The US climbed to economic preeminence because it was forced to innovate. They were rich in resources and poor in labor, so they created labor saving devices such as the assembly line as a coping mechanism. They also didn't have to fight a lot of wars being sandwiched between passive Mexico and Canada.

All of that is changing as the world shrinks. When a country is rich in labor (eg China) they will tend towards hierarchy, bureaucracy, collusion, monopoly and corruption, and move away from innovation. In the U.S.'s most important industry, high tech, they're importing lots of labor so as to make themselves labor rich in that industry. As a result they have companies like Microsoft and Google that have massive payrolls, and yet clearly don't show the kind of innovation one would expect from a company with their resources.

And then there's the interminable war on terror that is draining the nation of its wealth.

I shudder to think that the totalitarian state of China could very well be the next sole super power.

The problem is that high-tech industries don't create a lot of blue collar jobs for regular people. They create a small number of white collar jobs for highly skilled people. There's plenty of innovation in that industry. It's just that every bit of innovation helps eliminate American jobs. And since Americans suck at math and science, we don't even have enough engineers and CS graduates to fill the small number of job openings, so we have to import the labor from overseas.

Americans are uniquely fucked in this global economy. We have no new industries emerging that will create large numbers of high-paying jobs, and American workers are now at a competitive disadvantage in almost every industry. Most people don't get to see an empire collapse firsthand, but this is it. We're done.

i heard the same thing when i was in high school from this university educated communist back in the 60's. the US of A was finished he said. he almost had me convinced we would all be starving, the water and air would be so polluted we couldn't even breathe or drink. the economy was going to collapse, a civil war would ensue, the capitalist system would die.

man was he full of shit!

i had another neighbor who was a borcher and kept telling me that if they integrated to schools they would turn to shit and if they passed LBJ's war on poverty and great society programs it would do nothing for poverty but it would create a permanent underclass of non producing citizens.

who was more correct? i ask you.

I don't know, I think they were both kind of right.

See more details in my other posts last few days.

well you would be wrong. the air and water is much much cleaner today than at that time. of course you probably weren't around.

I assume that "borcher" was supposed to be "Bircher". Is this some subtle means of disguising your allegiance by pretending not to even know how it is spelled? I'll bet you have a stack of copies of "None Dare Call it Treason" sitting in a prominant place, ready to give out like one former supervisor of mine did.

The air and water are much cleaner today because of government requirements. Because many of the early smog laws were local, you could travel around and find pockets of bad smog where there was no law against it, even though the technology was available. Now, we have an obstructionist federal government (cabal seems a better term somehow) which is actively opposing the efforts of local governments to go beyond the federal requirements to control air pollution, even though that same federal government has specifically ordered some of those same local governments to take action to meet federal limits.

sorry i type like a horse. it is bircher. i thought the guy was nuts as i was a young, idealistic dumbshit. looking back though, he was more correct than the leftist moron.

go figure!!! i lived in california back then.

'Now, we have an obstructionist federal government (cabal seems a better term somehow) which is actively opposing the efforts of local governments to go beyond the federal requirements to control air pollution, even though that same federal government has specifically ordered some of those same local governments to take action to meet federal limits.'

you are full of crap. the feds will not stop any local government from enacting stricter laws than theirs. the problem is they want federal money to do it. if the locals want to enact stricter laws, then let them pay for it and there will be no problem.

of course you could be gutless sneaky fucksticks like osambo and hildawench and put it on earmarks instead of sponsoring a bill for the money.

The era discussed in this piece appears to be roughly the 1960s to the present, the same era in which women and minorities have been ascendant in American business and politics. It may be that this absolutely necessary shift, which led the world in its depth and breadth, may not have been well founded. In fact, the austerity and rigor that characterized American business during the rise to world leader, may be lacking in this new leadership. It is up to the elite institutions to correct this problem - while continuing to support the rise of women and minorities.

'The era discussed in this piece appears to be roughly the 1960s to the present, the same era in which women and minorities have been ascendant in American business and politics.'

that is a damn good point and is a big dilemma for the liberals. what they think of as progress could be construed as progress down the toilet.

The credit problem was exaperated by federal over ride of stricter local laws meant to control credit abuse.

Cheney is a cabal leader.

The talent that drove this country was largely created by this "Liberal" concept.

I have not seen any national GOP program that has improved the country.

The GOP just creates debt.

It is literally true. California and 16 other states have gone to court to try to overthrow an EPA ruling which prevents them from going beyond the EPA pollution requirements. Schwartzeneggar is one of the leading activists in this campaign on behalf of the individual states.