Financial turmoil and the prospect of recession loom large in current discussions of the US, and cast long shadows over much of the world. Some feel that the balance of global power has begun to shift eastwards, away from its 20th century heart. In this month’s cover story, however, Michael Lind asserts the underlying robustness of American society against three pervasive myths of decline: that ethnic rivalries are set to tear the States apart; that religious fundamentalists dangerously dominate its politics; and that the country cannot afford or sustain its social security system.
Even the traditionally pessimistic conservative magazine Commentary has something to say along these lines, and we reproduce an edited version of a recent piece by Peter Wehner and Yuval Levin which examines trends in crime, drugs and welfare statistics, and concludes that there are many reasons for cautious optimism.
Perhaps it’s time to look beyond short-term gloom, and consider whether one century of American supremacy was just the first act of a play that’s going to run and run. As always, let us know what you think here.
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Lind fudges a bit by citing statistics on church attendence for North America that include Canada but not Mexico. Chruch attendance in canada is much lower than in the U.S. ans skews the numbers.
While I agree that United States will not be in decline, it may not increase at the same rate as other countries.
Something I do not know is that, at current growth rates, when does China and India catch the United States in terms of GDP as a whole and GDP per person. That is the sense that we are falling behind. There will probably be a day when the United States will not be the sole superpower. When you are on top, there is only one direction to go, and people don’t like to descend at anything.
An un-educated, but truly believed opinion.
It has long been my opinion that economically the US is doing well, but the media and members of the political class have a vested interest in portraying otherwise. Unemployment is low, incomes and standard of living continue to grow, higher education is available to anyone interested and ambitious enough(although the expense of college level education is high compared to most of the world) and the opportunity for small and large business is great in the lower tax portions of the country (south and midwest). I will believe that the US is in a decline when immigrants start flooding India and China looking for work (unlike the immigrants flooding the EU, looking for the dole).
It’s typical that when you mention decline everyone talks about economic decline. Whether a record deficit and huge amounts of treasure poured into Iraq represent decline I will leave to the economists.
I first visited the US in 1963 and came back to get married and to become a citizen 14 years ago. I would define “decline” in a totally different way: the US is morally and ethically in decline, and even Syria, which I visited recently, is a happier place, where people smile and seem to believe their country is on the right track. There is a horrible morale problem in the US, caused by bad government (which can be corrected), an almost out-of-control capitalism (that maybe cannot be corrected, since money speaks loudest) and a level of corruption in all its senses that may, who knows, have existed in the 60s, but was not very evident. The Republicans will shout me down, but then they are benefiting from the system. The country has become selfish, uncaring and bitterly divided. The less affluent will know what I mean. Not a good recipe for continued domination of the world.
Mr. Lind analyzes the U.S. logically, pointing out that many of the apparently insurmountable problems once rationally considered can yield to straight-forward solutions.
What complicates these problems, however, is that many of them grow out of American mythology. Lind admits, for example, that scholars believe that many Americans lie when answering questions about attending church. Why? Because going to church is supposed to be good, because at heart we live in God’s own country. Our national motto–”In God We Trust”–acknowledges the centrality of religion to public life. Thus Ronald Reagan pandered to the religious right. But he never went to church. So, too, the current president who during his first campaign cited Jesus Christ as his favorite political theorist. (In much the same way many U.S. politicians claim that they don’t believe in evolution. Why? Because to believe in evolution challenges belief in God. And who would vote for a politician who didn’t believe in God?)
Yes, the Social Security shortfall could be immediately resolved by raising the limit on wages taxed solely to support this program. Both political parties have avoided considering this simple step for one reason: The truly rich hate Social Security, because they pay more into the system than they will ever receive. For as long as I can remember, people on the right–let’s be honest: the Republicans–have been calling for an end to Social Security. Better to face an impending crisis than to take quick, simple steps to solve the problem for good.
Building a constituency for logical solutions is very hard: someone’s ox is always going to be gored. And those in power want to make sure that they and their families will remain safe and secure.
Until politicians find ways to solve problems without challenging American mythologies the country will continue to face these vexing issues.
The kind of pessimism in American public life is nothing new. I’ve been around long enough to have lived thru several cycles of “Everything is going to sh!t”. Talk of ‘American decline’ was way worse in the 1970s than now. Go ahead, peruse any newspaper archive from 75-79 and see how dark the future looked.
And there’s always been a huge disconnect between how people perceive their own lives and the health of society in general. Thus individuals will say Congress is a nest of crooked politicians, but insist their representative os one of the good guys. Public schools suck, but their child’s school is quite above the norm. The economy is going to hell, consumer spending remains high showing a great deal of faith in future economic conditions.
