Oh come on now, things are not THAT bad. On a vertical scale with Haiti at the bottom and Switzerland at the top the U.S. is probably still somewhere in the upper half.
I think globalization and internet will neutralize the American advantage. USA will be inhabited with people living on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_income
Never was. "Empire" is a term US haters like to use when they refer to our poking our sanctimonious noses into the affairs of others. (We have military bases around the world... something like 195 of them, but that's not the same as colony-like control or governance.) Frankly, I wish we'd stop. Let the world fight their own battles, as any impact we have is both expensive to us and temporary.
When 40% of your tax payers are paid from taxes collected from the other 60% the writings on the wall. Traditional geographic borders.. countries, states, counties, cities have been obliterated by advances technology. Our financial system, taxes, budgets have relied primarily on local transactions. The feds insure interstate commerce... Internet sales tax loopholes dilute the local tax income but keeps the money circulating in the US... Overseas commerce.. We have transferred jobs, tax income, money and our future. Our system was never designed for individuals to freely transfer money outside of our vacuum. Once the money is outside all cyclical compounding benefits are lost.
"Internet sales tax loopholes". all income belongs to the gov't. any transaction not taxed is a loophole, then as a serf u get a few pennies.that is the mentality of obama and the democratic congress. " Our system was never designed for individuals to freely transfer money outside of our vacuum. Once the money is outside all cyclical compounding benefits are lost. " let the government determine the worth of the currency. close the gates. protect american industry. are you for capital controls? sounds like communist russia. congratulation
Don't we have to be? American workers, especially those in unions, want (and believe they are entitled to) $25-$30/hour minimum for their labor. Our foreign competition earns only about $1/hour. How do we make American labor competitive? (The answer to this question is the MAJOR cause of persistent high unemployment in the US today... something which has managed to escape the understanding of current politicos.)
the swiss, the germans, the chileans, hong kong doesn't, the japanese don't but the americans do need them. why is that?
My observations are from a historic monetary infrastructure perspective. Just go back 25 years to 1985... before the explosion of catalog / mail order / phone orders. Most money was made and spent locally. Traditional brick and mortar supply chains. Very easy to project for government budget purposes. Intrastate commerce picked up and a loss of local sales tax was experienced. Reciprocity laws were enacted to attempt to capture taxes and states criminalized certain high tax intrastate transactions (NY - cigarettes) New types of private currency offerings were devised: gift cards, pre-paid debit cards, stored value cards... essentially electronic currency equivalents. In 2000 the Commodity Modernization Act was passed by Congress retail forex accounts became attainable and started mushrooming around 2005. Euro launched currency and coins in 2002. Think back to pre euro / pre retail forex. traveling europe you end up with a plethora of coins and currencies with geographic borders controlling access and localizing transactions. Each govt had some independent control over its money supply. As a result of technology, consolidation and retail access every one is tied together cross borders now and trying to find equilibrium.. US, JPY are getting averaged down and India and others are being brought up.