> So, you think population changes in the U.S. would make these numbers look
> dismal? Why?
Population growth in the US has averaged around 1% a year; it's maybe 0.2% in the EU, 0.1% in Japan. Plus, you left out 1990 -- a boom year in Japan and Europe, a recession year in the US. While the euro has weakened recently (judging by trade and current account surpluses, plus consistently high EU productivity increases, the euro is significantly undervalued), the appreciation of the Japanese yen during the 1990s has more than canceled out the effects of the East Asian recession. None of this, of course, says anything meaningful about the quality of GDP growth; in terms of reducing working hours, social protections, health insurance for all, etc. the EU makes the US look like a savage, deindustrialized, low-wage semi-periphery.
> but I'm not sure why you think the US deficit spells its downfall, anymore
> than Japan's current account surplus has done it much good in the past 10
> years.
In the wide wide world of capital, creditors have the power, debtors have interest payments to make, or else they get their assets seized. The EU and Japan now have a 2 trillion EUR sledgehammer they can drop on the US any time we get out of line. That's real power.
No offence to Perry, who's one of my favorite authors (Lineages of the Absolutist State is a shining gem). But if you're going to talk about revisioning the Left, you have to talk seriously about the European Union and East Asian big biz.
-- Dennis