OK, it's been a few years since econ class, but I trust someone will point out the errors:

Isn't the decline of the dollar a (relatively) good thing in terms of balance-of-trade? Not in terms of us making money at trade per se, but in that goods will be cheaper for us to make here (as opposed to paying the Chinese to make them for us)?

Isn't that why the World Bank people got on China for artificially devaluing their currency?

RE: warfare against China. If we could keep it conventional (missile shield, preemptive strike, whatever), a US victory would be limited by our own ethical standards. Unlike the PLA/PLAN, the US Navy/Air Force are designed to project power. After knocking down their air defenses (no joke, but doable - most of our offensive power was designed with this in mind), we could basically have our way with their civilian infrastructure.

I don't care what kind of economy they have, removing power plants, oil refineries/pipelines, railroads and highway bridges will bring it to a grinding halt. The ethical limitations would be that this would cause mass deaths in the cities now cut off from food, power, and fuel sources. A nuke would be more merciful - at least it would be fast.

so, you think the US should destroy china to keep it's rank as a superpower?

or do you think that we could destroy china and stay a superpower?

The development of the world economy will in the distant future make the current State System lose a large amount of power as technological innovation and economic development instead shift into the hands of massive corporations that are able to compete with national governments and for a time will (and are) necessary for these national governments to function efficiently. In time, these corporations will dominate as independent units, and the proliferation of information technology and international transportation will make questions of borders less and less pertinent.

If that doesn't happen, and the State System continues as it is with no changes (Very unlikely from a historical viewpoint) even then no one empire can be a super power for ever. Resources run out, hard times are fallen upon, unique situations come about, wars drain resources, governments are deposed, and territories change. Whether or not it's even called America is in question; it may be a nation of predominantly Hispanic and Asian technological and industrial workers that occupies the upper half of south and a quarter of North America given enough time...

So either way the question degrades in importance the further into the future you travel.

Should?
Genocide again a billion people to prevent ourselves from losing a little power doesn't sound like a particularly good thing. Would seems to be the question, and I honestly don't know.

Could?
Destroy China... almost certainly. Would it prevent the U.S. from declining... highly unlikely. But that isn't really the point. The point is China's current position: If they challenge the U.S. directly, they are destroyed, and what happens to the U.S. afterward doesn't effect them much.

Which is why a military engagement is fundamentally impossible: the aggressor cannot benefit. So, we resign ourselves to economic struggles.

I think many people here assume that the nation state concept has permanence.

Nation states, as we have them today, are a relatively new invention.  Europe, the first continent to have nation states, didn't even complete the process until the 19th century.

A 100 years from now? Who knows. Multinational corporations and international trade treaties and the like might make nation states largely obsolete.

Even in my lifetime I've seen an immense change. I work with people all over the world.  Sins of a Solar Empire, for instance, was a collaboration between Americans and Canadians that was pretty seamless.  Stardock's other products include people who work together from countries as varied as Russia, Poland, UK, Brazil, South Africa, Italy, etc. all working together as a single team.

Nationalism is something of a generational issue. I feel a strong sense of "patriotism" for my country but is weakens over time as I come to realize that the ideas and people that matter to me occur across multiple borders. This already has happened in the United States. At one time, loyalty to individual states trumped loyalty to the union of states.  In a century who knows how things may evolve.

That said, it is unlikely that any *government* will be as powerful as the federal government of the United States any time soon.  People talk about China but China's a blip. It'll be a very long time before the government of China is a major power in the world.  China is barely at the nation state level from a government point of view.  A lot of money is being made there but the government has little ability to tax it at this point.  If any country is likely to be run by corporations in 50 years, it's China, not the United States.

Of course it will, its a matter of time. Its in so much debt its already in decline. People often assume superpower is the one with the most military/nukes.(Those people are usually from Texas or more south from what i understand)
But it seems strange in this age to be thinking in terms military power, as if china and usa would fight a war for the one that gets #1, you wont get a match and then a scoreboard will list the winning country, it will just slowly become the main country for getting entertainment/pop culture and things like that.
I'd say my top pet peeve with ignorance in america is how they say things like "the most free country" or things like that. Some things i hear on the news like email/phone surveillance and torture prisons give the idea of the most oppresive environment ever.

