50 years from now, is the US still #1?

[SkinsHokieFan]

And even though this many sound like tin foil - it's pretty much true that "aliens" aka fallen angels came here in the 50's and made a secret pact with the government to give them technology, in exchange for letting these "aliens" abduct humans for experimentation without harming them.(and supposedly they're working secretly miles underground)

[twa]

Well he did add a disclaimer, I keep rereading it to see what I'm missing:rubeyes:

How can that be 'pretty much' true?

Is there really that much room for variation of fact or nuance?

I obviously need more coffee or bourbon....or both :confused:

[Thanos]

1. One area that concerns me is the US almost total abandonment of space. If China, Japan and maybe India leapfrogs ahead of us that could be telling.

2. What makes the American military unique is strategic lift. We can move armies anywhere on the planet.No other nation can do it with the speed that we can.

3. America in 2060 will be a different place. What , I can't predict. Same as talking with elders who were children in DC , sixty years ago. Heck I thought as a kid in the 70's we would be in orbital cities by 2001..

[Spanky22]

I voted 'no' but I really needed a more complicated answer.

Economically, no I dont think we will still be #1 in 50 years. With the complete devastation of the manufacturing sector in this country, our economy wont continue to grow as it has. We cant be an economy fully made of service and management jobs and stay on top. China will move ahead of us in the next 50 years as they go through the same booming development that our country went through in the post WWII period. On the other hand, I dont think that our economy is going to go straight through the floor either. We will still be ok here for a long while, but we wont be #1.

Militarily, we probably will still be #1, but with others gaining on it. We spend a large portion of our budget on having the best and biggest military in the world and I dont see that changing any time soon.

[PleaseBlitz]

Im not buying the immigration argument against China. Sure people arent immigrating to China, but they have a larger supply of uneducated cheap labor from their hinterlands than the US has from Mexico/Central/South America. And sure, many Chinese students come to the US for grad school, but many of them return to China afterwards, plus the fact that while America CLEARLY has the best schools now, China is investing a massive amount of capital into education, specifically universities that teach science and engineering.

The US right now is the destination of choice because we are an open society, but most importantly because of the economy and because of the fact that our 'poor' have a standard of living that shames other countries. Can the US sustain all of this? I don't think so. Our current budget is unsustainable. Paying for retirement and healthcare for the baby boomers is going to put us in too much debt to invest in much else. But no politician is going to change it because they cant piss of the baby boomers and keep their job.

[War Paint]

Or maybe in 50 years nobody will be #1. Perhaps the New World Order will be established by then.

[Larry]

1. One area that concerns me is the US almost total abandonment of space. If China, Japan and maybe India leapfrogs ahead of us that could be telling.

2. What makes the American military unique is strategic lift. We can move armies anywhere on the planet.No other nation can do it with the speed that we can.

3. America in 2060 will be a different place. What , I can't predict. Same as talking with elders who were children in DC , sixty years ago. Heck I thought as a kid in the 70's we would be in orbital cities by 2001..

I have to admit that I put a big emphasis on our space program. Probably a disproportionate emphasis on it.

But yeah. I look at the US in the 50s and 60s, and I see a nation actually doing things which only one other nation on Earth was able to even attempt. I see the UN passing "international laws" which are specifically designed to prevent the US from owning the Solar System. (And I see the US actually agreeing to these things.) I see the world firmly convinced that if they don't do something, quickly, the US will own the Moon, and space.

And then I look now, and I see China and India making plans to go and claim water on the moon, something which might very well turn out, 50 years from now, to be more valuable to the economy of space than the Persian Gulf is to today's economies.

And I see the US literally shutting down their attempts to get back to what we already had, 40 years ago.

[PeterMP]

How so?

There was this thing called the baby boom in the US in the 40's and 50's. Most of whom would have been very young in the 1950's.

Lot's of really productive years ahead of them.

About 12% of the Chinese population is over 60, and nearly half the population is fully productive (over 30).

In the United States in 1950, the number was less than 8%, and more than half of the population had not reached a productive age (under 30).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate#Fertility_Rates

United States fertility rates:

Period U.S. Total

Fertility

Rate[6]

1930-34 2.1

1935-39 2.0

1940-44 2.5

1945-49 3.0

1950-54 3.3

1955-59 3.7

1960-64 3.4

1965-69 2.6

1970-74 2.1

1975-79 1.8

http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=sp_dyn_tfrt_in&idim=country:CHN&dl=en&hl=en&q=China+fertility+rate#met=sp_dyn_tfrt_in&idim=country:CHN:USA

Chinese fertililty rates have been below 3 since the late 1970's and are currently LOWER than ours.

