Who makes the small reactors being constructed now?
Apart from the fact that, as far as I know, they have not actually built any of them, you tell me
I see a lot of “global” in there.
A decade or so back, a tar sands processing plant was put in near Tar Island AB. The plant was built in Asia in pieces, barged to Lewiston and transported over winding mountain roads through Idaho and Montana to get to northern Alberta where the pieces were ikeaed together. Because, I guess, we could not afford local talent to do the whole job in Canada/US. That strikes me as the pinnacle of cost-cutting absurdity.
I have read any number of articles insisting the share of GDP going to corporate profits is up a bunch and the share of GDP going to labor is down vs. e.g. 20 years ago. I wasn’t able to form a good enough Google query to come up with cites for this post; the search results were swamped with simple stats of things like time series of gross corporate profits by year.
Perhaps you’ll have more success.
The inflation of the 1970s made it less beneficial to save, and more beneficial to buy stuff now, before the price went up.
Possibly this influenced habits going forward.
I agree with most of the above, but I would like to add one item: the hollowing out of the public education system. Even before Betsy DeVos took a sledgehammer to it, it was in bad disrepair. A few years ago, the Times printed a letter from, I am guessing, some upper class twit who complained that school teachers were overpaid and underworked. He seemed to think that teachers worked 5 hours a day, nine months of the year. This has only gotten worse as states balance their budgets by reducing the allocations to education, both K-12 and post-secondary. Teachers are disrespected, bullied by parents, and paid very poorly. There are many gifted teachers, but many of the best are burning out.
Incidentally, in the comparison of saving and spending above, the point was missed of who was saving and who spending. It is only my WAG, but I suspect that most of that saving is by the people who have the money. What else are they going to do with it? While the poor zhlubs who slave in the salt mines can’t save; they need every cent they earn.
Ok, but what is the evidence that this is happening? I haven’t seen any showing that the US is in an actual decline relative to other countries economically, even this year where the US is being impacted heavily due to the Covid outbreak. The thing is, if a billionaire only makes 1% on their investments this year it’s still going to be more than a millionaire making 6%. Even if the billionaire goes negative the relative change is going to mean it will take years or even decades before their positions change. This year, our only real peer rival (wrt total GDP anyway) isn’t doing particularly well either, and in fact seems to be doing a hell of a lot worse. Other near peer rivals aren’t doing all that hot either, so I’m not seeing any sort of trend here. Certainly the US hasn’t done very well wrt the number of infected or dead in this Covid outbreak, but the relative numbers aren’t wildly different, even trusting that several other countries are accurately reporting their numbers which, you know, I have my doubts about…wink wink, nudge nudge…
Anyway, to answer your OP (I think both Exapno_Mapcase and that brutal conqueror Tamerlane hit it on the head) would be a noticeable, measurable economic decline over decades relative to the rest of the world or at least relative to the top countries, or some sort of large scale, sudden and devastating event…which would certainly take down the US but would, consequently take down the rest of the worlds economy too, so you’d get something like a dark age.
Rather than Russia, which as pointed out up thread is a bad example (the US is unlikely to ever have that trajectory), I’d say something like what happened to the British Empire is perhaps a better analogy. Except instead of losing our colonial empire it would be our trading empire. Think about if the US didn’t have many (or any I suppose) of the top companies world wide. Now, think about if the US wasn’t such a large market anymore as well, so that countries and companies weren’t as interested in US markets. You’d have a shift in trade markets to other, more lucrative ones and away from the US. Manufacturing would shift towards those markets and away from us. This might also cause (or be an effect) the US dollar to no longer be the go to currency, move it away from being central to several products, and thus further shift the focus from the US to either a new economic hub or, more likely, to several. Again, think about how the British Empire was once the hub around which trade and goods flowed to today, where the UK is still a power but not the central focus anymore. THAT could be what a declining US would look like.
