> output. Switzerland was first, then western and central europeans were
> the next, with far east next, and the US down somewhere 17th, below
> Spain and the UK. (China wasn't listed---why?)
Mainland China's per capita production is only 20% of the US figure. They produce a lot in absolute terms, where they're fifth in the world (Japan is #1, Germany #2, Italy #3, US #4) but we're talking about 1.2 billion people. Also, China runs huge trade deficits in the machine tool biz -- about $1.1 billion a year, the second-largest in the world (the largest is the US, at $2.4 billion).
> despite this bi-polar shift to asia and europe, the whole reason the
> US is still Empire incarnate, is because of our neoliberal scam
> economy, where we excel in manipulating our capital and its markets
> to maximize our own otherwise materially decrepit economy.
It's the classic Marxian crisis of a rising infrastructure colliding with a decrepit but still powerful superstructure. US neoliberalism has become a barrier on the development of the multinational productive forces, and now comes the reckoning.
-- Dennis