Will the US be able to arrest the decline and reinvent itself |
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11.1% (15) |
Will the political extremes lock up the system |
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42.2% (57) |
Will it decline in some areas but advance in others |
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26.7% (36) |
Will it decline, lash out with nuclear/biological weapons and create a zombie apocalypse? |
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20% (27) |
Poll: A threat to American Hegemony? Pages PREV 1 2 3 NEXT | |
"you guys" what does that mean? Anyway, china's economy depends to greatly on us for them to "demand their money back." Like I said it's a serious problem that the government needs to take care of, but there's no need to freakout and jump ship. We live in an age of anxiety, and what we need most are level-headed individuals that fix the things that are broken instead of shitting themselves and crying. Unfortunately, I don't have the power or know how to fix things, but I still have a choice as to whether I freakout or not, and I choose not. | |
In all fairness, out of any empire or kingdom that I have read about and witnessed over the history of society, the United States is the only one that is still capable of maintaining empire well past its prime, but seems to be the most fearful of trying to get there. China is going to become an economic powerhouse, you cannot stop that, but what the US needs to do is focus on sustainable economic plans and a drastic reduction of useless spending and they may be able to curtail this climb into decent. While I'm sure I don't know half the story, what I do know is not good for the Americans, but it isn't all bad. They still have the 3rd largest population in the world, one of the highest HDI around and a lot of money to boot. If they can rectify the current mistakes they are making, reduce their debt and use that huge population to its advantage, there is every possibility that by the time China finally reaches the up echelons of the economic world, the US will still maintain a substantial part of its current influence and rather than be taken over by China, actually rival and share the spot with them. | |
You know that China is only owed about 8% of America's debt? And that China itself relies on America a lot more than vice versa? If the debt was called in, America could plausibly pay it off, while China would collapse. | |
I've already written my piece so I'm not going to repeat it, but if you fall, you will languish like all the other fallen empires, forced to relegation behind the new power/s that take up the mantel. If you want some advice, start a greens party, in about 20 years they'll have a frustrating minority that while getting on my tits, at least acts as some sort of questioner of the main parties (I'm Australian). | |
We did have a Green Party. They were second to Al Gore in costing Al Gore the 2000 election. Which resulted in an economy devastated by bad decisions, and a standing among the leaders of the world as a nation of douchebags. | |
A little revolution, now and then, is a good thing. Not "Occupy." Not the paranoid, anti-government militias that crop up every now and again but (thankfully) never do anything. Something big. Major natural disaster, complete economic collapse, energy crisis, zombies. Something massive and uncontrollable to hit the 'reset' button. Something that will DEMAND a change in focus for this nation. The system is too convoluted and self-interested to fix itself at this point without outside intervention. The whole 'right vs. left' debacle and the reemerging emphasis on state's rights just reeks of future civil conflict. Hopefully not another outright civil war, but I honestly wouldn't be all that surprised if the right issue came up. Who knows what the future holds. I just hope I survive to see it. | |
AMURIKA IS IN THE DECLINE OH NOES!!!! D: Haha, hahahaha.....ha. *sigh* Cmon on, we've known our dual-dicatatorship (reps and dems) is a terrible thing and nobody takes our politicians seriously........ but at least we aren't Austrailia? Eh?? *nudge nudge* or Germany thats BANNING THE XBOX. You heard me, banning the xbox. or a third world country or a country with shitty internet connection Cmon people, despite our flaws, we have Cinnabon and high speed internet, working video games and amazing products that only our backwards yankee land could produce. Yes, we have rednecks and religious zealots and other idiots like the rest of the world, but I think people are taking this a bit too seriously. Oh, and if China demanded their money back, we're AMERICANS. We would nuke them into ash, regardless of moral it is. I would much rather have nuclear Armageddon than being a slave to China. | |
If America declines China stops growing. China may make everything but: Who buys what China makes? If America goes under Chinese production would slow, millions would be laid off and given their high population and oppressive government I would be surprised if China was still a single nation by the time America breaks into individual countries. | |
That doesn't necessarily mean much, most people don't want to move from where they are, even if there are much better places - why do people live near occasionally active volcanoes after all? Inertia tends to rule, coupled with certain other real risks are involved with moving to a new place where you tend to be at the bottom of the pyramid and lose most of your previous family/friend connections. | |
Could you explain why you are so frightened? | |
