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Thomas Piketty: 'The reality is the US is losing control of the world'

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Re: Thomas Piketty: 'The reality is the US is losing control of the world'

#71

Post by throwaway5465 »

jnmandal wrote: post #19

Without entering (and winning) some kind of major conflict, this was always going to happen. Two things are important to think about. 1. Power should be measured in relative terms not absolute. (For a good treatise on this, read Paul Kennedy's Rise and Fall of the Great Powers ). The US would have to be keeping up with China, India, and rest of world to maintain its previous pole position. 2. Great nations/empires ge…

China has grown old before it grew rich. The past decade has been one of a collapsed houehold sector (and birth rate below the already gloomy concensus back in 2010), general deflation, and bright lights and conspicious technology achieved only through throwing government spending at ritzy projects - centrally planned growth and waste. Being unable to escape the domestic security agenda will forever neuter global aspiration, from currency to technology.

India is yet to harmonise widespread organisation.

Relative gaps are smaller, but the persistance of gap is never more entrenched than ever.

That is not a decline. It is however a Great Game, not played with nations but with ideology and where the US and China are quite aligned. That game is less visible until it is seen.

Re: Thomas Piketty: 'The reality is the US is losing control of the world'

#72

Post by griffzhowl »

01284a7e wrote: post #31

"The Iraq War, launched in 2003 – resulting in over 100,000 deaths" Isn't this an extreme low-ball estimate?

Yes, it's on the low end of estimates and corresponds most closely to the US military's Iraq war logs that were leaked by Wikileaks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War#Tab...

Still, "over 100,000" is technically correct if it's more than 100,000. Since this subject isn't the main point of the article and the Iraq war is generally acknowledged to have been disastrous, I suppose he chose a safe figure so as not to derail the article with disputed estimates at the outset.

Re: Thomas Piketty: 'The reality is the US is losing control of the world'

#73

Post by watwut »

tmountain wrote: post #62
graemep wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your first point. The alternatives are a lot worse. its not going to be Russia (its not got the economy to do it) but China. > The US are by no means innocent of terrorism and invasion of other countries, but at least with countries commonly counted as "the west", the US was a friendly nation. And in most of Asia too where China is a very immediate threat. > Even worse, if the right wing and right extrem…

I have concerns about the authoritarian tendencies of the current admin, but I think the word "fascism" should be avoided in these types of discussions, as it's such a loaded term that it's hard to know exactly what's implied. The main risks I see are the erosion of democratic norms (weakening of core institutions) and a reduced access to due process, particularly for non-citizens. You see this in ICE deportations to…

How are they NOT fascists? They match pretty much any definition of that word.

It is easy to know what is implied. Issue is emotional - people do not want to admit that yes, these are fascists.

Re: Thomas Piketty: 'The reality is the US is losing control of the world'

#74

Post by OgsyedIE »

watwut wrote: post #61
OgsyedIE wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 1944 huge numbers of people, from a large number of countries, asked for a hegemonic world police stemming from a sole hegemon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_Conference We don't know much of it anymore with the decline of Europe, but for several centuries the dominant geopolitical goal of most countries on Earth was to defend themselves from European invasion. Why do you think every incremental ratch…

> Why do you think every incremental ratchet step on the gear of Germany rearming in the last three years has been taken as serious headline news by so many? Cause they started two world wars previously. The second one coupled with genocide, actually multiple separate genocides going on at the same time.

Germany only started the second and all parties in the first had some prior experience with conducting a genocide.

Re: Thomas Piketty: 'The reality is the US is losing control of the world'

#75

Post by fidotron »

pjc50 wrote: post #65
fidotron wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Europeans want it both ways: they want the US to pay for and be responsible for policing the world, but to do it the way the Europeans want with them free to criticize the US and act morally superior the whole time. This act has become utterly tiresome.

> want the US to pay for and be responsible for policing the world Not really convinced that it's that way round, that Europe actually wants much of this "policing" to be done at all rather than being dragged into it. Until Ukraine, which is the exact bit of world policing that Republicans no longer recognize as crime.

You're doing all of it right there.

You, a European, want to tell the US public how their resources are to be used, and when they don't agree with you then you act morally superior about it.

Re: Thomas Piketty: 'The reality is the US is losing control of the world'

#76

Post by danmaz74 »

pfdietz wrote: post #47
squidbeak wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A large part of the lifestyle Americans enjoy is owed to its control of the world.

How is that? Are we taking stuff at the point of a gun? The benefits would seem to flow to those countries that would have been swallowed up without Pax Americana.

> How is that? Are we taking stuff at the point of a gun?

No, but the USA is getting a lot of stuff in exchange for $$ which it can print for basically free. Consumers in the USA have benefitted a lot from this, which partly compensated the fact that more and more of the pie is going to the richest instead of the average American.

Re: Thomas Piketty: 'The reality is the US is losing control of the world'

#77

Post by igravious »

01284a7e wrote: post #31

"The Iraq War, launched in 2003 – resulting in over 100,000 deaths" Isn't this an extreme low-ball estimate?

There's a pretty famous website that tracks Iraqi civilian deaths:

   Documented civilian deaths from violence

   187,499 – 211,046

   Further analysis of the WikiLeaks' Iraq War Logs
   may add 10,000 civilian deaths.
as of today

https://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/

Re: Thomas Piketty: 'The reality is the US is losing control of the world'

#78

Post by ksec »

jnmandal wrote: post #19

Without entering (and winning) some kind of major conflict, this was always going to happen. Two things are important to think about. 1. Power should be measured in relative terms not absolute. (For a good treatise on this, read Paul Kennedy's Rise and Fall of the Great Powers ). The US would have to be keeping up with China, India, and rest of world to maintain its previous pole position. 2. Great nations/empires ge…

>Power should be measured in relative terms not absolute.

I would argue everything should be measured in relative terms. More often than not this is not the case.

>The US would have to be keeping up with China, India, and rest of world to maintain its previous pole position.

This is the biggest problem I see. US is not keeping up. Nor its willingness to compete. Taking the US dollar as world reserve currency for granted. Along with host of other benefits ( and responsibility ) that came with it.

There are signs that we may see a global market recession next year. And China may benefits even more.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46273326

Re: Thomas Piketty: 'The reality is the US is losing control of the world'

#79

Post by SanjayMehta »

01284a7e wrote: post #31

"The Iraq War, launched in 2003 – resulting in over 100,000 deaths" Isn't this an extreme low-ball estimate?

Indeed it is. Madeline Albright admitted in an interview that at least 500,000 children died but "it was worth it."

The total toll must have been much higher.

[0]https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/03/27/im-iraqi-and-i...

Re: Thomas Piketty: 'The reality is the US is losing control of the world'

#80

Post by padjo »

mattmaroon wrote: post #12
pfdietz wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because it's not worth the expense. Vanity is a hell of a drug, but it has its limits.

It’s not that it’s not worth the expense, it’s that we’re unable to continue funding global peace and prosperity ourselves. And we shouldn’t have to. I don’t agree with Trump about much but he’s correct that the other liberal democracies have been more than happy to have us foot the bill for keeping the wolves at bay while looking down on us for doing it.

You have to consider how much it felt like progress for Europe to become less militaristic. The continent had been obliterated by war and then divided and filled with tanks during the cold war. For Europe, reducing military spending was seen as a welcome step away from the internal conflicts of the past. This is changing now, and while America may see this as a victory I find it hard to welcome headlines like “Germany to massively increase tank production” for all the negative historical echos.

I’d also be very surprised if US military expenditure decreased by a single cent as a result of increased spending by other NATO countries.

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