That brings up an interesting question; is national global power a zero sum game, in that there is only so much power to go around? The rest of the world power goes up, so the US power must go down?
The problem is that China’s and India’s populations are so huge that they will both wield the same sort of power the US does now.
Well, this isn’t the guy I wanted to quote, be he pretty much echos the same thing a local economist who used to be on the radio here locally.:
If you’re referring to embryonic stem cells, most of that is anti-Bush propaganda. Research on ADULT stem cells is proceeding apace, and we’ve found that they are much better than embryonic cells for many purposes.
http://stemcells.nih.gov/info/basics/pages/basics5.aspx
So–you’ve been reading John Titor, I take it?
No it’s not. Have you heard the kind of rhetoric the right indulges in? They see those who oppose them as would-be socialist dictators, they see OBAMA that way, and he’s basically a Reagan Republican, though admittedly, he does have a strain of tyranny in him.
Civil War involves armed conflict against your family, your friends, and your neighbors. This will NEVER happen in the US because a few people really really dislike the President’s skin color.
How is that? I’d think that huge populations are more of a liability above a certain point than an asset. You have more mouths to feed and more people to be angry at you if you don’t.
The US is in a rather unique position of having a huge population (#3, last time I checked) AND huge economic power.
What I see happening to the US is a gradual decline of relevance on the world stage, to being a Great Power instead of the lone Superpower. I don’t see a political or economic collapse causing the breakup of the Union with our current system of government; the US federal system has a lot of in-built flex that tends to mitigate such things.
Keep in mind that most of the current nations of the world have been nations/peoples in one way or anther for the past thousand years, more or less. Think about England having been England since the time of Alfred the Great. There’s no reason to believe that America and Americans won’t endure similarly, even if governments rise and fall.
Conservatism. Between weakening the government using starve the beast tactics and arming a bunch of racist fundamentalist militias, US society will fall in a flurry of violence. The downfall has already started.
:rolleyes:
When is Canada going to fall? I mean, if Quebec seceded, would that mean that Canada didn’t exist any more? Or if Canada becomes a republic, would that mean that Canada stopped existing? Or if Canada had an economic downturn and elected a series of shitty governments and its per-capita income dropped below that of the US, would that mean the end of Canada?
The existence of the United States of America does not depend on being the world’s largest economy, or not electing shitty presidents. It does not depend on whether Puerto Rico becomes an independent country, or a US state, or maintains the status quo. The existence of the United States does not depend on being a world leader in science and technology. If we stop funding stem cell research that won’t destroy the United States. If we elect a Republican president that won’t destroy the United States either.
A country takes a lot of destruction. A country can change governments, be conquered and occupied, go bankrupt, have a civil war, change religions, change their constitution, join supra-national organizations, absorb foreign ethnic groups, and still exist.
And even if empires split apart, the people living there can be better off after the split. British people are better off now then they were back when they ruled a quarter of the globe. The loss of empire was a net economic gain. And if Scotland becomes independent, does that mean decline and disaster for England? Was it a disaster when Ireland became independent?
I don’t see another Civil War. The next time the South tries to secede, the rest of us will be happy to let them go. The two (or more) smaller countries will gradually fade in world importance over the ensuing decades.
Most recent World Factbook figures show Canada as having $43,400 GDP per capita.
The United States has $50,700. I don’t know that Canadian per capita income has ever been higher than the United States.
Well that’s my point. Canada continues to exist, even though there are nearby countries with larger populations, larger economies, and higher GDP per capita.
So explain to me how if China improves its per capita GDP by a factor of 8 that means the US won’t exist any more.
I certainly wouldn’t “let them go”. I’d probably be with the GAR 21st Armoured Division Thaddeus Stevens, flushing out the traitors in Greenville to keep the greatness and power of our Republic.
It’ll be an economic collapse. The Federal government has wracked up trillions of dollars in debt, and can’t even be bothered to pay lip service to the idea of paying it off. It’s inevitable that at some point, the house of cards will collapse.
Once this happens, states will begin to bail out of the USA in an effort to rehabilitate their own economies. The attitude will basically be, “last guy at the table gets stuck with the check.” Most likely, this will be either California or New York, who will try the hardest to preserve the status quo because they’re the two biggest dogs in the yard. As the last vestige of the USA, CA/NY will end up crushed under a truely hopeless mountain of debt, to the point where even basic civil services will become problematic (think Haiti).
People love throwing around cute phrases like this, but they typically never bother explaining their rationale with cites and explanations.
That’s good to hear - thanks for the information.
The civil war I’m talking about won’t be geographical - it will be economical.
But the more important figure (in my opinion) is the debt per capita - $52,170 in the USA vs. $29,625 in Canada (from here). That site also puts the US debt at 106% of GDP and Canada’s at 64% of GDP.
That’s what I’m saying, too. One thing that does come to mind, though, is the old idea that a bank can’t afford to have one huge customer who owes them a huge debt; that puts the customer in a position of having some power over the bank, since if the customer declares bankruptcy, the bank goes under. The USA is indeed a huge economy, and a huge player on the worldwide stage - can the rest of the world afford to let the USA declare bankruptcy, or would we be looking at a global economic re-structuring?
The US has a lot of debt. Not a lot of debt compared to some other countries, but still, a lot of debt. Our debt to GDP ratio is a lot lower than most first world countries. But the nice thing about the US debt is that the US debt is denominated in US dollars. It would be one thing if we borrowed Euros or Yen and had to pay everyone back in Euros or Yen. Except we can pay people back in US dollars. And who makes US dollars?
That’s right, the US government. We can whip up as many dollars as we like to pay off our debts. Of course the problem with this is that we’ll have massive inflation, the value of the US dollar will plummet, and it will be hard to get new people to buy US bonds if there is rampant inflation without agreeing to pay outrageous interest rates.
The reason Greece is in such trouble is that it owes debts in Euros, but it can’t devalue the Euro, only Germany+France could do that. The thing is, sovereign governments can just pass a law telling their creditors to go screw. And there’s nothing the creditors can do about it.
And another part of the “trillions” in debt is that this is just projected future payouts for things like social security. All we have to do is cut future social security payouts, and our “debt” doesn’t exist. Social security is not a savings plan. Instead current retirees are paid by current workers. It can’t work any other way because today’s retirees have to be supported by today’s economic output.
I mean, compare the US economic situation to Greece’s. Is Greece about to revert to Haiti-style squalor, or Mad Max style barbarism? No, somehow Greece is going to muddle through. I don’t see how people can expect the United States to collapse due to debt when countries with much worse problems have never collapsed due to debt. Greece could just repudiate its debt tomorrow. The reason they don’t want to do that is that they’d be kicked out of the EU. They don’t want that, they want the EU to bail them out.
So why is America so much more fragile than any other country in the world?