Is the US a declining country?

[Patrick2]

I'm interested in everyone's view, and their reasons. I'm talking about the long view - don't clutter the thread with news from the last 24 hours.

I subscribe to the view that it is.

Reasons: Unsustainable spending and debt, the growth of statism with the corollary decline in entrepreneurship, the nature of immigration, the seeming inability to deal with the problem of american labor and the exportation of jobs, balkanization, to name a few.

 

[uscitizen]

At best hold steady, but mostly declining in that we are not even maintaing our infrastructure let alone perfoming needed exapnsions of it.

Meidan wage earners make what they did in 1969 once inflation is figured in.

 

[hortysir]

'rapidly'

 

[Polk]

The Rome parallel is apt, but not in the way most people use it.

 

[Wiseacre]

I think we are declining, mainly due to extremely poor governance over the past 50 years or so. Neither party has the moral high ground, and both have put themselves and their party ahead of the best interests of the country.

What'll it take to change things? I think we need a major shitstorm that causes a big shift in civics and personal responsibility. I think we're too focused on our daily lives and individual issues, we're going to have to get our collective heads out of our collective asses and re-establish the values and principles that got us this far. If we don't, we're fucked. And our kids and grandkids are too.

 

[Polk]

As much as people hate to admit it, the biggest cause of our decline is math. We make up roughly 5% of the world's population. Even if we do everything right, it's hard to be envision us having 20% of global output and 50% of global defense spending over the long run.

 

[Disenchanted61]

Well, the blueprint for the intentional cause for economic desparity of a Nation, began with Pinochet of Chile in the early seventies
involving the same coersion tactics used by the same Banker's today, in Latin America, Africa, and various Euoropean countries. And the same sequence of event's are recognized by Geo-political watchdogs and insiders here in the States. So...based on this historical fact, how would you sum up the fate of our nation?

 

[zzzz]

Yep!

When you are no longer a producer but a consumer you become beholden to others and therefore on the slippery slope of decline and fall.

 

[William Joyce]

I'm interested in everyone's view, and their reasons. I'm talking about the long view - don't clutter the thread with news from the last 24 hours.

I subscribe to the view that it is.

Reasons: Unsustainable spending and debt, the growth of statism with the corollary decline in entrepreneurship, the nature of immigration, the seeming inability to deal with the problem of american labor and the exportation of jobs, balkanization, to name a few.

Yes. I think anyone who thinks that America will get BETTER from here -- measured by standard of living, national security, education, life satisfaction, whatever -- is insane. It just isn't. Our lives are worse than our parents and grandparents, no doubt about it. We work longer hours for less money, we live immoral lives, nobody goes to church anymore.

I think all your ideas are right. Race is a big one: we are not going to sustain the nation as we've known it with the coming minority white population. Nobody speaks English anymore. The blacks are just going to remain violent and lazy drags on everything. Hispanics are almost worse -- they are NOT improving our country by coming here to do freakin' landscaping. Muslims just want to blow the place up. Jews just want us to blow up the Muslims, overseas.

The American military is basically Israel's bitch.

Heard a Texas oilman on the radio the other day. Said, "the American economy is based on filing lawsuits and flipping burgers. That's not a recipe for future success." True dat.

Heard a libertarian scholar say, "China is run by engineers. America is run by lawyers. Guess who'll own the future?" True dat.

We don't MAKE stuff in America anymore. We don't even make MANHOLE COVERS, for God's sake. We import those.

The Social Security and related systems will run out of money. The T-bills will be worthless. The dollar is not the top currency anymore - even the Euro is slipping.

We pour trillions down the drain on worthless shit. I'm in court the other day, and someone announces he's on SSDI. Why? He has ADD. Fucking seriously? Not a good sign.

Political correctness chokes everything. The state requires daycares to promote multiculturalism.

America is probably going to die quicker than we suspect.

And it may not be replaced quickly or easily by something neat and tidy. There may be some messy transition period. No matter. What matters to me is that my race, the white race, does well and lands on the other side. Hopefully, we'll establish smaller nations or territories that recognize the primacy of race and ethnicity in the make-up of a cohesive, functional society.

 

[Bones]

Only head-in-the-sand flag suckers still walk around in their red, white and blue panties crying "This is the greatest nation on earth! How dare you blaspheme and claim that our collective shit stinks."

It does. America is a rotting corpse with the Federal Reserve serving as ventriloquist. Once the default occurs, get ready for a bumpy, violent descent into the economic and social abyss.

 

[editec]

I'm interested in everyone's view, and their reasons. I'm talking about the long view - don't clutter the thread with news from the last 24 hours.

I subscribe to the view that it is.

Reasons: Unsustainable spending and debt, the growth of statism with the corollary decline in entrepreneurship, the nature of immigration, the seeming inability to deal with the problem of american labor and the exportation of jobs, balkanization, to name a few.

Yes, it is on the decline.

It appears to me to be going the way of most EMPIRES.

Corruption from within weakens it as the nation's insiders steadily and systematically strip the nation of its vitality using the power of the government to make themselves rich at the expense of all other citizens
.

 

[Truthmatters]

I think they may have just too much power to stop them

 

[uscitizen]

Yep!

When you are no longer a producer but a consumer you become beholden to others and therefore on the slippery slope of decline and fall.

And we became a debtor nation under Reagan.

We been going a while on inertia, but slowing down now.

 

[Wiseacre]

I think this country is in decline mostly due to our own unwillingness to live within our means. Our excesses have lead to the time when we have to pay the piper, sooner or later somebody has to pay the bills. Plus we have not been paying enough attention to what goes on in Washington and we have not held our elected reps accountable. IMHO you get the gov't you deserve, and so if Amercia is looking around for somebody to blame then a mirror could come in handy.

And make no mistake, our governance has been poor. e swing back and forth from left to right depending on who's in power instead of rationally addressing the problems at hand in a professional manner. We have too many fringe wingnuts from both ends of the spectrum driving our gov't, and not enough moderates from both parties who are willing to work together and compromise to the betterment of us all.

I was and am still pleased with the emergence of the Tea Party groups, it's high time regular folks started voicing their objections to what's been going on. Howver, some of the leaders of those groups have taken on the very same attitudes of the fringe elements of their parties. I would be willing to bet that most of the TPers do not share the intransigence that you read about in the papers, most just want the spending reduced without drastically cutting the main entitlement programs.

And the media is not helping matters any. Most of the major players have essentially chosen sides and the public gets a slanted view rarther than a completely "fair and balanced" reportage. We get reps from both sides talking over each other and spitting out the same talking points. We don't get the whole story, parts are left out or dismissed. Trust is gone, there's nobody I can say is reporting without bias or trying to influence me one way or the other. Nobody lays out the facts and presents the analysis of real experts in a calm and understandable manner.

So - are we in decline? Obviously, but the future does not have to be disastrous. I think it's going to take another bad recession or depression before people demand better from the gov't and begin to hold them accountable. Wish I could say different, but our history has always been good at cleaning up the mess rather than preventing the mess in the first place.