Is the ‘Age of America’ Really at an End?
And while it’s true that China has enjoyed the full fruits of capitalism, its economy still suffers from faux-communist distortions. From uninhabited, brand-spanking-new “ghost cities,” to a financial sector that would make Tim Geithner blush, Beijing is sitting on multiple power kegs while smoking up a storm.
China is also up against the limits of its arable land. About the same geographic size as the U.S., China has four times the population and a lot more desert. Combined with Beijing’s growth-at-any-cost policies, the Chinese ecology is under serious pressure.
However, China does have strengths all its own — over three trillion of them, at last count. $3,050,000,000,000 is the current dollar value of China’s foreign currency reserves, and that’s the kind of big, swinging… purchasing power that can win a country some friends in a pinch. More importantly, cash reserves that size have let China paper over its most pressing financial difficulties. So far, at least.
The real secret to China’s success is no secret at all. Whether it’s accurate or not, reforming Chinese President Deng Xiaoping is believed to have told his people that “To get rich is glorious.” Mao was dead, and so was communism. And the Chinese people heeded the call.
Our president has declared “that at a certain point, you’ve made enough money.” Barack Obama certainly acts as though he thinks the U.S. is now plenty rich — and should get no richer. Obama has used “spread the wealth around” as his policy on pretty much everything. Medicine? ObamaCare put everyone in the same leaky boat. Manufacturing? He gave away big chunks to General Motors to the UAW which had helped drag it down. Energy? There’s been nice talk about nuclear energy, but also ham-fisted and unnecessary drilling moratoriums and threats to make burning coal economically unfeasible.
Our dollar is in a tailspin, our financial house makes Enron look like a model of probity, our education system costs too much while demanding almost no rigor of its pupils, and our East and West Coast cultural bulwarks remain staunchly anti-American.
And all those allies America can claim? Obama has made it a point to offend some of the best and strongest of them. The rest have certainly taken note.
China has aggressively pursued its national self-interest, while our president and his party have aggressively denied Americans the chance to pursue theirs.
The story isn’t so much about China’s rise. After all, an industrious, intelligent, and entrepreneurial people can be held down by their government for only so long.
After centuries of hardship, the Chinese learned that lesson to great success.
We need only to remember it.
I believe the trick is to have 4x the population, lie flagrantly when people ask you for your stats, and have friendly journalists assume good things about your future and bad things about the US’s.
First, the Russians were going to bury us. Then, it was the Japanese. Now, it is the Chinese.
China is copying the Japanese model of currency manipulation. Deliberately holding the value of their currency low to maximize exports.
It works to a point, but what has been the growth rate in Japan during the last decade?
The only thing preventing a resurgent America is Barack Obama.
Before that, it was the Germans and the Japanese (again);
If both countries had not had Leaders who were out of touch
with reality, they would have won first the economic/industrial war,
and later on the ‘Kinetic Negotiation’ with a desperate Us of A.
You forgot that the Arabs were going to own us all in the 1970s because the price of oil was going to stay high forever.
At a static $3-4 USD per barrel at the well head for Arab oil, would you think the price of oil has remain inflated and HIGH?
Yes, but the Chinese are moving slowly but surely towards capitalism, while America is running away from it.
We’re playing the role of the Soviet Union with our very own Gorbachev, and while I hate to interrupt your poorly reasoned jingoism, America doesn’t get to be immune from history or consequences.
Many top-heavy, centralized nations have crumbled before us because of their irresponsibility. We have become what we condemned previously, and we’ll end up just like they all did.
Don’t worry, the Chinese have their idiotic politicians to sabotage them. We’re racing to the bottom. The Indians will be rising next.
Interesting that you raise the comparison of Gorbachev and Obama. You’re not the first one.
http://abriefhistory.org/?page_id=1710
The essay, in a Canadian newspaper last year, subsequently disappeared from its website.