So for those who are all atwitter over the decline of America, my suggestion is to relax. This wave of pessimism will soon pass…it always does.
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“The first myth, which is mainly a conservative one, is that racial and ethnic rivalries are tearing America apart.†What the heck does that mean? Only the Left talks about racial, ethnic and class rivalries, fighting the 1960s battles. The conservatives are concerned not about Hispanics or Muslims coming here, but illegal, uncontrolled immigration with all the strain on the welfare system (and no country in the world has an open-border policy!). More importantly though, they are worried about those “minorities†which aim not to strengthen the country but to undermine the very principles it and its success have been built on. In other words, it’s not Hispanics in general, but Hispanics who champion Marxism; not Muslims, but Islamic fundamentalist who want the US to become part of the worldwide caliphate and are willing to behead infidels to get there.
The statement regarding the threat that “retirement of the baby boomers will bankrupt the country […] could be met by moderate benefit cuts or a moderate growth in the US government share of GDP†completely ignores that it is exactly what has happened in Western Europe. Also, is “a moderate growth in the US government share of GDP†newspeak for “raising taxes� New taxes are the progressive’s prescription for the welfare crisis…Great. To hell with facts, long live idealism!
As an American I have a sense of “not being able to see the forest through the trees.†It is difficult to see beyond your own front door. Helicopter-parents are turning into want-a-be oligarchs, health care is declining, people who paid into social security (money that was used to fund other people’s retirement) are worried that it will not be there for them, people are disillusioned with big business at least as employers, people support our military but question the tasks they have been given, and nostalgia has lost its ability to comfort. These are my perceptions in no particular order and not necessarily ones that are shared by my neighbors. I haven’t done any surveys so I only speak for myself.
My country has been down before in many different ways. What has helped to right us has been a deep-seated belief in the principles that were used to knit this country together at the beginning. It is found in our collective unconscious. I have seen evidence of this coming to the surface recently when several of the presidential candidates spoke in my town at different times. There were moments during each campaign speech when there was a change in the timber of the response, when it came from the soul. Those moments were consistent with the best of who we are. We have problems but I believe we are ready to address them. I am sorry we didn’t do it sooner, for whatever reason we were not able to do it sooner.
Michael Lind’s piece is entirely sensible, but I would have liked to hear his views on the decline of American influence abroad. The bungled Iraq and Afghan wars, and years of denigrating the UN and other multilateral fora, have made it increasingly difficult for the US to get other countries to go along with its foreign policy objectives.
Balkanization, Theocracy and Social Security default are indeed false fears. The second half of Lind’s piece is much weaker though, and ‘The future is bright’ commentators above don’t have a clue.
The American ‘productivity miracle’ of the 90s is a sham; the real, productive portion of the economy is a fraction of the size it was in the ‘dark days’ of the 70s, just about everything Americans buy is made in China or Europe, our infrastructure is completely unprepared for long-term high oil prices, foreigners are catching on to the fact that Wall Street is embezzling their money, and the dollar is well on the way to hyperinflation. We do have an overwhelming comparative advantage in one domain: bad journalism…about how everything is going great or how the US can solve its intractable problems in ten easy steps. To give him credit, Lind is among the best of a bad lot.
Yes, an entirely sensible piece. It might well have been written by Marie Antoinette about France in the mid-1780s. Everything’s fine, folks. Nothing to see here. Now move along.
Reading Michael Lind’s article, that Prospect has given the status of Cover Story, puts forward such a blinkered view of the US problems. It seemed like a paid article to camouflage the real problems US would face in near future.
I also read the other comments on this blog, it seems when live within a country/society is like seeing the house only from inside where live in, rather than from outsider’s perspective. The whole house may on sliding down the hill, you may not even feel it when are living inside.
What put the US on slipery slop is its decoupling of the dollar in 1972, as currency, from the gold reserves US is supposed to hold. It has allowed the US to print money like crazy. If any other country would have done it, no body would buy that currency. As a result, there are such big heaps of cash dollars in the world, especially in the oil rich countries. To add to this problem that no body know how many of these is fake currency. People relied on Dollar as solid money as it has been a trading currency for oil, gold and other commodities.
Since Dollar has been a trading currency, so most of the oil money is deposited in US banks, that is what gave US a sense of well-being and prosperity, and it could afford to a launch uncalled for wars such as Iraq.
