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Politics.369 |
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Decline of the American Empire |
{Politics.369.1}: it's mourning again in america {paracletus} Sat, 25 Dec 2004 22:26:27 EST (HTML)
Has the decadent descent of Bush II interregnum, and the resultant unjustifiable Iraq misadventure, hastened the decline of the U.S. as an economic and political power? When a superpower loses all sense of proportion and decency, and all sight of its national interest, are the days of thePax Americana numbered or will hegemony reign supreme?
China Expands. Europe Rises. And the United States . . .
By Fred Kaplan, December 26, 2004
It'S a risky business to predict the decline of the American empire. Ask Paul Kennedy, the Yale historian, who issued such a forecast in his 1987 book, "The Rise and Fall of Great Powers," only to witness an almost immediate American resurgence.
Yet the signposts, at the end of this year, are ominous. As an economic power, the United States no longer sets the rules, much less rule the game. As a military power, it vastly outguns the rest of the world, but has a harder time translating armed might into influence... .
This year, the United States spent nearly as much on its military as all other countries combined. No other nation possesses, or aspires to, anything like the reach of American armed forces.
Yet, if someday the United States finds that it can no longer count on foreigners to bankroll its deficits, it may also find that it can no longer afford a globe-spanning military. The war in Iraq has already stretched America's forces to the limit. In the 1970's and 1980's, when Pentagon strategists spoke of a two-front war, they envisioned having to fight simultaneously in, say, Germany and Korea. Today, they mean Mosul and Falluja.
About 40 percent of the American troops in Iraq are from the National Guard and Reserves, "weekend warriors" who never figured on serving long combat tours. As a result, Guard recruitment has fallen by 30 percent. If there is no large Guard and Reserve, there is no large Army. In short, not only has the Iraq war been harder than many imagined, it has also made going to war elsewhere a less practical option - and a less credible threat.
The economic trends are worrisome because they stem not just from
market forces but also from politics. As T. R. Reid notes in his new
book "The United States of Europe," the euro "was specifically
designed to challenge the global hegemony of the dollar." Similarly,
China's rivalry with the United States in Asia and Latin America isn't
a side effect of economics; it's an explicit ambition.
{Politics.369.2}: Richard Clark {cardo} Sun, 26 Dec 2004 12:46:38 EST (2 lines)
Which is why the US has to be in a position,in the Mideast, to restrict the flow of oil to China.
{Politics.369.3}: But will it play on Broadway? {paracletus} Mon, 27 Dec 2004 00:06:48 EST (HTML)
"In the political jockeying next year, two new terms will be used to describe unconventional Republican tactics. To prevent Democrats from blocking President Bush's judicial nominees, Senate Republicans are considering a parliamentary maneuver with potentially explosive consequences called "the nuclear option." And to keep the president's plans for Social Security from causing the deficit to mushroom, some Republicans are talking about putting Social Security "off off budget."...
As for Social Security, the program is theoretically off budget,
meaning its accounts are separate from those of the rest of the
government. But because the program has been running a surplus,
budget-makers always count it to make the deficit appear lower than it
would otherwise.
But if workers are allowed to divert part of their Social Security
tax payments into personal investment accounts, that might lead to
hundreds of billions of dollars of additional borrowing annually,
making the deficit look much worse.
One solution is to exclude Social Security from deficit computations.
That, wrote Stan Collender, a budget expert, would mean the program
was "off off budget."
{Politics.369.4}: Richard Clark {cardo} Mon, 27 Dec 2004 19:46:45 EST (2 lines)
I'm assuming 'off off budget' means 'on budget.' And if it does not mean that, what does it mean?
{Politics.369.5}: it's mourning again in america {paracletus} Mon, 27 Dec 2004 20:23:36 EST (2 lines)
off off budget means that it won't be calculated when reporting the deficit. in other words, funny money accounting.
{Politics.369.6}: it's mourning again in america {paracletus} Sat, 01 Jan 2005 20:59:52 EST (HTML)
The American empire goes for broke - and it could be heading that way.
