And this is certainly, why we’re going to war, because only through our military can we prop up the greed of the plutocracy.

The plutocracy doesn’t like to lose out to anyone. At first they will sell off our ressources, to make up for that great sucking sound in the center of this country.

But soon after Americans are left starving and penniless the shooting will start..

And one day American’s will go to sleep by the light of a Red Chinese moon.

Unless through some miracle the plutocracy is deposed.

The article might better have been called “The Shifting Imbalance of Power”  now that oother powers are rising.  Maybe those that held the recent World Policy Conference will prove to be somewhat more realistic than the so-called “Great Powers” that have rumbled across the stage of history for the past 1000 years of more, playing their “great games” of slaughter, domination and denial till forced by their own decadence to cease and desist.
  Here’s hoping, but it’s going to take more knowledgle and compassion than we “Westerners” ever managed to incorporate into our way of doing business.

There is an unreported dimension to the Chinese success story. The brightest
students out of a population of 1.4 billion have flowed into their high tech
workforce, they have assembled the greatest concentration of brain power in world
history. A Chinese workforce of 200 million nerds has demanded the right to
become masters of a new world order, but the mentally challenged, confused, and
disenfranchised will not go down in defeat, the final battle will be between brawn
and brainpower.

Morristhewise
I agree with your thoughts, but lets examine why. Our financial experts and economists decided that the way to make money was by having all the manufacturing done cheaply in the third world and the marketing and sales in the first. They assumed the following: that the West would always be the main source of innovation, that it would lead to opening of new markets for those overseas workers. And finally if it all didnt work out the military and economic might of the US could be brought to bear to change the rules. What was not considered was that the only real value lay in the manufacturing, that the know how could be developed by the overseas partner. The lessons of the Car Industry were not learned. It was the US during the Korean War that it was decided Army Jeeps should be assembled in Japan. That directly led to the development and growth of the Japanese car industry. The wrong lesson was learned in the 1980s, when the Reagan administration pressured Japan to put factories in the West, the Japanesed buckled. They located factories here and in the UK. The Chinese are a very different proposition, they do not need or want US ‘protection”,as the Japanese do need, nor did they anticipate what the worldwide web would do for sharing information and the accompanying acceleration of innovation, clearly the country with the manufacturing would benefit most, because it now held the card. This is already happening in solar panels. There is no way to ‘save” America in the next decade, over 51% of our Graduate students are from overseas, from India and China mostly, who are our competition in addition we have created a culture whereby, bankers, real estate agents, sports stars, celebrities are what the young are being told to aspire to. Some years ago I was doing a story about a minister who was also a violent crimes division cop, I traveled all day with him. At the end of the day he said to me, all this work goes down the drain, the minute the pimp with the tailored clothes, hot babe on his arm and nice set of wheels steps out.
We are screwed.

With the creation of the worlds fastest computer China no longer will be thought
of as the land of cheap labor, but also as a land inhabited by the worlds fastest
thinkers. Research and development was once monopolized by the US and it was
the leader in the race for new products, but a yellow horse has now taken the
lead. Unless the US regains its once creative workforce, it will finish out of the
money.

Moonraven has it right; as the Old Testament prophet Hosea said of ancient Israel, “They have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind” (Hosea 8:7).

Gerard
In case you missed it the new Corruption Perception Index came out a few days ago, the US and israel didn’t make even the top 20
http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2010/results

Gerard
What is often forgotten is that population growth worldwide is due mainly to better health care. Big families were the norm worldwide, but now people are living longer. Paradoxically, by improving healthcare, people live longer and in the developing world more children survive childbirth. The most effective, but immoral way, to reduce population in the developed and developing world would be to reduce health programs. No-one is suggesting we should do that, but they should question the vast resources keeping people alive, when their natural lifespan is over. This is especially true in the US because most of our healthcare dollars go to keeping those on death’s door alive

