So. To summarize many other threads (discuss at length)...it's 2005 - do you think America is seriously in decline?

(Dan Perry very OTM)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/3755686.stm

We could probably use some more riots, though.

He did add, however, that he reserved the right to change his mind if more credible allegations about Bolton came to light.

The response here is haha- http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1399245/posts

The 'ongoing experiment' description is one I am extremely fond of. I am patriotic to the extent that I do allow for reinvention; I am committed to the ideal and trying to put that into practice.

The rise of rival economic power centres does not necessarily spell America’s end. The resilience of the US economy through the past four turbulent years — in contrast to Europe and Japan — is a monument to its capacity to recreate itself. But more important even than America’s dynamism and economic resilience is the durability of its central ethos: the power of freedom. The genius of the founding fathers, which was celebrated again yesterday, has created the world ’s most stable, successful, and, for all the current phobias, still the most appealing model of society for humankind. The world may grow and change around it, but I would not bet on America’s eclipse just yet.

Every nation at its height has liked to believe in its invincibility, for whatever differing reasons...whether you want to call yourselves "the Middle Kingdom" or "the great experiment."

But nations are different in the sense that their life spans are of course much longer than humans, but just like individuals they go through many cycles (before ever coming close to their utter extinction)

i'd like to think that America is simply on a downward slop for now, but it's temporary (meaning, say, perhaps a century or two). After all China was in a slump for half a millennium, and yet now is rising again. Rome and Egypt also went through many such up and down cycles in their lifetimes.

No one should think, though that anything about us is "special" in the sense that we're eternal

Corporations are on the incline.

That wacky Neil Stephenson.

that pesky civil rights movement/enormous explosion of wealth affecting all classes/upswing in personal and cultural freedom/exploration of space! not to mention popular music as we know it!

I think America has been seriously in decline since approximately 1973

darn that American-led explosion in scientific (and especially medical) understanding/computing power/information accessibility! (i'll give you, though, that you can characterize most of the positive developments in this era as responses to or efforts to manage contemporaneous problems - we live in the caretaker age now)

that pesky civil rights movement/enormous explosion of wealth affecting all classes/upswing in personal and cultural freedom/exploration of space! not to mention popular music as we know it!

Hey, way to draw them inferences gabbneb, gee...I meant that perhaps our rate of economic growth levelled out a bit after the post-war period, and then since the 70s its been down. Of course, socially things _have_ been improving, so maybe that'd disprove this contention. Unless you believe that economics is the bedrock of everything, which some do after all.

I'd like to know why 1973 some see as being significant? Watergate?

I still this we're the most "inclusive" nation in the world when it comes to immigration, and while we've of course never come close to being the classless society that "social studies" instructors wax idealistic abt when they'd compare the US to Europe in junior high (where _i'm_ from at least har har), I still thnk this is the best place in the world to find a multitude of opportunities, and for anyone to improve one's material station in life based on the merit of hard work and talent (for, ahem he most part - yes there are numerous exceptions). I say this as a first generation American, and the child of 'til-recently-'aliens'-now-current-citizens; I'm proud that, for example it's easier for a Venezualan to move here and be accepted as being an "American" than it is say for a Turk to move to Germany, and be accepted as "German" - and that's not just a minor strength in our system, it's major. But we're relatively behind when it comes to sexual equality, and acceptance of peoples of differing sexual backgrounds, and for some reason for a nation that was founded on the principles of religious freedom, we still (unconsciously) impose on ourselves a shared identity of having a "Judeo-Christian heritage," and conflate it (despite "it" being ill-defined in the first place...when did it really exist?) with some vague concept of moral law, all of which seems antithetical not only to the ideal of separating church and state, but also to letting people practice their "religions" in freedom in the first place. And this has only gotten worse in recent decades, as you all know, since the "backlash" to whatever position the (unsuccessful on some of their own terms - where was that revolution?) 60s social movements left us at.

If culture and "cultural strength" (of retaining our original values of freedom, equaity and inclusiveness, values that one can strongly argue haven't even fully been realized yet) are all dependent on the economy however, then is that all that matters? From this very narrow vantage point, I still can't foresee a US or a UK ever embracing Chinese culture in the next century, despite their supposed approaching world dominance.