The Chinese can be wonderfully industrious, ambitious, extrovert and optimistic, but there is no detectable trace of responsible governance in their collective memory. I believe this explains the impressive size of the extended families still common in rural areas, which have not received much of the benefits of a strange kind of capitalism by behavior, but not in spirit, a relatively superficial phenomenon restricted to the new urban centers. They may already be the sensational and telegenic part of China, but not its essence, yet.
How far can they go with so much poverty in the hinterlands and still no individual freedom? It is interesting to note that Chinese translations of the Bible are best sellers in China. On the surface, there may not be much in common between the Saudi monarchs and the Chinese high ranking officials, but their common fear of western culture would easily unite them in the virtual space of existential insecurity, which is where the all too real devils of opposition to national development perpetuate all the trappings of intellectual stagnation.
If China continues on its economic ascent, sooner or later its obscene contrast between the rich and the poor may well trigger revolutionary convulsions (not the Mao variety this time) before its human potential is fully realised. If by that time, America has managed to overcome its current funk, comparisons between China and the US will become more meaningful.
Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun;
Who has all the guns in China ?
Mao’s Cultural Revolution did not provoke a people’s revolt,
and nothing the current regime may have to do will either.
Some slave revolts lost to the guns, some did not. How may guns were there on the side of Nelson Mandela?
Pretty much all that the Soviets wanted to spare him.
As even Ghandhi admitted, non-violence only works against governments, like Britain and the US, which aren’t prepared to be ruthless.
HItler’s response when asked about Gandhi?
“Shoot him.”
I’ve read the story of the US’s decline before, and every chapter and verse was the same.
It was 1978 through 1981. Japan was ascendent. It’s mix of authoritarianism and semi-free markets was clobbering the US. We were just a few years away from them becoming the dominant economy in the world. Our oil reserves were running out, Our products were inferior. We were lazy, fat. Inflation was killing us. Malaise was rampant. Our capitalistic system was a failure. Russia was eating our lunch militarilly and Iran was humiliating us on the world stage. Global cooling was gripping the planet. The world popolation was at the verge of an implosion. The stock market would never recover. The situation was hopeless. There was nothing to do but roll over on our stomachs and enjoy the enema.
Every chapter and verse was identical.
Carter I brought us Reagan. Who’ll be Reagan II to follow Carter II? I love Trig’s mom to drive the high-and-mighty Ivy Leaguers and MSM hangers-on bonkers.
Obama Carter.
Obama = Allende. Thus, the question is: Who will be our Pinochet?
I don’t like the like the Pinochet analogy. I have no desire to see people dissapear and be flung from helicopters over the ocean.
Although the way things are going with ever expanding government, growing powers of search and seizure along with goons like the TSA and a “them against us” attitude with the unions et al I fear it may be closer to the truth than is comfortable.
I’m sensing that it won’t be a Carter to Reagan transition. It will be more like James Buchanan to Abraham Lincoln. And we know what happens after that. There are too many pressures hitting all simultaneously: Mexico is failing, our own economy, the fact that the Obama administration won’t let us drill for our own oil, but is sending US taxpayer money to other nations to drill for oil, 3 wars, our debt, definition-of-life centered social issues (abortion, homosexuality, anti-Christianity — like slavery, it is a question of what is human and what is not), the very definition of rights, and an extremely dumbed-down distracted population. I don’t think we’ve ever had a time when the people in charge wanted to so fundamentally change Life itself, and purposefully sought to destroy the nation.
Yeah – but back then we still had a strong dollar and a manufacturing base. All that is gone now.
There is a reason that the US is missing from the book of Revelations.
The LGBTQ wedge into the military means that the total takeover of US society by the left is now complete. This and the devolution of the US economy are exactly what Obama and his handlers have wanted. Meanwhile, China also knows what it wants, and is well along the road to achieving it. The IMF report simply ratifies what is essentially a done deal by the progressive oligarchy.
We can easily predict the kinds of things that will happen in the near future as rising powers such as China decide to take advantage of the economic and military weakness of the US. One of these actions has already started, specifically the replacement of the US dollar as THE international currency by a ‘currency basket’ of the Euro, renmenbi, Australian dollar, etc.
