Comments by "Luredreier" (@Luredreier) on "Whatifalthist"
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The analysis here leaves quite a bit to be desired as far as its evaluation of the economy is concerned.
It's not the economic trade terms that's hurting the middle class in America, it's poor governance.
As for the trade imbalance...
In reality USA is just very successful in selling one of its most valuable products, the US dollar, a currency backed not just by purchasing power inside the US but also around the rest of the world.
There's huge amounts of it out there, so it losing value would be horrible for the rest of the world, ensuring that we have a wested interest in keeping you guys going.
As for your debt.
As long as your economic growth is higher then your increase in debt it's ok to take on more debt as a proportion of your total economy.
The trade imbalance is greatly favoring Americans as far as living standards is concerned.
Trump and Sanders becoming major players has more to do with the electoral system in the USA, it just isn't flexible enough to deal with nuances.
It discourages voting for other political parties leading to two parties that's both encouraged to go at each others throats and antagonize each other.
Instead of encouraging politicans that are open for compromises and that's constantly searching for allies among multiple different political parties all vying for power.
A multiparty system with more then one path to power (no major party being reasonably sure that they can come to power on their own but their potential allies also not being irreplaceable) is often too complicated to allow going out too hard against others and you keep getting nuanced views as minor parties either on the sides or in the middle always can play kingmakers if the major parties fail to play by ear with their populations enough to remain popular.
So you don't risk having the major parties essentially highjacked by one faction or another within the parties, and views that's at odds with both major parties can be expressed without dominating anything or being ignored.
The major parties plays a big part in shaping what people discuss and therefore how they think.
As for your idea about the US not needing the rest of the world...
Yeah, no...
The US economy isn't stable at all and relies entirely on the rest of the world to stay afloat...
It's just as brittle as you describe Russia or China being.
Just like any other country there's some things that USA just can't find within its borders (some are not even found in its sphere of influence).
Look how all of the US needs of the following minerals where covered in 2018:
Arsenic, asbestos, cesium, fluorspar, gallium, natural graphite, indium, manganese, natural sheet mica, nepheline syenite, niobium, rare earths, rubidium, scandium, strontium, tantalum, thorium, and vanadium.
Likewise there's technology that just doesn't exist within the US used to make products that American companies rely on in their own supply chains in order to produce their own products.
USA can't maintain anywhere close to its current economic output without the rest of the world.
Yes, the US could go isolationist if it wanted but that would be just as harmful for USA as it was for China or Japan when those countries did the same thing.
Also, the international world order doesn't entirely depend on the US either.
Yes, USA invented it and benefits greatly from it (we're already paying the tribute you mentioned in the form of the rest of us propping up your currency, without the US military and economic alliance the motivation to do so would go down), but we are able to maintain the international world order without the states, although I'll admit that it won't be easy...
The majority of nations in the world are democratic by now and we're linked by a number of intricate relationships of various kinds, diplomatic, economic etc.
And while losing American influence will upset a lot of those there's still too many incentives to keep it for most nations.
Or at least their elites.
There's only so much that China or Russia can do.
Yes, there might be some wars.
But overall we've all had a taste of a world where you don't have to pay for a huge navy on a nation by nation basis and where wars isn't the first choice of action in times of conflict.
War and large armies just aren't economically sound.
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@calebemerson9317 As for comparing countries with 10 million people vs a country of 300 milions, that just doesn't hold water.
You have plenty of states that's comparable to us.
And Europe as continent is actually bigger in terms of both land and population then the US, yet we have better social mobility here.
There's 26 countries with higher social mobility then the US.
Most of them in Europe.
As does the continent as a whole, even with Russia etc dragging us down...
Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan are other countries ahead of the US in terms of social mobility...
You're not horrible though...
At least the US is ahead of Russia...
And regarding migration from South America, you have more social mobility then Brazil, Mexico, Venesuela etc.
Basically all of South America...
And to be fair, when it comes to social mobility it's actually a statistics where the US isn't dead last among western nations for a change, and you're beating some western nations like Spain and Italy according to some studies on social mobility...
(Although not by much)
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@brianlong2334 I don't think that the US is a trendsetter here.
The US is and Europe is struggling for different reasons.
Both has issues with the use of artificial intelligence and modern technology leading to people ending up in echo chambers causing increased political polarization.
But while that's legitimately threatening the US democracy it doesn't seem to do so in most of Europe.
Yes, it has caused fringe groups like the ones trying to start coup recently, but those have no real political power base and remain a minority with a low amount of relevance.
No, in Europe it seems like it's our demographics, our relationship with Russia and to a lesser degree China, our raw materials situation and our bureaucracy that's posing challenges.
Our laws and lack of unity is making it hard to be competitive in several fields like technology, and like the US we depend on microprocessors from Taiwan, combine that with a low amount of natural resources remaining due to our long history of exploitation and that poses challenges for our competitiveness.
