Are Americans so angry about politics because the U.S. is declining as a world power?

Great Debates
61

To clarify, my statements were made because xtisme ‘challenged’ the following quote by me:

That’s to clarify what this debate is about. My claim that the US is at the extreme end of the spectrum on many issues and have some extreme problems. What I posted was what I think are problems. Such as a high murder rate, bad health, lack of social mobility. Xtisme quite eloquently answered my murder statement with “So what? [if it is true]”. Since he doesn’t want to agree that murder is a problem, I’m not going to try to discuss it with him. You provided an answer that indicated that you do in fact see the issues as problems (if they are true). So the following is for you. I will attempt to convince you that my previous quote about the US being ‘extreme’ is true.
The US has the largest prison population in the world.
And the highest percentage of it’s population imprisoned.
These ones are very easy so I’m just going to quote wikipedia:

The US military budget is bigger than the military budget of the rest of the world.
The lowest estimate seems to be that the US makes up for 44% of world military spending and the highest 55%. I’m willing to go with the lowest estimate and concede that the US only make up for almost half of the spending.

On average Americans spend 20 times as much money per capita on military than other citizens.
If the us has 5% of the population of the world and pays for 44% of the military, then the remaining 95% pay for 56%. That means the US population on average pays 16 times as much. If we use the higher estimate it’s 25 times. But once again I am willing to go with the lower estimate.

According to the World Health Organization in 2006, the US payed $6.714 per capita and its healthcare was ranked 37:th, France who had the best healthcare in the world payed $3.554 per capita.

The US has the highest murder rate in the western world.
Western world defined as: USA, Canada, Australia and Western Europe.

According to nationmaster none of those countries have a higher murder rate that the US. The US rate is 42.8 per million, Finland is closest of the western nations with 28.3 per million.

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita

The US pays about four times as much per capita as the average Western nation, yet get among the lowest ranked health care. And has among the lowest life expectancies.
Compared to the world average it is about 8 times. Compared to the other top ten highest spenders it is close to twice. Estimates vary, highest put the US at about 3-3.5 times as much, lowest puts it at about twice. I am willing to concede that the US only spends twice as much money to get much worse healthcare than comparable nations (who all have universal healthcare).

So the other nations pay half as much and get better healthcare, for everyone.

Social mobility in the US is among the lowest in the western world.
The most US-positive source I could find didn’t agree that it was lowest, only that it was below average. I am willing to concede that the US only has “below average” social mobility rather “among the lowest”.

http://www.princeton.edu/futureofchildren/publications/journals/article/index.xml?journalid=35&articleid=85&sectionid=515

The US has the largest income gaps on the planet if you exclude small oil nations.
Alright lets use the “Gini coefficient”. According to that, there are actually a few african nations as well as two south american that have larger income gaps. I am willing to concede that the US only have the largets income gaps in the world outside Africa and South America.

I propose we agree on the following:

-The US has the highest murder rate in the western world. (unchanged)
-The US has the largest prison population in the world, and the highest percentage of it’s population imprisoned.(unchanged)
-On average Americans spend 16 times as much money per capita on military than other citizens. (revised)
-The US military budget is almost as big as the rest of the world put together. (revised)
-The US spends about twice as much on and gets worse healthcare than comparable nations (revised)
-Social mobility in the US is below average. (revised)

Please specify an alternative that you would prefer if there is any point you don’t agree with.

62

Thank you for providing cites.

So, you’re trying to support the statement “The US at the moment is pretty much the extreme end of the spectrum so it’s not surprising that they would have extreme problems.”

I assume by spectrum, you mean political spectrum? I would guess the following facts support the US as being at the extreme end of the political spectrum:
-The US has the largest prison population in the world, and the highest percentage of it’s population imprisoned.
-On average Americans spend 16 times as much money per capita on military than other citizens.
-The US military budget is almost as big as the rest of the world put together.

I guess I have no problem with that characterization. I don’t see anything wrong with being “extreme” in term of policies. If something works, then it hardly matters how it compares to other nations’ policies.

And the others you claim to be problems?
-The US has the highest murder rate in the western world.
-The US spends about twice as much on and gets worse healthcare than comparable nations.
-Social mobility in the US is below average.

I agree these are problems. (Although not because of the comparison to other nations. Murder rates, poor healthcare and poor social mobility would be problems even if we compared well to other nations.) I do not see how these statements are connected to the policies you stated. Can you explain the connections?

63

The OP asked if Americans are angry about politics because the U.S. is declining as a world power. I’m putting forward as an alternative that Americans are “angry” because of internal political/social issues, not external.

The USA is one of the richest countries in the world. So why is it plagued by social issues that are usually associated with 3:d world countries? Massive incarceration rates, violent crimes, low voter turnout, high infant mortality, poor healthcare, child poverty. There are even armed militias inside its borders.

