This is a two part, somewhat vague question about the future of the U.S. It’s really some random rambling on my part, so I just stuck it here because I think there may be good responses. And if not, oh well.
What will be the eventual destiny for the United States?
Will we go out in a bang? A whimper? Will we be absorbed by a larger entity, a la a world government? Violent revolution? Be relegated to a respected but not super power status? I can’t think of any other options (unless you think we will stay like this forever).
2. This would be a question fit for GQ: Has the U.S. government ever DECREASED in size or power? I’m pretty sure it hasn’t (I am speaking of negative, not 0 or little, growth).
Thus, will the U.S. government continue its never-ending expansion forever? What types of consequences do you see in the near or far future if this is not halted? Will its people ever care? Candidates always spout rhetoric, but I don’t see how the government could ever be decreased, even if a libertarian somehow got elected – the government just seems like a huge black hole for money and resources. Do you think it is even a problem?
I fear that in the short term (50-100 years from now) we may end up as less than a superpower. There are any number of factors leading us in this direction. We have restructured the power and common practices of our federal government to the extent that a would-be dictator might have an all-too-easy time of it. This, or some other event, could lead to factionalism within the country, leading to the eventual dissolution of the union.
There is also of course, the potential for competition from China.
The only thing keeping us in charge right now is our nukes. If some technology comes to light that renders nukes more or less obsolete (I have NO idea what that could be, but to declare it impossible would be folly), or if we find that increased terrorist purloining of nuclear material makes it ill-advised to continue with nuclear fission programs, we could lose that edge.
I see the need for very strong leadership to keep America from succumbing to something unsavory within the next century, and, unfortunately, I don’t see that emerging anytime soon.
Longer term: Scientific American recently published an article on how the climate has historically shown the ability to change drastically in a much shorter timeframe that previously thought. Within a few decades, a completely different but stable climate emerges and can remain unchanged for decades, or centuries, even.
Ice core samples from Greenland show a severe drying out of the climate at a period that could explain the otherwise mysterious collapse of the Mayans. So, that may be our ultimate destiny.
I do not know of a time when the US government shrank, but that’s just me.
To shrink government now would take a painstaking and very unglamorous raking through the budget to weed out unnecessary expenditures, useless duplication of funding and efforts, bad ideas and out and out fraud. I’m not sure anyone capable of winning a modern media-saturated election also possesses the skills to perform or effectively delegate these sorts of tasks.
Right now the United States faces a massive budget crisis on the horizon. But by on the horizon, what’s really meant is that we could without much effort postpone the day of reconning until around 2035-2040. But once we get to that date, there’s nothing left that we can do. It has the potential to send inflation and interest rates out of control, crushing the economy. What really matter is whether someone will step up before then and declare that we need to start trimming handouts and increasing taxes in preparation for the crisis ahead.
As for world power, wait and see. Nobody four years ago predicted that we’d be fighting a major war in the Middle East now, nobody can predict what will happen four years from now, much less forty. Militarily no Middle Eastern country can challenge us now, but a generation down the road Pakistan or Saudi Arabia or even Iran might be much wealthier and possess a much more modern military. And of course there’s always the possibility that China will start interfering in the Middle East in order to get their own oil supply more secure, which could lead to a showdown with the United States.
I think we will face much more direct competition from Europe and China as time moves on. America may not shrink in power, but its advantage may grow significantly smaller, especially if we get tied down in expensive foreign interventions like Iraq and Afghanistan. I certainly think that our dominance of the global economy will shrink as technology diffuses. Domestically, we face the social security and the budget crisis.
I don’t think our problems with our Middle Eastern friends are anywhere near at an end - these kinds of conflicts can and have run on for centuries. Look at Russia and the Crimea.
This is absolutely incorrect. Our economy, advanced technology and the fact that we can project conventional military power anywhere in the world is what keeps us “in charge”.
My concern is that the US will simply get fatter and stupider. That we will eventually become a nation of morons who can’t add 2+2 and watch reality shows all day. Eventually, as a greater percentage of people can’t afford to go to college and foreign students go elsewhere, other nations will start to surpass us. Basically America will become like a large retarded child. Chanting “U! S! A!” and drooling on itself while the more advanced and sophisticated countries pat us on the head “of course you are…”
A climatic shift might dramatically reshuffle the political landscape but such a thing is dificult to predict.