This isn't insurmountable, but it's something we'll have to deal with.
Demographically we have a aging population leading to a reduction in working age people pr pensioner.
That's posing challenges that we're partially countering with increased immigration, something that while I think that is a positive has caused some tensions due to the changes being a bit too rapid for our more conservative citizens, a portion of our population that's growing as our population is aging...
Although that trend of people getting more conservative with age seems to be slowing down somewhat in Europe with people staying left wing for longer.
Militarily we can't rely on the US anymore and while Russia is weaker then the US they're still potentially a serious threat to most of Europe.
Indeed we where lucky that they attacked Ukraine as they where among the nations in Europe most capable of repelling them.
If Russia where fighting another European nation and we didn't have the backing of the US then we'd probably struggle...
And since we've depended on Russian gas and Chinese goods and markets for our economies it's going to take time for us to adapt.
India is a potential new market that we're trying to explore but the Indian goverment is highly nationalistic and they've historically had a lot of red tape and restrictions holding back our companies there.
Africa is overtaking us all, but that's taking time, and once they do we'll stop getting new people to replace those we lose from our low population growth...
The US is increasingly growing hostile, so that's a market we can't rely on.
South America is a mess of left wing populists and centrist populists that just makes any kind of economic activity on the continent challenging...
Asia is promising, but there we'll have to deal with China and Russia, and to a lesser degree India and Turkey as local powers that don't necessarily want our presence to grow...
It's just in general a challenging geopolitical climate.
Thankfully this proxy war with Russia lowers the risk of a conflict in the Arctic as Russia is being drained of resources in Ukraine...
And maybe it'll open up a path to the Stans so we can start acting there.
The economic woes of Turkey may change the political climate there, if it does we'll be able to act more in the Middle East and grow the economies in the southeast.
Especially since Serbia seems to be warming up slightly towards the west perhaps opening up the Danube.
All countries near the Danube could benefit from increased trade along that river.
And so would several nations near Europe.
I don't know...
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@soul-heart No.
Yes, the US and UK has a lot of influence due to the English language.
But that's not what we're talking about.
We're talking about the world following in the negative fotsteps of the US, and we're just not.
Regarding birthrate, the US had a high enough birth rate to keep the population stable without migration as late as 2009, and you're still more then high enough to easily replace the losses with migration.
Malta had 1,13 births pe.woman in 2020, in the same year the US was at 1,64.
And enough women still remember families with multiple siblings for a fertility increase to still be achievable with measures like subsidized daycare centers, increased unionization to give US workers negotiation power in order to raise wages etc...
This can be turned around for the US.
As for the illegal immigration, it's mainly there because passing the border legally both for migration and to commute to work has become harder.
But migration has been falling recently.
Mexico has more jobs then in the past, and crossing into the US just isn't worth all of the racism and discrimination anymore.
That migration wasn't undercutting the US, it was enabling economic growth.
Wages where low not because of migration but because of anti-union laws from Regan and onwards.
As for the bureaucracy, it's not a issue of it being "slothful" but underfunded, and working with poorly designed laws due to the US electoral system and outdated constitution...
The dependence on eastern Asia isn't really a problem in my view, the dependence on China might be however because of the course they've decided to take...
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@chickenfishhybrid44 I don't know anyone who haven't ever been outside the continent above the age of 18 personally.
Don't get me wrong.
Usually when traveling we'll go to other European countries.
Leaving the continent is expensive and often a rare treat.
But myself I've been to New Jersey, New York and Florida.
And I plan on visiting Pennsylvania, Arizona and Colorado
I've also been to Egypt (together with my most of my school class), both Cairo and further east in Sinai (the rest mostly traveled to China)
As for driving distances.
It depends on the country.
The country I live in, Norway is both further west then Luxemburg and about as far east as Istanbul.
And driving the whole length of the country would actually take about as long time as driving across the US or Australia from east to west.
A big part of that is of course that the country literally is a mountain chain, so progress is naturally going to be slower then say when flying.
But even so if you where to overlay Norway over the US and tilt it we'd still cover the whole US-Mexican border.
And sure, there's countries in Europe you can literally stroll across on an afternoon without a problem at all the continent is actually bigger then the US.
Yet the average European hasn't just traveled more within the continent then Americans have, we've traveled more outside it too.
Europeans also tends to know as much or more about the US as Americans do about their own country (you'll of course find individuals in both continents that knows more or less, with Americans intimately familiar with Europe, Asia, South America etc, and Europeans that doesn't have a clue, but on average you'll find that what I've said is true, although there's definitely differences between countries in this regard)
So I do believe that it's accurate to say that Europeans are indeed more cosmopolitan them Americans and more aware of the world around them.
Mind you, we have gaps in our knowledge too.
Usually they're regarding the African or South American continents in my experience.
We tend to lump them together as a single entity in our minds a bit although we're of course aware that it's not really true...
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