Okay, okay, maybe I'm being a little over-dramatic here. I'm not saying the USA will actually collapse , but it will stop being the world's dominant force. I won't go into all the details because I could write pages on the topic, so I just want to ask everyone to give an estimate of when the USA will stop being the world's dominant force.

I'd say it will start losing power quickly in about 20 years, and lose quite a lot of it in another 20.

What do you mean 'start losing power'. In most places it lost power, and respect.

I think it lost more respect than power. It is still, however, an incredibly powerful country.

Speaking as someone who actually lives in the US, Althalus is right: it already has started losing power. It starts from within and right now the country is divided on a lot of very important, very volatile issues. Whether the trend will continue is hard to say.

*Dons flak jacket in preparation for the staunch American response to this thread*

personally, I think it might just collapse...or go into an even more extreme downturn than it is right now, and I don't think it's that far off either...

I don't know if who could give an estimate of when, but if we know how and why it'll lose it's power I'm sure it'll give us a better idea of how soon it'll happen. Also, it helps to be an American to know all this, although living on the outside of the States seems to highlight mostly all of America's defects.

Another good question would be "Who is going to be the next nation to become "#1"?".

CANADA!

*sigh* That was my moment.

-Glandith

I was thinking more of places such as Brazil or Japan...I wish we'd be next to Glandith...well, not really, it would change our people complety. Although I find it a shame that we're more than likely to go down with the U.S., after all, when they get a cold, we caugh! Metaphorically speaking of course...then again, a lot of their pollution drifts up north into our lungs...

Hehe glandith, as long as we dont become a nuclear power if that happens.

When will the USA collapse? I think it's already begun. Once enough of the country's population stands up against the warhawks and politicians who are making it the world's dominant force.

Maybe in 20 years, when the global pollution levels are at a point where they can't be ignored by even the most stubborn republican. Where oil and gas will be nearly "pollitically incorrect" sources of energy. And when mainstream media won't be able to "bend truths" and other minor forms of brainwashing anymore.

/me vents some more

I think it's slowly starting already, yeah.

Although I don't think the US will lose it's dominant place in the world for at least 100 years it could do things to reverse this trend. Right now though the division between conservates and liberals is too great the divide must be breached or the country will be incapacitated by internal disputes. It doesn't even matter which side of the cultural divide can become dominant this country just needs something to get it to act unilaterally. Being dependent on foriegn natural resources and foriegn manufatring for our own companies will make us impotent when dealing with the rising powers like China because we couldn't deal with them economically or militarily without crippling ourselves. And although Europe is becoming very independent of the US it's following the same trend of outsourcing manufacturing which will make it just as vernerable as the US because the economies are so intertwined.

Remeber JFK's saying, foreign policy can only hurt us domestic policy can kill us.

Wouldn't be nice if no one became the next superpower? Maybe then we could start spreading the wealth and power that has previously been pooled up. It probably wouldn't happen that way, but it's a thought.

But then everybody would be a Commie pinko and we all know that Communism is inherantly evil.

Luna - who is being facetious.

That's a good one! (write down in my "political jokes" journal)

Oh, the inherent evil of equality, of job availability, of national progress mentality. Oh, the humanity...

If America could ever embrace communism, it's downfall would be avoided, at least for another age. China seems to be doing quite well...

There is no 'embrace' of communism. One of the tenants of communism is that it comes about through voilent revolution. I think you might mean 'socialism'...
Which is something that will never happen in a quasi-democratic right-wing republic such as our own.

A lot of people, including former President Bill Clinton, are predicting the fall of the US from superpower status by the year 2030. There are several approaching fronts on which the US will lose power to other countries, and most of them fall under the header of economic ruin at either our own hands, or the hands of economic competitors.

As far as pure economics go, there are no indications so far of how our 'downfall' will come, but 2030 is roughly around the time that China will have outpaced the US, economically.

China has a growing work force and no democratic reform or labor rights. This means that they can practice unmitigated laissez faire. While laissez faire led to revolutions and reforms in labor practices throughout the Western world, that is not going to be the case in the East.

There are different values put on individuality in China than there are in the West. Unfortunately in the modern sphere, this becomes less about self-sacrifice for the greater good, and more about the Chinese government and encroaching American corporations sacrificing labor and health standards for their personal gain.

This is the best case scenario for the US losing power. If China's economy gently eclipses our own, we should count it as a blessing. There are several other dangerous economic paths that we as a country are winding down...

Be aware that the following scenarios are pure speculation on the part of leading economists, environmentalists, and other members of the scientific field. They relate directly to current trends and represent an albedo-effect runaway economic climate. If the system doesn't self correct, then the things described forthwith may be entirely likely scenarios.

The Economy-Cannibalizing Service Sector
America today is becoming an economy ever reliant on the quick-and-easy solution for the upper one percent to get rich quick: the service sector.

