Are America's best days behind us?

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2056610-1,00.html

by flavio87 • 15 years ago

28 14 15 years ago

If you haven't read Zakaria's "The Post-American World", I highly recommend it.

I agree with his assessment that the landscape is changing rapidly and profoundly, although I don't know if the resultant loss of economic and political weight means that we can't still have our best days ahead of us.

All that's necessary, I think, is the political will to move forward in the right direction. I would argue that large infrastructure projects in telecommunication and energy, and shifting education goals towards an information economy and away from it's Taylorist origins are most important to be able to compete in the future.

Although even with that, we will probably never have the kind of political dominance we've had in the past. I don't think I've ever had a problem with that.

adam• 15 years ago

Your "All that's necessary..." is a big "all." Looking at the political class today on both sides of the aisle, I'm afraid they just aren't capable of taking any sort of necessary actions Zakaria prescribed. In addition, a President who many saw as a savior who would transcend all of the pettiness has proven no better or influential than any other person who could have won.

michaelchisari3• 15 years ago

I understand the cynicism, and in a lot of ways, I share it. And I'm not naive, I think that movements should be built to pressure politicians to move in those directions.

I don't think they will make those big decisions on their own. I think the biggest issue with Obama is that he was a centrist who was elected by a mobilization of progressives who thought their job was done on January 21st, 2009.

I do see things building to push that kind of grassroots pressure, though.

kiba• 15 years ago

These are matter of regulatory issues, not spending. For example, it is difficult to build nuclear power plants in this country. There is a serious lack of competition in the telcom market probably because of regulations favoring big corporations. On the other hand, it seem that we're seeing competition between wireless operators.

Our education system also suffer from poor incentives. Teachers have little incentives to teach better, and tests are inadequate. Political forces are disallowing us to make the proper changes to the institution so it will be quite difficult to shift toward the information economy.

michaelchisari3• 15 years ago

I would say it's an issue of both regulation, and proper allocation of funding. Along with a series of other concerns.

smhinsey• 15 years ago

I think until we can get beyond this situation where any sort of modification to the status quo suggested by one side is viewed as an assault on the fundamental way of life by the other, we're in trouble. Right now American politics is essentially a battle of marketing teams, not of ideas, and this is strangling our ability to move forward and to compete.

I mean right now we have people arguing against large infrastructure projects on the basis that they are socialism, or some other vague but evil -ism.

mnemonicsloth• 15 years ago

Here's a rubric for evaluating stories like this. First, think back to news stories from 2007. Everybody's house is going to keep going up in value forever. Wall Street is an obvious place to go if you're smart and ambitious and want an easy way to make a lot of money. Is America ready for a black president?

However wrong-headed that seems now, however enormous a failure of imagination or refusal to pay attention to what's actually going on in the world, that's how stupid this article will look after whatever big thing happens next starts happening.

None of which is to say that the world isn't changing. But Time is a business that sells magazines, and a very effective way to do that is to spin anxieties common among its audience into a narrative and then feed that narrative back to them in an authoritative way.

michaelcampbell• 15 years ago

> First, think back to news stories from 2007. Everybody's house is going to keep going up in value forever. Wall Street is an obvious place to go if you're smart and ambitious and want an easy way to make a lot of money.

Maybe I'm old, but I remember none of these stories. I understand your point here (and there are a group of successful traders whose main "technical indicator" is headlines from a certain set of periodicals; they trade against whatever the consensus is), but I'm sensing the gathering of reeds for the strawman construction just a wee bit... =)

tokenadult2• 15 years ago

The best point made in the article is that the danger to the United States comes from its track record of success:

"Mancur Olson . . . was prompted by what he thought was a strange paradox after World War II. Britain, having won the war, slipped into deep stagnation, while Germany, the loser, grew powerfully year after year. . . .

"Olson concluded that, paradoxically, it was success that hurt Britain, while failure helped Germany. British society grew comfortable, complacent and rigid, and its economic and political arrangements became ever more elaborate and costly, focused on distribution rather than growth. . . . The system became sclerotic, and over time, the economic engine of the world turned creaky and sluggish.

"Germany, by contrast, was almost entirely destroyed by World War II. That gave it a chance not just to rebuild its physical infrastructure but also to revise its antiquated arrangements and institutions . . . with a more modern frame of mind."

On the other hand, Britain is arguably not very far behind Germany even today, as Britain later had opportunities to learn from failure. Definitely a country that learns to embrace learning from failure (even the relative failure of not always being the best, while still being quite good by world standards) is a country that can keep making progress. I'm not counting out the United States yet as a country that can learn to do better, especially because the United States is still very receptive to immigrants from all over the world who feel an urgency about bettering their lives.

humblest_ever2• 15 years ago

> especially because the United States is still very receptive to immigrants from all over the world who feel an urgency about bettering their lives.

But unfortunately increasingly less so from the poorer countries. As if clever only comes from Western Europe and Canada.

tokenadult2• 15 years ago

But unfortunately increasingly less so from the poorer countries.

What is the evidence for this? The United States has had high rates of legally approved immigration since 1964, second only to the turn of the nineteenth to twentieth centuries in rate of immigration as a percentage of already arrived population.

vacri• 15 years ago

Germany also has an incredible work ethic. Not only did they bounce back after WWII, they also did after WWI. At the conclusion of WWI, the allies effectively stripped Germany of it's factory infrastructure and imposed crippling repayments. Within 20 years Germany had again massed a military machine that took over Europe - overpowering their former opponents - and came close to taking Russia.

They've always valued quality and hard work, and it pays off for them. Right now they're the ones dragging the EU along by the ear.

Another factor is that much of the UK's economy was based on income from foreign lands, particularly India. Once that was gone (India achieved independence post WWII) a decline was inevitable.

Perhaps the secret sauce is having the guts to admit that significant changes need to be made and then act on them. Since the GFC, all the US administration has done is try to preserve "business as usual". There's been no real "stuff is really harsh, we need to take some serious measures here". I guess that covers that stagnation angle...

espeed• 15 years ago

That was the question posed by Jim Collins when he spoke at West Point to a group of 36 people-- 12 U.S. Army generals, 12 "Fortune" 500 CEO types and 12 leaders from the social sectors.

Specifically, he asked them, "Where’s America? Is America at an inflection point? And if so, which way? Because great nations -- Athens, 500 BCE, Rome, Egyptian Old Kingdom, Egyptian New Kingdom, Minoans of Crete have fallen."

This question was the inspiration for his fascinating book, "How the Mighty Fall" -- you can watch his interview with Charlie Rose on this here: http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/10565

He said his research team found 5 stages of decline that were common among all the great enterprises that fell. He said the first stage is hubris, but you can go through the first 4 stages and still recover before reaching the fifth and final stage, which is capitulation or death.

Are America's best days behind us?

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