The US Empire is Collapsing

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The elites are feeling woozy.
Their boat is rocking.

TIP.
IT.
OVER.

Expanding and dominating, not collapsing.

"U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday approved a $68 billion increase in military spending next year"
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa- ... SKBN1AC38K

That increase alone .. is more than every country on the planet spends on their military budget, except China and Russia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_c ... penditures

America is in decline, but not because we don't spend enough on the military. It's in decline because of the widening gulf between the rich and poor, the stagnation or even loss of wages, the loss of a manufacturing base, a crumbling infrastructure, a bad educational system, and the rejection of intellectualism by a large segment of the population, etc. Let's give those other things money, or at least attention, in order to offset America's decline.

That's a lot of noise that people don't care about.

Money talks.

In America, you might be "poor" if you only have 2-4 million dollars in wealth, because there's so many rich people.

However, compare that to other nations.

Those people have a much harder time acquiring wealth.

This chart shows that Amercian household wealth per the CPI is rising not declining ... so Americans are getting richer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_in ... ominal.png

Ask the average American if he or she is getting richer - you can even show that data - and you'll still be told it isn't true.

Yeah ... Americans are getting richer ... and yet they still live with a terrible health care system.

Sure, nearly everyone feels poor.

Ordinary middle class baby boomer American has a ...

-500k home
-4 million dollar pension
-250k in investments
-250k in assets
-200k in their 401k ....

And despite that 5+ million in assets ... feels poor.

The truth is that these people are mega-rich.

That's because the chart shown only shows half the story, the economic growth shown in the chart as a sum of all the country doesn't show what's happened locally. While the numbers have went up, those + numbers buoying the overall positive increase have happened almost exclusively in metropolitan areas over the last 40 years, and furthermore mostly in areas that do a lot of international trade, i.e. coastal cities. Rural America, and the interior for the most part have actually suffered. Politically speaking, guess what effect that had last election?

Also, the wikipedia article the chart was pulled from mentions another sticking point:


That aspect is a sore point for even those that have seen moderate gains, because they haven't necessarily seen the same prosperity their companies have seen in that period, merely a few scraps have been tossed from the table for their labor or success at their jobs. And this is a real problem, because money IS power, your purchasing power, your lobbying power (if you have enough money), your power to make your own choices (no money = few choices). We berate the middle east countries for their totalitarian regimes which foster such things as violence and terrorism, yet we're on a path that leads to the same kind of consolidated power and will eventually lead to those same problems.

Sure, people with all that are rich. But that doesn't include me, or almost anyone I know.

George Friedman of Stratfor and geopolitical futures disagrees and argues, the american empire is just in its beginnings.
Yes, it has internal struggles, and it hasn't been successful lately in absird attempts to create outposts in the middle east, but, he says, it's a young empire, and it doesn't really want to be one.
But the US is the country in control of the major oceans which seperate it from potential enemies and can project its power wherever it wants on the planet.
It has no rivals.

Regarding the wealth divide, and this us my sarcastic comment: the British ruled the world with an incredibly impoverished working class... The greeks and romans had slaves...
Inequality is not what "empire" is measured in.
Trump's election is only of advantage for the "vile masters of mankind", .... So....

Yes, that is true; empires of the past had had vast social and economic inequality. But we Americans at least like to imagine that we are something different. We see ourselves as the shining beacon of equality. I personally think, in order to be Americans, we must live up to our own self perception, otherwise we risk becoming something most of us consider abhorrent.

It seems to me like the ebb and fall of every leading country is pretty much determined. The fantasy starts up at some given point in a given country of infinite expanse in economic growth and world influence, to an extent that country earns it and puts the hard work in but toward the top of the curve you hit decadence, you get leadership who can't handle the complexity of the issues or whose to detached to handle things wisely, and the result is the decline and fall of that country.

I think it gets echoed very clearly watching the rise and fall of corporations. I remember in my temp engagements over the past several years seeing timeline placards on the lobby wall which showed them starting their business between 1880 and 1920, being a small mom-and-pop shop, having slow, steady, and responsible growth up through the 1970's and early 80's, starting to buy up other companies a little in the late 90's and early 2000's, then really ramping up the buying spree, and about the time that they go from a c-corp to a holding company you know it'll typically be less than a decade before they wipe out and venture capital companies are cleaning up the mess. Thankfully I don't think countries wipe out as fast or hard as countries but I think the rise toward decadence and decadence itself have a lot to do with bizarre turns in human motivational chemistry and how we socially manage one another.

Also the 'too big to fail' thing is really ironic, if anything gets too big it gets too detached and can't govern itself properly. It amazes me that we can actually run a democracy of 300 million plus and not have it fractured into civil war or just be something more like a loose federation of countries. Trying to make that work is an insanely difficult task.

So what we get a bunch of guns and equipment for the military while things like the infrastructure, environment and social safety net get neglected?

Well baby boomers a lot of times seem to have a pretty entitled attitude. In the meantime younger millenials have none of those things and are likely renting a place with room-mates, still living at home, or couples can go in on an apartment after some hardcore budgeting and saving up a bit. No one I know has 5+ million dollars in assets...no one I know even has assets to begin with.

The people you describe are mega rich, if they see themselves as poor perhaps this is part of the problem...what do they need 100 million to be happy? And what because some rich baby boomers see themselves as poor it means there aren't actual problems with poverty in the U.S?

Whys the Soviet Union on that graph? It dissolved in 1991

Yes.

Also, transgender soldiers cost too much, so they have to be kicked out.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/26/us/p ... itary.html