No, of course not. I believe America as it is now will be around for the next 50+ years. Yes we probably won't be number 1 forever, but for the foreseeable-future we will remain a superpower. When we do collapse I'm putting my money on a military coup, not a USSR-style break up of the states. I'll be happy when China and India surpass us. The world will blame them when things start going wrong, and when they invade defenseless countries.

The US's debt as a % of its GDP is less than most European nations or Japan.  It's all relative. 

Technically speaking, the US is still currently on a relative ascension relative to the G7 average when one looks at economic and military might.

China, Japan, etc. are very very far behind economically and of course militarily they're not even on the charts.

All this hubris one way or the other about nation states is pretty baffling to me to be honest. Where one was born was a matter of random chance.

 

Good points. From what I understand, the real worry is not What Is, but rather What Could Become. The US economy revolve around the citizens spending all the moeny that they earn. If suddendly people stop spending and start saving, the big inverstors would stop investing their money because the value of their investment would not increase so much., then the small investors would get scared looking at the big invertors and would also stop investing. Suddenly you have a scenario where nobody spends money because they are too scared to lose their money.

Its funny, but thats how things work in the US. Hell, its almost stupid, think about it. If normal people (normal civilians) in the US start saving their money today instead of spending it, the US economy would collapse.




Is it bad to be a facist? Or a Nazi? Anybody can believe in what they want.

I just read an excellent article about the economics side of the great demise of the USA.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23681221-20261,00.html

I suggest some of you read it.

Well, they are communist, and people often forget some of the meanings that underlie that word. One of the core concepts of communism is that the government controls the means of production. With this philosophy, it's very heavily weighted towards government control, and the corporations have very little power.

I would agree, however, that China does not hold much power. If they were to go to war with the USA or do anything major that we don't like, we'd stop trading with them, and their economy (and likely ours as well) would tank. In which case, I'd predict they'd be hurt a lot worse by the economic instability than we would be. Our capitalistic economic system has proved to be quite resilient, surviving a Great Depression and the Cold War. Even when we get into major downturns, we have always been able to rebound eventually.



Agreed, and I think some people forget this: China has not been in a major war for a long time. Their military is very likely to be behind ours in technology and strength. The only real advantage they'd have is sheer numbers, and the USA's technology is likely to offset that. All we'd really have to do is to cut off all trade and hold our borders long enough for their economy to collapse.



I'm a bit worried about this "evolution." I think one of our greatest strengths is our ability to have pride in our states, our towns, and even ourselves as individuals. People may joke about how we are a bunch of "cowboys," but the truth is we have our roots in that rugged individualism and grew to be the great country we are today. Perhaps it's selfish, perhaps it causes conflict, perhaps it's not ideal. But then again, perhaps a person who is strong as an individual makes the group even stronger. Perhaps a person who improves himself will improve the entire nation. Perhaps a person who cares about himself will also care about his country. Perhaps an individual who has pride in himself will extend that pride to his town, his state, his country.

I've seen many complaints that we ignore the international community - but the truth is, we simply do not want our sovereignty and our independence to disappear. After all, we were founded on the idea that we should rule ourselves, rather than by various parts of Europe.

Along this line of thinking, It's my opinion that we should strive to keep our government small. It should certainly exist, and it should certainly have enough power to enforce basic human rights and our laws, but it should not try to exercise undue control over the people.

So, in that like of thinking, I am very leery of what is going on in Europe, where international organizations such as the EU have enormous control over the laws of other nations. I think that these new international organizations may be taking away more rights than they give.



I worry greatly about this attitude of spending, and I worry that it may be a major reason for our declining economy. I personally think that saving some money is a great idea.

In fact, saving money creates personal wealth with compound interest rates, while going into debt destroys personal wealth. Credit cards have interest rates too - but they hurt, not help!

Seriously, I'd think it would be obvious that you'd want an interest rate that adds to your wealth rather than destroys it.



Quite the opposite!

The basic accounting equation:

Assets = Liabilities + Equity

Equity is the value of your company.

