First off, let me add my "ditto" to the list of people singing the praises of Fareed Zakaria. His show on PBS has been amazing every time I've seen it.
However, I think I have to respectfully disagree with some of your points, Stan. Comments follow. --- STANLEY DOORE <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > The statement that the United States will continue to lead the world is > not true. > > Military force can no longer control the world alone. No argument here. > Other nations have found that control > of energy by the US is key to controlling the US. Gangs and other small > groups are beginning to > take control of the US too. I think that's quite an exaggeration. The US still has a pretty strong government; it has hardly begun descending into mob rule as you seem to suggest. In a few particularly poor areas, there are some problems with street gangs (as there have been for decades, and as there are in many other countries as well), but to say that they are "controlling the US" sounds hard to believe. In fact, according to the first stats I found with a Google search, violent crime has been dropping steadily since 1995. http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/cvict_c.htm > The US has failed to control taxes and overspending. US policies have > forced jobs and > production overseas by increasing wages, costs and unnecessary mandates in > the US. Here you sound like you believe the US to be a left-wing state under the thumb of a tax-and-spend government. I can't claim to have thoroughly researched all the details, but our president for the last 8 years is actually from the party that favors less taxation and government regulation, and that party controlled congress for much of that time too. My general impression (from listening to both liberals and conservatives) has always been that the US has substantially less government regulation than the nations of Europe. I have also been told that we have among the lowest taxes of any developed country (see http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=332116 for a slightly more detailed discussion). I could be misinformed. Feel free to dig up some numbers of your own if you disagree. > Education in > the US has failed to adopt more efficient learning practices such as learning > anywhere at > anytime policies, technologies, and the SI. I agree that education in the US needs to catch up with the rest of the world. But last I heard, metric is still taught in most schools in the US. It certainly was when I went to school. We just never use it in the real world for some stupid reason. > Before, the US could control production and demand the use of English > units. No longer. > The rest of the world will produce products in the SI metric sizes and cut > out the US to improve > their efficiency to lower costs. Actually, I believe the EU recently tried to tighten the rules regarding metric products, but ultimately changed its mind under pressure from England. I'm afraid it will be a long time before the US really gets cut out of the picture due to its inane units. That said, we are no doubt already losing some market share. > The US is not dong enough of this. > The US is moving rapidly to an all government communist type of society > where demand > increases while production and supply evaporates in the US. Again, this is exactly the opposite of the picture I've seen, which is of an increasingly conservative and overwhelmingly anti-communist nation in which almost everyone is deeply suspicious of "more government". The government has done nearly nothing but slash taxes for almost a decade, and I've never seen anyone asking for a larger government. That just isn't the trend I've observed at all. Could you be more specific about what makes you think this? > People struggle to get into the US to get benefits which they have not earned. I haven't heard of this. Where did you hear that? In general, immigrants tend to do more work for less pay than Americans. So much so, in fact, that part of the stereotype of immigrants is that they work ridiculously hard all the time. That's one of the big reasons that anti-immigration groups are always pushing to get rid of them, because of this concept that they "steal all of our jobs, work for less, and drive down wages". The idea of lazy immigrants collecting welfare is one I've never heard of before. Here ( http://www.migrationinformation.org/USFocus/display.cfm?ID=45 ) it says that immigrants were 15% of welfare recipients before the passage of laws that made it tough for immigrants to receive welfare in the mid 1990s. This very informative page ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_States ) suggests that about 10% of people in the US were immigrants somewhere near that time. If true, these statistics indicate immigrants were only 50% more likely to be on welfare than native-born citizens (and I would guess that this is because of their tendency to be poorer than native citizens). Today, that figure is probably a lot lower. And regardless, since they work harder and for less, it's hard to imagine that they make up a very large net draw on the system. > And, the government continues to mandate contrary > standards rather than adopt the SI. > As Tom Friedman says, "The World is Flat" and politicians in the US have > not recognized it > although they have been told. Businesses go where they can produce goods for > the least cost. That is not necessarily true as stated. Remember that things like geopolitics and tariffs on trade also have an effect on corporate choices. Besides that, it is false that businesses are concerned only with what is cheapest. Some of them also care about quality, to say nothing of "public image" which opens a whole other can of worms. I'm not disagreeing that jobs are moving overseas, but I don't think the situation is quite as simple as you imply. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. http://mobile.yahoo.com/;_ylt=Ahu06i62sR8HDtDypao8Wcj9tAcJ