I think we should avoid the temptation of considering historical patterns when we make predictions about the future of America. The rate of technological innovation has been increasing at an unprecedented rate over the last hundred years–we’ve gone from horse-drawn carriages to jumbo-jets, hand-set type to computers that can transmit the entire text of the Bible in a fiber-optic link in a tiny fraction of a second. The recent transition to an information age will only serve to increase the rate at which powerful new technologies are uncovered.
Clearly, this pattern will continue into the foreseeable future. The United States will continue its technologic and cultural domination of the world, and the neoconservatives policies we’ve adopted in recent years will only sow our ideals farther abroad in the world. There will be a brief period of stagnation, however, that will probably start around 2033 or thereabouts–we’ll see fewer new discoveries, and most innovations will merely be expansions of fundamental principles already disovered. During this melancholy phase, dogs will become sentient, and as self-awareness spreads, they’ll become increasingly aware of the ways they’ve been cruelly exploited over the years. The inhabitants of the earth, accustomed to a more peaceful way of life then we know in the 20th century, will be unprepared for the merciless slaughter our Canine overlords will unleash. Thousands will die in an inter-species war that will span nearly a decade, a war that will ultimately see our nasally-gifted new masters begin a dynasty that will last nearly two millenia, until the Knights Templars return from the trip to Alpha-Centari upon which they departed in the mid 15th century.
Face it: I’m almost as likely to be right as any other post in this thread…
Well I for one welcome our new canine overlords.
In fact, I think they have already taken over. Who cleans up who’s shit? Who works while the other one plays with a rubber bone all day? I don’t see anyone drving me around while I stick my head out the window.
Ossama says he wants to bankrupt the USA. With the help of GWB, he well might do just that. I am a cynic, but I see a time coming when the USA will be subservient to some other power, possibly China. I wouldn’t guess at the time frame, though.
I won’t touch your first question. The difference in time between the demise of a state being inconceivable and inevitable is usually quite small. At the same time many states have lingered on far longer than observers would have expected. While it is unlikely that the US will continue to enjoy the relative power it enjoyed in the post world war ii and post cold war eras (simply as a matter of math) I don’t think the US will cease to be the preeminint power any time soon.
The government shrank throughout most of the nineties - an 11% decrease in the civilian workforce (and a sizeable decrease in the military).(1) It is certainly possible that the process would have continued had the events of 2001 not intervened. The federal budget decreased as share of GDP from 22.9% in 85 to 18.4% in 2000.(2) The federal government’s expenditures in real dollars also decreased over the nineties.(3)
Paul Kennedy if my memory doesn’t fail me talked about how the British empire slowly decreased. The British Empire was strong… but others were growing more.
The percentage of world economic power of the USA has steadily dropped since WWII. Even if the US is stronger than before… its a relative thing.
If the US drops 1% power every year… in a not so short 50 years it will be half of what it was before. These gradual declines are hard to perceive… especially when the US is strong militarily… but is losing the economic, technological and cultural hegemony of before.
The american political and economic systems are pretty robust… so I don’t see the US going in a bang… but you never know how badly politics might go in the future. It will become less and less of a superpower… but will remain an economic giant.
I, on the other hand, have an extremely tolerant (as well as beautiful) wife.
My prediction: for the next 40 years, we will coast simply by virtue of being basically richer than anyone else. By the end of that period, the European Union will be about two-thirds of its present size and have begun to learn how to act as a unit. Whether they or the U.S. is the dominant economic power depends mostly on who wins the race to exploit the natural resources of the 200 independent republics of the former Soviet Union. China will have embraced capitalism except for continued use of slave labor, which would give it a commanding advantage except that its only export outlet will be Wal-Mart, which will by that time have a seat on the Security Council of the United Nations and the globe’s fifth largest army (it won’t amount to much, militarily, because its soldiers will all be 67 years old). Islamic fundamentalism will begin to consolidate, which will mark the beginning of its end as extremists start killing each other in a never-ending game of “who’s holier than who?” Africa will be poor but largely unified in their hatred of pretty much everybody, and will begin to act on that hatred, initially under the flag of Islamic fundamentalism but eventually on their own account. Europe will bear the brunt of this, but the U.S. will be more afraid and will renew the long-discredited doctrine of pre-emptive war against countries that have no ability to attack us. There will be a constitutional amendment against discrimination based on sexual orientation, and the government will be accused by gay-advocacy groups of wasting the lives of gay Americans in unnecessary wars even though the U.S. military remains all-volunteer. The amendment will be rescinded shortly thereafter. McDonald’s will re-introduce the McKelp sandwich, which chemical analysis will indicate is the same thing they’ve been selling as the Quarter Pounder for decades. My children will be older than I am now, and I hope they will have learned from my mistakes.
