4 ms·

Americans (and not just the US) think they still have the influence on the world they had in the 1980s when their economies were a much larger proportion of the

Americans (and not just the US) think they still have the influence on the world they had in the 1980s when their economies were a much larger proportion of the global economy. Americans have no idea what the world looks like from Asia which contains most of the world's population and generates a third of global GDP.

graemep 4mo ago
It is a general western problem to some extent, but the US has a a faster growing economy than any of the big European economies. It is still a super-power.
- cess11 4mo ago
  The other year the US was beaten by a starved little country on the edge of the Arabian Peninsula, and recently by a somewhat large country by the Persian Gulf. Currently their only real ally is getting beaten by FPV drones handled by a guerilla force. The US has very little influence today compared to a decade or more ago. To the extent that the world at large cares about the US it's because they are committing genocide and destroying global trade logistics. All of their former allies are trying to substitute them out, or at least hedge with other international relations. As far as I can tell, outside certain parts of the Occident, no one cares about new US movies or television series anymore. The Oscars gather some interest because some people want to know if any entertainment industry people will go against the regime and say something negative about mass murder of children, but that's about it. Future generations will be shaped more by chinese and indian movies than usian ones. When apartheid South Africa was about to crumble it also initiated nasty military campaigns and faked political and military supremacy for a while, as did Idi Amin's Uganda. I'd bet something similar is going on in the US. Some people are still stuck in the late Cold War, notably EU politicians like von der Leyen and Kaja Kallas, as well as most swedish top politicians. They cannot imagine a world where the US is not calling the shots and will drag Europe further into global irrelevancy by idiotically paying tribute and kneeling for the US. Pretty much the rest of the world is disgusted and horrified by the bumbling nastiness of contemporary US empire.
- vanviegen 4mo ago
  The "faster growing economy" is basically 100% AI speculation now. If that gamble pays of the US is still in trouble (as is the rest of the world), as there doesn't appear to be even a hint of a plan of what a post-AI society looks like for anybody but the top 0.1%.
  - trollbridge 4mo ago
    I don't think the top 0.1% has a plan, either. From my personal interactions with them, they are mostly just excited they can talk to a chatbot on their phone all day, and then make questionable decisions from that - to use a recent example, deciding to be their own general contractor and make a house remodel cost an extra million and take an extra year to do.
    - johnnyanmac 4mo ago
      The money and time to pursue any passion or hobby they wish, or simply travel and enjoy the world's leisures. They can run a small company, never worrying about profits to survive because their interest will keep them afloat. And instead of delegating or relaxing or honing a talent, they still have this need to pretend they are a craftmen and waste everyone's time, instead of playing Factorio or Stardew Valley or X Simulator like the rest of us plebs do to scratch that itch. What a waste.
      - trollbridge 4mo ago
        It's both maddening, but at the same time, such people are usually more eager to pay asking prices and doing the jobs is easier, so I just do them. Getting to design a kind of fun home-automation project, actually, since he decided not to just go with a more-expensive all in one system and keeps piecemealing it, and now he can't figure it out, so I'm doing it all.
  - rob74 4mo ago
    Well, Musk for one is promising not universal basic income, but universal high income. In a country where a lot of people don't even have health insurance. Let's see how that will work out, I'll believe it when I see it...
- dgellow 4mo ago
  It’s fine, you don’t have to be the fastest growing economy in the world to be a meaningful global power and a good place where to live, get education, work. You need some level of growth, but it’s ok to no be at the top of the charts. The US has been the capitalist leader in the world for a long time and isn't going well at all, the country benefits its population very little. It’s not like only the actor with the top economic growth wins and all the other countries are losing. The EU has some issues, the economy isn’t the most dynamic, but the quality of life is great and has been improving. It is a large global market and has cultural influence. Our democratic institutions have survived ok so far. I think we are doing quite ok. We will see if we can deal well with issues caused by our aging population, that’s pretty challenging but I think we are in a reasonable position (and actually a more than great position if we compare worldwide)
  - graemep 4mo ago
    It agree that global power and the wellbeing of most people are not correlated. I think the common people of the UK were better off without and empire than with one. Many small countries with no global power have high standards of living. However, the comments I replied to above were about digital sovereignty and soft power. I am not convinced the future of the EU (or Europe in general) is as assured as you think it, but that is another discussion. Americans do have a high standard of living in general and a very high median income: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_... They have two big flaws in their system, both failures to provide security for the poor and for people who suffer misfortunes: wealth distribution and the lack of universal healthcare.
    - dgellow 4mo ago
      Americans do indeed have high standard of living, and the median income is high in absolute value, however the country has way more than 2 big flaws. US households have a high level of debts and a rate of personal savings trending down. The government is following an explicit inflationary strategy by actively devaluing its currency and applying tariffs. The national debt has been increasing very significantly without any plan to ever pay it back. That’s without taking in consideration all the political instability caused by Trump administrations: the destruction of US soft power worldwide, anti-science stances, rise in theocratic and fascistic ideologies, imperialistic tendencies, institutionalized racism making a come back, human right violations, war crimes, the normalization of blatant corruption by the country leadership, etc.
- intended 4mo ago
  As much as people complain about the EU, its the last western polity that is functioning to some degree of normal. To put it politely, America is just not, at this moment in time, with a predictable actor with rational self interest. If things continue to fail, then its simple to assume we return to the spheres of interest stage of things, at which point the EU still functions as a bloc which everyone trades with. Plus, American GDP figures are matched with a K shaped economy, and a population with a deep sense of unease and unhappiness.
  - Muromec 4mo ago
    The EU is curiously a block that countrirs want to join
    - graemep 4mo ago
      its second biggest economy left a few years ago, a number of smaller economies which collectively are much smaller want to join. Negotiations with by far the biggest of those economies have been started over 20 years ago and have been frozen for a decade.
gyanchawdhary 4mo ago
[flagged]
vitally3643 4mo ago
If both of these views are true (and they appear to be becoming more true every day): what happens? I find it a little hard to believe that Russia or China or whoever in the East or South is quietly puppeting all the bullshittery happening now. Maybe a little less hard to believe that the West has just collectively decided to huff lead gas fumes and lose our collective minds for a generation. Maybe this is just how corrupt capitalistic societies die and the East is happy to sit back and watch us burn ourselves to the ground.

