As Twilight Descends

The 20th Century has been aptly named The American Century, but not many could have predicted in 1990 how fast this American Empire would sink come the 21st Century? Sure, there were signs back then, but there was also optimism that we could turn things around, that our continued greatness was ensured by Manifest Destiny.

The Clinton years managed to forestall some of the worst trends, like our national debt, and people living in poverty. During the 90's the U.S. had a clear hegemony in the world as the one undisputed superpower and, except for Muslim extremists, enjoyed good relations with the other major and minor powers around the globe.

But how fast things can be turned around! The surpluses that Clinton left as part of his fiscally responsible legacy have been turned into mammoth deficits, now estimated at another 2 trillion over the next 3 years. (Perspective; It took almost 185 years to run up the national debt to 2 trillion, the bulk of that coming during the Reagan and Bush I Administrations.)

Since 2000, 4.3 million more Americans are living in poverty, and those without health insurance has risen to 45 million. Every other industrialized nation reports a lowering of poverty and has some kind of national health program.

Within a few years, the Baby Boomers will start retiring and combined with the fact that medical costs have not been curtailed, their combined Medicare and Social Security bill, added to the Medicaid program, has a 50 trillion dollar shortfall in the next several decades. When you factor in the massive trade deficit and falling dollar, the wisdom of banks and foreign countries continuing to buy our treasury bills (which is what constitutes the national debt) comes into question.

The main components of our economic superiority have been our aviation/aerospace and high-tech industries. Europe is superceding us in the former (Airbus and successful planetary probes) and Asia in the latter. A recent illustration of this decline occurred in the annual college competition of worldwide computer programming departments. The U.S., having won regularly until its last victory in 1997, has dropped lower each year, and our best college finished tied for 17th this year.

Two other areas of American superiority, the automobiles and bio-medical industries, are also facing into suddenly stiffer competition. Japan has taken several percentage points off of our world market share in the past few years and China looms as a super-competitor to both countries. Most of us have enjoyed buying low-cost items manufactured in China, and now they're going to use their cheap labor force and increasingly erudite populace to make cars. How will Americans react when they can buy a Chinese car for $7500 that compares favorably with a $17,500 U.S.-made car? Answer: Case closed.

As for bio-medical, the trillion-dollar market of the future (one that 5 years ago had America as its leader) is the stem-cell based disease cures and regenerative market. But due to the misguided dictates of a president catering to the fanatical right of his party, that ship has passed us by. Several countries are now ahead of us in this area, and that number will only grow in the next 3 years of this administration's tenure.

Another area, public health, while not that good in 1990, still showed signs of possible improvement, as the popular trend to diet and jog was seemingly taking hold. What has happened since then is a national embarrassment (and don’t think the rest of the world is unaware of it) as around two-thirds of adults are now overweight, and we’re spending 15% of our national income on health care to treat an ever-weaker population.

So, just now when we are facing into stiff competition from Europe, China, Asia and India for the world market, our knees are buckling from national laziness, moral decadence, an infatuation with tawdry entertainment and sports, as well as bad political decision-making. But our military is strong, right? Well, the price tag on that will be hard to sustain if the economy goes south, and we’re seeing early signs of that with all the current base closings. Add to that the way we’re overly stretched with our troops, and falling woefully short of our recruitment goals (mostly due to the mistreatment of current recruits) and even our continued military dominance will be called into question within about 10 years.

So that’s the unpleasant picture. If it’s any consolation, there hasn’t been an empire yet that didn’t fall in time, mostly from the same sort of things we’re experiencing. What’s a little shocking, though, is the speed with which we’re declining, greatly exacerbated by the Bush Administration policies.

Around the world, our positivity rating in polls has gone from the 65% to 90% range after 9/11 down to 10% to 35% currently, the latter numbers being from Great Britain. Nowhere in the world are we viewed well by a majority of the people. What this means in practical terms is that whenever they have a chance to grease the wheels of our decline, they’ll do it, whether in what they buy or the policies and politicians they support.