China will also correctly note that pursuit of political correctness in the US military will emasculate the ability to identify enemies, kill them efficiently, break their war-making capacity, and project power throughout the world.
For example, sometime in the next five years the Chinese will deliberately provoke a confrontation with the US Navy (you can be assured that the Chinese are planning for this even now). The US will come off second best as Chinese satellite-controlled anti-ship missiles slam into a carrier. Soon thereafter, the various nations in SE Asia will have no choice but to shift their de facto allegiance to Chinese economic and cultural proclivities, including such mundane aspects as what ‘international’ secondary language to teach in their schools (it is currently English, starting from 1st grade on up).
Our friends in the area may desire otherwise, but reality is reality, and accommodations with an increasingly powerful China will have to be made.
I’ve been wondering if someday there will be a tacit quid pro quo, as we let China take Taiwan with minimal interference from us, and then we cancel all our bonds held by the Chinese.
I think you get the chronology wrong.
China has aggressively pursued its national self-interest, while our president and his party have aggressively denied Americans the chance to pursue theirs.
We have the only leader of a country in the entire world, who has claimed that his own flag is the “wrong kind” of patriotism.
China does have strengths all its own — over three trillion of them, at last count. $3,050,000,000,000 is the current dollar value of China’s foreign currency reserves, and that’s the kind of big, swinging… purchasing power that can win a country some friends in a pinch. More importantly, cash reserves that size have let China paper over its most pressing financial difficulties. So far, at least.
Big, swinging….purchasing power…indeed.
But we do NOT need to be chalking up servicing debt like drunken 25 year olds living out a “Hangover” redux in Las Vegas. We need to reduce that immediately and aggressively. And stop allowing ourselves to be the doormat in an unreasonable and irrational import/export imbalance.
Give new meaning to the term “Chinese takeout”.
Unfortunately, there are so many people in this administration who worship Mao (and Che and Fidel and ….Marx)…we aren’t likely to get them to take America’s side in this regard.
In fact, I can’t remember a time when the Marxists have ever taken America’s side…in anything.
I see a lot of wishful thinking on the part of other commenters here so far. Unfortunately, they fail to take account of the myriad systemic weaknesses in US society and the US economy, cemented into place by the total control of a progressive oligarchy. Today’s America is not like the past, and it is hugely problematic as to whether the US in its present form will even survive, let alone be able to compete successfully on the world stage.
There may be a lot of hard ground to get lightly over, but American is not going to be buried.
The battle now is to wake people up to the facts of what is happening. And it would sure go a long way if we could get rid of the idiots of the looney left and their bogus power.
It may be a hard fight, but we will win. Persevere, no matter the odds.
["Does this mean that the U.S. is on the way out as a superpower?"]
From 2005 to 2010, the average wage per month for migrant workers increased 14.1% from 875 yuan (about US$130) to 1,690 yuan ($252).
China’s working age population (aged from 15 to 64) has experienced steady growth over the past few decades. According to the projection by the Report of China’s Population Development Strategy (2008), this figure increased to 968 million in 2010, occupying more than 71% of the total population. While China is currently enjoying the largest scale of working-age population and the lowest dependency ratio, new trends have began to emerge in the growth rate of the working-age population. The working-age population will stop increasing in 2017, when it reaches a peak of about 999.6 million, and will reduce gradually from then on.
It should be China’s strategic choice to stimulate new impetus for economic growth and sustainable economic development by increasing investment in human capital, improving the efficiency of human resources and building new comparative advantage in human resources on the basis of improving the quality of the labor force.
Li Jianmin is a professor at the Institute of Population and Development in the School of Economics at Nankai University
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China_Business/MD20Cb01.html
China is developing very similar in many variables to 19th and 20th century America, except for their population and labor ratio’s being so signficantly larger. Furthermore, their economic industrial revolution comes in the advent of maturing global economic and market conditions.
