I was doing something dangerous the other day; thinking.
Something most politicians don’t want us to do.
I was thinking about American business, and how far flung it is, because some beer song on the radio happened to say that Hawaiian shirts are not made in Hawaii, but Taiwan, but that’s O.K., because it’s an island too. Connections were made in my frazzled brain like lightening, and just as dispersed.
There’s a whole lot of nations out there who dislike us, would love to have us fall, if they could, probably would invade us, and those who try to ruin our economy.
However, if the USA goes, so goes most of the developed world as we know it.
We have businesses in almost every nation on Earth, using local people, local goods, dumping cash in local banks and boosting local economies by making things we sell. We import vegetables from most of the agricultural nations, export masses of grain to others, buy metals, technology, soft goods, pots, pans, glasses and cups. We buy most of the oil in the world. We back foreign based research, invest in foreign medicines, foreign movies, cartoons, cars, tires, wood, canned goods, assorted tiny parts, and knowledge.
We export millions of tons of goods from military parts to medication, from seed to fertilizer. We import Mexican foods, native blankets, throws, silver and pottery. We have mines, industries, schools and banks in Africa. We own shares in international shipping and cruse lines, build most of the worlds passenger planes, provide deep sea technology and medical advances.
Nearly the entire world depends on our investments and products. Cut off all American business and the world market will crash, whereas no other nation can affect the world as dramatically as we can. Let France drop out and people will cheer. Wipe out Saadam’s little plot of hell, and the oil economy will stagger but not fail. Russia could vanish and not do more than cause the DOW to dip a few points. Canada could shut down and … well, what does Canada do anyhow except send it’s folks into the US to not tip waiters and to go home packed with American goods? Cuba could shut down and never be missed. Their prime economy is exporting people to Florida and sucking up illegal American dollars from illegal American tourists.
I wonder if all of those little anti-American countries out there have ever considered this? Knock us out and we take everyone with us. If we were to stop buying Saudi oil, they’d either have to go back to burning camel chips or double the price for the rest of the world.
China, now. If we cut off China from all of our goods and businesses, they’d have to attack someone to burn off the surplus people and gain funds. South America would go belly up without our goods and our thirst for cocaine. Drug lords would have signs saying ‘will work for food.’
Yeah. I felt better after all of that.
In WW2 it was 'wait ‘till the Americans get here to kick ass.’ Now it’s ‘wait until the Americans invest here to kick ass.’ Soon it will be ‘the Americans have landed on Mars’ and then ‘the Americans are on Europa - and they’ve found life.’