Quote Originally Posted by Schmedlap View Post
If America is in decline, then the world is in decline.
Quote Originally Posted by Fuchs View Post
You overestimate the relevance of the USA.
You know, Schmedlap, Fuchs is right; you are overestimating the importance and relevance of the US economy.

Two points that haven't been mentioned but should be are:

  1. Rhetoric aside, we (North America) don't have a "service economy" we have an "information economy" that drives service industries. The two are quite different. Furthermore, many of the areas, such as call centres, data entry, etc., that made up the service industries from the 1960's are now outsourced to India and China.
  2. Everyone seems to be confused by this idea of national economic power and has forgotten that large amounts of industrial capacity are not held by nation states but, rather, are held by non-state actors such as GM, Ford, etc. Multi-National Corporations (MNCs) are as "stateless" as groups such as al Quaida and, if their interests are not being met in one nation, then they will move to another.

Final point on "indicators"...

Indicators are signs pointing towards something, but there are some pretty basic flaws in our assumptions about what they point towards. For example, what does shipbuilding capacity/production point towards? Ken touches on this in his coment about shipbuilding earlier.

And while we are talking about indicators, let me bring out my favorite example.... Did you know that buggy whip production used to be used as he indicator for personal transportation capacity? Well, since it's the indicator (said with a hushed and reverant tone), what does that tell us about the state of US and Canadian personal transport capacity????? We're DOOMED !!!!!!