As to the cause, well, take your pick. Depending on your political outlook you can and probably will blame the other side for the decline. If you think that the US population is getting stupider or lazier or whatever that could be the cause. It’s hard to imagine something like this happening to the US alone while the rest of the world chugs forward, but I suppose it’s possible. The billionaire could make a lot of bad decisions and be surpassed by those millionaires eventually, and perhaps fall fairly far before reaching a new equilibrium somewhere. After all, for sure, one day the US won’t be number one (I know, you already don’t think that’s the case anyway), and will fade away. It’s all about what the time frame is as to how that might happen and where we might go. Honestly, though I don’t think it will happen in my life time (not saying much there as I don’t have all that long left), it might be nice to be the UK while someone else plays the worlds hyperpower…
I think you don’t understand what profit actually is. It’s not something that’s passed on to consumers in the form of lower prices.
Remember, all this stuff is time-separated. So a company may outsource some labor intensive aspect of their operation, thereby reducing the cost of their item. Then the marketing people decide how much it should be priced at. Other than the fact that you generally want to price things above cost, they don’t really have any relationship to each other. It’s something of a gamble- you want to figure out where that sweet spot is to make the most money- it’s an equilibrium between the price and the number you sell. Of course, it’s not in a vacuum- you have to also consider what your competitors and alternate goods cost (i.e. if you’re selling hamburgers, you still have to consider what Taco Bell’s prices are).
Then down the line, maybe at the end of the month, quarter, or year, the accountants tally it all up and determine if you are making money (profit) or losing money overall, and in particular for each item.
So it’s entirely possible if a company lowered cost through outsourcing, that they could also make a ton of profit while also lowering prices for the end consumer. Generally speaking, that’s exactly how I would expect some sort of significant cost-decreasing measure to look.
Well I wasn’t limiting the conversation to economic decline, which is why the response to covid was given as an example.
Anyway the economy is not entirely healthy either. The US once again smashed borrowing records. And wealth inequality is some of the worst in the developed world, and is only getting worse.
If you have tens of millions of dirt poor people, and one Facebook, that still looks great on the stock market. But, when you think about it, an escalating set of problems from Trumpism to police brutality to the subsequent protests can be significantly tied to the existence of an (often poorly-educated) underclass with little prospect of breaking through the glass gutter.
Felt I should clarify what I meant by this, lest I be accused of saying BLM participants are just uneducated.
What I mean is, police brutality and a draconian criminal justice system is partly a function of there being areas of significant poverty and high crime, and little political incentive to treat the people living there fairly.
People are quite rightly angered by this, and I very much support the protests, but at least part of the anger is also related to the fact that many feel they don’t have much prospect of ever escaping the poverty trap.
And yet, our debt to GDP ratio isn’t among the worst in the world…not even close. I’m not saying our debt problem isn’t large, but it doesn’t seem to indicate a relative decline, especially when, again, many of our peer or near peer nations are worse off. Even if we go by their official numbers, right Mijin? 
Is it? Is the US among the worst for wealth inequality? And is this an actual metric you are using on the US and other near or peer nations as well?
Thing is, we don’t have 10’s of millions of dirt poor people, not using the actual definition of that. We have 10’s of millions of RELATIVE poor people…relative to the rest of the population in the US. Certainly, that’s an issue, but the irony of talking about ‘dirt poor’ people on Facebook seems to be lost on you. But I wonder…what about a country that has large debt and not 10’s but 100’s of millions of ACTUAL dirt poor people? Plus huge debt, much of it black and a totalitarian government? How do they stack up? Having those things, are they in decline as well? I’m just curious how you are measuring decline here, as it seems to be a bit biased and leading.
Interesting. So, let me see if I have this. Dirt poor people. Large amounts of debt. Police brutality and protests, and an underclass with little prospect of breaking through the glass gutter. Perhaps a problem with ethnic cleansing and locking up millions of ethnic minority people. A huge wealth inequality gap, perhaps with a ruling elite taking up a large part of that, making it even more difficult for those not in that elite to break through. Oh, and a tightening grip of totalitarian government. Man, that does sound like one of the largest powers on the planet today, to be sure. Maybe you are right…maybe those are all indications of decline…
…it sure sounds like the United States of America, which is the subject of this thread. Do you disagree?
