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It is on a long-term decline, and it's not because of too many liberals or tea partiers or other distracting nonsense of the day.
It's because middle class jobs have been transferred to low-cost geos and the only replacement for millions are low-wage service jobs. Quite simply, there are not enough high-skill / high-wage jobs out there. Only so many high-tech, advanced-degree "info age" jobs are required, given the high efficiencies and globalized workforce impacts.
That's been going on for long before Obama, and both Republicans and Democrats have happily supported it. And that's the primary driver why our debt has gone up, why recovery has been slow, why more people need to use government assistance to get by, why the rich/poor gap has exploded, etc.
Inasmuch as neither Democrats nor Republicans have any clue how to address it, expect it to continue. Hell, most people still don't even recognize that this is a serious problem. Republicans don't have a clue that it's bad, and Democrats think the solution is to just redistribute from the rich and get everyone on the dole.
America will be a nation where the top tiers of elite will have a wonderful lifestyle and command huge economic power while the bulk of the middle / lower classes will be modern-day serfs. That's the future we've all collectively chosen.
america will always be here, it just wont be the economic and cultural power that it use to be.look at france, england,portugal,spain.even egypt in ancient times was so far ahead of the rest of the world it wasnt even funny, if the kept on evolving they would have landed on the moon centuries ago.but they collapsed and now look at them.
It is on a long-term decline, and it's not because of too many liberals or tea partiers or other distracting nonsense of the day.
It's because middle class jobs have been transferred to low-cost geos and the only replacement for millions are low-wage service jobs. Quite simply, there are not enough high-skill / high-wage jobs out there. Only so many high-tech, advanced-degree "info age" jobs are required, given the high efficiencies and globalized workforce impacts.
That's been going on for long before Obama, and both Republicans and Democrats have happily supported it. And that's the primary driver why our debt has gone up, why recovery has been slow, why more people need to use government assistance to get by, why the rich/poor gap has exploded, etc.
Inasmuch as neither Democrats nor Republicans have any clue how to address it, expect it to continue. Hell, most people still don't even recognize that this is a serious problem. Republicans don't have a clue that it's bad, and Democrats think the solution is to just redistribute from the rich and get everyone on the dole.
America will be a nation where the top tiers of elite will have a wonderful lifestyle and command huge economic power while the bulk of the middle / lower classes will be modern-day serfs. That's the future we've all collectively chosen.
The future has yet to happen, that model will come to past should we continue on this path.
I like gunlover's post. Several of the points stated can be applied to America and potential reasons or avenues to failure--or being outpaced by another due to stagnation and/or mismanagement of government, etc. I do not know if we as a country or society are in a decline but we are seeing signs which are concerning and could lead to us being out-paced by another power at the very least.
The reasons for decline of a country, society or empire, etc are highly complex; us Americans tend to want fast, simple solutions which when it comes to social problems more times than not will lead to even more problems instead of an effective, practical solution.
But since a decline is often a slow process, one that takes more than a lifetime it is a hard thing to gauge (let alone define) by the current generations. It is akin the old analogy of the frog in the slowly heated pot of water.
We tend to ignore or not realize the root causes that are at work, which in our case are mostly economic in nature, along with bad planning, bad decisions domestically and internationally as well as a growing lack of government-citizen transparency.
We have put ourselves in a position which is dangerous to our future economic growth and stability---when we have economic instability or failure social issues tend to arise or become more problematic (which we are seeing increased amounts of).
In any case we have a ineffective Administration and we continue to pass laws and finance programs and wars which either are ineffective or are detrimental to our future, not to mention often enormously expensive to maintain and enforce with little to no real benefit. Politicizing this is useless--both parties have contributed to and butchered a formally well-oiled machine--besides, doing so will never help solve the problems at hand here, which require unity and compromise (something which we are loosing the ability to do). The carpet was swept out from under us when we began to outsource our industry staring after the 1940s and we still have not found a suitable replacement for that which could bring us to a point where we were before then.
America is a strong country and highly unlikely to change, however, it will not be the strongest country in the future... That belongs to the most populated countries.... Why do you think the US likes Mexico so much, they have very high birth rates..... China, India, Brazil..... The only thing stopping them is serious infracture... The problem they have was a problem America conquered centuries ago, a connected infrastructure..... Looking forward, these countries should be the metric for our own system, large population separated by large masses of land... When people talk about healthcare, economy, etc, I find it amazing that they compare an island to our country.... It's comparing apples to oranges... Oh we'll, not like they would of cared anyways...
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