I was just listening to the radio, here in Australia, when I heard some of an interview with the author of this recently published book (see below) and I was just wondering what people on this forum would think of the big picture of America's state in the world as summarised below? Do you think he's got some valid points, and what can be done if so? Can the development of internet v3.0 (or whatever) or other areas of new technology/endeavour maintain America's leadership?
Does the prison system there strike anyone as crazy?
We're allies of America here in Australia, so while we've got our national eye on our local region in Asia, we don't exactly wish for your decline.
Time to Start Thinking: America and the Spectre of Decline
Fifty years ago, California was the place to be. A laboratory for new ways of living, bathed in glorious sunshine, the state of Berkeley andthe Beach Boys offered a glimpse of the future, all suntanned faces, gleaming cars and spanking new universities. But how times have changed.Half a century on, suffocated by smog and mired in debt, the Golden State has become a metaphor for everything that seems wrong with the United States of America.
Almost incredibly, notes the Financial Times's Washington bureau chief Edward Luce, California now spends less than $8,000 annually on each child in the state school system, yet spends $47,000 on every prisoner in its notoriously overcrowded penitentiaries. State politics has become a carnival of perennial plebiscites, while, as Luce sees it, 'Sacramento's role is to preside over a slow disintegration of the assets the state built up in the 1950s and 60s, the world-class infrastructure and public education that helped make California the place of the future.'
Sober, clever, measured and deeply depressing, Time to Start Thinking takes a long, hard look at a nation haunted by decline. Of course European visitors often love to announce the impending collapse of American civilisation, but Luce, by and large, lets his American interviewees do the talking.
In one particularly telling passage, he sits in on a seminar at the National Defense University, where promising military officers are sent 'to prepare their minds for leadership'. 'The window on America's hegemony is closing,' says one officer. 'We are at a point right now where we still have choices. A decade from now we won't.'
As Luce watches, fascinated and amazed, the young officers agree that the US should cut military spending, roll back its presence abroad and concentrate on economic competitiveness. 'Our number one goal', one says, 'should be to restore American prosperity.' But as their visitor remarks, 'the chances of anything like this happening were zero'.
What is so impressive about Luce's diagnosis of American decline is the quiet, methodical compilation of damning facts - all the more damning because he eschews histrionics and clearly has great affection for his current beat. He is very good, for example, on the miserable fortunes of American manufacturing, which now accounts for less than one in ten private-sector jobs. Even during the Clinton boom, most new jobs were either in healthcare or in government, which tells its own story. The United States now spends twice as much per head on healthcare as France, and a staggering three times as much as Britain - yet 'Americans continue to die earlier and spend more time disabled than their peers in Europe'.
In the meantime, Luce notes, the lights have been going off in the former workshop of the western world. Half a century ago, the United States made half the shoes on the planet. Now there are only two shoe-producing firms left. At the heart of Luce's book is the story of a nation that, fattened by affluence, fell for its own propaganda. He meets a California-born Harvard graduate, Amar Goel, who, at a recent reunion, told his old classmates that he was moving to Mumbai. 'There was a revolution happening in Asia, he said. It was like America in the late nineteenth century.' Goel's classmates thought he was mad. 'America was still number one in everything,' they said. 'Everybody in the world wanted to be American.'
But do they? On the same page, Luce recounts a meeting with Oregon's labour commissioner, Brad Avakian, who had recently been on an official visit to Taiwan. One evening Avakian's hosts took him out for a drink, and the talk turned to America. 'These guys were literally laughing at America,' Avakian recalled. 'They couldn't understand the game we were playing. "Please keep sending us all the jobs, everything else will follow".'
Looming in the background is the giant in the Far East. American economic hegemony has long been based on technological innovation, yet by 2020, Luce writes, the US share of citations in international scientific papers is likely to have been overtaken by China. According to the former IMF economist Arvind Subramanian, even if China undergoes a 'debt-induced crisis of growth' in the next ten years, its GDP will still be a quarter higher than the United States's by 2030, its share of world trade will be twice as high, and the yuan will have become the world's reserve currency. Yet what frustrates and bewilders Luce is Washington's complete failure to react.
The American school system, he notes, promotes shallow self-esteem over genuine achievement (encouraged by what he calls 'Good job!' parenting); and, despite the urging of businessmen and labour leaders, Washington seems allergic to any serious industrial policy. The United States, he thinks, has the worst of all worlds: a free-market culture that forbids state intervention, yet also an overweening bureaucracy that discourages innovation; a culture of complacency that saps urgency, yet also a neurotic nationalism that has turned presidential politics into a rolling freak show.