Gerard
I appreciate you picking up on my sarcasm, the statistic that has always stuck with me was one from the 1990’s the Rio Population Convention, Al Gore was
pushing his environmental agenda; the entire population of Ethopia uses less resources than 250,000 Japanese. The problem in under developed countries is one faced in Europe at the turn of the 20th Century, poor women have children because they
want to be taken care of when sick and old. I have been reflecting a lot on Haiti recently, having met a nurse who was over there. She said when you cross over to the Dominician Republic it is like going to
wealthy country, because Haiti is so poor. Given that they live on an island with the same climate and resources and history, it comes down to cultural, social issues, the cultural mentality is what has to change. That’s my concern with Africa, no matter where you go in the world outside Africa, Blacks are at the bottom. It cannot all be put on the shoulders of slavery, though it has had a detrimental effect. When one looks at how Zimbabwe has descended from being a wealthy country into poverty, and in South Africa they have stopped turning farms over to blacks, because the crop yields are so low and they have gone from a food exporter to an importer. I cannot see how the issues will be solved in my lifetime

Pretty pathetic comments, folks.

I see nothing sad whatsoever about the collapse of the US, a rogue state founded on genocide and slavery.

In fact, it’s overdue.

omygodnotagain:  Does anybody know where to find the study done some years ago that proved that populations automatically decrease when minimum necessary food,clothing and shelter are available; and that prolific breeding is largely due to extreme poverty where many children are thought necessary in order to provide the family with more beggars after the prevalent high death rate has taken its toll?
  I’m not suggesting that it’s a good idea to depend only on this change (though birth control education would help). But I’m interested in taking the prejudice out of statements like:  “The real issue today is how do we neuter all these chronically backward and poor people who reproduce babies at an insane rate?”
  Lots of people won’t get the sarcasm! They’ll take the statement at face value and set out on a “neutering of them all” campaign on the premise that it’s “for their own good” etc. etc. Never underestimate the power of hysteria and ignorance.
  It is also worth repeating that, although the US birthrate is comparatively low, we drain far more of the world’s resources and pollute the world far more than impoverished countries—unless our corporations have moved in on them.

After begging my dear friend to invest his profits back into the US economy he
turned a deaf ear to my pleading. 15 million dollars was invested in a Beijing
construction company employing 5 thousand Chinese workers. In a recent letter he
claims to have doubled his investment and shows no guilt for his lack of
patriotism. I told him never to write again and hope he becomes bankrupt and
spends the rest of his life receiving Chinese water torture.

SarcastiCanuck
I really enjoyed your post, there are too many people and lots of them lead dead-end lives, in backward countries. I know this is shocking but they are taking up room, where a more industrious Asian could be. The real issue today is how do we neuter all these chronically backward and poor people who reproduce babies at an insane rate

Well make up your mind.  Which is it?  1648 or the beginning of the 19th century.  because there’s a lot of difference between an “epoch” of 400 years and one of 200.  200 years is not much of an epoch.  More of a “blip”.

Was Europe really ahead of China in 1648?

Ur all finally seeing the writing on the wall.
witnessing america unravel is sad but a fact.
the EU will soon become the ‘United States Of Europe’ & dominate all nations!

Y’know, it’s going to be almost amusing in the future to see a Repub in the White House trying to act on the world stage as if nothing has changed and this country is still as “strong” as it ever was. Imagine his/her frustration!

Get over it, I say; this country’s “day in the sun” is about over, and trying to act as if it’s not will only make things worse.

“The Cold War proved to be a fluke, taken seriously because of the existence of nuclear weapons and the modern addiction to ideological violence, and finished in 45 years. It was a trivial historical event.”

Maybe a fluke, nonetheless, we now look upon it as a halcyon era where technology established a foothold which lead to the communications era in which we today find that geographical boundaries less significant. To belittle the era as “trivial” is to ignore the comcommitant advances in space, viz. satellites which made plain and irrevocable our ontological perception of planet Earth.