All things consider, it is likely to not only become the major economic and industrial power, it will likely hold such position for several decades short of some catastrophic circumstance. The competitive edge is in their court…playing fair or manipulating the global markets and currencies!
China is realizing its potential because the nation invested in itself and natural resources overseas, there is no magic or mystery behind it. Education in China is paramount, and is respect for teaching as an institution. This is slowly filtering out to rural regions and creating a solid infrastructure, something USA is sorely lacking.
America has a 235 year history, give or take a decade depending on what marker we use. China has over 3,700 year written history, with much of it as the worlds largest trading partner. It is slowly regaining what it once had, and it would be to anyones advantage to study that long history and gain insight to how China operates.
The problem with America is it can no longer determine its own destiny, the politicians have gutted the US Dollar by placing it on Petro-Dollar financing system, have wildly overspent themselves into 100 Trillion Dollar+ debt (using funded and unfunded liabilities) and have nowhere else to go to continue funding a 40 year credit Binge. (1971 is when President Nixon and Congress removed the US Dollar from Gold backing and converted the US Dollar to a Fiat Currency).
The Chinese Dollar is irrelevant to US economy, had the US not destroyed its own Dollar. We do not care what the British Pound is trading at, Nor the Yen, nor the Euro. But we wish to Blame the Chinese Dollar, instead of addressing the actual issue; the US dollar is worthless because we made it so.
There is no reason for China to provoke anything, why should they?? They will continue to watch the USA slide into historical oblivion because of our own faults and greed. Why risk military confrontation, there is no need.
China will continue investing in global regions we have been ignorant about, and will continue investing in their infrastructure and education, and when the time comes they will take up the role as world super power and their currency will remain backed by Hard Assets such as Gold, Silver, Nickel and Copper.
If there is one thing China does well, it is learn from others mistakes.
Very well put. However… China is facing a “population winter” worse than the European version of the same malaise. The US is the only major industrial country enjoying population stability now (in great part due to massive immigration.)
Trying to figure out what the shape of the world will be in the next five decades is nearly futile. The variables are many and quite wild.
Americans have an incredible capacity to bounce back. I remember reading that legend about Washington’s vision at Valley Forge, Christmas 1776. In it he sees the “third peril” described as a period of history when the whole world will be against America. I believe we will emerge from this a better nation and we will reach levels of wisdom and prosperity never achieved before by any nation.
In my book, in my faith, a country of slaves cannot possibly defeat a country of free men. Truth will prevail over the blatant lies we are being told now. The American Revolution will beget the American Renaissance. That shall be a sight to behold. In God We Trust.
Until recently, I counted four times in my 44 years that the American Century was declared over. They were wrong every time. It’s happened so many times in the last few years that I’m tempted to roll them all together and call them once. No reason to believe they’re any righter this time. I’m waiting for the end to be called by someone who isn’t merely voicing their own deepest wish.
As for China, Stephen you know where I stand on that. A house of cards. I’m not putting a date on their collapse, though I do believe it will be in my lifetime. When it comes, it will be big and bloody and will drag much of the world down with it.
One thing I’m a little surprised Stephen didn’t bring up is the demographic issue. China is getting older every year, thanks to its one child policy, and doesn’t have much of a safety net for seniors. As the population gets older, more and more money will have to go towards taking care of China’s elderly.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/06/24/96489/double-whammy-aging-china-has.html
What’s more, China’s banks are notoriously opaque, and are probably hiding billions in bad loans. What will happen when Chinese government can’t hide any more?
I have to get this off my chest: I’m sick and tired of the defeatism I sometimes see here. What some people here call “realism” I call “giving in”. I’m not about to give up on America, and I’m certainly not at all willing to wearily sigh and hand global primacy to a bunch of bleeping fascists and their cronies. And neither should any of you.