The obvious criticism of Luce's book might be that we have heard it all before. More than thirty years ago, another distinguished British observer of American politics, the peerless Godfrey Hodgson, published a book arguing that the presidency was a dysfunctional and failing institution; in the meantime, however, life has gone merrily on. In the late 1980s, there was a great panic about the supposed rise of Japan; ten years later, the United States was still Top Nation. But none of this means that Luce is wrong.
Americans may recoil at the thought, but empires fall as well as rise. In the 1890s, Luce points out, Great Britain was clearly the world's pre-eminent power, having reached a peak of wealth and influence. At the time, London's papers were full of gloomy predictions of decline, which many observers dismissed as hysterical doom-mongering. But as we know now, they were right. Edward Luce is probably right, too. Just twenty years from now, he will probably be able to say: 'I told you so.'
Ha, if there's one thing that America is definitely not going to be a pioneer in, it's developing internet technologies. General use internet is very poor compared to the rest of the world, and all this recent legislation hasn't exactly been encouraging.
In reality, I don't think it's going to get much better for America barring some miracle, but I'm not sure how quickly America will decline.
You really need to fix the paragraphing in your post, but that was a really nice read. As a citizen of Israel I'm terrified at my future prospects and hope I will start learning how to speak German pretty soon or else I'm screwed.
Wow, some British know-it-all predicting America's decline. Haven't seen that before except for that time yesterday. And that time last week. Oh and there was that time during breakfast on Sunday.
For.I.Am.Mad: Wow, some British know-it-all predicting America's decline. Haven't seen that before except for that time yesterday. And that time last week. Oh and there was that time during breakfast on Sunday.
. All Roads Lead to Rome. Britannia Rules the waves. Blood and Honor. God Bless America. ... I see a pattern here. Do you?
For.I.Am.Mad: You should be more worried about the little union in Europe. Seriously they're making me nervous.
What are you referring to?
Apparently, an organisation made up of several government bodies, with several different sized armies, with several varying agendas are more of a threat than one huge military under one government.
For.I.Am.Mad: You should be more worried about the little union in Europe. Seriously they're making me nervous.
What are you referring to?
Apparently, an organisation made up of several government bodies, with several different sized armies, with several varying agendas are more of a threat than one huge military under one government.
For.I.Am.Mad: You should be more worried about the little union in Europe. Seriously they're making me nervous.
What are you referring to?
Apparently, an organisation made up of several government bodies, with several different sized armies, with several varying agendas are more of a threat than one huge military under one government.
Yeah, I couldn't keep a straight face either.
I don't think For.I.Am.Mad. meant the EU was a threat. I think he meant it is likely to collapse.
For.I.Am.Mad: You should be more worried about the little union in Europe. Seriously they're making me nervous.
I know you're trying to be pejorative, but if there's one thing the union in Europe is not, it's "little" - the EU has 200 million more people than the US, and a larger economy.
Try to take the United States' decline as a world superpower as something inevitable, instead of as a personal slight.
Sorry, I've improved the layout so it's easier to read. And hey, just because it's a 'know-it-all' European, doesn't mean he might not have some valid points, and hearing Americans' informed rather than jingoistic opinions on those points would be interesting.
TheIronRuler: You really need to fix the paragraphing in your post, but that was a really nice read. As a citizen of Israel I'm terrified at my future prospects and hope I will start learning how to speak German pretty soon or else I'm screwed.
And we should be learning Chinese all around the world and Indonesian in Australia :)
Yep, I'm learning Chinese, and when they take over the world, I highly suggest you do too.
If only because the girls are cuter.
But seriously, the US has been getting progressively stagnant for a while. Whilst I know that most normal Americans are not ignorant, backwards or stupid, it appears to be one of the few countries which glorifies their stupid people rather than hides it.
Then again, I find civil religions in general (worshiping the country i.e.America itself) to be stupid.
EDIT: Also, I picked the "nuclear/biological weapons option" which was meant to be a joke, but I think America will probably try to go down fighting, invading other countries and stealing their oil and pasting their culture over places that don't want it...
Oh. Well, I'm sure they'll continue doing so.
I think they need to accept where they're going, and learn to adapt (In other words, be like Britain after the fall of the empire. Sit down, shut up and remember you're not that important anymore. And make friends with China)
For.I.Am.Mad: Wow, some British know-it-all predicting America's decline. Haven't seen that before except for that time yesterday. And that time last week. Oh and there was that time during breakfast on Sunday.
