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The Decline and Fall of the American Empire (2010)

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Re: The Decline and Fall of the American Empire (2010)

#31

Post by icegreentea »

belluchan wrote: post #28
notastartup wrote: post #25

This is my opinion. The world is built on American financial institutions such as World Bank, World Trade Organization. These entities ensure American dominance when it comes to economic power. China maybe taking the 2nd spot, but that's where it ends. The stage is always rigged so that United States prevails. The rules change in favor of United States, at the whim of it's administration. Then comes the military powe…

> The world is built on American financial institutions such as World Bank, World Trade Organization. Those are not American financial institutions. The World Bank is an international organization and the WTO's headquarters are in Switzerland.

Nominally true.

But at least the World Bank is blatantly pro-American. Every World Bank president has been American. The Chief Economist up to 2000 are all pretty much American (one Israeli + one dual Israeli/American).

Re: The Decline and Fall of the American Empire (2010)

#32

Post by sologoub »

memracom wrote: post #27
sologoub wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's an article from 1995 titled "Japan May Still Surpass U.s. To Become Leading Economic Power By The Year 2000": http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1995-04-10/business/95041... While the overall trajectory maybe right, the comparisons between the likes of USSR is really incorrect. The actual "fall" of the USSR came at the dissolution of the lands conquered by the old Russian Empire. The tensions driving that, bes…

China's biggest challenge is ecology and with that, natural resources. It is a mountainous country with human habitation mostly in narrow valleys except for a few large river valleys and deltas. And it has too many people. This is likely to lead to ecological collapse in one way or another. One way to stave that off would be to subordinate themselves to Russia so that Russia provides raw materials and therefore China…

Eh... more likely China and Russia will end up going to war over Siberian resources. Russia has a huge Chinese immigration problem on their hands and China has provoked skirmishes even in Soviet times: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Soviet_border_conflict

Re: The Decline and Fall of the American Empire (2010)

#33

Post by erichocean »

gaadd33 wrote: post #21

> Between 1973 and 2007, oil imports have risen from 36% of energy consumed in the U.S. to 66%. It's interesting they didn't cite figures from 2007 to 2013 yet they link to them. From their EIA link, it appears we import about as many barrels per month as we did in 1973.

It's an inconvenient truth. The oil boom in this country over the last 6 years seems to go mostly unnoticed by the media, except for the odd article here and there about housing shortages. (Way to find the "problem", media!)

I guess the oil boom doesn't advance the narrative that everything is going wrong for the blue collar workers in the US, that we're completely dependent on foreign oil, that we're not making "good jobs" anymore for people without a college education, etc.

I'm really curious how long it will take for the culture to come around on this one.

Re: The Decline and Fall of the American Empire (2010)

#34

Post by jf22 »

michaelochurch wrote: post #10
imack wrote: post #5

War will not happen between the US and China (2 economies which are inexorably intertwined) for no other reason than it will be exceedingly bad for business.

War will not happen between the US and China (2 economies which are inexorably intertwined) for no other reason than it will be exceedingly bad for business. One could have said this about the U.S. and Germany in 1927. I don't think war between the U.S. and China is likely, and I certainly hope it would never happen because no one would win that, but I don't think that argument has historic validity.

>One could have said this about the U.S. and Germany in 1927.

Source?

I read about history sometimes and am a big fan of WW2.

I've never heard Germany and the US being "inexorably intertwined" and find the comparison to China/US almost preposterous given the modern global economy and the feeder/lecher relationships we have now.

Re: The Decline and Fall of the American Empire (2010)

#35

Post by programminggeek »

One reason we are in decline is that for better or worse, our own people are a bit too mercenary for our own good. We have built giant multi-billion dollar corporations, which in theory should make us incredibly more wealthy and powerful, but they are no longer American companies, they are global entities that operate in a multitude of countries.

The jobs and profit don't necessarily stay in the USA either. In many cases the best place to hire workers or produce goods or services is not the USA. There are thousands or millions of talented people elsewhere who can do it better for cheaper and the profit that happens off of the difference is not going to come back to the USA.

If you think in terms of the "global" economy, there is no particular reason why the USA would have to stay #1 forever. Without significant effort, it is almost impossible to imagine how America stays on top for the same reasons that it is hard to believe that either Portugal or Great Britain could maintain such large empires from such tiny countries with limited resources.

I don't think USA goes from #1 to #50 overnight, but dropping to #3 or #5 seems plausible.