Yes, we are going through extraordinarily difficult times. Yes, unemployment is high. Yes, other countries are gaining on us. Yes, the Powers that Be haven’t decided whether or not we want to win in Afghanistan, or what victory would look like. Yes, entitlements are a looming disaster that we are just beginning to fathom. Yes, Obama is doing such a good job managing the economy that it really makes me wonder which possibility is worse: is he being genuinely malicious or is he simply an incompetent pretty boy with a pleasing voice and skin tone?
We have been blessed to be born in a country that, in theory anyway, prizes individual freedom and initiative. It is our tradition, and—here’s the crazy part—it works, especially when the government maintains its distance. We owe it to our children and our children’s children not to roll over and give up. America is not over, so long as there are still Americans out there that still believe in its ideals, and those ideals are still worth fighting for.
November 2010 heartened me greatly, and November 2012 will be here soon.
Thank you Armando for the hopeful note. I do hope –in fact I am convinced– that the best days of America are still ahead. This crisis is the price we have to pay to unmask Liberalism once and for all.
My ancestors saw the rise of Mussolini and saw how the crowds “took care” of him when his hour came. Expect nothing less for Liberalism. They are running out of things to give away. Soon they will learn how fickle “the masses” are. There is an old proverb I heard many years ago, I will trey to translate it here: “He who plays the redeemer ends up being crucified.” You can apply it to Liberalism. They will go the way of Fascism and Communism.
Best wishes to you and your theory! Maybe sometime soon you will consider that the “Great” America overcame all the winds of economic problems when it still had a stong domestic industrial and agricultural base and as already mentioned, it didn’t have fiat currency. Today, America’s economic ‘centerpiece’ is left to consumer spending and credit.
We import more technical and scientific labor than any country, from our national labs, higher education, medical and medical research, to every imaginable technical position in the private sector.
When you begin to ananlyze the how and why, we as a nation, have arrived at this critical point in time and debt, with huge multiples over GDP, you will see that recovery as you wish, cannot simply be prescribed because we’re America, who once had generations that were literally hard working, sacrificing and fiscally responsible people who didn’t rely upon the government. Those generations are long gone as is our once great economies!
Consider the fickle generations of today who, only a few months ago, a good sized segment was decrying that, the government was to big, to socialized and spending the nation into fiscal ruin….then current polling suggests 80% of Americans now ‘strongly’ oppose touching, in any way, social secuirty, medicare and medicaid.
As I repeat over and over, the nation is broken from the bottom up…not the top down!
True words indeed but I think you are rushing to the conclusion. I have lived in several different parts of the world and I can assure you there is no one there to replace the exceptional US. If I am wrong then there is no hope and the world will descend into tyranny, war, and chaos. I can see why you think that way but I sure hope (and work) for a brighter future.
Europe is exhausted, Asia can do nothing but work on the cheap, South America and Africa never counted and never will. The “challenger” Islam only knows how to destroy. See the other side?
The tide eventually turns. Those who want to vote themselves the benefits of the welfare state will build the gallows for the welfare state when the checks cease to arrive (and that is not too far!)
This defeatism goes back a long way to Ezra Pound and Jane Fonda, etc. The rabble ruling now will be erased by the force of their own actions. This fever shall pass. Trust in God if you believe. If you don’t believe wait and see. It’s going to be a great show.
Catino
“This defeatism goes back a long way to Ezra Pound…”
The culture of death.
I agree with you we have the slumbering seeds of renewal just waiting for the right time. It is happening now. We do have a good chance.
Black Bart,
The culture of death knows how to kill and die but life always finds a way.
It’s always some other country that’s gaining on us, Soviet Union, Japan, now China. I think we thrive on challenge, and see threats even when they aren’t there, because the challenge is what we live for.
Well I say, they can have the Crown of Mankind’s most superior culture when they pry it from our cold dead hands, and off our swollen bulbous heads.
China has a lot more going for itself.
Add to the growing economy the work ethic, the will to succeed and the fact that ALL Chinese are patriotic (No matter politics).
Compare that with a large percentage of America hating ‘Americans’ screaming for more ‘entitlements’.
