Decline and fall of the US

I think Mathalamus might be exaggerating, but the world won't fall into instant chaos if the USA lost power. The US economy might be heavily tied into world economics, but I doubt that its removal will utterly destroy the world and then stamp on its ruins.
 
The US will fall only if military bases in japan, korea etc.... begin to close down but I don't see that happening anytime soon. The US will be the sole hyperpower for quite a while.
 
I think Mathalamus might be exaggerating, but the world won't fall into instant chaos if the USA lost power. The US economy might be heavily tied into world economics, but I doubt that its removal will utterly destroy the world and then stamp on its ruins.

my guess is, there will be trouble at first, but the world will normalize in a few months or a couple years.
 
The US will fall only if military bases in japan, korea etc.... begin to close down but I don't see that happening anytime soon. The US will be the sole hyperpower for quite a while.

Why would the fall of the bases = fall of American might? It may limit it a bit, but our navy gives us a wide range, and that includes carriers for our planes.

Army is another matter, but we'd still be able to at least maintain power over the Western Hemisphere with that.

The bases, as I know, are important as re-fueling depots, with or without troops. I'm sure we could find some sort of alternative if necessary. Perhaps some massive expansion of the navy to support this purpose? Mobile refueling depots, as a bonus.

Also, military power ultimately derives from economic power. The US is the foremost economic power in the world. I say this because the EU doesn't count until it becomes a fully-functional government, and so it can take its 16 trillion dollar economy and shove it. :p

my guess is, there will be trouble at first, but the world will normalize in a few months or a couple years.

Which is why the American collapse will be celebrated with fireworks that put the 4th of July to shame... meaning, we nuke the entire world, making it impossible to recover. After all, if we can't have the world, no one can! :mwaha:

Though seriously, yeah, you're probably right. Though I've heard some argue that Russia would use its nukes before allowing them to go obsolete...

I still think we need to take the nuclear option to its most extreme meaning, however. :mischief:
 
I can't help but think that if capitalism falls to an Eastern structure, will we then after a hundred years without it - or two hundred - think of it as an obsolete system, which didn't work out?
 
SOMEONE SAY MY NAME?



...now to read the thread and see what it's about. :lol:

That is an interesting 20-year inflection though (1930-1950).


Is the overall curve ever predicted to go hyperbolic?
 
We honestly don't have enough experience to say. It's already in log-llinear terms, so the straight line represents a constant growth rate (about 2.1% per person per year, according to my data sources). That we've chugged along with that growth rate for about a century is somewhat remarkable. What's even more remarkable is the return to trend following the Depression - surely you'd think that such a huge event would leave some kind of lasting effect on incomes in this country.

It's also useful as an historical tool - returning to trend levels of real income per person right now would be a fairly hefty achievement, but we've done it before and in worse times.

(In writing this post, I've been running some regressions in Stata that apparently predict that we are 10-11% below trend right now, whether measured in per-capita or aggregate terms. Yikes! I thought it wasn't that bad.)
 
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