> urging war with Sparta.) And it is not quite irrational. While at the
> present time claims that Europe or Japan have already "overtaken" the
> U.S. and that the U.S. has become a third-world economy are simply
> laughable,
Second World, not Third World. The American decadence has reached the stage of making the Brits look good. 2001 global machine tools production, ranked by per capita dollar output:
Country Per cap production Switzerland 271.04 Germany 89.83 Italy 71.38 Taiwan 71.22 Japan 62.43 Austria 37.44 Finland 36.38 Korea 28.08 Czech Rep 24.21 Spain 22.13 Netherlands 20.44 France 19.16 Belgium 18.09 Sweden 17.85 Canada 15.45 UK 13.12 USA 10.69 Denmark 10.40 Croatia 5.30 Brazil 3.72 Portugal 3.56
(Data: http://www.gardnerweb.com/consump/survey.html)
-- Dennis