The civilizational East/West divide just seems too big to breach going in the other direction. And what would ever conquer, or even rival Hollywood?

The answer is still yes, though. The amount of power we've had since WWII has been pretty ridiculous, anyway.

http://www.greece.k12.ny.us/ath/library/teachers/philp/child%20labor%20in%20factory.jpg
1905

http://www.nielsenmedia.com/ethnicmeasure/images/photos/african-americans/african-american%20family%20watching%20TV-2.jpg
2005

I think America's looking pretty good, all things considered.

...but werent stories like this all over the news in the '80s, when it was "Japan is overtaking the US in manufacturing, Japan is beating the US hands down when it comes to technology and tech exports, Japanese students are eclipsing the Americans in science and engineering" ...Japan this, Japan that. And now Japan's economy has cooled, and you don't hear this anymore

Yes, maybe. But we've been largely a country of labor and industry so it's never really been about intellectuals or academic pursuits. I blame the Protestants.

yes...they were EUROPEANS

I think the anti-union people are being a bit inconsistent here. Further up the thread, someone suggested that unions and collective bargaining are unnecessary, because if people don't like the terms that the employer is offering they should simply look for a job somewhere else. Well, by that same logic, if someone feels like they are being forced to join a union to work in a closed-shop, then they should find a job somewhere else. What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. I don't see anything wrong in principle with letting employees try to gain as much leverage as they can in the employer-employee relationship, which is what unions are basically about.

uh, that's hardly the only reason or the primary one.

Right. It's just fight for power and money here. I've sat in on some union negotiating sessions, and my feeling was that the union guys were the biggest jerks in the room...except for the management guys.

Also, there are a lot of ways to look at this, but right to work states tend to have lower average incomes than strong union states.

But Eisbar is also right to note that the political balance between union workers and nonunion employees is a delicate one. When should nonunion employees who work under the protection of the contract participate in job actions? Should they have the same access to union reps and the grievance process as members? These are all thorny issues that many unions have done a poor job of resolving, if they have treated them at all.

How one answers the question depends on how the concept of "decline" is defined. I think it would be good if the US could maintain and improve its current standard of living, opportunity, equality, and so forth, and I would like to see all other countries in the world reach the same standards that Americans enjoy. So if that means that we must "decline" relative to the rest of the world for this to happen, then I would say that's a good thing, and not something to fear.

Why do you see the state of the world as some sort of a static concept?

Think of the ecological implications.

Well, naturally, I'd like to see this happen while also protecting the environment. But it's an indefensible position for Americans to tell the developing world, "Sorry you have to stay poor because if you consumed as much as we do, the world would be even more of an ecological disaster than it already is."

OTOH, they might reasonably insist we only use resources commesurate with our population.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/4617275.stm

again, any bets on who's going to survive?

cf. European airlines post sept 11 vs US ones, I realise the market is very different

America's biggest problem is not being able to swallow it's own philosophy. Capitalism says that in changing circumstances companies have to adapt or go to the wall, there has been a reluctance to allow this to happen with some sacred cows.

x-post

Crushing Upward Mobility

The United States is rapidly abandoning a longstanding policy aimed at keeping college affordable for all Americans who qualify academically

I thought that "college" as the only surefire method of upward mobility was debunked a while ago. Shall I tell the story again of my coworkers, many of whom do not have any degrees, yet make close to six figures? p4tr1ck and I are on the job hunt lately because we decided we hate our office and he's asking in the range of 105-115 for his next position.

i can vouch for lot's of success without paper as well. my boss never graduated for example.
m.

I'm a bit confused by this part of your post -- Why does having an authoritarian regime = letting undesirables disappear? I thought China was a society that took care of its elderly. Also, are you saying there are communist holdovers in India?

Anyway, sorry to interject. Ed's last post is OTM, disregarding the whole fancy-man ball player evolution thing temporarily.

Capitalism says that in changing circumstances companies have to adapt or go to the wall, there has been a reluctance to allow this to happen with some sacred cows.

OK, sure, but then what? Right, let the airlines and General Motors get carved up and redistributed by people who can do those things better and more flexibly. It's not like we're going to stop making cars or flying planes, someone's going to provide the services, we shouldn't cry for United and Delta.