It’s not just that - it is competent totalitarian government.
And I saw what you did there.
From what I can see, a significant fraction of the protesters are not the poorly-educated underclass. A lot of them are sub-middle-to-middle class non-blacks who object to seeing their fellow citizens treated like shit. Perhaps part of it is the Niemöller effect (“eventually they will get around to coming for me if I fail to speak up on behalf of those people”), or perhaps it is some kind of holistic attitude that treating everyone fairly makes our society a better place.
Yes it is. For example, here is data by the Pew Research Center, illustrating that the US has a higher Gini coefficient than any other advanced nation (scroll to the bottom).
No, the US has 10s of millions of poor people by ABSOLUTE standards, about 40 million in fact. Things like being homeless, or not being able to consistently afford food makes you poor, period.
But additionally, even the relative poverty rate is important, because of the higher cost of living in developed countries. If you live in a household earning less than half the median income you will likely struggle to buy essential goods like healthcare and transport to work. And the US is a far outlier in the proportion of people earning below this metric (cite).
Also, I didn’t talk about “dirt poor people on Facebook”. I don’t think you read what I wrote.
To be clear, I am not making the claim that the US is going into decline. The very first word of the topic is If, and I thought I made it clear in the description that while certain indicators might make one believe such a decline is on the cards, it’s absolutely an open question.
The topic of discussion is just intended to be that if such a decline happens (or is already happening, but is too hard to see because some metrics are still positive), what were the causes? On covid, we can point at Trump, but what happened to even put the US in a situation where its pandemic response relied on one science-illiterate selfish jerk?
Really? Absolute standards? You sure about that? Can you cite this interesting fact? So, relative to the rest of the world, we have 10’s of millions of poor that are on par? Like, let’s say, as poor as the hundreds of millions of poor people in China, our nearest peer? IIRC, they have something like 300 million+ people who make less than a dollar a day, so let’s use that as the ‘absolute standard’ (I believe that is in fact the standard the US uses for absolute poverty, but this is from memory), as that seems fair. The US has 10’s of millions of people who live on less than a dollar a day? If you can cite it I’ll be very interested in that as it’s something I can honestly say I didn’t know. Of course, based on your cite it seems when you say ‘absolute poor’ what you really mean is in reference to developed and prosperous nations with extensive safety net systems in place superior to the US, not ‘absolute’ as in, well, absolute, which is what I was saying about relative poverty. US poor are poor relative to the US population as a whole…and certainly relative to other very prosperous nations with large social safety nets. But not compared to, oh, say the dirt poor people in China.
Well, then how would Facebook affect them? Of course, the reality is that poor people in the US CAN and in many cases do use Facebook, so I think the irony is still there. Certainly not in every case, and certainly not those 10’s of millions of Americans that live in ‘absolute poverty’ you are getting me cites on.
Sure, but then you go on to list examples I interpreted as you saying it’s already there or there is a trend, so sorry for the confusion on my part. I did see your use of ‘if’ there.
Fair enough. I think I answered as best I can to project what the conditions would be ‘if’ that happens, which you didn’t seem to really respond to, while definitely focusing on the part of my post about poverty, but ok. I think that the only way to get where you are asking about is over long time periods where there is a fundamental shift of markets, finance, capital and pretty much everything else away from the US and to other nations. That doesn’t seem to be happening now, and I don’t see a trend where that is or even potentially could happen in any sort of probable way, but ‘if’ it did that would be what we’d see.
Is it though? Is the CCP a ‘competent totalitarian government’? What makes you think so? Just curious.
Not really unless you squint. So, I’d say, yes…I disagree. I do know of a superpower who does fit the bill, however, and you don’t even have to squint to see it. Though I’ve found that if you cover your eyes, you can not see it. This is something I’ve noticed quite a lot in the last few years, in fact.
