Is the US in decline?

Great Debates
141

On the balance, yes, I think the US is heading for decline.

We´re not attracting high-powered immigrants like we used to. Immigrants are the heart of the United States.

Hollywood movies are losing their glow. Hollywood is the soul of the United States, and movies are the dreams of the United States.

The political parties don´t do much except sabotage the other party´s efforts and stager endless filibusters and bickering sessions, when it producing candidates that any earlier generation would have laughed at. The political system is the brains of the United States.

We´re heading for the end of the age of cheap transportation. Cheap transportation is the blood of the United States.

Our media is biased and shortsighted, and puts following ideology before telling the truth. The media is the eyes and ears of the United States.

Surface ships are losing the arms race against missiles and submarines. Our navies are the strong arms of the United States.

Other countries will, eventually, tire of us and somehow arrange things so that they are less dependent on our goodwill. It will take a lot, but it will happen one way or the other. Being the place where the world´s dreams come true is the spirit of the United States.

142

So, are you saying should we be building more missiles and submarines, or more surface ships?

143

Like we used to when? It’s news to me…I see a lot of people in the IT industry that have come here from other countries.

Again, it’s news to me. A large percentage of the most popular movies in the world are still made in the US afaik. Do you have any stats to back this assertion up?

Have you looked at the history of the political process in the US? Things are actually mild in the US today, comparatively speaking. Look just at the turmoil and dissension of the 50’s and 60’s wrt civil rights some time, let alone at some of the early squabbling of the various parties…hell, even during the freaking Revolution!

We have been at the end of ‘cheap transportation’ many times in our history…yet we manage to soldier on somehow. I think we’ll muddle through this as well in 40 or 50 years when it actually starts to impact us.

:stuck_out_tongue: When was this magical dream time you speak of? The Edward R Murrow period? Earlier? Again, look a bit closer at the real history, instead of the rose colored version and you’ll find plenty of dirt, grim, bias and shortsightedness. And yet we’ve muddled through that as well. You have access to media undreamed about by our ancestors…practically the access of a god. GLOBAL access, from every ideology and political leaning under the sun.

Totally a non-sequitur to me, but…our surface ships have been vulnerable to missiles for something like 50 years, and have been vulnerable to submarines for even longer. Check out our losses during WWII to subs, for instance…or the losses in WWI for that matter.

Our Navy is no more vulnerable today than it was during the Soviet period…probably substantially less.

Perhaps they will. More likely market forces will subtly shift and another country or other countries will become more the center of gravity, trade wise. But it won’t happen soon, and I doubt the shift will be deliberate. It’s not our ‘goodwill’ that other countries are interested in, after all, but our markets, culture (gods help the world), and our status as the worlds premiere hyperpower. Eventually all that will fade (and is probably fading already)…but it won’t happen tomorrow.

It still is. And, for some, the place where their nightmares come true too. We are (for the time being) the dominant power in the world in just about every measurable aspect. We might not be number one in everything, but we are in the top 2 or 3 in just about every measurable aspect of power in the world, and will be for some time yet to come.

As a for instance, I’ve been all over the world. Even in backwaters and 3rd world countries, I’ve seen kids wearing Drink Coke tee shirts, or knowing some American movie or show on TV (I remember in India someone in a backwater village asking me about the show Dallas once). While we generate more than our share of hate, we are also hugely emulated, even by cultures who dislike us quite a bit (the Iraqi’s, say, or even folks in Afghanistan…hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were Iranian’s who would enjoy a Coke or a cheese burger sometimes…there certainly used to be when I was there before the fall of the Shah).

-XT

144

The US manufacturing sector has been growing consistently since the 1950s. We haven’t lost any manufacturing in any meaningful definition of the word “lost”.

Our infrastructure is well ahead of any other in the world, excepting perhaps a couple countries in Europe. The idea that it’s crumbling, or somehow presents a problem for the U.S. is ridiculous.

I feel like writing a standard post to these free trade/US is in decline/Oh Noes The Chinese are taking over/The economy is dying threads. There is just a lack of basic knowledge on this board of economic facts that is frightening for a board. Our GDP per capita is 15% higher than the next normal* country (Switzerland), and ~7 times that of China. Specifically speaking of China, the reality is that they are poor. Very poor. The idea that they are somehow winning the economic game is ridiculous. All they have done in the last 20 years is move from starvation level of poorness to being very poor.

*Defined as non city-states and non-energy producers.

145

Really? Up until the 1880’s our immigration policy was basically “show up and you’re in.”