Elections don’t matter when the US dollar is collapsing and we keep fixating on who the President is, instead of the Nations currency and banking system. We are moving players around the board, while the board is edging closer and closer to the cliff.
When we get serious about the US dollar, and stop voting for the individual offering the most toys we might get somewhere. We Rolled over 40 years ago when Nixon gutted the US Dollar, and can make the case 98 years ago when we handed over keys of USA economy to a European banking consortium. It is Congress alone mandated by the Constitution to value and regulate the value of the Dollar, not the Federal Reserve or European banking families.
America needs to stop pretending this is another bump in the Road, or at least prepare ourselves for a regional depression. International Markets will not continue allowing America to maintain these levels of Debt and spending, it is why Feds are desperately buying Treasuries to shore up the books, which is the same as using one credit card to pay the other.
It was our choice for the last few decades, it is not our choice any longer, we will be forced to balance the national checkbook and it will be ugly.
China is only taking up the slack, it is our ignorance of the Constitution that allowed this situation. Had we minded the store we would be loaning funds to China instead of the other way around.
There is one very good reason to be optomistic and it has nothing to do with numbers, economic statistics or much of anything else discussed here so far. The one thing that keeps me optomistic is we always get back up. We have been knocked down before and we get back up and counter punch. It is ingrained. Losers quit. We may not always win every battle but we go down swinging.
Todays problems are a combination of bad leadership, inflated expectations, and government over promising and under delivering on just about everything. There is just one thing though and that is the governemnt is not the country, and right now doesn;t even represent it.
There is coming financial pain to be sure but this too will pass. There is just no way they can keep us down. There are still too many Americans who will not quit.
Sweep Obama, and the Democrat/Marxist majority out of the Senate, and we can be well on our way to showing China how it (world-class economic performance) is really done. Oh, and sweep out a goodly handful of Rinos along with them, and see how the private sector rises from the ashes. Four thousand dollars per capita in today’s China? Hell, our “social justice victims” haul in five or six times that — with unlimited foodstamps and plasma t.v.’s to boot!
All we need to do as a people is remember what got us here as global hegemon: fully protected property rights; individual freedom; love of country; love of God; cultural assimilation (one language; one political creed; one loyalty (to the Red, White & Blue and none other); and a shared belief that we are a good & generous people with the bona fides to prove it.
We do not need to become Europe-beyond-the-Atlantic. We can be the America that we have always been. Get involved with your local Tea Party and INSIST on nothing less. Toss out the proven failures. MAKE the men & women who profess to serve us heel to our common-sense demands. No more empty promises. No more lies.
Right on! Just imagine how the world looks like if you make the US disappear in 1950. This country has invented a whole world out of nothing. The Chinese, the Romans, the Ottomans… have nothing to show in comparison. What is Islam after so many centuries? Nothing but a collection of misery and oppression. What about the Chinese? They disposed of a culture thousands of years old to become Communists so they could experience misery, hunger, and death. Great move! Now they slave for the capitalists and hope to take over the commercial empire built by the West. Sure.
The US has done in 200+ years more than all the previous world powers ever did. Their only problem: they caught the Liberal disease. Cure that disease and the world is yours, America.
The truth is the nation which generates the most capital wins. Sure China and other nations have governmental barriers to free trade, but the wealth is shifting their way solely because they are now doing the world’s manufacturing – what we were doing from 1945-1980. Once the ultimate, game-changing technology emerges here in the US, everything will swing back around and spawn a new industrial revolution because all the EPA barriers and death by a thousand cuts our industry receives from governmental regulations will easily be hurdled with this new technology.
The US has been sliding in QOL since 1989. That will change again too as millions of new jobs are created and our cities become humming again with the beautiful sound of factories producing goods and wealth.
Every tried to build a new factory and set up a production line?
I would guess not. Even if the “next great thing” turns up in the US tomrrow very few jobs would get created in the US.
Given the permits, environmental impact studies, zoning laws, employment laws, Obamacare and what not you need to comply with it takes way too long to build a plant here. And if the NIMBYS get involved, forget it.