So, with a small bit of algebra, we separate out equity:

Equity = Assets - Liabilities

The total value of a company decreases when liabilities increase, and increases when you save cash (cash is an asset, just like land).

I would gladly increase my investments tenfold if people and companies started saving more money.



Look where our "you gotta spend" attitude has gotten us - deep into debt and afraid to spend money. Debt is a major source of headaches, and the interest rates on credit cards makes it worse. Many people end up losing everything they have when they rack up a great deal of debt.

Indeed, if you save money, I think you'll find you're more confident to spend it. After all, you've saved it, you have plenty of it, and just having it saved increases your wealth due to compound interest. You can easily get the money you've spent back.

I'm not advocating hoarding money and never spending it at all - I'm merely advocating spend it after you've saved it through a bank, rather than buying an item immediately on a credit card.

Think about it: You can in fact spend more if you have money coming in through the interest in a bank account than if you money taken away through credit card interest.

My credit card company recently charged me for having a balance: That's money out of my pocket never to be seen by me again. That's less money I can spend. I have a lower overall cash flow because money is being taken away from me.

Money I can spend (Cash flow) = money gained each month (paycheck) - credit card interest

My bank, on the other hand, recently put some money into my savings account as interest. That's more money I can spend. I can have a slightly higher cash flow because I'm actually making a small amount of money by simply saving some money in the account.

Cash flow = money gained each month + bank account interest

So, as contradictory as it may sound, saving money actually allows greater spending.



I would disagree. I think it would only get stronger. In fact, people can spend more money and achieve a higher cash flow if they save a small portion of the money and maintain positive balances than if they maintain negative balances.

FYI, Microsoft is a "saver." They maintain a positive cash balance and try to avoid debt. I think their financial strength is obvious.

"Never spend your money before you have it." --Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826)

While debt does kill personal wealth, it is what the modern economy thrives on. You seem to be confusing "good personal economic sense" with "good macroeconomic sense": it's great to save but if people saved like you are advocating modern financial systems would collapse. People aren't going to outright buy a house or a car (well, the latter perhaps if it's junk). Heck, people even put payments on appliances. The way people buy big-ticket items is based on short-term personal loans, and that's a given considering the way people earn money (ie through monthly or biweekly paychecks).

To be honest in the next 50-100 years the countries that can manage their eco sand enviri sucessfully will become the new superpowers. Atm China is dependant on australian raw materials so we could technially cripple china when our current mining boom is over. As for america leader technologically, its all realtive, the advanced military technologies are irrelevant in the inforamtion age, consider this, You think the ability to have a combat suit that can turn someone invisible is a greater techological achievment than the technological probelms that China had to overcome to consturct its three gorages damn, also the worlds largest particle accelerator is being built in europe, kind of strange considering that people have been saying over and over again that america has the worlds largest gdp.

My opinion as an australian looking at america is that the arrogence of your leaders and your system of government will be your undoing. While you may not think that i understand what its like just remeber that our ex-primeminister john howard had his head stuck up bushes rear end and to be honest a lot of ideas were passed along. Its very sad to say that he was the longest serving pm (he was only better than the other guy) but towards the end of his reign he got real arogrant (like bush) and passed quite a few laws that favoured the rich (wow, corporate politics an american thing) (the main one was "workchoices" which took most rights away from employees) and we have had massive infaltion becuase of his eco managment (bush again).

US wont die ever.

Why?


Not because you are powerful or economically vital (you are at the moment btw) but because the way society has evolved these last fifty years war among developed countries, much less worldpowers are no longer feasibly. The world economies are so integrated that war will be too expensive even if one or both parties finds away to avoid the "mutual destruction assured" from nuclear weapons.

It is however quite likely that China (and to lesser) extent India is going to dominate the world economically.

The question is whether we have an enviromental breakdown before or after that.

China has always been one of the most xenophobic isolationist countries on this planet. Not to mention that they have an extreme overpopulation problem. There is no doubt the U.S. will not be head honcho in another 100-200 years but in the near term there is no way for China to overtake our GDP or our diplomatic controls, they don't even want to all China has ever wanted is to be left alone and have mild hegemony over its neghbors and for some stupid reason military control over Tibet.