But then what else do we do? That's what's missing. If we're going to accept a lot more instability and insecurity in some parts of our lives -- and we're going to have to -- then how do you make that up? Because people still need some level of security somewhere. Unstable societies don't turn out well for anyone. So where will the stability come from? It's all well and good to say that some companies have to go to the wall, I think we can all live with that, but what about people? Are we willing to let them go to the wall too? The American experience at the moment says yes, we are -- but only up to a point. We like our Social Security. We'd like to have some health insurance. And if we hit another bad patch of unemployment -- which we probably will -- then we're going to want unemployment insurance too.

Europe's bogged down in all that shit right now, and we sit around all proud of our higher growth rates and productivity, but we haven't solved any of those problems in any meaningful way, we've just pushed them down on the middle and working classes, and there's a limit to how much pushing people will take. The whole appeal of unions in the first place was providing some of those protections, some sense of stability. But if unions aren't going to do it, and employers aren't going to do it, and the government's not going to do it, then where does the stability come from? The decline in that sense of security and confidence is part of the decline asked about in the thread title.

gm, I agree with what you're saying, the question of "OK then what do we do if we do that" and the point about the decline in a sense of security and confidence. I don't offer a solution to "what next, what happens during a period of instability, what happens if we put these sacred cows up against the wall." But I still agree with Ed's theories, mainly because in the long run it's going to happen anyway. These things haven't really been real security and, I mean I don't think anyone will disagree, there's this real sense of entitlement in America (were you the one who made the post about people refusing to do the kind of work migrant laborers do anymore?), and I think that people ARE going to have to go against the wall eventually.

What happens DURING that period, besides a lot of really miserable citizens, I don't really know. But I agree with him that, in the aftermath, 10 or 15 or 20 years after that, there'd be a market equilibrium, it'd result in more global stability, and yes, currently "strongest" nations would recover.

it isn't going to happen, of course! Nations and empires do not demolish themselves willingly!

The neo-cons are very actively trying to take us in the other direction by implementing a poorly conceived idea of global empire, as per the dictums of the PNAC (why is the PNAC never discussed at length on ile...does it have its own thread?), but are ironically only hastening our slide thru overextension. Which is why it was interesting to see Hagel's comments about US decline, since as a Republican (if not a PNACer, i don't believe he's part of that "club") he probably committed career suicide by coming out and admitting the very opposite of the platform/ideal his colleagues want to continue to win elections on: American invincibility. Can a Democrat like Clinton return to restate the message while managing to win an electorate once again, in this new, war-time / post-invasion era?

It's never going to be 1996 again.

LA Times reporter Peter Gosselin has written a really fantastic series about all this, which is superior to the current NYT series on class in almost every way. It can be found here: http://www.latimes.com/business/specials/la-newdeal-cover.special

Also, Yale political scientist Jacob Hacker has written alot about these themes. His home page is: http://pantheon.yale.edu/~jhacker/

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-0506080148jun08,1,1504734.story?coll=chi-business-hed

That does look like a much more interesting series than the NY Times one, which was sort of spotty and vague.

Which is obviously what the whole PNAC thing is about, not going gently into that night. But I think part of the reason the PNAC and even the neocons don't get talked about as much as they did a few years ago is that they just seem increasingly irrelevant. They've been overtaken by events (and of course by the second-term shift to domestic policy, which they don't have much useful to say about).

And this is otm X 100: the shifting of the burdens of macroeconomic risk from the government and corporations to individuals. Although of course as the LAT notes, not to all individuals. Can't have an ownership society without owners, can we?

well.

i assume you're referring to this piece of breaking news?
http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-03-19/hillary-clinton-let-s-go-camping

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J.–Hillary Clinton would love to see sleepaway camps for adults and more relationship-building in Washington, she said Thursday at what will likely be her final paid appearance before launching her expected presidential campaign.

"We really need camps for adults," the former secretary of state told the American Camp Association of New York and New Jersey’s Tri-State CAMP Conference. "None of the serious stuff ... I think we have a fun deficit in America."

straight down the well xp

i wonder how close to the mole people in Lang's Metropolis the have-nots will be before any type of insurrection begins.

HRC wd be a fine elderly Robot Maria

Oh come on think of all the jobs that would create!

I assumed this was bumped for the house judiciary buzzfeed press release