On Jan 4, 2009, at 9:13 PM, Dan M wrote: >> -----Original Message----- >> From: [email protected] [mailto:brin-l- >> [email protected]] On >> Behalf Of Bruce Bostwick >> Sent: Sunday, January 04, 2009 7:49 PM >> To: Killer Bs (David Brin et al) Discussion >> Subject: Re: Scouted: U.S. to collapse in next two years? >> >> On Jan 2, 2009, at 8:35 PM, [email protected] wrote: >> >>>> From the Wall Street Journal: >>> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123051100709638419.html >>> >>>> As if Things Weren't Bad Enough, Russian Professor Predicts End of >>>> U.S. >>>> In Moscow, Igor Panarin's Forecasts Are All the Rage; America >>>> 'Disintegrates' in 2010 >>> >>> I read this a few weeks ago and got a good chuckle out of it. It >>> shows >>> than Americans aren't the only ones who can be clueless about how >>> things >>> work in other countries. :-) >>> >>> Dan M. >> >> Well, one element of it is almost certainly true -- the USA that >> we'll >> be living in in 2010 will not be the USA as we know it. If we >> continue >> with "business as usual", the mostly-completed process of running the >> country into the ground will very likely reach a point of no return >> before then > > Ah, I'd really like some hard data to support that hyperbola. As > messed up > as Bush was, by most measure, the US is far better off than most > countries. > Take, for example, one I worry about the most: foreign debt as a > percentage > of GDP. It is now, by my rough calculations for 2008, at about 45% > of GDP. > While I think this is bad, it's much better than Great Britain, > where it > stands at 380%. > > If you are over 40, you should remember how Japan was going to blow > the US > out of the water in the '80s. China is the new champ....only they are > finding their growth is sliding from 10% per year down to a far > lower level > that folks are guessing at. We know industrial output is down from > last > year, so they have as much trouble with the trade imbalance as we do. > > The US is far less densely populated than any other developed > country, its > air and water suppliers are far less polluted than 40 years ago, and > racism > has fallen to the point where we've been able to elect a black > president. > > And yet, you sing we're on the eve of destruction? > > Dan M.
With a few minor exceptions, the USA is running largely on momentum, which is finite. We've been migrating from a production-based economy to a service-based economy by degrees since the Bush I era, and we now manufacture very little if any of what we consume as most of our finished goods are manufactured in China, and the vast majority of the remainder are imported from other countries whose labor is far cheaper than ours. Unless I'm reading the signs wrong, it definitely seems to me that the fire has gone out and the machinery just takes a long time to spool down, and this recent collapse is more symptom than root cause. I just don't see the fundamentals currently supporting anything more than a downhill slide into progressive collapse if the systems currently in place continue to operate the way they're operating now. As a country, in aggregate, we don't really seem to *do* anything these days other than buy, consume, and move money around. The few productive industries we have in the USA now (the auto industry springing immediately to mind) are in such sad shape -- in the auto industry's case, from putting more energy into fighting a phase c hange into a PHEV/BEV based market than they are into any real R&D or new product development -- that they cost more than they generate in value. To me, that seems unsustainable. Am I missing something here? Some energy source that's going to inject new value into the system? "Good, 'cause, you know, we want to report that the country's a lot stranger than it was a year ago." -- Toby Ziegler _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
