Back then it was popular to compare our situation to the declining years of the Roman empire. It seemed a stupid analogy to me at the time. I don’t think most of us will notice our fall from world dominance until well after it’s happened; if it happens. There are simply too many ways to fall from grace for there to exist a simple ‘check it and see’ test of our status in the world.
Of course, are some disturbing trends of late…
This “dominance” is not an on/off thing. Some time ago, it was widely accepted that there is very little the US can do in the conflict between Russia and Georgia. US influence has always had limits and succesful war presidents have preferred invading Grenada instead of Iraq. These limits will, no doubt, continue to move back and forth. Post-Iraq (and Afghanistan) the biggest change is in perception: everybody has seen the limits. Before some people pretended they do not exist.
It is interesting that people are mixing military with economic power. France in 1939 was considered a military power (first rank)…and that was correct (the French Army was one of the largest in the world). However, it was rather poorly equipped. And it was not a first ranked economic power (the USA in 1939 had a much larger GNP per capita than France)…yet the USA (1939) was NOT a first-ranked military power (our army was smaller than Portugal’s). This was because the USA did NOT want to be a superpower, in 1939.
Today, China is a huge economic power, but it is not even a minor military power-it has a small navy, and a large army which is equipped with obsolescent weapons.
As for fighting, the Chinese have been able to obtain everything they want (resources from Africa; access to the USA market) without any use of military power-they do it the “good old-fashioned way”-bribing politicians and buying access.
The whole thing is becoming an old-fashioned worldview, because (as we have seen) having a high-tech military hasn’t halped us in the idiotic conflicts we have chosen to embroil ourselves in. China will never involve itself in some civil war in an obscure African country-they will sell weapons to both sides, and buy both sets of politicians.
You think the Great Depression was the result of New Deal building programs? The Great Depression that started during the Hoover administration?
The evil of the New Deal was so great that its effects broke physics and traveled back in time. It killed the dinosaurs too.
FDR’s mad skillz FTW.
Yeah. The U.S. is in decline because it has turned into a plutonomy.
How does that compare to wealth distribution in China or other countries?
China and the US both have Gini coefficients around .45, oddly enough.
No…not as far as I can see. What we have is that other countries are rising relative to the US. But the US is no more in decline than Europe (as a whole) is. I’m not buying much from the OP’s cited article. The Chinese are going to over take the US militarily in less than 50 years? :dubious: America will suddenly collapse because other 'empire’s collapsed suddenly? Much of it seemed to be the same anti-outsourcing, pro-isolationist theme we’ve been seeing made around here and in the wider community with increasing stridency for the last few years. Appeals to polls of the population who are being fed a steady diet about the evils of outsourcing, of corporations in general being the root cause of all our problems, of how tariffs will save the day and would be in the best interests of the good workers and peasants of these great United States, blah blah blah. It’s interesting to me when people appeal to the supposed greater wisdom of the masses…and when they ignore them because the masses don’t agree with them.
I’m not seeing much in terms of hard facts indicating we are nearing the end of ‘empire’ here in the US. AFAIK, our GDP, before the recession, was still increasing, though obviously more slowly than, say, China’s or India’s. But that’s like comparing the percentage of increase of someone like Bill Gates wealth to someone who moves from crushing poverty into the lower middle class. While Gates percentage of improvement might be in a few percentage points, those percentage points are much larger in absolute terms than the huge percentage change for that poor guy moving from total poverty into lower middle class. I see China and India as moving from crushing poverty into…less crushing poverty. While the US moves from affluence to…a touch more affluence. Europe is in the same boat…they already HAVE great affluence, so gaining a bit or losing a bit really doesn’t markedly change the over all environment. They are in a recession, just like us. They are having to make cut backs and are taking a short or medium term down turn just like us. But relatively speaking, they are still one of the wealthiest regions on earth. Just like the US.
As for militarily, people are dreaming if they think China will overtake the US militarily in 50 years. Our technological lead today is probably something like 50 years. Even if we stopped development and procurement tomorrow we’d hold that advantage for that time period. And I seriously doubt we’ll be seriously cutting back on our defense budget this year. Or next year. Or 5 years from now.