Why does the US with all its wealth have all these problems? If I am looking for an answer to that I’m going to look at countries who have a simmilar conditions and see what seperates them. By simmilar conditions in this case I mainly mean economical, since political/social/cultural differences is what I am looking for.

The one thing that stands out the most is the huge internal economical differences. And research indicates that large socio-economic differences are strongly connected to many social problems. A huge problem is that you can not even discuss these things in the US or with Americans because it is tantamount to cussing in church.

A provocative example: The American Dream

That means that anyone can lift himself up by his bootstraps. Only in American can you make the journey from born as the 12:th child in a poor family to become a millionaire. Every American knows this is true. But if we examine it we see something else. The American Dream is basically the essence of social mobility. And as we agreed, the US performs below average in that category. It’s actually harder to fulfill the American Dream in America than in most Western Nations.

But the moment you start questioning truths like that, communication tends to break down. It’s very much the same as the reaction you get from a religious fundamentalist when you start questioning the truth of their holy texts.

64

I agree with you, interestingly enough. Oh, not that we are particularly ‘angry’ at this period in our history (any more so than in the past), but what anger we have is mostly internally directed. As usual for us, really. At heart, we are still isolationists or at least internally focused.

How is any of this different than what we’ve ever been? When did we not have all of those things…and how is today any different than 10 years ago, or 50 or 100? If anything, it’s BETTER today on every one of those fronts than it’s ever been before. And none of them make us any less (or more) than we have ever been.

Possibly…if so, it because people are more focused on the economy right now because of the recession and that brings out fear, which brings out anger. People are scared because so many things went wrong so quickly, and because this recession has really hit people’s sense of themselves and their confidence in ways different from other recessions.

You may think you have demonstrated this, but IMHO you haven’t. I guess it all comes back to what you think the ‘American Dream’ actually is. You seem to think it’s all about healthcare and social equality, and if so, then you are right…it’s harder to get those things in the US than in Euro-land. But it’s still easier for an American to buy, say, a single family house than it is for your average French citizen in France. Or in Germany.

Have you ever questioned the ‘truths’ you live by in your own country? Ever considered that massive social spending may one day come back to haunt your own country? My guess is the answer is ‘no’, because you KNOW that the ‘truths’ you live by are the right ones. You grew up that way, after all, so it MUST be right. I’m not saying that they are wrong or right, merely pointing out that you probably have never even thought about it seriously one way or the other.

-XT

65

I didn’t say it was.

Yes I have.

No I don’t.

Continuously since I can remember.

66

I feel that his arguments are sound with one flaw: if the US is declining as a world power, who’s #2 and how far ahead is the US?

Imho, if the US was half as dominant as it was in 1998 (before the bubble burst,) the US would still be twice as dominating as #2.

Another historical trend that Abramvsky failed to mention is that whenever one of the world powers became too powerful, usually a group of the weaker powers would join forces and topple the top dog. This has happened with the formation of the European Union and the WTO, but they have done little to nothing to challenge the economic might of the US. Also, for whatever reason, nobody in the world has an army capable of challenging the US (while the Chinese may have more bodies, they can’t match the US’ technological superiority.)

67

“How far ahead is the US” is hard to quantify, unless we use some particular agreed-upon measure, like trade deficits, and no matter what such measure we pick many will argue its irrelevance. E.g., the European Union is ahead of the U.S. in GDP, but does that count, the EU being not one country but more than a dozen?

But, here’s what matters: After WWII, the U.S. was the largest manufacturing-and-exports economy in the world, and that fact provided the American working class and lower-middle class with an abundance of high-wage low-skill jobs with security and benefits, and people who were young then got to thinking of that as in the very nature of things; and that state of affairs has been eroding ever since the early 1970s. For several reasons, including outsourcing, globalization, declining U.S. oil reserves, and other parts of the world simply catching up in terms of industrial development.

As for U.S. global military dominance, it has not so much declined in terms of relative troop strength, etc., as become steadily less relevant. What does it matter, if America can beat China or China can beat America? We’re never going to go to war anyway, our economies are too intertwined; the Chinese know that and, in their dealings and negotiations with America, have no reason to give American military strength any weight at all. If Bill Gates and Donald Trump have a business sit-down, it makes no difference whatsoever in relative negotiating strength that Donald could probably kick Bill’s ass.

68

Cite that it’s harder for a poor person to become a millionaire* in the US versus other Western nations. Note that this is not captured by the Gini coefficient, which measures wealth distribution, rather than ease of changing one’s wealth.

I suspect that while the wealth distribution is more uniform in other Western nations, that accumulating significant wealth is substantially harder there.

*Probably too low a threshold, since anyone who bought a house a couple decades ago and has mostly paid off their mortgage is likely to be nearly worth one million dollars.