And it isn't like the Chinese are likely to have or allow a large influx of immigrants.

[PeterMP]

Our current budget is unsustainable. Paying for retirement and healthcare for the baby boomers is going to put us in too much debt to invest in much else. But no politician is going to change it because they cant piss of the baby boomers and keep their job.

The problem is that China essentially has the same problem. Its offset by about 20 years, but it is still there.

And they aren't going to have (or even likely allow) the immigration we've had to offset the issue.

[Ax]

Just wondering, today at lunch.

Is the US still the #1 country in the world (by whatever standard you chose: Military? Economy? Science/Technology?)

Yes. Across the board.

Second question: Can you explain why you feel whichever way you do? Which forces, do you think will keep us on top / bring us down?

Because I refuse to believe the people will allow it to happen.

The forces that threaten to topple us, are the socialist style government controls currently under way by the Obama administration. They are more likely to make us more like everybody else, and not, unique in the world.

The forces that can prevent this from happening are,

a) Republicans retake House/Senate this fall

Stop all the programs in their tracks

c) Elect a President in 2012 who will sign the bill to resend them. Be he/her an R, a D, or an I.

The one event, which is more possible than some seem to want to believe, that would guarantee our #1 status, and in the end, solve a lot of the more pressing issues around the world, is WWIII.

Unfortunate, but true. IMO

Third question?

Covered above.

[PleaseBlitz]

PMP i see the opposite happening in regard to age demographics. The baby boomersmin the US have already started to retire, and almost allmwill in the next

15 years. All of our massively expensive entitlements were put in place when the ratio of workers to retirees was like 10 to 1. In 15 years it will be 2 or 3 to 1.

China doesnt have these massive entitlements to woory about, plus the scale of population is totally different. According to the cia factbook, 18% of China is younger than 14. 8.5 % is older than 65. 13% of americans are over 65 and this is going to get much higher.

I wont even get into socializing healthcare in the worlds fattest industrialized country.

[PleaseBlitz]

Sorry for my awful typing, im on my iphone.

[PeterMP]

China doesnt have these massive entitlements to woory about, plus the scale of population is totally different.

What sort of health care/retirement systems do you think China is running?

According to the cia factbook, 18% of China is younger than 14. 8.5 % is older than 65. 13% of americans are over 65 and this is going to get much higher.

I wont even get into socializing healthcare in the worlds fattest industrialized country.

As I said, the problem is off set by 10-20 years.

Over 20% of our population is under 14. We are doing better than the Chinese at that end of things (our fertililty rate has been higher than China's for the last decade +).

Look at the fertililty rates I posted before.

China had a fertility rate of almost 6 during the late 1960's. Even during the heart of the baby boom our fertility rate never even hit 4.

They had more deaths of young people in the late 60's and early 70's than we did during the baby boom, but they had a lot more kids born in the late 60's than we did even in the heart of the baby boom.

AND they're birth rate dropped a lot more rapidly.

[NavyDave]

Yes if we purge ourselves of liberalism, socialism cough the progressive agenda.

By then a good percentage of the Baby Boomers would have died off, but its not like the Grandkids of Generation Ipod won't be asking the same question "What have you done to the country?"

Will we have the majority of our manufacturing jobs 50 years from now based here?

Otherwise the open border policy allowing only the under educated and those most likely to expect federal assistance in exchange for a vote, policies that push social justice cough global fairness will remake us into current Europe.

[PeterMP]

Here:

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/HC21Ad01.html

"In 2000, people aged 60 or older composed 10% of the population and their numbers were growing by 3% a year. The demographic state of China that year fit nicely with the United Nations definition of an aging society - a country or a region where people aged 60 or older make up 10% of the overall population.

What is more, the numbers in China are rising fast. Chinese demographers predict that if current population trends persist, by 2035 people aged 65 and older will make up 20% of the population."

20% is higher than where we are now and higher than where we are projected to be in 2035.

And in the 1950's (your original claim) NOBODY was predicting that in 25 years 20% of our populatoin would be over 65.

[Hubbs]

Damn, zoony beat me to the Japan punch.