The jovs will go to where you can build a plant and get the labor for it without being anally probulated. I wuld guess China myself.
A little serious international competition might be a good thing. It could force our elected idiots to implement policies that will result in domestic economic growth rather than what they are currently doing which is implementing policies designed to achieve their reelection.
Never buy into the twilight journalism of the MSM. They infer and suggest to the nation that it is the people who are to blame. They are guilty. But they are the tellers of lies and delusion.
For MSM the black is the perpetual victim, the white man the epitome of evil, the Christian a purveyor of hate and intolerance, accomplishment is greed and ALL people need to be micro-managed by them.
Today I saw a ball. It was grinding or sanding, would be the best way to describe it. I do believe the delusions are going to be put into the ‘meat grinder’ or ‘sander’.
The world of illusion and deceit will not stand. It will be ground up.
America will stay a superpower all right – just not THE superpower. It will be one such power among at least two, as it was for the first forty years of my life.
Main order of business is to find a substitute for mideast oil, so that that wretched region can be left to go hang. As for Africa, if the Chinese want it, as far as I’m concerned they’re welcome. I wish them much joy of that great pesthole.
“In trade, China’s “brand” is probably best summed up as “dirt cheap crap.” That’s not how this country or Japan came up in the world.”
Then you obviously wasn’t raised up in the fifties. That’s exactly what Japan produced, dirt cheap crap.
LOLOLOL!!!! Remember the first Japanese cars?!!!???? What total pieces of CRAP those thing were! My, but they have come a long way, haven’t they?
“Leading from behind”. It’s the Obama way.
It think “leading from one’s behind” is more accurate.
I can hold my breath until 2012 (I hope)
Yes, its over. We’re broke.
We’re not going to be a “hyper-power” any more, no matter what. We’re going to have a hard time sharing the status of “superpower.”
If we want to avoid this, we need to stop subsidizing indolence, incompetence, and bastardy. We need to stop regulating entrepreneurship out of existence. We need to stop punishing success.
But I don’t see that happening.
“we need to stop subsidizing indolence, incompetence, and bastardy.”
Are you kidding? We made him President.
We vote for and keep returning politicians whose “legislative accomplihment” is “regulating entrepreneurship out of existence”, It’s much easier to squeeze out “campaign contributions” from big donor corporations that are earmarked for “subsidies” and “bailouts”. They raise taxes to “punish success” to subsidize their constituents to return them to power every couple of years.
We’ve met our enemy, they are not the Chinese.
Japan was known for making dirt cheap crap until about the 60s or 70s. Check out the Airplane song “Greasy Heart”.
I miss those junky little wind up toys made from beer cans you used to get from Japan.
There was another China-Kruschov`s Soviet Union in 60th,who had the same percents of the grouth.China had the great technological achivements in the past but the Chenese have understand themselves as the local leader only. Today`s “great leap” is the delayed communist messianic effort,I think.
One thing going for the Chinese vs. Americans (or Westerners) is that they can be as ruthless as need be, while the population in the West gets softer and softer.
C. Stevens is right. The only way out is a complete repudiation of the left and a completeness change in American live.
Our elites have betrayed us for “globalism”. One need not look further than the proposed sale of the NYSE.
We have allowed the self appointed left wing elites do this to us. It is a form of willful suicide.
Would you buy stock in a company where:
- you could not receive an impartial audit
- the company has a history of bad, if not immoral business practices
- the company officers are known for their ability to, ahem, bend the truth
Probably not. In fact, you would be more than a bit skeptical of a company that followed such practices. You might see people jump on the bandwagon when that company is reporting great returns, but a more seasoned investor might stand back.
You may not like our numbers, but our numbers bear the weight of scruitiny. The other company, eh, not so much.
Once East Asian countries (e.g., Japan) realize that China plans to make vassal states of them, they will seek even closer ties to the U.S. China knows arrogance, period. Bullying and bellicosity to follow.