Well I don't disagree that America has many real strengths and China could be devastated if the US suddenly destabilized, affecting the world economy, but China is expanding its influence across the world, tapping farmland in Africa and other resources throughout the pacific and asia and it will be interesting to see if it can translate this into a new economic empire. It will also be interesting to see what happens in China and America re the political/human-rights tensions that obviously exist in both places. | |
America is on the decline only because what they have had in the past is frankly amazing, generally good conditions for all in a democracy of millions of people. Thats unprecedented. Your politics is dum because you allow it to be, if you formed effective protest against the main parties behaviour they will listen. Unlikely but certainly possible. Every nation has its golden age and not one has ever stayed in that age permanently. China will surpass you then India will surpass China then who knows what will happen. The only way for america to stop declining would be to mimic these nations in terms of politics and workers/human rights. Decline is a hell of a lot better than that. | |
You guys = I'm not American. And good for you. I still can't get over ten trillion plus in debt. I'll admit that you're probably the better man, but I reserve rights to say "I told you so" if the debt is what takes America down. | |
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Fair enough, though I hope you never get a chance to say it. I think people here are starting to wake up to the fact that our media lies to us, that our government lies to us, and that the whole thing is run by crooks and idiots. I think people my age are sick of the embarrassment our government and media causes us, and I don't think it will be long before people start demanding that congress stops setting on their hands, and we see some actual positive results. The occupy wall street movement has been an unorganized mess downplayed by the media, but I think it's simply the first of many, and that the next time people will be more organized and unified in their opposition to the way our country is being run. Hopefully things will change for the better before they get worse. | |
I wasn't insulting your grammar or spelling... I was wondering why you had 3 posts in a row... Someone likes to assume then insult much. So you don't like the fact you're a brain washed peon its ok we still love you. Also the fact that I'm Canadian has nothing to do with my psyc-I mean special... no never mind. Anyways the fact that I have a brain is why I can see that the states are falling apart just like... who was it in the early 90's..... Oh I know china... no that can't be right.... I'm sorry if you can't see it. I'm sorry you enjoy being a big bad wolf, so huff and puff all you want, you special person you. *Edit (Gasp it works!)
Basicly this. Also your own prison system and corruption is bankrupting you. Captcha:Pea Brain (Oh the irony!) | |
We are a nation of extremes. Any calm, reasonable suggestion is drowned out by hype on one side or fear-mongering on the other. I'm hoping living in the middle of nowhere will be a decent buffer against the backlash of our fall. If not, that's why I also live close to Canada. I'll jump ship and kiss my guns goodbye if I have to. As for what caused the problem... mass addictions: convenience, a false sense of total security, the idiotic superiority complex we've made of "patriotism", deifying an ideal "American family" that never once existed outside of 1950s television, a court system that awards insanely high punitive damages for ridiculous bullshit, and above all... unrestricted capitalism. Now, I'm all for capitalism... within set limits. What we have is a system that has removed so many of those limits that the imbalance of power and wealth is choking us all from the bottom up. Don't need to be an economist to look at percentages and /facepalm. | |
So, from a couple post you've concluded that I am a brain washed peon, and yet in the same post you berated me for making assumptions. I guess the hypocrisy is lost on you. And I enjoy being a "big bad wolf"? Really, like I as a citizen have any power or delusions of power whatsoever, hilarious. Please write me again, all the comedy sites I usually go to haven't updated their videos yet. | |
I'd like to say that doesn't sound like Australia's Greens Party, but in all honesty I could see them being just as stupidly unintentionally destructive. Though I would like to reiterate that the US is not a lost cause, if some pretty big fucking sweeping reforms went through, you guys would definitely have a chance, but from the outside you appear so scarred of change you'll probably just elect another republican president and implode. | |
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Speaking as a member of a nation that is an ally of America (Australia), I'm not all that concerned about its decline since we're an increasingly strong ally of its likely successor, China. Quite frankly, I'm excited to be able to say to my children "I watched the decline of the American Empire." Don't get me wrong, America's got a couple a decades as top dog left, but it's in decline. Let's not forget that often the British empire is not considered to have ended until the Suez Crisis in 1956, well after WW2. Should be an interesting watch. | |
I cant vote. There is no "we will not decline" button. Take it away Mr. Eastwood: There is PLENTY we can do to ensure we stay the strongest country on the planet. So enough with the pessimistic, defeatist talk people. captcha: Want More? Im sure you people will. | |
One thing to be learned from this. USA haxxx and is a cheating bastard. | |