China right now is Japan in the late 70's. Yes, yes, of course there are differences. But they won't change the big picture. We've seen this movie before, and we know how it ends. First, the rapid expansion of efficient, cheap, simplistic production is so successful that the nation in question winds up over-investing in that production, developing significant overcapacity before enough troubling signs become apparent to the nation's leaders to cause some worry about future growth. There are then two fundamental choices - either accept the fact that this overcapacity exists and go through the slowdown that comes with shifting labor and capital to more complicated development, or start pulling economic strings to fudge over the problem of overcapacity. China, like Japan before it, is choosing the latter. Government policy combined with easier and easier credit allows the myth of perpetually rapid growth to persist much longer than it would otherwise. And because that myth persists, money continues to flow into the very investments that created overcapacity in the first place, building up even more overcapacity and prompting ever-grander efforts to make up for that overcapacity, lest diminishing returns dampen the enthusiasm of investors and put an end to the belief that GDP can expand at 8% forever. This self-reinforcing cycle is similar to a Ponzi scheme in that it will continue until the math becomes too difficult to overcome. If you start a scheme with $1 million from your Ponzi participants, you're fine if you can find $2 million in new money. That's fine as long as you can find $3 million after that. With every round, you make more, but you also need more to continue the scheme. With every year, China's economy will grow larger, but it will also need more juice to once again grow by 8% the next year. And one day, there simply won't be enough juice. Just ask Japan.

To be clear, "industrial overcapacity" doesn't mean that China has hit an overall production wall. It still has enormous manufacturing potential. But as every advanced economy learns, you can only industrialize once. China's problem lies in what so many of its cheap factories are producing. Even a nation of over 1.3 billion only needs so much concrete and so much steel. Even American consumers only buy so much cheap plastic. The skyscrapers that now tower over Shanghai and Hong Kong won't be built again. The train tracks that link Beijing to Macao won't be laid again. Maintaining infrastructure doesn't create nearly as much demand as creating it, and as more and more is created, the benefits become less and less potent. (Building 10 new highways is a much bigger deal when only 100 already exist than when 1,000 already exist.) Some estimates already put China at 30% overcapacity under current conditions.

In 1988, Japan's seemingly miraculous recipe for never-ending rapid growth meant that we'd all be using yen to buy the latest robots within 20 years. In 1989, the only fall bigger than the Berlin Wall's was the Nikkei stock index's. Japan still hasn't recovered. China is probably 10-15 years away from 1989. But the signs are already there. In fifty years, The People will probably be much less impressive than they seem right now.

[PeterMP]

Damn, zoony beat me to the Japan punch.

China is in better shape than Japan because they have more/better natural resources.

Japan is always going to have limited long term potential (unless they redo WWII and are successful).

[Hubbs]

China is in better shape than Japan because they have more/better natural resources.

Japan is always going to have limited long term potential (unless they redo WWII and are successful).

So do we. When was the last time we had consecutive years of 8% growth?

[88Comrade2000]

What makes you think we are the world's #1 country now?

You probably can rank China above us in most, if not all of those categories. (except human rights)

I would second that.

If we didn't have nukes; this country would have been invaded by now. We are a country on the downhill track.

[Hubbs]

I would second that.

If we didn't have nukes; this country would have been invaded by now. We are a country on the downhill track.

Do explain.

:munchout:

[PeterMP]

So do we. When was the last time we had consecutive years of 8% growth?

I don't disagree with your general premise.

Just pointing out that long term, if the government does the right things, they likely will come out of this better than Japan.

[DjTj]

Im not buying the immigration argument against China. Sure people arent immigrating to China, but they have a larger supply of uneducated cheap labor from their hinterlands than the US has from Mexico/Central/South America. And sure, many Chinese students come to the US for grad school, but many of them return to China afterwards, plus the fact that while America CLEARLY has the best schools now, China is investing a massive amount of capital into education, specifically universities that teach science and engineering.

I think the cheap labor supply is probably about equal, but there is a good amount of cheap labor actually leaving China and coming to the United States. I don't see that trend reversing anytime soon, and unless it does, we will still be on top.

And it's the same thing with universities. Although many Chinese students may be coming to the U.S. and then returning to China, many others are staying here and starting tech companies (with manufacturing in China). Until the flow of students starts going the other way, we will still be on top.

And really, can you ever see Indian students deciding to go to Chinese universities in large numbers? Even now, while there are great schools in Europe, the top destination for Chinese or Indian graduate students is still the United States (with Cambridge and Oxford probably also in the conversation).

The US right now is the destination of choice because we are an open society, but most importantly because of the economy and because of the fact that our 'poor' have a standard of living that shames other countries.

France and Germany have the same standard of living, but they don't attract the same numbers of immigrants. Not even the UK attracts immigrants like we do. China can't ever hope to take our position in that regard.

