Is the US becoming a banana republic?

Great Debates
101

A bit of a digression, but…First off the USA is the most populous developed country. A lot of the points raised here, like foreign aid, immigration etc. is basically total numbers. A result of having a bigger population, when the numbers per head iare nowhere near the top.

Seems to me that if we are looking for a hypothetical US decline in relation to other nations, a per-head measure makes more sense.

Um, no. Actually, hell, no. This seems to be an issue of perspective and scale.

Last numbers I remember, 2009, Germany, the UK and Frances total military budgets were bigger than the total budgets of Russia and China. If the US evaporated tomorrow, the remaining EU/NATO countries would have something like a third of the military speding of the planet.

The EUs military spending is vastly overengineered for any potential threat. And if the EU wanted greater military power, coordinating current spending would yield much better results.

Ony from the perspective of US military spending could the EU spending possibly be regarded as anything but massivly over the top.

The US spends just under 5 % of GDP on its military. Major EU nations spend between 2,5 -1,5 % of GDP.

Meanwhile, the US spends 18 % of GDP on healthcare. The western EU nations average 9 %, with mostly better outcomes. That difference is 3 times the difference in military spending. In fact, the waste in US healthcare is almost twice the entire US military budget!

European social programs are built on more efficient healthcare not less military spending. Military budgets are just not on the same scale.

102

[QUOTE=Grim Render]
Last numbers I remember, 2009, Germany, the UK and Frances total military budgets were bigger than the total budgets of Russia and China.
[/QUOTE]

If you are going to tell me hell no you better back it up with a cite then, ehe? Here is the figured from Wiki (in dollars):

China: $166.0
Russia: $90.7
Germany: $45.8
France: $58.9
UK: $60.8

So, by my calculation the COMBINED defense spending of France, German and the UK is less than the (known) spending of China alone. None of your group spend more than Russia on a one for one basis even today. And, of course, China’s spending is continuing to increase year by year.

By comparison, Japan actually spends more than Germany and France (the UK spends a touch more) and they basically have just a local defense force (that, also, relies on the US)…Japan: $59.3

No, it’s not. It relies on the US to carry the bulk of the water wrt military projection outside of Europe. Where would the money come from for the EU to ramp up their military significantly? They are having serious fiscal issues NOW, with their relatively small military budgets as it is. They have spent the money they saved (from us doing the bulk of the military spending) on social programs, and they are basically tapped out.

No, from the mission they spend too little. The mission being the ability of the western powers to project military force outside of their borders. Of course, only the US CAN do that of the western powers…which is why our budget is so high compared to the other allies.

Yeah, I know. That’s the issue.

Exactly. Their wonderful social programs and healthcare are subsidized by the US. Great, ain’t it?

Exactly. They rely on us to carry that water for them, and spend their money on other things. Which is exactly what I said. Now, you might disagree that the western powers need the ability to project military force beyond our (or Europe’s, or Japan’s) borders, but I disagree with that assessment. I believe that without that ability there would be no one to protect all that trade stuff, or the importation of strategic materials (like that oil stuff).

103

I dunno. I tend to measure a nation’s strength by the health of its people. Because all the material things in the world mean nothing if we aren’t fit enough to manage them well.

The USA has a relatively high infant mortality rate compared to other advanced nations. We are obese and suffer from all the illnesses that accompany that affliction.

Our use of addictive drugs and our drug dependency is high.

And I believe that currently we lead the world in cases of anxiety and depression.

I don’t think of those problems when I think of a Banana Republic. But in terms of decline, yes. We are, in general, an unhealthy people.

It’s a strange illness, this malady of plenty.

104

And yet Life Expectancy is increasing, not decreasing. Link to PDF.

And the Infant Mortality Rate (also PDF) is decreasing.

Americans are getting fatter (as are people in most of the developed world), but living longer. Not seeing that as a “decline”.

105

I appreciate your optimism.

Increased life expectancy isn’t always the boon a scientist thinks it is.

I don’t see a nation of obese people as progress, myself. You don’t see it as a decline in health? Diabetes, heart disease, knee and back deterioration?

106

But it’s one indicator that the country is not “in decline”.

It’s not unique to the US. And it’s not that difficult to imagine reversing it, particularly since it appears to be leveling off. In fact, one of the easiest way to change that would be for the US to actually become a Third World Country, which is the topic of this thread.

107

I don’t know where we currently stand but in the late last century I believe we were 14th on the list. I’m glad it’s improving, of course, though it continues to be at uneven rates for ethnic groups.

I mean to reiterate that among the most developed countries we are not at the top of the list in our health. Seems to me that given our wealth of resources and riches this should be possible for us.