69

He already covered that. It’s not that “it’s harder for a poor person to become a millionaire”, per se, it’s that income mobility is pretty much nonexistent among the top and bottom quintiles in the US. Things for the middle three quintiles are pretty much the same as elsewhere.

70

Oops, somehow I missed that cite. It’s interesting, although it’s looking at intergenerational mobility rather than personal mobility. Not the same thing, but likely to be highly correlated.

The real problem with that study for our purposes is that the income mobility is only in relative terms instead of absolute terms. That is, it looks at mobility between quintiles of the income distribution, rather than some monetary value.

For example, it could be possible that the richest quintile of a European nation has the same wealth value as the fourth quintile of the US. So while it might be easier for an individual to enter the top quintile there than the top quintile here, it might be easier for the American to enter the fourth quintile (and similar wealth values) as the top quintile there. So in terms of purchasing power, it could be easier to become wealthy (in an absolute sense) here. The study does not address that issue, so we don’t know.

71

The European quintile would include having health care, and a strong social platform to keep you above water in bad economic times. In many cases the government actually works for the people.
Our wealth requires we subtract the amount of money we pay for health care before we compare them. My brother died from brain cancer a month ago. He had medicare and a insurance party through work. His widow still has to pay 10 of thousands of medical costs that the doctors rejected or said was not enough. She fought with her health care company over and over during the 7 months he fought cancer. Our system is reprehensible and costs a fortune.
Our health care costs over $1000 dollars a month. In much of Europe, they get far better coverage and have minor out of pocket expenses.

72

Pleonast, I think I have been very forthcoming with cites for my position and it seems you agree.

Since the American Dream is universally known, and it is “common knowledge” in the US that the US offers among the highest, well let’s be honest, THE highest possibilities for it coming true it should be very easy to find cites supporting THAT position.

73

Yes, I appreciate that you have cites, and you need to continue providing cites for your claims, rather than expecting others to disprove your claims.

74

I find this somewhat unfair. If this is not reciprocal I don’t see what I get out of it. I’m only interested in good faith discussions where both parts try to learn and find agreement. That means I argue my position and provide cites, then listen to your arguments and look at your cites.

75

I feel that I am making a good faith effort to being open to being convinced by your arguments. You are the one who claimed “it’s actually harder to fulfill the American Dream in America than in most Western Nations”. If you do not want to defend it, that’s your prerogative, but don’t expect anyone else to be convinced.

If there’s claims others have made that you’d like cites for, then ask for them specifically.

76

I apologize for not giving you the credit you deserve, I really do appreciate your openness and good faith. Should have pointed that out in my last post, which as I read it comes off as harsher than intended.

Let me instead ask you this:

Would you be interested in a good faith win/win discussion where we try to find a position we can both agree on?

To me that would be much more rewarding than me trying to ‘drag’ you as close to my current position as possible.

77

I think that is what we are doing. :slight_smile:

I think more or less everyone in this thread agrees that the anger in the current political discourse is because of discontent with the domestic situation rather than because of any change in the US’s international status.

The disagreements are over what parts of the domestic situation are the source of the anger. You claimed that-The US has the highest murder rate in the western world.
-The US spends about twice as much on and gets worse healthcare than comparable nations.
-Social mobility in the US is below average.are sources of this anger. You have provided cites that support some version of those claims. (But you need to be careful about extending farther than the cites support.) I guess the next step is to discuss whether or not these issues are reasons for the anger.

78

Well the nature of the discussion so far has been somewhat unilateral. I make claims and provide cites, you accept, refuse or negotiate those claims. The reason for this being that we’re assuming that there is a starting point against which the claims are made and which needs to be proven false.

Basically the premise is that the opposite of what I say is true, unless proven otherwise by me.

Lets say that I claim that California is hotter than Florida. By the current system the burden of proof is now on me, and if I am not able to provide evidence the opposite is taken to be true.

I don’t think this asymmetrical method is optimal. And it has some obvious flaws. For example, I might as well have said Florida is hotter than California, which would mean that if I can’t prove that it’s the other way around. And obviously the temperature of those states are not correlated to which I name first in my argument.

I would prefer that in lack of supporting arguments or cites all statements are treated as equal. This is of course only an effective way of reaching conclusions if we have good faith, otherwise one party could just continually ask for cites for every statement and the discussion would break down because of frustration.

Since my impression is that you indeed are debating in good faith, I think this is a valid method.

79

Just another perspective (and as 'luci says, shields up loony lefties, it’s a tighty righty site) on the question about income mobility. I had also found a link done by the Treasury Department, but it was a rather large .PDF so I’m not going to post it here (besides, anyone can Google ‘Income Mobility in the US’ and get the same stuff).

-XT

80

The cite was interesting but lacked the essential component: International comparison.

It supports the claim that there is economic mobility in the US. But it does neither support nor oppose the claim “There is more/less economic mobility in the US than in X”.