As far as I can tell the dollar is nowhere near as bad as the Euro. Probably has something to do with the productivity of our free-market economy. Well, freer than Europe's at least. And also, I wonder how much spending we could cut if we ditched such entitlements as Social Security and MediCare?
How much money would we save by ditching vampiric government contractors? What the government needs is budget reform. Cut back programs if you want, but if you simply have a more flexible budget policy you'd save a lot of money.
I'll give you an example. An IT service run by the government needs $1 million to keep running. But, every 4-5 years, they need to spend $3 million to upgrade computers. But, if you only use $1 million one year, the government assumes that you don't need the money and cuts the budget to $1 million permanently. The weakness of the current system is that budgets are kept rigid, so the IT services department spends $3 million a year in order to keep the budget high so they can use $3 million on the year they need it. That means $2 million/year has to get wasted.
It would be corruption, except I don't think anyone benefits from it. Maybe the guy whose job is to literally find ways to waste money (this actually exists), but he has a fixed salary. It doesn't benefit anyone except for the contractor who feeds off the waste for titanic profits.
Who knows how expansive this problem is. I can't find any statistics for how much is spent because of the use-it-or-lose-it budget policy. I have a vague feeling that just doing this would make government budgets far less obscene, especially in the military.
Whatever you believe the role of the government is (I'm a left-winger) there is absolutely no need for it to be this wasteful. I'm of the thought that the government should really do its own work and not hire outside help. Better yet, pass some legislation to reform how budgets are calculated.
The problem is not spending money in and of itself. The problem is spending money and getting no effect. Demand-side economics only works if the money spent by the government is going to benefit consumers. In our case, the money just...
...seems...
...to be...
...disappearing
maybe we can sell all our olympic gold?
Historically, all "super powers" eventually fall. The U.S. will likely follow suit. Eventually. Personally, I predict the next Great Super Power nation will be Liechtenstein.
There is one key difference...no nation before the US was a superpower while the world was so globally connected and interdependent...every empire BEFORE the US either had other comparable empires or did not have access to the whole globe...
The Mongol Empire and British Empires were the closest...but the Mongols didn't have global reach like the US, and didn't really have control over the far reaches of their empire...the British Empire had global reach, and was the most powerful of its time, but it didn't dominate global politics or economics on the scale of the US...Africa and Asia were piece-mealed by all of Europe, not just Britain, and even great Britain couldn't have stood up to more than a few enemies at once...
With the fall of the USSR, the US was unquestionably the first true superpower the world had ever seen...the US is the first nation that can military react quickly anywhere in the globe without a comparable competitor capable of the same...when it comes to superpowers, military power is the ultimate factor...technology, economics, government style--they're all important, but military power represents a nation's ability to synergize it's economy, technology, and government...military power also is the most direct way to spread influence...the US isn't on the UN security council, dominating summit meetings, and leading coalitions against a country like Iraq because it has the largest economy in the world...representing half of all global military expenditures is why the US is a superpower...if America loses its edge with technology or industry, it will lose its place as a superpower...but only because its military will lose its edge as a result...
The US got lucky...it got through WWI AND WWII with hardly a scratch compared to most nations (cough cough...Russia and China...cough cough)...and, it became superpower right when technology truly connected the entire globe...the US may or may not fall from the upper echelons of global power...but regardless of what happens, past history won't be good enough to predict the future....not this time, this time "empire" has taken on a whole new meaning...
America's military is dangerously overstretched. There is a saying that the entire US military is either in Afghanistan or its going/leaving. This is exageration but it does highlight a problem. The US military has an unusually low number of personell yet it is almost everywhere at once.
America now is like France and Britain in the 1930s. Huge and expensive armed forces with the best technology in the world with a firm belief that no major wars would ever occur again and that the future of warfare is all about counter-insurgency.
The American military is most definitely overstretched...but so has the military of every empire, it is simply part of being imperialistic...
Except that in the 1930s there were no massive stockpiles of nuclear weapons...America could prepare for conventional warfare, but if America went to war with any nuclear power (which is pretty much all your powerful nations), it wouldn't really matter...counter-insurgency as of right now is the warfare of the future...aircraft carriers, commando units, satellites, stealth aircraft--this is what makes the American military so effective, not hordes of tanks and fighter jets....the next progression of warfare is likely to be cyberwarfare...and as of right now, America is the leader in that too...America may be losing its grip, but its military is going to be holding the number one spot for quite a while...and therefore, its spot as superpower...
Double post...my apologies...
True, all empires have stretched militaries but America tries to be in more places at once than any previous empire but with fewer personell proportionally.
My point was that every one believed that counter-insurgency was the future of warfare and that no major wars would ever occur again and this was before BOTH world wars. The major powers were wrong about counter-insurgency and major wars several times before. They will likely be wrong again eventually.
While America will not always be a Superpower, it will likely remain a Superpower in our lifetimes.
Well, unless the forces that be continue on the current course of saying 'I'm Sorry' to the ones that want to destroy us.
Or unless they continue to spend so much of what we don't have to support an illegal population.
Or unless they continue to throw away what made this country the best in all the world.
Or unless they continue to throw away any values whatsoever.
Oh, wait...
That is what the current Administrations have been doing. The most current one, especially.
Yup. We're toast.
Why such a focus on military strength? Economic strength is more important while the risk of M.A.D. looms.
I feel America may already be on the way out. They 3 things that kill and empire are overstretched military and police, economic breakdown and internal unrest and corruption. From what I see the first 2 have already happened and the 3 is starting due to with the polarization of views the country is getting, economy making some desperate, and the loss of civil rights(habeas corpus etc..).
the fact that alot of people in america think it will never fail or the rest of the world will fail if we do is just hubris. I think that it will be our tragic flaw.
Even climate change may take us down if our country loses its "bread basket" and we have to turn to other countries for food.
How is America Imperialistic? I am curious where our empire is so I can go visit it.