146

What about JOBS? :rolleyes:

Cite? Show us where we have bullet trains.

Wow, this is starting to remind me of a scene put forth once by Hans Christian Andersen:

Treis I feel bad for you that you are finding yourself stuck with the unenviable task of reminding the crowd that the emperor is not naked.

What these uneducated masses are trying to tell you is not at all related to that. What they are saying, which is quite true, is that China and these other third world nations are robbing us in order to bring prosperity to themselves.
I’m going to explain this to you as clearly as possible.

If we stop buying from third world countries, if our currency just happens to take a nosedive, or if we put up tariffs… they go right back to the abyss. Does anyone disagree with that?

147

I say we do everything in our power to change this.
I want the world to be thrilled! At the US’s expense!

Best wishes,
hh

148

Oh yeah? What about restrictions on non whites to enter the US, the anti Japanese and Chinese legislation.

149

At least in the US we did have a period where the plutocracy was on the run. The 1930s-1960s saw a strong move away from plutocracy. Starting in 1980 we turned back and have been heading in that direction ever since. But I don’t know if you can claim that it is a permanent shift.

But of the wealthiest, most powerful nations on earth, most have low rates of income inequality. The US is an outlier.

And I believe the working class is being economically empowered in countries like Brazil, Russia, China, etc. So maybe those nations will see inequality go down too.

So long term, I would assume plutocracy will go into remission again. Maybe it is cyclical in the US. However in other wealthy nations it seems that plutocracy was suppressed about 80 years ago and has been ever since. There is no cycling like there is in the US where plutocracy goes down 1930-1980 then comes back 1980-2010~.

I tend to think in the US the plutocracy problem will get worse since the GOP won redistricting rights in the 2010 election and will have an advantage in holding the house. At the very least, it won’t get better because of that, all legislation that reduces inequality will be blocked.

150

Quote:
Our infrastructure is well ahead of any other in the world, excepting perhaps a couple countries in Europe. The idea that it’s crumbling, or somehow presents a problem for the U.S. is ridiculous.

Well, I’d invite you to take a ride on Rt. 128 (around Boston)-I’ll be happy toshow you overpass bridges that haven’t been painted in 25 years. Or RT. 93-a huge hole fell out of an overpass last month-the deck hasn’t been resurfaced in 30 years. Or, try the bridges over the Charles River …the B.U. Bridge (built 1923) is finally getting repaired (it was close to collapse)…or try the Longfellow Bridge (1911)-structural engineers have placed if close ro collapse.
Or the sidewalks where I live-intalled in the 1930’s, they are cracked and broken.
But we have $100 billion a month to blow in a place called Afghanistan-must be well worth t!

151

And here we have it in a nutshell. The only possible way a sweatshop worker in China can make a dollar is if he grabs that dollar out of the hands of an American worker. There’s only so much money in the world, and if one person gets more money that means everyone else has to lose money. The global economy is a zero sum game. So when a Chinese peasant gets a job in a factory, it means somewhere else some other poor schmuck gets fired from his factory job.

What I can’t understand, is how do people who believe in zero-sum economics explain the economic growth of the past couple hundred years. I mean, we’re not all subsistence farmers anymore. How do they explain it? I just read the Little House on the Prairie books to my kids. How is it that most people in America don’t live in handmade shacks and scrape out a living growing wheat anymore? I mean, during the depression when my Grandma moved off her North Dakota farm to take a job cleaning the hotel in town, the improvement in her standard of living must have mean a corresponding decrease in the standard of living for everyone else, right? How is it that we’re all better off than we were during the depression?

152

shrug We may have fewer manufacturing jobs, but we haven’t lost manufacturing. That sector has been growing for decades. The fact that we make more stuff using fewer people is a good thing, not a bad thing.

Show me where China has superhighways or half as many railroads as us. You’re criteria of “bullet trains” is ridiculous because they are a tiny fraction of most country’s transportation infrastructure. Go to wikipedia and look at railroad length or highway length by country and tell me who is in the lead by far.

Yeah, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.

And what I am saying is that China doesn’t have prosperity and isn’t getting it anytime soon.

Yes! The import/export gap in China’s economy is about 4% of their GDP. The idea that China is completely driven by exports is just wrong. The reason they have grown rapidly for the last 30 years is that (1) they were ridiculously poor, and (2) they have moved from ridiculously stupid government to just stupid government.

153

Find The Best Latest News & Website Reviews on dodbuzz.com The industrial base has dropped from 25 percent during Regan to under 12 after Bush. if it weren’t for the endless wars, it would be even less. Our manufacturing base is under serious erosion and the implications are grim.
Of course we have dropped a huge amount of our manufacturing base. The sector is absolutely not growing.

