America Not in Decline

[Lemur]

America is in relative decline compared to, say 25 years ago.

I don't think 1987 was so fantastic. The advent of Max Headroom and Space: 1999 cannot save an otherwise lackluster year, what with the market crash of '87.

I keed, I keed. The same trends that are cited for American decline today have their roots in the policies of the late 1970s and 1980s. Energy shocks, offshoring of manufacturing, trade deficits, budget deficits, consumer deficits, deregulation of the financial sector ... all of this was happening in that period. If anything, I believe we have come through the aftershocks of those policies, and are well on our way toward taking the best elements and discarding the dross.

As for military supremacy, America does not need to be the preeminent power of the globe. We can't afford it; no single nation can.* We need to protect our interests, certainly, and we need to defend ourselves, but the gross imperial gambits of Bush II are now rightly seen as a budget-destroying error. The same sort of global overreach that did in the British Empire. I'm not in favor of isolationism, but a re-think of our global policing is no bad thing.

Our best days are ahead of us. I firmly believe this.




* Indeed, there's a good argument to be made that a bloated defense budget not only weakens us economically, but weakens us militarily.

[W]e have new fiefdoms pushing new products and guarding pots of resources that are not integrated with the rest of the force. We have the director of this center of excellence and the commanding general of that command, each with a flashy name and each with a new age explanation as to why we need them in modern warfare. Meanwhile, they pursue programs and supposed solutions in single-minded vigor, guarding and expending resources in a rabbit hole rather than pursuing business and military strategies integrated across functions and time. Look at a professional journal and see who is publishing most of the articles you don't read. Directors and staffs of these agencies are constantly justifying their existence and their pot of money. This, my friends, is the path to hell, decadence, and strategic decline. [...]

While each believes he or she is doing his best to save the world, the rest of us know most of this is a joke. The joke is on us, though, because no one cares to impart discipline on the system that got them to where they are and their interests have been so fully entwined with the interests of the organization and of the nation that there is no discerning them anymore.

[Xiahou]

Our best days are ahead of us. I firmly believe this.

You're not worried by unsustainable growth in entitlement spending? Or are you just confident someone will have the courage to fix them? I agree that the US has some good fundamentals, but we also face some daunting challenges.

Also, while we can certainly trim the fat on defense, I don't think it's accurate to paint it as "budget destroying". You could completely eliminate defense spending and we'd still be running a healthy deficit. At least defense is one of the enumerated powers of the federal government.

[Lemur]

You're not worried by unsustainable growth in entitlement spending?

One of several concerns, certainly, but I am quite certain that we will address it. I also think the tax code is a joke and a drag on the economy, needing radical simplification. Again, I believe we will address it.

Much less clear on how we will deal with some macro-economic trends, but that's a whole 'nother thread.

Also, while we can certainly trim the fat on defense, I don't think it's accurate to paint it as "budget destroying".

Conflating two separate issues; defense budget and the two off-budget wars we waged in the 00s. I do believe the DoD budgeting and procurement system encourages single-issue, single-program fiefdoms that drain away millions while doing little to help our men and women in uniform. The Iraq war, on the other hand, cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $2 trillion (some estimates go as high as $4 trillion, when factoring indirect costs), which was, in fact "budget-destroying."

[Sasaki Kojiro]

http://www.the-american-interest.com...cfm?piece=1183

(long)

I was going to post this in its own thread but I don't have much more than a recommendation. It fits here well enough because his topic is what needs to happen politically...why we are in a decline only if we think we have to stick with a certain system. Although I think there may be some contradictions with the above article.


Also, here's another article on "the myth of american decline":

http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/...ower-declinism

[ICantSpellDawg]

America is in a relative decline, not an actual one at this point. It could go that way, but my general understanding of the world is that when your competitors do well, you do better, unless you are a crappy competitor.

[a completely inoffensive name]

I read Sasaki's first link and it was very good all the way up until the end.

NOTE: To understand this, you have to read the article.
Those we call "conservatives" want liberalism 3.0 and those we call "liberals" want liberalism 4.1. But then he just goes on to say at the end that what we need and are ready for is liberalism 5.0. Except if everyone is looking to the past, who is going to create liberalism 5.0? This is why I feel America is declining, or about to decline. No one is looking towards the future, they are just clinging to their old ideas and feelings.

[Lemur]

[W]e are certainly not going to be the top dog in, say, fifty years or so if things keep going the way they are

If there's one thing you can count on, it's that linear trends don't stay linear.

What is in danger of collapse is the US political system

Unfortunately, when you declare all government to be evil, and then set out to prove it, there are unintended consequences.

[PanzerJaeger]

Good thread, and lots of good articles. I guess it depends on how one defines 'decline'. As most of the world embraces some form of free market capitalism, GDP size will be increasingly correlated with population size. Even with her significant legal, regulatory, and technological advantages, America's ~400 million people cannot hope to support an economy the size of the one China's 1.3 billion people can. Feudalism, colonialism, internal strife, outside aggressors, and finally communism artificially held China (and India on many of those counts) back. Falling behind large-population nations on global rankings of the biggest this and the most that is definitely relative and not particularly important.

However, is America being held back, or indeed declining, in real terms? I think Sasaki's first article makes a strong case for that argument. America is clinging to a model built for a different era while other nations are building new, innovative, and more efficient models that correspond more closely to the 21st century. Our private economy is desperately (and in many cases successfully) trying to adapt to to the realities of the emerging global marketplace under the onerous burden of a governmental system stuck in the Great Society.

I really liked this from the article:

But today the words liberal and progressive have been hijacked and turned into their opposites: A “liberal” today is somebody who defends the 20th-century blue social model; a “progressive” is now somebody who thinks history has gone wrong and that we must restore the Iron Triangle of yesteryear to make things better. Most of what passes for liberal and progressive politics these days is a conservative reaction against economic and social changes the Left doesn’t like. The people who call themselves liberal in the United States today are fighting rearguard actions to save old policies and established institutions that once served noble purposes but that now need fundamental reform (and in some cases abolition), lest they thwart the very purposes for which they were created.

I have thought the same for a long time but have not seen it written so succinctly.

At the same time, I think a lot of those hoping to return to the gold standard must acknowledge the following.

We cannot realistically solve our problems by trying to return to the 3.0 liberalism of the 19th century because the American economy of that era depended on conditions we cannot reproduce today. Though some may think it desirable, we cannot return to a largely agrarian economy. Nor can we replicate the industrial system of the 19th century, with its extremely high tariffs against foreign goods and a completely laissez-faire national attitude toward immigration. Trying to recreate the American economy of a century ago would lead to massive dislocations, depressions and quite likely wars around the world, not to mention thoroughly wrecking the American economy and bankrupting many of our banks and biggest corporations.

[a completely inoffensive name]

At the same time, I think a lot of those hoping to return to the gold standard must acknowledge the following.

But....but Ron Paul says we can.

[Papewaio]

You have some of the key energy companies and the key IT companies.
And a huge chunk of the worlds liquid fresh water.

Much better fundamentals then Australia which is essentially a quarry.