I suppose remaining static or improving slowly technically in these areas isn’t decline. But it is the closest step to decline.

108

Not a good example. If you know anything about how supercomputers work these days, you would have noticed that it uses American designed processors, and (primarily) American designed software that’s highly scalable. I could introduce you to one of the people who helped develop that technology (he’s a Physics prof at Duke U., and his machine does wonders…), and he could introduce you to the rest.

At this point, it’s just a matter of ‘how many FLOPs do you need? How much money do you have?’ Keep stacking processors until you either achieve your desired FLOP rate, or run out of money. That machine is nothing more than throwing more money at a highly scalable (mostly) American technology, until you beat the Americans. It’s not Chinese technology, by any reasonable definition.

109

Fair point.

110

Not just this excerpt, but the entire post–good argument. This is what I look for in these kind of discussions.

111

This comment shares a problem I have with much of this discussion, and others that discuss topics of relative prosperity. The gross numbers hide or ignore relevant details.

In this instance, you seem to hold that as long as the gross numbers for life expectancy are increasing, it doesn’t matter that the longer life comes with details such as diabetes, arthritis, etc. As another poster implied, a life that is simply longer is not necessarily better. Yes, it is possible to live a longer life in spite of poorer health, mainly due to medical science. Should we really consider that “Progress”? How about shooting for a longer life because of better health?

112

No, I didn’t say that. I said it was “one indicator”. There are a slew of others. It is, however, a very common indicator used to assess “quality of life” in a give country. Any such set of indicators is necessarily going to be incomplete and somewhat subjective.

113

As I asked several times in this thread - you’ve never answered - when are you comparing to? Although there are specific aspects of overall health that are disturbing, obesity being the main one, every possible look at the totality of health and medical treatment shows that people are incredibly and utopianly better off in the U.S. than they ever were in the past. Do you understand that we didn’t have antibiotics until WWII? That in WWI recruiters were in despair about the level of fitness of the average man? That most people couldn’t afford regularly visits to doctors and hospitals and never used either except in emergencies until mid century? That hundreds of cholera epidemics from bad milk were needed to persuade people after a multi-decade campaign to pasteurize milk? That Pittsburgh and other industrial cities used to be blanketed under layers of soot? That factory workers tended to die at around 50?

Please answer the direct question: when do you imagine this era of better health was? What constituted it? How was it better and how were people ever healthier than today? Make a case - any case - that health is actually declining overall today instead of being hugely, enormously, overwhelmingly better.

114

I don’t know why you have the idea that I am comparing the state of the US now to the state of the US at some time in the past. Please point out where I have said something that can be interpreted this way.

115

Right here:

116

Well, someone less charitable than I might refer to your title for this thread, “Is the US becoming a banana republic?” and point out that it is unintelligible if it does not imply a state of decline. And the post I was quoting asks, “Should we really consider that “Progress”?” which is also meaningless unless it refers to the past.

As I am not charitable I will also point out every post you made in between them, none of which make any sense whatsoever unless you are arguing that the U.S. is falling behind either because of decline or because other countries have passed us so that it can no longer be considered a world power or a world leader. I.e., things have changed since some date in the past.

But you’re right. Other than every post you’ve made, I got nothing.

117

Did you even look at these links?

It’s $2 trillion in total individual networth for the Forbes 400.

As for the $118 trillion:

How is that a comparison?

118

Yes I did. Did you actually divide 2/118 and come up with 50%?

I compared net wealth of individuals to the net wealth of the country and found that the article was, well, factually wrong.

119

Wealth is a measure. But it’s somewhat of a moot point. If you have millions, all the possessions you could desire, are well protected and have the adoration of everyone who knows you it will do little good if you are disabled by disease, crazy, or drug addicted.

Don’t people get that?

The adoration of everyone thing? I remember when that was true. Now we question and even discount past international decisions and nearly the entire world is unhappy with us. How is that progress?

They still want to come here for the material things but that’s a misplaced priority because a material world is worthless without health.

120

First, the United States is not a nation without health. It has incredible medicine. What it also has is large pockets of poverty that pull the average numbers down. But that is not at all the same thing.

Second, you need to look at where immigrants are coming from.

You can’t make the case that all those countries have better health care than the U.S. By coming here immigrants generally improve their lives.

Yes, I would like the U.S. to have a proper national health care system. But the fact that some factors are lower in areas of poverty does not mean that immigrants become unhealthy when they step across the border. You’re making the same mistake as the OP by not putting any of the numbers in any context and therefore reaching entirely false conclusions from them.