Things are not going well, certainly not. However, I think what most studies and books and such fail to recognize is the upcoming generations of educated people who have been learning in the liberal system that America is not the be-all, end-all answer to civilization - a mentality that plagues the current generations in power. I'm not so much referring to my own generation, but the ones on either side. My generation is mostly populated by the apathetic group who grew up in high times and haven't yet realized that the seemingly invincible can and does become fragile. If the line can be held - if the people currently on top can die off quickly enough (natural causes of course, they're all getting pretty damn old) - if some moderate stance can come into being and keep things steady long enough, I think there's a serious chance of recovery when the two or three generations after my own come into making up the bulk of the voting population. We are, until then it seems, on the express train to very unpleasant things ahead right now unfortunately. If you take half a look at the political situation it is grim. Then again, most of the people running that show are tipping 70s and should just the the hell out of the way already. | |
It's also screwed by demographics. Palestinians are outbreeding the Israelis. I can understand why Israelis are scared. However, they're not making the potential demise of Israel any easier for its Jewish inhabitants by enraging and persecuting the Arab population who will take their vengeance when the Jewish become a minority within Israel. Israel should make the case for its existence without using charges of anti-semitism against anyone who criticises its colonialist settlement policies and without the ghettoisation of Palestinians/Arabs. It really makes Israel a bad guy in international poltiics. Without powerful lobbying organisations the Israeli government would have to answer before the UN war crimes tribunal. Taiwan is another nation which is very much screwed when the USA loses hegemony. Japan and South Korea might help sway the balance, but are they willing to risk war with China? One thing I can see happening is a war over the South China Sea and Taiwan. China, Vietnam, and North Korea on one side; Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea on the other. Vietnam is also worried about China but I think with a few concessions it might agree to be an ally. | |
As an American and a Texan [therefore, I am like, 30% more American than people from America], I have to say something like this. America is big, we have hands in nearly every type of economy, and history has taught us that all big 'empires' will eventually fall. But unlike history, where a collapse ended with a few ragtag colonials getting a country or something, America's collapse from a world superpower will leave a sizeable power vacuum that other countries will try to fill. The question isn't if America is going to collapse, its how can the rest of the world reduce damages when it does collapse. Best case scenario: Current world powers sans America converge and take up the slack equally leaving no power struggle. Worst case scenario: War. | |
Yeah, damn those ragtag colonials like the United States, China, Brazil and India. They'll never do anything of importance.. ;) And on topic. "Collapse" strikes me as the wrong world. Britain didn't "collapse", I live here and it's still pretty nice. I haven't clubbed someone to death for their food ration for days now. What we're talking about here is other countries, namely places like China, Brazil and India, catching up, and while that could have quite a negative effect on the US economy if it isn't planned for, long term it can only be a good thing for the world as whole. It is, in fact, what everyone has been preparing for when they talk about globalization. Politically, no longer being the pre-eminent world power might be the kind of wake up call America needs. Certainly in Britain, the anxiety over the end of the Empire seems to have pulled the sticks out of a few arses, and if there's one thing we should learn from the British empire, it's that living in the richest and most powerful country on Earth doesn't mean your life is terribly nice or even that you're terribly rich. There's room for improvement, and maybe declining global importance will make that more obvious to the average American. So yeah, it's going to happen one day. China controls almost all of the supply of rare earths, which are vital to any modern economy. Brazil has invested hugely in high tech industry. America will find a niche in the global economy just like Britain did, but sooner or later someone is going to do better. I don't think that's anything to fear, from a global perspective it's pretty cool, and could actually mean life in America gets better, not worse. | |
More of a threat than the superpower that is unable to regulate its own financial system leading to unregulated bailouts because it is "too big to fail"? The current financial crisis is not Europe's fault. America's inability to control its own finance is the cause. This exacerbated Europe's problems. That's not to say that European nations are blameless but this all extends from an American fuckup. | |