-XT
Well, the US overtook everyone else militarily in less than 10 years. It took a lot of technology transfer, particularly from the UK, though (radar, the jet engine, a large chuck of the research underlying the Manhattan Project) which is admittedly less likely today.
This thread from a couple of year’s ago touches on the same theme: What will be the biggest issues for the next President to deal with? - Great Debates - Straight Dope Message Board
I think it is patently obvious that we are in decline, or that the rest of the world is catching up and passing us (with the same result); and that precisely at a time when we should be trying to make significant investments in our education system and embracing new ways of thinking, a large segment of our society is instead embracing populist anti-intellectualism that will further push us back.
I agree. PLA top-brass is known to be very macho when it comes to their perceived abilities as a force capable of going toe-to-toe with US forces. While it is true that they have been receiving copious amounts of funding as of late, they don’t appear to be fielding anything revolutionary. Much noise is made about certain platforms, such as as the PLAN’s apparent ‘carrier-killer’ missile, yet it is probably mostly smoke. There are huge differences in troop quality as well. Ever so often I would see groups of low-end PLA troops wandering around Chinese cities when I lived there. They lacked the super-confidence that glows around a western-trained soldier. Their equipment was poor and ill-fitting with most having these small cloth sneakers in lieu of standard combat footwear. They certainly were not physically intimidating. That’s just some ad-hoc anecdotal observations.
One can say what they want about the US military and their adventures abroad, but those efforts have kept them razor sharp as a fighting force. The PLA hasn’t been involved in anything since they wandered into Vietnam in the 80’s.
Thinking of military might as the primary means of a nation projecting its influence is pretty antiquated view. Our massive military isn’t winning the war in Afghanistan and I think it’s unrealistic to think that the US and China are going to square off in a conventional war. The probelm is that we have put so much of our resources into developing a mechanism that is less relevant than other means of power.
Also, America’s decline doesn’t mean that the next superpower fill the void, it is more likely that a host of regional powers fill the void: a multi-polar world.
One of the strength of Germany, Japan and later China is that they do not immediately think in terms of raw power politics and this saves them billions. The economically useful part of the US armed forces are a couple of carrier groups (which ensure that in a crisis the US gets to decide who gets stuff by seas) and a small part of the ground forces and nuclear detererrent (to keep its soil unthreatened). Not wanting to touch the ideological and political implications in this thread, all rest is an economical burden.
If the US wants to continue to use a lot of money to arm itself, it will continue to be the only player in the field, because there is really very little bang for the buck in it. Others will slightly raise military spending when their GNP grows. In China particularly the army is influential internally and runs huge businesses unrelated to weaponry. This in my opinion is a huge draw-back in its fighting capability. So the US is in a slight decline militarily but there is nothing dramatic in it.
In economical terms, others are not only in rise but the US should do all it can to enhance that. The US has a serious trade deficit. In the future, there will be 100000000 Chinese, who will want to buy a tiny white box with a microchip and elegant letters “iBragg” in it. It will cost enormously. And that’s your hope. Start designing it already.
While the smart ones will send their kids to private school or home school them to keep them ahead of the curve.
Who cares if America is in decline? If you’re smart enough to be one of the rich it really doesn’t matter. This is only a concern for the unambitious worker bees.
One would think those who are smart enough to be rich would be smart enough to know that the worker bees are the source of their wealth. It is good to know they are not as smart as they think they are.
Worker bees are easily replaced. Again, the decline of a nation is only of concern to the workers. The rich can always find workers willing to bust their butts or even sacrifice their health for a job.
One good thing this economy has done is deflate workers’ overinflated sense of importance.
Every time someone says “Workers own the means of production” all you have to do to make them piss themselves is whisper “automation” or “offshoring” and they fall right back in line. Even though neither is really doing much to actually hurt employment.
That works until workers get tired of being hungry, and drag the wealthy out of their castles and burn tires around their necks. Bees have stingers, you know.
Being rich has nothing to do with being intelligent; you can be a moron and be rich. Connections, luck and ruthlessness are what make you rich, not being smart.
I bet the rich guys killed off in Communist revolutions thought that too. Make the general population miserable enough and that sort of thing often tends to happen.
Ah, so called “labor discipline”; in other words terrorizing the common people into being good serfs. That’s not a “good thing”.