The biggest threat US faces is, if tomorrow OPEC decides to switch from Dollar to Euro as its trading currency, the dollar will be worthless. There are already voices in the OPEC, those are asking for this switchover. It is the Saudis, as chair of the last OPEC meeting didn’t allow this discussion to take place. One can understand that Saudis has invested all its reserves in the US, which is estimated to amount around 8% of the US economy.
Considering when Euro was launched in 1999, Dollar value has dropped more than 30% percent. It is commonsense that OPEC countries would not like to keep Dollar as its trading currency. US government has aware of this danger and has made concerted efforts to de-rail Euro, or at least not to allow to be used as global trading currency. Some people believe that real reason for US attack on Iraq was not that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, but he has set a dangerous trend to sell his oil in Euro.
According to Energy Bulletin – 2 Aug 2005 “It is now obvious the invasion of Iraq had less to do with any threat from Saddam’s long-gone WMD program and certainly less to do to do with fighting International terrorism than it has to do with gaining strategic control over Iraq’s hydrocarbon reserves and in doing so maintain the U.S. dollar as the monopoly currency for the critical international oil market.”
Energy Bulletin further adds “Similar to the Iraq war, military operations against Iran relate to the macroeconomics of ‘petrodollar recycling’ and the unpublicized but real challenge to U.S. dollar supremacy from the euro as an alternative oil transaction currency.”
This is the real danger to US supremacy, which the pints Michael Lind pointed in his article. Imagine tomorrow Saudis decide to withdraw all its investment in the US, that is said to be trillions of dollars, how the US is going withstand sudden outflow of money from its economy. That will certainly be the end of the Dollar as international currency and US supremacy as global power.
When the whole house edging on the slippery slop, is in danger of tipping over, what makes the difference how the internal furniture is arranged, that is what Michael Lind and other occupants of the house area talking about.
The article is an interesting puncturing of a set of Myths of American decline. But it projections about the future are based on “business as usual“ scenarios. Avterjeet above points out one of the thin ends of the wedge as to why business as usual is unlikely, but this relates to a wider politics, of how America will attempt to maintain control of dwindling natural resources, even as it becomes financially beholden tot he rest of the world.
There is no sense in the article of living in a physical world with natural resource limits. A recent study from Imperial college has established that every doubling of global GDP also involves a doubling in the amount of natural resources used, since human life began.
Since we are pretty close to the limits on so many natural resources now, it seems highly unlikely that we will see another doubling of GDP, which would take perhaps a quarter of a century at a 3% global growth rate.
The productivity of natural resource usage rises at nowhere near growth rates, and is not set to do so in the near future. “Greening“ growth has not historically lead to a stabilization or reduction of resource usage, and given the huge rates of increase charted by the Imperial study, is unlikely to do so in the foreseeable future.
So how is the most natural-resource intensive economy in the world going to stay in rude health in the face of that? The signs of difficulty are already emerging. Scarcity in natural resources is pushing up commodity and food prices already, leading to a form of inflation that will be very hard to control with monetarism. Some basic commodities are substitutable, but not that many, and not infinitely so because you need to substitute with another resource, which may well also be running scarce.
But many resources are not easily substitutable, and prices will rise until people are totally priced out of the activity, which for some resources such as food and water means life. So you will have a pressure on commodity prices that will not easily respond to controlling the money supply. So where will the American economic model go then? What will happen to such a resource intensive economy when its life-style starts getting way too expensive?
And what will happen when the rest of the world wakes up to this scarcity and starts protecting its natural resources, as Russia and Venezuela are starting to do with its energy reserves? America is an edifice built up on humungous imports of foreign natural resources. How will it survive when the barriers start to rise?
Indeed, the switch to the Euro as the more stable international reserve currency, which is only being staved off with political force, has an inevitability to it. But surely it is the more general with-drawel from an American-style trade system that will really make things tough for the USA. Indeed, what stability can the American free-trade model, with its volatile currency and loosely regulated financial markets, offer to the rest of the world, in an increasingly unstable climate?
Consider this. If food prices keep on rising, and developing country governments start finding it hard to feed their populations, what is to stop them nationalising their natural resources, those that are becoming scarce and valuable, and using the proceeds to feed their population and thus fend off social chaos?
Like so much of what comes out of America, this article seems to come from another planet. America faces grave problems, because it’s business model is based on access to cheap and abundant natural resources. The switch to the Euro as a reserve currency is only the tip of the iceberg in the un-ravelling of this problem, which really calls into question the whole American way of life.
People in UK may believe this article, but it just ‘ain’t’ so….this article is skewed, spun, and made up.