Running below the surface of the year-end self-congratulatory assertions of American supremacy (as in Monday's Washington Times: "The world really is becoming more 'American' ") are warnings, often ignored, of our decline. The steady loss of the dollar against the euro is one. The spiraling trade deficit is another.
And in the past weeks, there were two serious economic signs signaling momentous change, if not outright decline.
The first concerns China's invasion of Canadian oil fields,
heretofore a U.S. energy fiefdom. The second came in the form of an
all-but-hidden report from the Department of Agriculture that America,
the breadbasket of the world, is now a net importer of food.
{Politics.369.7}: Jivan Vatayan {panlight} Sat, 01 Jan 2005 22:41:14 EST (24 lines)
The Ends of the World as We Know Them by Jared Diamond > How long can America remain ascendant? > > History warns us that when once-powerful societies > collapse, they tend to do so quickly and unexpectedly. > > When it comes to historical collapses, five groups of > interacting factors have been especially important: the > damage that people have inflicted on their environment; > climate change; enemies; changes in friendly trading > partners; and the society's political, economic and social > responses to these shifts. > > Why weren't these problems obvious to the Maya kings, who > could surely see their forests vanishing and their hills > becoming eroded? > > By insulating themselves in the short run from the problems > of society, the elite merely bought themselves the > privilege of being among the last to starve. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/01/opinion/01diamond.html
{Politics.369.8}: {cardo} Sun, 02 Jan 2005 06:38:58 EST (0 lines)
{erased by cardo Sun, 02 Jan 2005 06:39:34 EST}
{Politics.369.9}: Richard Clark {cardo} Sun, 02 Jan 2005 06:47:04 EST (HTML)
This is probably because of the huge amounts of beef we import, and all the fancy processed foods that cheap foreign workers can assemble so much more cheaply than Americans can.
As to the huge amounts of meat that Americans eat, I read a report that claimed the average American consumes four times more protein that optimum health requires.
The land that it takes to produce enough feed to create a pound of meat protein could produce _twenty_ pounds of plant protein, by expending a small fraction of the energy. And if you eat the right variety of plant proteins, you can certainly meet your body's need for all required proteins.
Half of America's topsoil has disappeared in the midwest over the
last 50 years. (Water) aquifers too are disappearing. Too much water
is used to produce a pound of meat or a bale of cotton. The cotton is
heavily subsidized by our government and is then exported, and sold at
artificially low prices that drive local cotton growers out of
business. Smith describes all this in a section of his book on
Economic Democracy at: www.ied.info.
{Politics.369.10}: mutual fundamentalist {paracletus} Sun, 09 Jan 2005 23:16:05 EST (12 lines)
Even drug dealers are giving up on the dollar. By Daniel Gross Currency of choice The dollar's decline against the euro shows no sign of ending. Clearly, currency traders have made a long-term judgment about the relative value of the currencies of the Old and New Worlds. That sounds bad enough. But now there are signs that we're losing some of the most devoted fans of the greenback: drug dealers, Russian oligarchs, and black-market traffickers of all kinds. <http://slate.msn.com/id/2111504/>
{Politics.369.11}: Richard Clark {cardo} Mon, 10 Jan 2005 10:32:21 EST (1 line)
Not a good sign.
{Politics.369.12}: Dan Wylie-Sears {dsws} Mon, 10 Jan 2005 10:57:44 EST (2 lines)
Think it means the current regime is so evil that even Russian mobsters aren't willing to be associated with it?
{Politics.369.13}: Tom Austin {taustin} Mon, 10 Jan 2005 11:27:52 EST (1 line)
worse. so incompetent.
{Politics.369.14}: mutual fundamentalist {paracletus} Mon, 10 Jan 2005 19:19:35 EST (2 lines)
more likely, it means that the dollar is weakening and losing value so fast that it's chief use will be as play money in Monopoly games.
