[tpiddy]

(06-29-2014 08:00 PM)scorpion Wrote:  

Our decline is no myth, it is fact. A clear fact for anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear. Our decline is a fact that can be measured economically, politically, culturally, spiritually and even, strangely enough, technologically (that sure is a nice iPhone, but what happened to our once-proud space program?). To save time here I will not go into a point by point enunciation for all the evidence of decline, because I believe that the honest interlocutor and reader would admit the decline of the West as having been self-apparent for quite some time now.

I think America's relative decline compared to the rest of the world is visible, and likely was unavoidable, but an absolute decline? It's not a zero sum game. Life expectancy in the US continues to increase. Violent crime in the US continues to decrease. Hard drug use continues to decrease.

Technology wise, the US is still the center of innovation. For example, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Tesla and yes SpaceX (which is innovating in space flight, just more on the price side) are all american companies with more innovation happening here than anywhere else.

The average person has never had more options for amount of activities, media and education that is completely accessible because of the internet.

Could things be better economically? Yes. At some point the kicking the deficit can down the road will come back to haunt us, but deficits will likely hurt parts of Europe and Japan first. Have free trade and the changing economy created structural unemployment in the US? Probably, but it's also helped bring probably billions of people out of abject poverty around the world and increased their life span, in addition to making many US people wealthy and reducing the cost of everything everyone buys in most of the world.

Even the relative decline of the US compared to China is probably overblown. China faces a demographic challenge as they run out of people to bring from the country to the city and their population ages. China won't be able to keep its growth going as their supply of labor decreases and the cost of labor increases without focusing on innovation, which is something they historically haven't done that well. It'll be cheaper to manufacture in other developing countries or even in the US because the transportation costs will start to matter.

I think we'd all agree that many things are getting worse in the West, especially the things that affect us as men such the trends around dating and marriage with women, but many things are still getting better. You could even make the case that it's never been easier to get laid.