Sure, we have debt issues, but maybe I have more faith that we will address it to some degree before going bankrupt ... and I also think that in 50 years, if China's economy starts to look more like ours, they will start having the same debt issues, and probably worse because their government is bigger, they are not having that many children, and they won't have quality immigration to balance out the demographics.

[zoony]

Do explain.

:munchout:

I'll explain. Rdkns2000 is drunk.

....

[mcsluggo]

holey smoley there is alot of myopic posturing in this thread.

1. there is a little bit of "grape anf grapefruit" tinging any comparison of the US and China. China has 1/4 of the worl's population, the US has 1/20th... that has to be accounted for when comparing the two. duh.

Syria is the 68th biggest economy in the world (by gdp), luxemborg is the 69th...

68 Syria 52,524

69 Luxembourg 51,736

which economy is stronger?

(hint, syria has over 21 million people, Lux has about 500k)

when looking at a combination of BOTH absolute size, AND individual purchasing power, no country will come close to us in 50 years, period. Unless the EU has unified much more than expected, and is viewed as a single country at that point. But even in that case, the US will be much richer per-capita. China will probably overtake the US in absolute terms, but will remain MUCH poorer an a per capita basis.

2. China is growing rapidly. but the country started from an incredibly depressed starting point, held back for centuries (most recently and most drastically in the mao years). It is ALWAYS easier to experience rapid growth in a "catch up" phase. Simply by slowly stripping away the huge anvils that had been hanging on th country's neck, the country was going to grow fast.

A HUGE proportion of China's growth can be explained very simply by the migration of hundreds of millions of people from the country side --where their official contributino to GDP was close to zero, since most of what they produced they consumed directly, and production doesn't become "GDP" unless it is sold.

3. the US remains the number 1 manufacturing country in teh world (in an absoute sense), but will not for long. Manufacturing JOBS have disappeared rapidly, but the value of US manufactured product has contunued to rise. Although it HAS fallen as a proportion of US gdp, that is also an indication of the strong growth of the US economy (until recently) in non-manufacturing sectors. However, alot of manufacturing is dirty work... and in ALL cases ends up being a "phase of development" question.

in the 50s, it seemed to the whole world that everything was manufactured in the US (the only country that hadn't seen its manufacturing capacity physically destroyed). in the 70s, suddenly it seemed like every thing began to come from Japan, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. that migrated to Korea and Malaysia and eventually to China....

EVERY little manufactured trinket used to seem to come frmo Hong Kong... NOTHING does now... Is that because Hong Kong has fallen into the crapper? No, of course not. It is because Honk Kong got so relatively rich that it became expensive to manufacture there, and the manfacturing shifted over to the Chinese mainland, across the straits.

4. the "Obama is turning the country into a socialist third world ghetto" comments are obviously moronic at first glance, and really don't need comment. But the overall perception that the US is an economic basket case seems to be prevelent. There is still a funk in the western countries that relied heavily on global integrated finance. That will pass. BEFORE this current funk, the US was BY FAR the most dynamic economy in the world. It will remain so. Growth when you are the richest country in the world per capita (other than a few tiny outliers, that each can be explained by specific circumstances) is very different from "catch up growth" the US continues to attract the most dynamica and inventive firms in the world. It has displayed ideal combinations of SOME regulation performend in a relatively straightforward transparent and non-corrupt manner; entrepreneurial spirit; political stability; financial might -- that has generated very dynamic companies. No other country has come close, really.

5. Militarily... I wouldn't Eff with the US. In 50 years will we clearly be able to single handedly kick the ass of any 10 countries that choose to gang up on us? (like we can now). Who knows? will we still be bumber 1? absolutely.

[zoony]

The United States goes around the world building other nation's economies for them. Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Western Europe... now China and India of course.

And each time, scores of chicken littles in this country come out of the woodwork to tell us all that this time we've done it. We've created a country that is going to dominate us.

And each time, the chicken littles are wrong. This is nothing new.

And btw, several companies are getting out of China. You're not reading about it much because a lot hasn't happened. But China's government has come to the realization that they can't keep giving away their country to the west for nothing. Things like rampant pollution, worker abuse, etc. These things need regulation and government oversight, and tax dollars. That's right, the Chinese gov't is drastically increasing tax dollars on western corporations. You are silly to think that we were only over there b/c of the cheap labor. Hell, you can get cheap labor in Panama and save money on shipping.

India is next, btw. Expect an explosion there over the next 10 years. They're currently giving their country away. They won't forever.

Next on the list of the United States world tour will be Africa. Or maybe south america. Depends a lot on political stability. Cheap Labor, easy to skirt environmental regs, money to be made.

.....