. I...wait...what... Arab population taking their vengeance when there are more Muslim Arabs in Israel than Jews. Wait, what? If that ever happens, I mean if you seriously see a war between the two groups and the front lines get blurred, then the IDF will push them back and away from the territory just like how it did to the Arab Militias in the Independence war of 47-48 (Before the declaration and the arrival of the combined armies of Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, Jordan and Syria). I think you're not understanding the situation. Our politicians are inept. In stead of using the case of Golda Meir, Israel's Prime Minister at the time of the '73 war and her hesitation about the war, you see atomic ducks and antisemitism. I blame the incompetence of my elected leaders. They are still living in the 70s. (In the '73 war the Prime Minister at the time was informed that the neighboring armies are preparing to strike and she had a chance to call a massive draft and strike first at them. She refused because after the '67 war the world pretty much either hated us or didn't care for us one bit. She thought that if we play the victim we would get some legitimization. Nooooooope. It was one of the bloodiest conflicts we ever had. We face a somewhat similar decision now, though I don't have all of the info in front of me and probably never will.) Ghettoisation ... Do not agree. Is that even a proper verb? There are mixed cities and towns and there are Arab villages, I do not see how you can reach this strange conclusion. | |
Indeed. I'm still trying to figure out how a country gets 10 trillion dollars in debt. It's fucking mind boggling how much money that is. | |
Privatisation will always cripple a country, especially when they find a loophole through rewording bribery (Lobbying) | |
Well, America's in relative decline in that it's economy is slowly growing but many other countries like China, Brazil and India etc are fast catching up and China's likely to overtake in a few decades. So in some way's America's decline is going to be like Britain's. Living standards will continue to increase, people are still going to work in relative safety and Hollywood will still make it's blockbusters. The main thing that America will have to mentally adjust to is not being the worlds sole-superpower. America won't have unquestioned military superiority of China continues to ramp up military spending, America won't be the first place where the worlds foremost intellectuals will go nor will America be at the very forefront of scientific research. But given it's large population America won't shrink into the middle-power league like Britain has. America will be either joint superpower or second superpower to China for most of this century. I'd be surprised if Americas's not in the top 3 world powers by the end of this century. Assuming some sort of disaster, political, civil or environmental, devastates America. In all likelihood, America will in the next few decades have it's own "Suez Crisis".[1]Perhaps the USA will perform a military intervention in South America one day and China, disapproving of this, threatens to call in it's debts and America's forced to withdraw. Or maybe it will be something more symbolic like China beating the US into putting a man on Mars. It may be something like that, a few political embarrassments for America, that will lead mean the country will have to come to terms with no longer being the sole superpower of the world. Still, i don't think anything drastic will happen, and America will continue to be a major world power, just not the sole world superpower. [1] In British history, the Suez Crisis, occurring in 1952 i think, is when Britain and France conspired to create a war between Isreal and Egypt that would allow the UK and France to step in as "peacekeepers" to re-take control of the Suez Canal which had been nationaised by Egypt. The USA disapproved of this and threatened to call in the debt that Britain owed the US, forcing an embarrassed Franco-British withdraw. The point of this is that it brought to everyone's attention that Britain was no longer a major power. | |
I'm very optimistic about this. America won't collapse, as has been said, it will just cease to have quite the dominance and relevance across the world. There's no colonies to pull out of and economies / politics to threaten (e.g. the state of affairs at the end of the age of empire). I think a multipolar world will be beneficial. Although I am the kind of person who eventually wants a World Government (and if anyone says the UN is already that then I will scream...). | |
America's economy seems to be in shambles from a laymans point of view and will most likely stay like that until you sort out the mess that is your political system of having two elected houses that both swing back and forth in terms of who controls them. The American president (dem or rep) steps forward and says I want to do this and the other house (who from what I have seen thus far) immediately says no because they are from the other party. I understand the point of having two houses of debate to act as a check and balance but when both are so politically dominated it becomes a mess and just stagnates the country. Take a look at the British system which although ain't a shining beacon is still imo much better then the American system because although the House of lords ain't elected it actually does mean we get some form of impartial debate going that is outside of politics which is a proper check and balance and doesn't just stagnate. | |
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Our government is disfunctional.
Our people are either apathetic or clearly insane.
Our left wing wants to destroy our right wing.
Our right wing wants to destroy our left wing.
We have the most backward social standing among all 1st-world countries, which is saying something.
We are a Christian nation masquerading as a free religious country, and we let religion control our country even more than the Islamic nations we demonize.
We outsource our jobs, and cling to the time when we saw ourselves as the heroes of the world.
We are the worst of each sector of life, and refuse to change because we've never had to before.
And this will not change. We will fall, and I hope it comes soon, because only then will we learn and get better.