Service jobs are quick and easy to set up since everyone is a direct consumer. Local economies can't compete with the local monopoly instituted by places like Walmart and other direct-to-consumer companies.

The companies that take advantage of the service sector don't offer health plans to their workers, don't deal with unions, and don't usually promote employees to upper levels of management since employees tend to come and go in the harsh and unforgiving work environment of the service sector. This has proved to be very successful and streamlined for generating corporate profits. Walmart for example has a 'gross national product' that outpaces Austria, the Netherlands, Spain, and other small Western nations. Mom and Pop stores that used to get business instead get financially plowed under by the encroaching uber-economies, and Mom and Pop end up working at Walmart themselves. But what relevance does this have to the fall of the US economy? Lots.

With an economy based in the service sector there is no production. 50 years ago most jobs in this country used to rely on procution of raw goods: everything from steel to cars to clothing to jet engines. All of these production jobs have now been shipped overseas, ruining towns and local economies and forcing former steel workers, jet engine mechanics, and textile workers to work in service sector jobs in order to keep a roof over their heads.

The problem with this set up is that there is a ceiling to service sector expansion. If the economy becomes entirely service oriented, then no one will be able to afford the goods of service. At this point the bottom will have dropped out on the middle class, and we will be forced back into a state of corporate feifdom where the bossman eats before the worker producing goods.

This means that investors can run off with all the fucking money once the system tanks, but it also leaves the teaming masses in a state of political and social unrest. This sort of economic porkbarreling would be one of the possible ends of our reign over world politics: once we've shipped out our entire economy and nothing is left except for a few Walmarts dotting the landscape, then every other country will step in to replace our cannibalizing free-market 'logic'.


Environmental Futurist Arguement and Resource Consumption
There is another factor that would literally gut the US, and its something we've already seen the affects of: when we imperialistically exploit another nation's resources, we make enemies out of the peoples of those nations. The peoples of those nations then crash planes in our economic edifices.
Consider this: the United States makes up about 8% of the world's total population. In return, we consume 25% of the world's natural resources. Not only that, but we have almost the sole monopoly on food and plant-based economic production throughout the world. We have the land space, we have the technology, and we have the varied environments nescessary for growing everything from bananas to cotton to pine trees to wheat.

We have so much food infact that instead of sharing the excess with the Third World, a venture that could easily end famine hunger in the economic bottom 25% of the world's population, we instead plow under half of our crops to keep the market value of food goods at a price where the major shareholders in companies like Monsanto and ADM can still profit off of it. We can see how this works by virtue of the fact that we institute economic sanctions on 'disobediant' nations and force them into starvation.

The rest of the world knows this and sees this and, right or wrong, see it as a direct affront to their humanity. After all when the NYSE stock of ADM goes up a 1/4 of a point, the amount of money that the 1/4 point represents enough grain to feed an entire African village for a year. Instead, all of that wheat is plowed under and turned into a stock point gain that in this country equals the price of a new Mercedes E-Class as a birthday present for the son of a junior stock holder.

The emphasis we put on how valueless human life is to the US leads people in Third World countries to think that we are indeed the Great Satan, and that we deserve to be brought to our knees and share our resources. Because when it comes down to it, we don't share our resources. We sell them to the highest bidder, usually to the industrialised nations that can afford the output of our goods. What sharing we actually do is restricted to the 1% of the federal budget allotted to the United States Agency for International Development. Comparatively, other industrialised nations contribute 10% of their budget, absolute minimum, to developing countries.

The major population growth takes place in areas that are already strapped economically (Southern China, Bangladesh, Kenya, India, Ethoipia, Thailand, etc) and the spreading out of economic wealth, according to the Ricardo theory of economics, will only lead to everyone getting a subsequently smaller piece of the economic pie with each generation.

This leads, inevitably, to global revolution. In this scenario, it wouldn't be long until the world starts knocking on our door demanding their resources and local wealth back.

The environment may also play a factor, leading to a hasty demise for our economy and the welfare of our contry. The Atlantic Gulf Stream being slowed or stopped by warmer currents near the poles as the ice caps slough off glaciers the size of Manhattan means that the US would find itself becoming drier, dustier, and having violent extremes of temperature in the summer and winter.

This would lead to a sudden and immediate food shortage in the US, and a halt on all exports worldwide as we try to grow enough food to survive as a country. The prices of goods would skyrocket and only the remaining middle class and the rich could afford to eat 3 meals a day. Fresh fruits and veggies would become impossible to find. The poor in this country would raid farmland for growing food, while the malnourished in every other country would do everything in their power to get into the US and eat everything that we are denying them.



Both of these conclusions could be avoided if the US emerged gently into its role as a power sharing nation. Blending and fading is the only way to take direct focus off of the economic 'might makes right' motto of the US, and instead would force us to foster economic growth in countries that would view us as friends rather than foes.






~blood rose~

"When we stand at the top of the Abyss,
Where can we go but down?"
Prophet VI