The U.S. is not declining except by criteria which have been irrelevant for over a century. Britain _never_ declined. I'm not sure it's accurate to speak of decline in the case of Italy or France. When we speak of a "nation" we speak of Capital, not some mythical geographical-demographical entity. "The U.S. is in decline" has NO content; it is not a sentence because a sentence must have some grammatical subject, and "The U.S." names nothing; it can't be the subject of a sentence..
BP has stations all over the Midwest. Those stations are part of "the u.s." in so far as "the u.s." is meaningful and not a myth. The shoes being made in Vietnam are part of "the u.s.," not part of Vietnam.
But leaving aside DR's raving, I have a question.
What would happen if the U.S. government simply repudiated its national debt?
Account for the U.S. military in your answer.
Account for employment in China in your answer.
Carrol
> -----Original Message-----
> From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]
On
> Behalf Of Dennis Redmond
> Sent: Sunday, November 25, 2012 7:10 PM
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] on Doug's latest show, Galbraith
>
> On Sun, Nov 25, 2012 at 4:38 PM, Jordan Hayes <jmhayes at j-o-r-d-a-
> n.com>wrote:
>
> >
> > Does today's deficit ... matter?
> >
>
> Austerity is toxic insanity. But the geopolitics underlying the US decline
> is not unimportant, because we urgently need a postneoliberal vision of
the
> future.
>
> I think Yanis Varoufakis is on to something when he argues the US current
> account and budget deficits need to be understood as integral aspects of
> what he calls the Global Minotaur, a.k.a. the US-centric shadow banking
> system of neoliberalism, which preserved certain aspects of US hegemony
way
> past its formal expiration date of 1985 (when the US became a net debtor
> nation). Makes a lot of sense, and also explains why euroliberalism
emerged
> as it did (short version: it was part and parcel of the Minotaur), why
> Japan's post-Bubble nihon-liberalism never got off the ground (Japan is
> Germany without a Euro-periphery, so it stagnated) and why euroliberalism
> and neoliberalism are in a horrifying race to see which system can commit
> suicide first.
>
> So it's not enough to just critique US austerity as the mean-spirited
> vampirism it indeed is. We need to think and act transnationally: a united
> front of developmental states, social movements, and digital commoners.
>
> -- DRR
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