At 08:30 AM Monday 1/5/2009, Bruce Bostwick wrote: >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?
(See note below after you read to the bottom.¹) > > > > 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, I heard people making the same claim (that we were moving or indeed had already moved to a primarily "service" economy) in the Carter 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. Again, from the late 70s/very early 80s: "This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy." Douglas Adams (1952 2001) > 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 "peta-hecto-electron-volt/billion-electron-volt"? >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 _____ ¹"The Greatest American Hero" aired for three seasons from 1981 to 1983 on ABC. (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Greatest_American_Hero> <http://tinyurl.com/8r84wy>) (Relevance? Recall what happened whenever the alien spaceship was about to appear . . . ) . . . ronn! :) _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