{Politics.369.15}: Dan Wylie-Sears {dsws} Mon, 10 Jan 2005 20:05:02 EST (5 lines)
You can get a deflationary crash, but inflation requires dumping money into the system. There's some money out there in dollars that will be dumped as speculators worry about us quasi-defaulting on the federal debt by printing money. But I don't see the Fed increasing the number of dollars in circulation ten-fold or anything like that.
{Politics.369.16}: mutual fundamentalist {paracletus} Mon, 10 Jan 2005 20:32:22 EST (11 lines)
historically, that is how the interest on deficits is paid, although ten-fold might seem extreme just now, wait a little bit. an inflationary spiral is how we 'paid' for the Vietnam War and rising oil prices in the 70's. if we continue to borrow at the current rate (and i don't see the cost of the Iraq Occupation decreasing dramatically anytime soon) and add to that borrowing for the proposed Social Security Ponzi, which will inflate the stock market a la Enron, the scenario for a crash is not at all unlikely. If De Lay's cherished national sales tax is enacted, that is another considerable source of effective price inflation.
{Politics.369.17}: Dan Wylie-Sears {dsws} Mon, 10 Jan 2005 21:56:48 EST (5 lines)
Iiuc, we try to reassure lenders that we won't do that, by issuing debt of varying durations including a lot of short-term debt that keeps getting turned over and reissued. So if we start to devalue the dollar, we have to pay an interest rate on the reissued debt that reflects the inflation rate.
{Politics.369.18}: mutual fundamentalist {paracletus} Mon, 10 Jan 2005 22:23:06 EST (4 lines)
<we have to pay an interest rate on the reissued debt that reflects the inflation rate.> paid for with the De Lay national sales tax? (a user's fee on food.)
{Politics.369.19}: Dan Wylie-Sears {dsws} Mon, 10 Jan 2005 23:47:57 EST (5 lines)
Probably they'll do that. But there will probably also be a round of increases in income tax. "Fair" increases, where everyone's taxes go up by the same amount, of course. But maybe a few more decreases first. "Fair" decreases, where everyone's taxes go down according to the percent they're paying.
{Politics.369.20}: Glen Marks {wotan} Tue, 03 May 2005 21:59:51 EDT (4 lines)
- The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded. Baron de Montesquieu
{Politics.369.21}: Abbie Ritter {abbieritter} Wed, 04 May 2005 08:51:27 EDT (12 lines)
From Yahoo News: "...Overall, the legislation ...pushes the costs of the two conflicts beyond $300 billion." "...Most of the money — $75.9 billion — is slated for military operations, nearly $1 billion MORE (my emphaisis) than what the president wanted..." I don't hear ANY complaining about this from ANYBODY in the legislature...if you didn't know better you'd think there was really only ONE party...
{Politics.369.22}: mutual fundamentalist {paracletus} Wed, 04 May 2005 09:19:56 EDT (7 lines)
they might also opt for a regressive sales tax, Dan, and call it a user's fee or some such crap. < if you didn't know better you'd think there was really only ONE party... and at $300B it's one helluva party
{Politics.369.23}: Glen Marks {wotan} Sun, 08 May 2005 19:47:34 EDT (5 lines)
- Today we are afraid of simple words like goodness and mercy and kindness. We don't believe in the good old words because we don't believe in good old values anymore. And that's why the world is sick. Lyn Yutang
{Politics.369.24}: Jonah Finnegan {jfinn} Mon, 09 May 2005 06:52:31 EDT (8 lines)
I wouldn't say "the world is sick." Old values evolve into new values. There are plenty of good people out there doing good work. It's all a matter of perspective. In my opinion the problem is we lack a shared mythology. As I've posted elsewhere, the Bible is now viewed in many quarters as simply a book of admonitions, and the complex philosophical and mythological underpinnings are overlooked.
{Politics.369.25}: Wendell Schenk {wenschenk} Mon, 09 May 2005 07:23:17 EDT (2 lines)
Good points, Jonah. However wouldn't you agree that the whole point of those "philosophical underpinnings" is essentially "admonition?"
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