Is America in decline?

Just as writers of potboilers repeat the same theme with variations from book to book, so Americans seem to have had a common doomsday theme for generations that America is in decline, and the next century (whatever that century is) will belong to someone else. It has been a reliable moneymaking theme for book after book and speaker after speaker for generations now. In my lifetime it was the Germans under Hitler who were going to surpass us, then it was the communist world, then it was Japan, then it was the EU, and now it is China who is supposedly poised to surpass us.

Balderdash! Like so much in the popular press and popular imagination these days, it is an idea completely unsupported by the evidence.

Consider:

The US, with 5% of the world’s population, accounts for about a quarter of the world’s total economic output.

The US, bounded by oceans it controls on two sides, and by friendly non-threatening neighbors on the other two sides, is one of the few nations in the world not much worried about land conquest.

The US navy, even in its current reduced state, completely dominates both the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans, the major trade routes of the world. The nation that controls the seas controls the world’s economy.

The US is far and away the world’s leading innovator, which is why nations from France to Russia and China spend so much effort trying to steal our technology.

The US dominates space, which means we have superb coverage of what is happening anywhere in the world.. We currently have 568 US satellites in orbit, to China’s 177 and Russia’s 133.

Even with their problems, US universities are among the leading in the world.

The US dollar is the world’s reserve currency. Even the Russian mafia stores its ill-gotten gains in dollars rather than rubles – it is safer.

All the other major nations of the world are currently in crisis. China has moved to a dictator in order to prepare to deal with the growing internal tensions between the rich minority on the coast and the impoverished majority inland. Russia struggles with an export economy the size of Italy and in deep trouble. Europe is fragmenting as the EU comes apart. Latin America continues its centuries-long struggle to develop effective governments. And most of these nations are in the process of depopulating themselves over the next half century, which will bring enormous social and economic pressures and strife.

Americans (lead by the media, who need to make everything into a sensation) think they are in crisis, but in fact are not.

That’s not to say the US doesn’t have issues. It does. Our political system is highly dysfunctional. Our national debt is getting out of hand. We have developed a winner-take-all economy that is producing growing income inequality. These are real issues, but not nearly as serious as the current issues faced by the EU, Russia and China.

So next time you read some Cassandra predicting the decline of the US, take it with a grain of salt.