I have often wondered how much hatred the Chinese feel towards the Japanese, due to the Japanese occupation from 1931-1945. The Japanese, of course, are doing themselves no favors here by refusing to take responsibility for past actions (first aerial bombing of civilians at Shanghai 1937, the Rape of Nanking 1937-38, the three alls Policy: “Kill All”, “Burn All” and “Loot All”, 1940-44, and so on).
“There is a reason that the US is missing from the book of Revelations.”
Not so, the US is all over it. “House of Israel” refers to the US and the UK.
‘In trade, China’s “brand” is probably best summed up as “dirt cheap crap.” That’s not how this country or Japan came up in the world.’
But that is how Japan *started*. In the 50s Japan did indeed make “dirt cheap crap”. Of course, their quality improved rapidly in the 60s.
In the late 70′s and early 80′s we were worried about the oil states and Japan, for economic competition, and the USSR, for military competition. We managed to win all those competitions, mainly because our compeditors had weaknesses as well. The difference then though, was that we had good leadership with Reagan. Now we have Obama.
That is the main thing that worries me today. The US has always demonstrated hidden resiliance in the past and won these threat of the decade competitions, but Obama is doing his best today to take away the very qualities in the US, entrepenurialism, hard work, and self reliance, that provided that resiliance, and substituting crippling debt, spending, regulation, taxes and crony capitalism.
** “C. Stevens is right. The only way out is a complete repudiation of the left and a completeness change in American lives.”
AAH MAY THE FORCE BE WITH “U.S.” — (CAPITALISM/AMERICAN ENTREPRENEURALISM, CAN DO KNOW HOW, THINK ON OUR FEET, BLITZ THE PROBLEM(S), VERTICALLY ENVELOPE IT –MOVE–MOVE–MOVE.)
“U.S.” IS GREAT BECAUSE EVERYONE CAME FROM EVERYWHERE ELSE. THATS THE SECRET TO THE SUCCESS.
THE FOUNDERS LEFT A LOT OUT-SO WE COULD WORK WITH IT. ONCE FOLKS FROM OTHER PLACES FOUND THEMSELVES IN A CLIMATE OF FREEDOM (AS POOR AS THAT CLIMATE IS TODAY) THOSE FOLKS WILL WORK TO KEEP IT.
KEYS WAS WRONG, FRIEDMAN WAS CORRECT. NOV 2012 IS THE NEXT TURN OF THE PAGE.
The Age of America ended when Ronald Reagan sold it out to the corporations and started the collapse of the middle class. It had been stumbling along under a coldwar footing, but from then on it was all down hill…
The End of “The Age of America”
We may, or may not, be living through The Age of Aquarius but since astrological ages last on average about 2,150 years it doesn’t matter very much.
More relevant to Americans is the duration of The Age of America which doesn’t refer to our nation’s chronological age but to that period of world history when the United States dominated the world stage. Past tense is apropos since the Age of America is coming to a close.
Liberal commentators, who philosophically if not in actuality resent that dominance, may be applauding the recent forecast issued by the International Monetary Fund that China’s economy will reach and surpass that of the U.S. within five years but most Americans will experience a sense of loss, a feeling of defeat and even grief for the end of greatness at the IMF announcement.
On the other hand, conservative observers, ever-confident in that greatness, are disputing the IMF’s opinion on various bases, most often pointing to the inherent illusory quality of the explosive growth of the Chinese economic model.
For example, Stephen Green in, “Is the ‘Age of America’ Really at an End?” highlights China’s fundamental flaws, its weak yuan and GDP, the continuing poverty of its people, its dearth of close friends in the international community, and its ecological disaster caused in large part by China’s inexorable pursuit of prosperity.
Green concedes significant Chinese strengths, notably its $3 trillion foreign currency reserves, (much of which represents ownership of America), and President Deng Xiaoping’s capitalistic invocation to China’s masses to get out there and get rich! http://bit.ly/eQdgBo
Juxtapose those reserves and that mandate against China’s unprecedented military build-up, against our out-of-control budget . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=4249)