You are probably right. But is this so terrible?
The British once proudly ruled the world, but it all ended within one generation. There must be tens of thousands of elderly people Brits who spent their youth in India, expecting to inherit the role of aristocrats, leading the Empire.Today they are retired in England, and don’t seem to have such a bad life.
Suppose, maybe 75 years from now, America becomes a simpler country like England, or Canada; will our grandchildren in Saint Louis live worse than today’s residents of Manchester or Montreal?
*AUTHOR: Alexander Fraser Tytler (1747–1813)
QUOTATION: A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.
ATTRIBUTION: Attributed to ALEXANDER FRASER TYTLER, LORD WOODHOUSELEE. Unverified. *
I think we’ve already made that discovery and are on our way to financial catastrophe.
The US is a continental power…we won’t decline like the Brits did. Hell, THEY wouldn’t have declined (IMHO) like they did if they hadn’t gone so close to socialism and been burned. They seem to be recovering fairly well since then though. I suppose, to attempt to answer the OPs question, that it all depends on the time frame we are talking about. I don’t see how the US will decline from ‘superpower’ status in the next 50 years…to me thats wishful thinking. Again, we are a continental power with the strongest military in the world, the strongest economy, and the largest market for the world. Militarily alone the US will remain a ‘superpower’ for the next 100 years or so, baring a huge draining war (basically what finally sapped the Brits…WWII)…and Iraq ain’t it. I don’t think people on this board have any comprehension of where our military is relative to where everyone else’s is…and what those other nations would have to do just to catch up to where we are today.
I see, in the next 20-40 years the EU and perhaps China (or some conglomerate of Asian nations) rivaling the US on the economic front. I seriously doubt the EU will ever become a viable military force, so they will never have the teeth to back themselves up as a superpower…its just not in the cards for them unless something radically changes. I don’t see them ever becoming more than a loose association of countries in the same economic sphere…certainly not a US of Europe or anything close to that. I also have my doubts as to the long term viability of Europe from an economic perspective due to several factors including declining population. This is just a WAG on my part though, with nothing by my own impressions to back it up.
China has an aweful long way to still go…I think they are reaching their peak soon under their current system and something will have to give for them to go further. Either they will have to dump all the old communist baggage still in their trunk or they will cap out and never rival the US in the forseeable future…and perhaps even decline. I don’t think their current hybrid system can continue indefinitely. I also don’t see China as ever being a serious global military, but remaining simply a regional military power…not unless they are willing to cripple their economy to do so, and I only see that happening if they stick to the communist parts of their baggage. If they toss it out I seriously doubt they will even try for such a thing.
As to the US’s declining education, I agree its certainly in decline at the grade school through highschool level. However, again, we are a continental nation with pretty big human resources…and we have superior colleges and secondary schools, as well as private schools. Also, we continue to attract some of the finest people from OTHER nations in various fields and I think we will continue to do so for the forseeable future, so I don’t think we will fall behind or become some moronic nations of droolers, etc etc. If the US can continue to dodge the lure of increasing our own socialist tendencies I think we will continue to prosper, and our economy will continue to stay strong. Perhaps in time some other economic unit will emerge that will rival us…but just because we have an economic rival doesn’t mean we HAVE to go into decline. There is plenty of room for multiple strong nations. I don’t see power in the world (especially economic power) as a zero sum game…because some nations gets strong doesn’t necessarily meain the US must become weak.
So we’ll reiterate Britain’s evolution? :ducks a brick:
I think at some point, far down the line, America will be less a political force than an idea. How many nations are descended from Rome? This is our probable direction. There will be various independent states in North America that will look back the USA as a sort of seminal age.