. All Roads Lead to Rome. Britannia Rules the waves. Blood and Honor. God Bless America. ... I see a pattern here. Do you?
EDIT: Also, I picked the "nuclear/biological weapons option" which was meant to be a joke, but I think America will probably try to go down fighting, invading other countries and stealing their oil and pasting their culture over places that don't want it...
It's a little concerning that the crazy meter is quite high in some quarters in a country with thousands of nuclear warheads and the capability to deliver them around the world.
America is quite rich when it comes to natural resources and still has plenty of potential. I just hope that they can live up to the image that their diplomats strive to convey.
EclipseoftheDarkSun: Sorry, I've improved the layout so it's easier to read. And hey, just because it's a 'know-it-all' European, doesn't mean he might not have some valid points, and hearing Americans' informed rather than jingoistic opinions on those points would be interesting.
I think that is my signal to step in. :D
I seems to me that the United States is just coasting along on it's past glories, both parties seem to squander any real chance to fix anything, they just bicker and fearmonger to get themselves back into office.
I think that the decline of the United States will be much like the decline of the Byzantine Empire, it will remain a portent cultural force, but it's world influence will degrade to that of a lesser power. But the United States will not just die and go away, it will remain, slowly becoming the play thing of more powerful nations...
Am I the only one who doesn't see this as a horrifying thing?[1] So America is slipping from 1st place. It only means that the world is getting better, not that we suddenly started sucking.
Even if we did start sucking, as long as it doesn't result in Hellfire and Damnation for all, so what? We just work to make things better just like everyone else does.
For.I.Am.Mad: Wow, some British know-it-all predicting America's decline. Haven't seen that before except for that time yesterday. And that time last week. Oh and there was that time during breakfast on Sunday.
Too true. That's probably the worst part of these forums.
OT: No the U.S will not implode in a fireball of nuclear violence and warfare. It may lose power, but it will survive as a country.
I see the decline of America as a lot of things. I see it as the world generally getting wealthier and more countries rising to the economic and technological levels of the top tier countries. I also don't think America necessarily needs to be in decline, but we can't stop arguing long enough to bring it out of decline. We are too focused propping up certain industries, bowing to corporate interests and squabbling over unimportant matters to focus on it. That we have a major political party whose response to a declining America is to cover their ears and call out anyone who points out America is declining in power as anti-American isn't helping. The way how I see it working out is that some other country (or maybe the EU as a whole) is going to start being the economic focus and it will be a wake up call for the entire country. How we handle it from there is anyone's guess. With the right leadership and little bit of luck, we can easily go back to being on top or at least be important, but I think it is only going to be because someone actually pulls ahead of us.
EDIT: Also, I picked the "nuclear/biological weapons option" which was meant to be a joke, but I think America will probably try to go down fighting, invading other countries and stealing their oil and pasting their culture over places that don't want it...
It's a little concerning that the crazy meter is quite high in some quarters in a country with thousands of nuclear warheads and the capability to deliver them around the world.
America is quite rich when it comes to natural resources and still has plenty of potential. I just hope that they can live up to the image that their diplomats strive to convey.
And moonbases are not the solution .. :)
You obviously don't know how much Helium-3 can be found on the moon then.
I'm not surprised my country is in the state it's in. We've all been spoiled rotten by being middle/upper class or taught bad fiscal habits by being poor ( http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-5-stupidest-habits-you-develop-growing-up-poor_p2/ ) Combined with a shitty public education system being bled dry by the parasite known as "The Teachers Union".
I predict this'll all spiral to a point where my country will collapse into ignorance and infighting, and from there will either realize it's collective mistakes and begin to better itself or fail to learn anything, anad suddenly The United States is labeled as "Mexico 2" on globes and maps.
This may come as a shock, but in terms of world politics I find America being in decline as a good thing. At the very least after the decline the world will have to pick out a new scape goat to blame all its problems on, and I look forward to that. If I had it my way we probably would have never involved ourselves in world politics, wars, or economies to begin with, what good has it done us? But then this isn't my country, Yes, I live here, but culturally I'm little more than a foreigner.
EclipseoftheDarkSun: Sorry, I've improved the layout so it's easier to read. And hey, just because it's a 'know-it-all' European, doesn't mean he might not have some valid points, and hearing Americans' informed rather than jingoistic opinions on those points would be interesting.
I think that is my signal to step in. :D
I seems to me that the United States is just coasting along on it's past glories, both parties seem to squander any real chance to fix anything, they just bicker and fearmonger to get themselves back into office.
