Is It Time to Bail Out of the US?

[bigbadwolf]

I feel reasonably confident in the US recovery, although it may take half a decade.

What recovery? It is not on the cards. The 7m+ jobs that have disappeared during the last two years (and the 3m manufacturing jobs that vanished from 2001 to 2007) are not coming back. The empire is living on a day-to-day basis, fervently praying that its numerous creditors don't make a stampede for the exit and start dumping their dollars en masse. There is no economic strategy. The incumbent in the White House knows how to look grave and somber but that's about the sum total of his skill set. His advisors are drawn from the ranks of the very criminals who have helped get the country into the present morass over the last three decades.

 

[bigbadwolf]

True, but this has been threatened within the past 10 or 15 years by immigratiom of poor, ill (or un-) educated Middle Easterners, who sponge on, and yet criticise, the society, which pays them some 9,500 kroner (US$ 1,800) a month per head for doing nothing but exist.

Not the same thing as the USA. 5% or 10% immigrants means nothing compared to the USA. The USA is not a nation; it is a military and financial empire, where citizenship is defined legally and not ethnically (or even linguistically). The problems it faces are those of an empire and not a nation -- an empire in decline, perhaps terminally so.

 

[RWS]

BigBad makes good points. The United States have become more a tumultuous unitary state comparable to ancient Rome in the third or fourth century than to anything closely resembling either its settlers' or its founders' ideals.

 

[RWS]

You ain't dead yet!
I feel reasonably confident in the US recovery, although it may take half a decade.

True: not dead, not even moribund. It's the loss of honorable purpose that saddens me.

 

[bigbadwolf]

On a side note, here's a perceptively written article on Russia and its prospects in the FT:

China sees its neighbour as a declining power. Temporarily re-energised, of course, by a surge in oil and gas revenues and by Mr Putin’s nationalism; but for all that a state that is squandering its petro-bounty and one in which almost every medium-to-long term indicator points in the direction of decay.

Joe Biden hit the mark a few weeks ago with a candid assessment of Russia’s prospects: a falling population, a withering economy and severe psychological hangover from the loss of empire. The US vice-president got into some trouble for his undiplomatic choice of words, but his assessment is pretty much the consensus outside Russia. For all that Mr Putin, with the help of oil revenues, has revived the country’s spirit, Russia is indeed shrinking fast. By some estimates its present population of 140m or so will be closer to 100m by the middle of the present century.

It is not just the ravages of low birth and high mortality rates. The Kremlin’s crony capitalism has done precious little to modernise the nation’s economy or to rebuild a crumbling infrastructure.

 

[Matt84]

You call it empire, but...
The Chinese trade with America voluntarily, absence of either military and financial coertion. They wanted (or felt prepared) to be better off in the 80s and they began the transition.
Brazil has never "submitted" to "Yankee Imperialism" and yet is another important trading partner. American culture is the most diverse, not the mainstream but the long-tail, and other cultures are thristy of it.
Has it ever occured to you that a good part of this Civilization (rather than empire) is mutually beneficial for those involved? Or is everything a zero sum game?

 

[bigbadwolf]

You call it empire, but...
The Chinese trade with America voluntarily, absence of either military and financial coertion. They wanted (or felt prepared) to be better off in the 80s and they began the transition.
Brazil has never "submitted" to "Yankee Imperialism" and yet is another important trading partner.

Brazil and China are major powers in their own right. The policy of Nixon and Kissinger in the '70s was to allow Brazil more leeway (difficult to deny it to such a big country) but keep it loosely within the American sphere of influence. A leeway denied to, say, Chile, Columbia, and Central America.

As for China, the major imperial powers (including the United States) were squabbling over its post-imperial carcass in the '20s. Again, in recent decades, it has been too big to be messed with.

Even at the height of their imperial power, the Romans and Mongols didn't have everyone subjugated. Same with the USA.

American culture is the most diverse, not the mainstream but the long-tail, and other cultures are thristy of it.

Your opinion. I doubt other societies are big into reading Whitman and Thoreau and I presume you mean the export of popular music (Michael Jackson, Madonna, Britney Spears), and popular film (Sylvester Stallone, etc.). Many argue this cultural imperialism is another facet of a broader based military-economic-cultural imperialism.

Has it ever occured to you that a good part of this Civilization (rather than empire) is mutually beneficial for those involved? Or is everything a zero sum game?

"Empire" involves the transfer of resources from vassal states, from the periphery to the imperial core. To this extent it's a zero-sum game. And since there are obviously many losers in this system, it has to be maintained by coercion. Hence the U.S. system of 800+ military bases and 12 aircraft carriers -- so that "peace" and "freedom" can be maintained, and the people of the world be "free" to accept dollars for real resources, which I presume can then be spent on Madonna records and coca-cola.

 

[soulskier]

I think the best way to sum up the current state of affairs in the Empire is to look at California, my home state. There is a Hollywood action figure writing it's residents IOU's.

 

[John.St]

... Your opinion. I doubt other societies are big into reading Whitman and Thoreau ....

But we do read e.g. Dostoyevsky, Borges, Cortázar, Kierkegaard, Jules Verne, Camus, Sagan, Dorothy Sayers, Douglas Adams, and other famous American authors ( )

 

[RWS]

BigBad correctly esteems American exports to be mostly popular music and film, in my opinion. I, however, don't see this as American imperialism, but, rather, as an indication of what pleases many a young person worldwide (after all, he or she could have chosen to read Borges or watch Strindberg).