Look at the Covid results. Now, I think their suppression of free information is going to hurt them in the long run. And it is in comparison. You think Trump would have been more effective if he had more power?
…you don’t have to “squint” to have witnessed multiple examples of police forces out-of-control, with little to no accountability, with much brutality and protests. What is it, do you think, that Black Lives Matters are protesting about? And the US Attorney General suggested to prosecutors that they should bring sedition charges to some of the protestors. Whats up with that?
You don’t have to squint very hard to see that personal debt is at its highest in years. You don’t have to look very hard to look at an underclass of people that no matter how hard they work and how much money they make the white supremacist “overlords” will do whatever it takes to put them “back in their place.” The United States has a history of eugenics and its sad to see that this legacy hasn’t gone away. America has a massive wealth inequality gap. Its so massive I’m quite astonished that you can’t see it. The “ruling elite” hold almost all of the money. The white supremacist regime currently holding office is looting and pillaging the country. According to the statistics I see there are substantially more incarcerated people in the United States than there are in China. And America has a “ruling elite.” That makes it difficult for those “not in the elite” to break though. America is built on the bedrock of white supremacy.
I’ll concede that America isn’t in the grip of a totalitarian government. Yet. If Trump wins again later this year though then I’m not sure if that will remain true. We’ve watched as this administration has routinely ignored the law, fired and gotten rid of dissent, stacked the courts, ignored one of the branches of government. We’ve got the President of the United States actively trying to undermine the postal service and the next election, with got acting heads of ICE and Homeland Security who weren’t appointed with congressional oversight.
So I don’t know what America you are talking about. But the America that I can see ticks almost every single box you presented.
Would that be…China?
Here’s a question for you: what’s with the obsession with China? I could understand you bringing China up in a thread about China. But it seems every time the US is criticized in a thread and you choose to participate in that thread, you instinctively bring up China in defense.
Why is that?
A lot of things to unpack here.
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In your previous post, you were incredulous that the US has the worst wealth inequality, and largest poverty rate, of any developed country. When I subsequently provided cites to back that up, your response is…tumbleweeds.
If I were in your position, I would consider these facts to be a big shakeup to my worldview. It would likely cause me to reevaluate my position. What I wouldn’t do is just skip over that stuff, to find something else the poster said that I could try to attack. -
In terms of absolute measures of poverty, I gave two examples already: homelessness and food insecurity.
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This was all in the context of comparing the poverty rate of the US to other developed countries. I don’t know why you are bringing a developing country (China) into the discussion, nor why you now want to compare absolute numbers of people.
While you mention it though, the proportion of people living on less that $1.90 a day, by PPP, is indeed higher in the US than in China, according to the World Bank. I’m sure you’ll argue that PPP is a relative measure, but it’s actually intended to remove the relative difference of pricing in different locales. IOW, you could see earning <$1.90 per day PPP as a measure of how much rice and vegetables a person could buy. -
You’ve now also conceded the original point by acknowledging that “US poor are poor […] certainly relative to other very prosperous nations with large social safety nets”.
And it should be noted “very prosperous” here is not the standard examples like Sweden or Iceland. But essentially, all the industrialized nations, from Spain to Poland to Russia. And some not very industrialized nations like Morocco.
Again, I suggest you go back and look at what I actually wrote. I never at any point talked about anyone using Facebook.
I know China is your favorite boogeyman to harp on… But what kind of argument is “our homeless and hungry are better off than their homeless and hungry”? I mean, we are still talking tens of millions of homeless and hungry that we, as a country, have failed, right?
IMO …
It is very common that lefties look at current reality and measure how we’re doing by how much worse we are versus how good we could be. Meanwhile righties tend to look at how much better we are than other countries.
IOW, Progressives say “Compared to Star Trek, how bad are we?” while Conservatives prefer “Compared to China/Russia/Iran, how much better are we?”
It’s glass half full / glass half empty write very, very large.