I think that the decline of the United States will be much like the decline of the Byzantine Empire, it will remain a portent cultural force, but it's world influence will degrade to that of a lesser power. But the United States will not just die and go away, it will remain, slowly becoming the play thing of more powerful nations...
...and now I feel a little bit sad. :(
I really don't think things here are that bad (the media would have us believe the worlds on fire, but it's just not so), and it's going to be a long time still before we're a more powerful nations plaything. I wouldn't be surprised if our countries in a decline, but remember the great depression? We've been in a decline before and came out of it, so there is no reason to become doomsayers now, just because some Brits trying to sell his book through fear-mongering. Also, in terms of a decline in Americas participation in world politics I don't think that would be a bad thing at all as I have already said in another post in this thread.
For.I.Am.Mad: Wow, some British know-it-all predicting America's decline. Haven't seen that before except for that time yesterday. And that time last week. Oh and there was that time during breakfast on Sunday.
Too true. That's probably the worst part of these forums.
OT: No the U.S will not implode in a fireball of nuclear violence and warfare. It may lose power, but it will survive as a country.
The anti-American bigotry is so bad on these forums that I find myself having to resist developing prejudices against people from the uk.
I figured that it was on the decline. For ONE thing, it's kind of impossible to thrive on a >$10,000,000,000,000 debt.
And I'd normally figure that they'd pull their pant legs up and start getting things fix'd, but judging from the current bipartisian government and the general attitude of people from America on the debt, education, etc... it feels like I'm pointing at a huge fire consuming half of the building (the debt) and screaming, but since I'm Canadian, no one gives care.
EclipseoftheDarkSun: Sorry, I've improved the layout so it's easier to read. And hey, just because it's a 'know-it-all' European, doesn't mean he might not have some valid points, and hearing Americans' informed rather than jingoistic opinions on those points would be interesting.
I think that is my signal to step in. :D
I seems to me that the United States is just coasting along on it's past glories, both parties seem to squander any real chance to fix anything, they just bicker and fearmonger to get themselves back into office.
I think that the decline of the United States will be much like the decline of the Byzantine Empire, it will remain a portent cultural force, but it's world influence will degrade to that of a lesser power. But the United States will not just die and go away, it will remain, slowly becoming the play thing of more powerful nations...
...and now I feel a little bit sad. :(
I really don't think things here are that bad (the media would have us believe the worlds on fire, but it's just not so), and it's going to be a long time still before we're a more powerful nations plaything. I wouldn't be surprised if our countries in a decline, but remember the great depression? We've been in a decline before and came out of it, so there is no reason to become doomsayers now, just because some Brits trying to sell his book through fear-mongering. Also, in terms of a decline in Americas participation in world politics I don't think that would be a bad thing at all as I have already said in another post in this thread.
The world may not be on fire, but I'm VERY VERY concerned about the USA's national debt. As in, I'd want my government to deeply slash ALL their expenses (even the military, social security, health care and education) and get rid of it. Even if the world ISN'T on fire, that big of a debt is the next best thing.
For.I.Am.Mad: Wow, some British know-it-all predicting America's decline. Haven't seen that before except for that time yesterday. And that time last week. Oh and there was that time during breakfast on Sunday.
Too true. That's probably the worst part of these forums.
OT: No the U.S will not implode in a fireball of nuclear violence and warfare. It may lose power, but it will survive as a country.
The anti-American bigotry is so bad on these forums that I find myself having to resist developing prejudices against people from the uk.
You do know that there is an edit button right?
Back on topic.
A revolution is coming to the states just wait. Mass prisoner release, an exodus of the rich, the rising of the middle class. Its like russia all over again just for different reasons.
Too true. That's probably the worst part of these forums.
OT: No the U.S will not implode in a fireball of nuclear violence and warfare. It may lose power, but it will survive as a country.
The anti-American bigotry is so bad on these forums that I find myself having to resist developing prejudices against people from the uk.
You do know that there is an edit button right?
Back on topic.
A revolution is coming to the states just wait. Mass prisoner release, an exodus of the rich, the rising of the middle class. Its like russia all over again just for different reasons.
I like how you start the conversation off by insulting my grammar or spelling, it really helps us start on friendly terms. It also lets me know right away that your not worth speaking to, but nevertheless when did Canadians acquirer psychic powers?
