The US net international investment position continues to fall down a mine shaft...
**********************
It seems to me that the purpose of the Bush Administration’s militarized foreign policy is to halt - in mid descent - the US' decline as a great power. I believe that its efforts to stop the clock through force will probably end up making the fall from the throne much harder than it needed to be.
........
Even if our economy was quite strong, with both robust industrial and service sectors, the existence of skilled workforces with dexterity handling complex technology and manufacturing in other nations, would mean that America's absolute primacy would decline.
After all, if ten other countries (just an example oh ye fact checkers) can build smooth cars, launch space probes and perform rapid DNA scans, and all the rest of the techno-sphere stuff, the fact that the US can do these things seems far less special.
But of course, our economy is not booming; in fact, I understand that our industrial base is diminishing, our service sector jobs (at least the high wage ones) are under pressure from cheap offshore alternatives and there's a non-trivial deficit that's growing larger.
I'm sure there are other indicators of decline I'm not aware of.
The smart thing to do, under these circumstances, would be to adopt a strategy of managed decline in which the US softly assumes its diminished, but still important, place among the wealthy countries and leaves the world alone to the enjoy the Eurovision song contest.
Sadly, this is not to be.
Even many of the people who are opposed to the Bush Administration because of war and occupation, civil liberty erosion at home, abuse of immigrants, 'war on the poor' economics or just plain feelings of ickiness at the sight of the ghouls still believe in American supremacy.
They just want it to be used for good instead of evil.
I think that our economic decline is just one of those things that was bound to happen sooner or later. The trick is, how to handle the divorce from top dog status? Will we be smooth, like Chandler's Phillip Marlowe, who, after taking an ass whooping at the hands of some thugs, picks himself up, brushes off his suit, lights a cigarette and calmly observes the LA night?
Or will we be a goon; throwing our fists left and right, shooting at anything that looks at us cross-eyed and going down like a punk?
Ah, goon it is.
DRM
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com