The State of America

[Surferbeetle]

Fuchs, Slapout,

As I have been wandering around the world over the course of the last decade I have been thinking about, watching, and participating in number of development activities. At this point I don't claim to have any answers, but I have some observations that might be of interest.

Walt Whitman Rostow, came up with an economic growth model called the Rostovian Take-Off Model. As with any model, it incompletely describes reality...'all models are wrong but some are useful'...but the take away I get is that human societies move from nomadic, to agricultural, to industrial, and eventually to service based ways of livelihoods (all of which favor different types of political systems). Reality is not continually static, and there are always multiple layers and multiple regressions, pauses, and advancements occurring simultaneously.

A quick google search on ecology resulted in the following link...ecological systems theory...new to me, but interesting

What do you guys 'see' out there as we try and describe the elephant?

[Fuchs]

... and eventually to service based ways of livelihoods (all of which favor different types of political systems). R

Service-based or not (and if anything, we're agriculture- and mining-based):

You're in deep trouble if you continue to consume and invest more goods than you can afford. It doesn't matter whether your service sector has a gazillion volume. If it cannot export enough value to make up for the deficit in goods trade, you're not in a sustainable mode.

http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/inte...ime_series.xls

[Surferbeetle]

Service-based or not (and if anything, we're agriculture- and mining-based):

You're in deep trouble if you continue to consume and invest more goods than you can afford. It doesn't matter whether your service sector has a gazillion volume. If it cannot export enough value to make up for the deficit in goods trade, you're not in a sustainable mode.

http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/inte...ime_series.xls

Hey Fuchs,

Appreciate your sharing your view of things from Deutschland. It helps with getting a 360 view of things, which I think is very important.

You raise some interesting points regarding the economic structure of nations/societies. What are appropriate export/import ratios, debt ratios, manufacturing and service ratios as to a total economy, among other ratios? For specific business sectors business ratios are captured and used to guide decision making, but I am not aware of any such guidelines for nations? Quality of sources and references is always an issue, to include the CIA Worldfactbook Multiple different sources seems to be the way to go.

Per The 2011 Economist Pocket World in Figures the US has the largest world economy with a 14.093 trillion USD GDP, and the worlds largest industrial output at 3.073 trillion. The last is not defined and can be contrasted with a manufacturing output of 1.8311 trillion USD which puts us in second place behind China which cranks out 1.850 trillion USD and is the worlds largest (with Germany at 855 billion USD). With respect to government debt as percent of GDP Japan is #1 at 189.3%, Greece is #4 at 114.9%, America #8 at 83.9%, Germany #12 at 77.4%, Switzerland #23 at 44.4%, and China is not listed within the 29 nations examined.

One of the things about America that I see, from inside and afar, is that we are a deeply restless nation. We are chock full of immigrants that were quite upset with the status quo and strong enough so to say 'a pox on all your houses, I am outta here' and follow through. It's my opinion that this is why we, as a nation, are such a unpredictable/stochastic catalyst/change agent. Sometimes for the good, sometimes for the bad, but it's our core competency.

It's very possible that economically we as a nation are about to take a beating, but it will not kill us, and if it knocks us down we will get up afterwards. What upsets me is that, IMO, the hoi polloi suffers due to serial mismanagement by the political class as a whole....over the course of several administrations. I look forward to changes resulting from upcoming elections

[Dayuhan]

What upsets me is that, IMO, the hoi polloi suffers due to serial mismanagement by the political class as a whole....over the course of several administrations.

I suspect that the hoi polloi also suffer to a large degree from their own inattention, vacillation, and inclination to hop on the bandwagon of whatever member of the political class can toss out the moment's most superficially appealing line of twaddle. Democracy has a way of handing people the government they deserve and demand.

Wall Street, Main Street, and DeeCee all have a substantial slice of blame to carry for The Way Things Are (which is neither as dire as some would pretend nor as rosy as some others would pretend). The tendency of each to point the finger exclusively at the others is as unproductive as it is understandable.

[Surferbeetle]

I suspect that the hoi polloi also suffer to a large degree from their own inattention, vacillation, and inclination to hop on the bandwagon of whatever member of the political class can toss out the moment's most superficially appealing line of twaddle. Democracy has a way of handing people the government they deserve and demand.

Wall Street, Main Street, and DeeCee all have a substantial slice of blame to carry for The Way Things Are (which is neither as dire as some would pretend nor as rosy as some others would pretend). The tendency of each to point the finger exclusively at the others is as unproductive as it is understandable.

We are indeed here today for some of the reasons you mention.

Perhaps these are some steps out of the mess we presently find ourselves in...

Starbucks’ Schultz Says 100 Leaders to Halt Campaign Giving, By Leslie Patton, August 24, 2011 3:31 PM EDT, at Bloomberg News

Rove, Burton Political Groups Are Subject of IRS Complaint, September 28, 2011, 5:25 PM EDT, at Bloomberg News

The Moment of Truth, The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, USG

What Does A 'Post-American World' Look Like?, Fareed Zakaria interviewed on US NPR, Published: June 30, 2011

[slapout9]

Hi Beetle, we don't have a service economy....not even close. Click on the link below to see why. Scroll done to #6 to see a true defenition of a service economy which we don't have as opposed to a service sector economy which we are growing into(and that is bad!). This was a big theory when I was in college back in the 70's and so as not to disapoint anybody did I mention it is based on Systems Theory



http://coevolving.com/blogs/index.ph...rvice-economy/


Fuchs may know this but I think it was a German econcomist that invented the idea, was nominated for a nobel prize but I don't think he won it.

[Bob's World]

Many things German don't work in America. Forestry is one classic example. When the US realized 100 years or so ago that forests were not an endless resource and required management we turned to the experts in Germany for advice.

Their answer was simple and logical: Cut down all of the wild forest and replace it with efficient plantations of even aged, mono-cultured stands of manageable trees. Maximize the volume/profit per acre, etc.

So we set about cutting down the old growth forests with American industry. We also wanted to make our national forests accessible to all for multiple use, so we scattered the timber sales throughout the forest so as to promote a vast road network to service the sales. In a matter of decades we came to realize that more miles of forest road than interstate freeway was a problem to maintain, and that checkerboards of clearcuts were destroying the "deep forest" ecosystem and ecology that affected fish and farming as much as it did elk and owls.

What made sense in a densely populated state like Germany simply did not work in a vast continental nation such as the US. We will be recovering from that error for several generations yet to come.

So direct lifts that work well one place may be highly unsuited to another. Someone needs to pass that to the team leading the design for Afghanistan...