Well, we've got a culture that demonizes big business while at the same time being shameless corporate whores. We "Occupy Wall Street" and protest corporate greed, whilst playing Angry Birds on our $400 iCrap. It's because we want to help the poor, those disadvantaged people who only get a meager $500 a month from the government.
Meanwhile, our business themselves are being killed by the socially-accepted cancer known as "Unions". They're designed, ostensibly, to help protect workers, but they don't just help the good workers who deserve help, they help the shitty workers who are dragging everyone else down.
This includes Teacher's Unions, which end up ensuring that the same person has been teaching for at least twice as long as the people they're teaching have been alive. And even if they're absolutely fucking sick of it, and don't mind letting it show in their teaching style, they can't quit because they're making too good money.
We've got a political system divided among itself, then divided some more, and divided once again to the point where nothing ever happens that doesn't result in some branch of some party getting dragged along kicking and screaming. Meanwhile, those same big business are contributing millions of secret dollars to political ads to deliver various bits of false information to the public, who gobble it up like candy from the Easter bunny.
We've got a military who really isn't as bad as everyone thinks, but since we're one of the few countries with boys overseas, we consequently get more attention than everyone else.
And, ironically, despite all its faults, I'd rather live in the USA than 90% of all the other countries in the world...
I seems to me that the United States is just coasting along on it's past glories, both parties seem to squander any real chance to fix anything, they just bicker and fearmonger to get themselves back into office.
I think that the decline of the United States will be much like the decline of the Byzantine Empire, it will remain a portent cultural force, but it's world influence will degrade to that of a lesser power. But the United States will not just die and go away, it will remain, slowly becoming the play thing of more powerful nations...
...and now I feel a little bit sad. :(
I really don't think things here are that bad (the media would have us believe the worlds on fire, but it's just not so), and it's going to be a long time still before we're a more powerful nations plaything. I wouldn't be surprised if our countries in a decline, but remember the great depression? We've been in a decline before and came out of it, so there is no reason to become doomsayers now, just because some Brits trying to sell his book through fear-mongering. Also, in terms of a decline in Americas participation in world politics I don't think that would be a bad thing at all as I have already said in another post in this thread.
The world may not be on fire, but I'm VERY VERY concerned about the USA's national debt. As in, I'd want my government to deeply slash ALL their expenses (even the military, social security, health care and education) and get rid of it. Even if the world ISN'T on fire, that big of a debt is the next best thing.
I agree that it is extremely important that our government takes care of the national debt, but I still don't think it's reason to panic, or start predicting the end of our country.
I really don't think things here are that bad (the media would have us believe the worlds on fire, but it's just not so), and it's going to be a long time still before we're a more powerful nations plaything. I wouldn't be surprised if our countries in a decline, but remember the great depression? We've been in a decline before and came out of it, so there is no reason to become doomsayers now, just because some Brits trying to sell his book through fear-mongering. Also, in terms of a decline in Americas participation in world politics I don't think that would be a bad thing at all as I have already said in another post in this thread.
The world may not be on fire, but I'm VERY VERY concerned about the USA's national debt. As in, I'd want my government to deeply slash ALL their expenses (even the military, social security, health care and education) and get rid of it. Even if the world ISN'T on fire, that big of a debt is the next best thing.
I agree that it is extremely important that our government takes care of the national debt, but I still don't think it's reason to panic, or start predicting the end of our country.
I think it is.
I'm normally not easy to disturb or freak out, but keep in mind that if China finally demands their money back, you're screwed. And that would be still OK, if not tense, if the debt wasn't actively growing.
Nothing would make me happier than if you guys would stop leaving it on the backburner and actually did something about it.
Hi everyone,
I was just listening to the radio, here in Australia, when I heard some of an interview with the author of this recently published book (see below) and I was just wondering what people on this forum would think of the big picture of America's state in the world as summarised below? Do you think he's got some valid points, and what can be done if so? Can the development of internet v3.0 (or whatever) or other areas of new technology/endeavour maintain America's leadership?
Does the prison system there strike anyone as crazy?
We're allies of America here in Australia, so while we've got our national eye on our local region in Asia, we don't exactly wish for your decline.
http://www.literaryreview.co.uk/sandbrook_04_12.php
Time to Start Thinking: America and the Spectre of Decline
Fifty years ago, California was the place to be. A laboratory for new ways of living, bathed in glorious sunshine, the state of Berkeley andthe Beach Boys offered a glimpse of the future, all suntanned faces, gleaming cars and spanking new universities. But how times have changed.Half a century on, suffocated by smog and mired in debt, the Golden State has become a metaphor for everything that seems wrong with the United States of America.
