork?

Denial, spin and branding can’t win customer loyalty in and of themselves. Without actual product backup, false advertising can buoy the bottom line for only so long.

Real solutions demand everyone’s participation and not half measures.

Our environment won’t be spared from an irreversible death sentence by individual eco-correctness. Our economy won’t be righted by repetitive first aid to the systematic blunt trauma of “free market” excesses.

Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren call us to head in a perhaps radically expressed direction, but which, if listened to, should make sense to anyone that thinks America should be about reward for all, not just reward for some. The 1% shouldn’t have almost all the pie for themselves.

American capitalism has never been all it’s cracked up to be. For the haves it’s always been good to great. For the have-nots its always been “try harder.”

Social Security and Medicare are not capitalist. Without some socialism, capitalism would be a harsh provider indeed for the majority of capitalism’s rank and file.

“Free enterprise” has always rewarded those industrious and savvy enough to improve their odds in that crap shoot. For the rest of us, pensions, rather than 401K shell games, would seem a better safety net.

Banks do better than ever risking your money rather than theirs. Corporations now have personhood. Citizens United stands against other citizens who, disunited, can never achieve parity in a fixed game that can only be remedied by democracy asserting public interests over those that have over-leveraged capitalism to the point that it’s unrecognizable.

Some economists think capitalism has been fatally wounded, that it’s run its course and is driving off a cliff. For them, there’s no point attempting life support. Capitalists are doomed, so be it. Others keep insisting that we should continue navigating the same dwindling circle of boom to bust and recovery to recession, having what we can collectively gain siphoned off by the privileged few.

America’s economic engine was built upon slavery. Historical fact. Now it tries to coast on outsourced labor barely above slavery. In between we managed a worldenvied upward mobility fueled by a division of the American pie that was far more equitable, and where excess profit was reinvested for the common good.

Capitalism, governed properly by a proven road map of social intervention, could well do great things again.

Return manufacturing and corporate profit to the U.S.. Return to a sharply progressive tax system. Eliminate too big to fail banking.

An improved road map would include: Break our addiction on a crippling fossil fuel driven economy. Raise the minimum wage as an effective and practical economic stimulus.

Time to shift into forward.

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Gary Anderson lives in Bath.