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Originally Posted by audiman08

The U.S. experienced its' zenith about 50 years ago.

Where did U read that? Time Magazine?

YA Can't Put Humpty Dumpty Back Together Again 08/05/2010 - 11:14 — tabs
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You don't have to tell me things are bad, worse than bad. But the sky isn't going to fall, the end isn't nye and we are not doomed. What is going to happen and we are well on the road to this end is that the USA is just not going to be as prosperous nor as powerful as it once was.

The Middle Class is going to shrink, there is going to be a relatively large underclass of working people and unemployed. Wages for the American worker are going to more closely parallel that of the worlds wage structure and the living standard is going to decline. The economy of the USA is going to more closely resemble 1910 than its post war heyday of 1960.

What truly amazes is the lack of vision on the part of ALL the economists, politicos and media. These people don't seem to understand the historic inevitability of this end. It does seem that they are stuck in the present and when trying to remedy problems are trying to formulate some grand plan that will "fix" America so that it can retain its supremacy in the world. What these people fail to realize is the fact that it took one step, one decision at a time over a number of decades to reach the situation America now faces. To "fix" the problem a grand plan of action or legislation is not going to work for any plan is based on present knowledge and conditions and can not foresee future conditions or problems. One gets themselves into trouble one step at a time and one gets one self out of trouble the same way. Anything else is simply not going to work. That is not to say that one can not have a direction or policy to move towards.

Further all the efforts to rectify America's problems is like the kings men trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together again for these same economists etal also fall to understand the arc of history. Again they seem rooted in the moment or at best looking back a mere decade. To get a truly accurate assessment of Americas current status one has to look at its economic and political history going back 65 years.

After WW2 America entered into an unprecedented wealth building Post War Prosperity Boom that lasted roughly 20 years. This prosperity boom was fueled by 5 main ingredients

1. America was the only unscathed industrial power in the world and the world needed rebuilding.

2. The GI's returning from WW2 started families and needed everything refrigerators, washing machines, televisions, cars and houses.

3. After WW2 there was a dearth of consumer goods as very few were produced from 1930 to 1945 due to the Great Depression and the World War. Thus there was 15 years worth of pent up demand.

4. The rise of the large middle class, where a man without an education could attain middle class status was due to corporations thinking that they were making so much money that they could meet Union demands for higher wages. These corporations felt they would lose more money by going on strike than paying its workers higher wages and benefits.

5. The Cold War demanded that higher military budgets be kept in place. This one might say was a continual government stimulus program.

By 1965 this unprecedented status began to change first with competition from Europe and Japan and later Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, China, India and Brazil. If one remembers the first of the American industries to fall to foreign competition was the American ship building industry, followed by autos, steel and electronics..remember those American icons of American electronics Zenith,, RCA, and Westinghouse? This trend has continued on to this very day.

Also one has to mention the inflection point where the US government and society in general began to feel that as a "Rich" nation we could afford it all without consequence and that was the day LBJ put the SS Trust into the General Account in 1968. This act merely disguised the true national debt by using an accounting gimmick of placing that debt into accounts payable.

By examining the causative factors that led to the Great American Prosperity Boom of the post war period one has to realize those conditions that created it no longer exist, there is a new paradigm at work. America is saturated with consumer goods, debt and is faced with continually steeper competition in the world. The mere fact that American politicians are trying to resurrect the past is in of itself a causative agent for failure. America has to face this new reality and not try and delude itself into thinking Humpty Dumpty can be put back together again.

BTW this went out to Charlie R, the NYT and various other mostly Republican political operatives in August. Fahreed Zakaria of TIME nearly word for word parapharased this piece in his last vistit to Charlie.