154

Except the problem with the cite you give above, is that it talks about relative percentages, not absolute amounts.

So yeah, manufacturing goes from 25% under Reagan to 12% today. Does that mean manufacturing has shrunk by half? No it doesn’t. Manufacturing has actually grown since Reagan, it’s just that the other sectors have grown a lot more. It’s like, if in 1980 you made $25/year from your manufacturing job, and $75 from your other jobs, and in 2011 you make $50/year from your manufacturing job and $300/year from your other jobs, your manufacturing job went from 25% of your income to 12%, even though you’re actually making more from manufacturing than you used to.

Same with “In the past eight years of the Bush administration, the U.S. share of global economic output dropped from 31 percent to 27 percent”. That doesn’t mean the US economy has shrank, it means the US economy hasn’t grown as much as the global economy. And that’s because China and India have grown from grinding, crushing poverty to normal everyday poverty.

We could dramatically increase the US share of global economic output instantly overnight simply by dropping a bunch of nuclear bombs on Western Europe. That wouldn’t make us better off, even though the percentage would change overnight.

155

That’s not what your own cite says:

What is says is that the in 1981 it made up 25 percent of the economy and only makes up 12 percent today. That’s because there are many jobs and businesses today that weren’t even around in 1981. What your cite is not saying is that US industrial manufacturing has gone down since 1981…merely that the percentage of our economy taken up by manufacturing has declined. Which is, you know, pretty much a no brainer.

US manufacturing output has increased quite a bit since 1981. Note, this doesn’t mean that there are more jobs in manufacturing since 1981 (there aren’t)…the number of jobs in a sector has nothing to do with whether that sector is growing or declining. There are less jobs in manufacturing in the US today because each worker is much more productive, thus less are needed. Again, to use an example, in the agricultural sector at the turn of the century there was a large percentage of the population in agriculture or agriculturally related industry. Today it’s a minuscule percentage (less than 1% IIRC). And yet, today, we are vastly more productive agriculturally than we were at the turn of the century…orders of magnitude more productive. So, all those folks who weren’t needed in agriculture were available to do other things.

-XT

156

The entire market has expanded in overall size. That means when you talk about the total amount of money in manufacturing going up. ,you have to correct for inflation and increased prices. But American jobs , corporations and companies involved in the industrial base are shrinking in a growing world economy. It is a smaller proportion of our GNP. That is troubling to many.
I understand when you are young and looking into your future, it is difficult to face a new world which America is not the manufacturing and technological leader anymore. But that decision has been made. We will not be. Workers will work harder and make less money in the future. The bedrock unemployed will expand including many who felt pretty secure in their education and chosen profession. It will be a new world and it wont be pretty for a long time.
China ,India and some Asian countries will lead the new world until they start to demand too much .then it will be moved away from them. The world is run by international corporations with no debt or sense of loyalty to any country. The only measure of success is profit. We seem to like it that way.
This is not like the agricultural revolution. This is more like the monopolists of the early 20th century whose greed put them in conflict with the government . Trustbusting was the answer then. that wont happen again. They can move anywhere they want. They control the governments and police. They have won.

157

1/3. As has been said repeatedly in this thread, the size and value of the American manufacturing sector has been growing, is growing, and will continue to grow. I would like for you to acknowledge this undisputed fact, or at least stop spouting the same bullshit that has been debunked numerous times.

158

Repeating something wrong does not make it right, no matter how often you say it.

Here is Dylan Rattigan explaining how corrupted our system has gotten. teddy Roosevelt was alarmed when J.P. Morgan got too powerful and started impacting government decisions at the turn of the century. he commenced trust busting. We are way beyond that thresh hold now. watch the cartoon at the bottom too. I hope someday you guys can see the light. But I do understand how uncomfortable it would be for many of you.

159

Ok, so you are denying that the U.S. manufacturing sector has been growing?

160

Obviously, measuring output in absolute terms is just plain silly, so please don’t throw a tantrum when people fail to agree.

It’s like Dr Evil and the “One. MILLION. Dollars.” thing. One dollar in the past isn’t the same as one dollar now, for reasons I’m sure you understand.

The manufacturing share of the GDP has shrunk quite dramatically - 21% in 1980, 13% in 2008. The US share of world manufacturing has shrunk from 31% to 24% - not as dramatic, but still a pretty big chunk. That’s not “growing”. That’s decline.