After 25 Years of America's right turn, it's coming to a close

[illinoisprogressive]

Amazing article on Alternet about our turn to the hard right, Reagan's destructive economic policies and the fact that america's might is coming to a close.
China is at 80 percent of our might and will surpass us soon as we have become a debtor nation.
The policies of the Bushies are only Reagan's in hyper mode. Speeded up the destruction.

an excerpt from the ending of the article. I do suggest you read the whole article.

But, the right-turn path may be reaching a dead end. In terms of the economy, we have had a quarter century of top heavy growth in which the vast majority of economic gains have gone to the richest 10 percent of the population. While the economy has generally been boosted by a virtuous cycle in which productivity growth lead to wage growth, which in turn lead to consumption growth and then further productivity and wage growth, the key stimulus for growth in the last decade has been financial bubbles, first in the stock market and more recently in the housing market. With the latter bubble beginning to unwind, the economy's prospects do not look bright.

Internationally, the days when the United States was the biggest boy on the block are rapidly coming to an end. The United States is still the world's largest economy, but China's economy is almost 80 percent of its size and growing very rapidly. It will not be long before China's economy is larger than our economy. As its economy begins to surpass the size of the U.S. economy, its military strength will likely soon exceed that of the United States as well.

Even barring any military conflict with China, which is highly unlikely, the ability of the United States to impose its will on China is very limited at this point, as it has very few cards to play. In fact, the ability of the United States to impose its will on much of the world has been sharply constrained by the fact that it is now a huge debtor nation that is borrowing $800 billion a year and that it has most of its military bogged down in the Iraq War.

This is a bad situation for a bully to be in. After a quarter century of not caring about the concerns of other countries, the United States is facing a situation where other countries may not care much about our plight. We may soon wish that we had spent more effort building up meaningful international institutions when we had the opportunity.

www.alternet.com

[evlbstrd]

1. www.alternet.org

[illinoisprogressive]

2. sorry. I could not copy and tried to remember it.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

3. Empires rise and fall through hubris and greed. Our cycle is notable because of it's brevity.

We became the biggest kid on the block after WWII finished off our recent predecessors. The world has grown weary of carrying us on their backs. Now, we're in the part of the process of trying to hold it together by force.

Didn't work for the others, but it usually took longer for them to fail.

Karma's a bitch.

[Rydz777]

4. The only good thing that will come out of this war

is that it may teach our elite some humility and keep future Presidents for a generation or more from trying anything this stupid again.