Almost incredibly, notes the Financial Times's Washington bureau chief Edward Luce, California now spends less than $8,000 annually on each child in the state school system, yet spends $47,000 on every prisoner in its notoriously overcrowded penitentiaries. State politics has become a carnival of perennial plebiscites, while, as Luce sees it, 'Sacramento's role is to preside over a slow disintegration of the assets the state built up in the 1950s and 60s, the world-class infrastructure and public education that helped make California the place of the future.'
Sober, clever, measured and deeply depressing, Time to Start Thinking takes a long, hard look at a nation haunted by decline. Of course European visitors often love to announce the impending collapse of American civilisation, but Luce, by and large, lets his American interviewees do the talking.
In one particularly telling passage, he sits in on a seminar at the National Defense University, where promising military officers are sent 'to prepare their minds for leadership'. 'The window on America's hegemony is closing,' says one officer. 'We are at a point right now where we still have choices. A decade from now we won't.'
As Luce watches, fascinated and amazed, the young officers agree that the US should cut military spending, roll back its presence abroad and concentrate on economic competitiveness. 'Our number one goal', one says, 'should be to restore American prosperity.' But as their visitor remarks, 'the chances of anything like this happening were zero'.
What is so impressive about Luce's diagnosis of American decline is the quiet, methodical compilation of damning facts - all the more damning because he eschews histrionics and clearly has great affection for his current beat. He is very good, for example, on the miserable fortunes of American manufacturing, which now accounts for less than one in ten private-sector jobs. Even during the Clinton boom, most new jobs were either in healthcare or in government, which tells its own story. The United States now spends twice as much per head on healthcare as France, and a staggering three times as much as Britain - yet 'Americans continue to die earlier and spend more time disabled than their peers in Europe'.
In the meantime, Luce notes, the lights have been going off in the former workshop of the western world. Half a century ago, the United States made half the shoes on the planet. Now there are only two shoe-producing firms left. At the heart of Luce's book is the story of a nation that, fattened by affluence, fell for its own propaganda. He meets a California-born Harvard graduate, Amar Goel, who, at a recent reunion, told his old classmates that he was moving to Mumbai. 'There was a revolution happening in Asia, he said. It was like America in the late nineteenth century.' Goel's classmates thought he was mad. 'America was still number one in everything,' they said. 'Everybody in the world wanted to be American.'
But do they? On the same page, Luce recounts a meeting with Oregon's labour commissioner, Brad Avakian, who had recently been on an official visit to Taiwan. One evening Avakian's hosts took him out for a drink, and the talk turned to America. 'These guys were literally laughing at America,' Avakian recalled. 'They couldn't understand the game we were playing. "Please keep sending us all the jobs, everything else will follow".'
Looming in the background is the giant in the Far East. American economic hegemony has long been based on technological innovation, yet by 2020, Luce writes, the US share of citations in international scientific papers is likely to have been overtaken by China. According to the former IMF economist Arvind Subramanian, even if China undergoes a 'debt-induced crisis of growth' in the next ten years, its GDP will still be a quarter higher than the United States's by 2030, its share of world trade will be twice as high, and the yuan will have become the world's reserve currency. Yet what frustrates and bewilders Luce is Washington's complete failure to react.
The American school system, he notes, promotes shallow self-esteem over genuine achievement (encouraged by what he calls 'Good job!' parenting); and, despite the urging of businessmen and labour leaders, Washington seems allergic to any serious industrial policy. The United States, he thinks, has the worst of all worlds: a free-market culture that forbids state intervention, yet also an overweening bureaucracy that discourages innovation; a culture of complacency that saps urgency, yet also a neurotic nationalism that has turned presidential politics into a rolling freak show.
The obvious criticism of Luce's book might be that we have heard it all before. More than thirty years ago, another distinguished British observer of American politics, the peerless Godfrey Hodgson, published a book arguing that the presidency was a dysfunctional and failing institution; in the meantime, however, life has gone merrily on. In the late 1980s, there was a great panic about the supposed rise of Japan; ten years later, the United States was still Top Nation. But none of this means that Luce is wrong.
Americans may recoil at the thought, but empires fall as well as rise. In the 1890s, Luce points out, Great Britain was clearly the world's pre-eminent power, having reached a peak of wealth and influence. At the time, London's papers were full of gloomy predictions of decline, which many observers dismissed as hysterical doom-mongering. But as we know now, they were right. Edward Luce is probably right, too. Just twenty years from now, he will probably be able to say: 'I told you so.'