Re: The Decline and Fall of the American Empire (2010)

#36

Post by Tloewald »

amagumori wrote: post #30
twoodfin wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No kidding. I dream of a world economy that has grown such that the median Chinese or Indian citizen can enjoy the lifestyle of the median American or Swede today. I don't think people can conceive of the magic that kind of productive bounty would represent.

genuinely curious here, why would a bigger economy mean a better quality of life for regular citizens? who's to say the wealth wouldn't be all concentrated in one area of society? as far as i've understood it, in free market capitalism, companies increase their profits by cutting their marginal costs (like worker's wages)

The basic tenet of free market economics is that people engage in transactions voluntarily and with good information. GDP is a crude measure of all the transactions that take place in an economy, and from the preceding tenet each transaction makes both parties happier (or why would they take part?). It follows that happiness monotonically increases with economic activity.

In theory.

In practice it works pretty well. The happiness isn't evenly distributed, to be sure, but despite all the stuff you've heard about globalization, Monsanto, the rich getting richer, etc. go look at Hans Rosling's presentations and you'll see that everyone is getting better off as economies grow.

The big gripe about jobs being exported overseas is kind of racist. At bottom it says that an American should get a job instead of a better qualified or cheaper foreigner. Why? Is it not OK to look for the best deal you can get? Now, the fact that capital can cross borders and people can't is the real problem. But the same people who want to keep jobs at home also want to close borders to people.

Re: The Decline and Fall of the American Empire (2010)

#37

Post by VintageCool »

michaelochurch wrote: post #10
imack wrote: post #5

War will not happen between the US and China (2 economies which are inexorably intertwined) for no other reason than it will be exceedingly bad for business.

War will not happen between the US and China (2 economies which are inexorably intertwined) for no other reason than it will be exceedingly bad for business. One could have said this about the U.S. and Germany in 1927. I don't think war between the U.S. and China is likely, and I certainly hope it would never happen because no one would win that, but I don't think that argument has historic validity.

People did say that about Germany and Britain in 1909.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Illusion

Re: The Decline and Fall of the American Empire (2010)

#38

Post by dasil003 »

memracom wrote: post #23
dasil003 wrote: post #14

The ridiculous thing is that there's no reason America has to be in decline right now except hubris. The idea that military superiority is the end-all-be-all of power, the idea that every American deserves to be richer than than the average Chinese, etc. We still have amazing natural resources and an amazing entrepreneurial can-do cultural attitude. The problem is too many resources devoted to skimming the cream at t…

Empire is built on the back of military power and political influence. America's military power is in decline, but more importantly, its political influence is tanking. So the end of empire is here. At this point it looks like Russia will be the next imperial world power although they are certainly doing it differently than other empires of the past. The Euro-Asian Union is likely to officially hold the crown but as…

The US hasn't been a traditional empire either though. I think it's arguable that American economic dominance came on the back of the military. After all, we never had governance of any of our imperial "territories". It's hard to tease apart the military and the industrial of the military-industrial complex, but I haven't seen compelling evidence that amazing run the US has had over the last century was primarily dependent on military power.

Re: The Decline and Fall of the American Empire (2010)

#39

Post by mark-r »

erichocean wrote: post #33
gaadd33 wrote: post #21

> Between 1973 and 2007, oil imports have risen from 36% of energy consumed in the U.S. to 66%. It's interesting they didn't cite figures from 2007 to 2013 yet they link to them. From their EIA link, it appears we import about as many barrels per month as we did in 1973.

It's an inconvenient truth. The oil boom in this country over the last 6 years seems to go mostly unnoticed by the media, except for the odd article here and there about housing shortages. (Way to find the "problem", media!) I guess the oil boom doesn't advance the narrative that everything is going wrong for the blue collar workers in the US, that we're completely dependent on foreign oil, that we're not making "goo…

The oil boom is real and welcome, and wasn't at all obvious when the article was written in 2010. Unfortunately it only postpones the day of reckoning. We're still dependent on foreign oil, just less so than predicted. Our economy is almost entirely dependent on the amount of oil we can consume.

Re: The Decline and Fall of the American Empire (2010)

#40

Post by mark-r »

everyone wrote: post #15

This article does not mention climate change, salinization, loss of glaciers (to feed rivers) contamination of soil and groundwater (from mining or maybe all the fracking the US has been doing) over-irrigation. These and others are real threats the US faces and will result in reduced fresh water and food.

There's no reason to believe these factors will affect the US to a greater degree than any other nation.
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