graemep 4mo ago

It is a general western problem to some extent, but the US has a a faster growing economy than any of the big European economies. It is still a super-power.

cess11 4mo ago
The other year the US was beaten by a starved little country on the edge of the Arabian Peninsula, and recently by a somewhat large country by the Persian Gulf. Currently their only real ally is getting beaten by FPV drones handled by a guerilla force. The US has very little influence today compared to a decade or more ago. To the extent that the world at large cares about the US it's because they are committing genocide and destroying global trade logistics. All of their former allies are trying to substitute them out, or at least hedge with other international relations. As far as I can tell, outside certain parts of the Occident, no one cares about new US movies or television series anymore. The Oscars gather some interest because some people want to know if any entertainment industry people will go against the regime and say something negative about mass murder of children, but that's about it. Future generations will be shaped more by chinese and indian movies than usian ones. When apartheid South Africa was about to crumble it also initiated nasty military campaigns and faked political and military supremacy for a while, as did Idi Amin's Uganda. I'd bet something similar is going on in the US. Some people are still stuck in the late Cold War, notably EU politicians like von der Leyen and Kaja Kallas, as well as most swedish top politicians. They cannot imagine a world where the US is not calling the shots and will drag Europe further into global irrelevancy by idiotically paying tribute and kneeling for the US. Pretty much the rest of the world is disgusted and horrified by the bumbling nastiness of contemporary US empire.
vanviegen 4mo ago
The "faster growing economy" is basically 100% AI speculation now. If that gamble pays of the US is still in trouble (as is the rest of the world), as there doesn't appear to be even a hint of a plan of what a post-AI society looks like for anybody but the top 0.1%.
- trollbridge 4mo ago
  I don't think the top 0.1% has a plan, either. From my personal interactions with them, they are mostly just excited they can talk to a chatbot on their phone all day, and then make questionable decisions from that - to use a recent example, deciding to be their own general contractor and make a house remodel cost an extra million and take an extra year to do.
  - johnnyanmac 4mo ago
    The money and time to pursue any passion or hobby they wish, or simply travel and enjoy the world's leisures. They can run a small company, never worrying about profits to survive because their interest will keep them afloat. And instead of delegating or relaxing or honing a talent, they still have this need to pretend they are a craftmen and waste everyone's time, instead of playing Factorio or Stardew Valley or X Simulator like the rest of us plebs do to scratch that itch. What a waste.
    - trollbridge 4mo ago
      It's both maddening, but at the same time, such people are usually more eager to pay asking prices and doing the jobs is easier, so I just do them. Getting to design a kind of fun home-automation project, actually, since he decided not to just go with a more-expensive all in one system and keeps piecemealing it, and now he can't figure it out, so I'm doing it all.
- rob74 4mo ago
  Well, Musk for one is promising not universal basic income, but universal high income. In a country where a lot of people don't even have health insurance. Let's see how that will work out, I'll believe it when I see it...
dgellow 4mo ago
It’s fine, you don’t have to be the fastest growing economy in the world to be a meaningful global power and a good place where to live, get education, work. You need some level of growth, but it’s ok to no be at the top of the charts. The US has been the capitalist leader in the world for a long time and isn't going well at all, the country benefits its population very little. It’s not like only the actor with the top economic growth wins and all the other countries are losing. The EU has some issues, the economy isn’t the most dynamic, but the quality of life is great and has been improving. It is a large global market and has cultural influence. Our democratic institutions have survived ok so far. I think we are doing quite ok. We will see if we can deal well with issues caused by our aging population, that’s pretty challenging but I think we are in a reasonable position (and actually a more than great position if we compare worldwide)
- graemep 4mo ago
  It agree that global power and the wellbeing of most people are not correlated. I think the common people of the UK were better off without and empire than with one. Many small countries with no global power have high standards of living. However, the comments I replied to above were about digital sovereignty and soft power. I am not convinced the future of the EU (or Europe in general) is as assured as you think it, but that is another discussion. Americans do have a high standard of living in general and a very high median income: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_... They have two big flaws in their system, both failures to provide security for the poor and for people who suffer misfortunes: wealth distribution and the lack of universal healthcare.
  - dgellow 4mo ago
    Americans do indeed have high standard of living, and the median income is high in absolute value, however the country has way more than 2 big flaws. US households have a high level of debts and a rate of personal savings trending down. The government is following an explicit inflationary strategy by actively devaluing its currency and applying tariffs. The national debt has been increasing very significantly without any plan to ever pay it back. That’s without taking in consideration all the political instability caused by Trump administrations: the destruction of US soft power worldwide, anti-science stances, rise in theocratic and fascistic ideologies, imperialistic tendencies, institutionalized racism making a come back, human right violations, war crimes, the normalization of blatant corruption by the country leadership, etc.
intended 4mo ago
As much as people complain about the EU, its the last western polity that is functioning to some degree of normal. To put it politely, America is just not, at this moment in time, with a predictable actor with rational self interest. If things continue to fail, then its simple to assume we return to the spheres of interest stage of things, at which point the EU still functions as a bloc which everyone trades with. Plus, American GDP figures are matched with a K shaped economy, and a population with a deep sense of unease and unhappiness.
- Muromec 4mo ago
  The EU is curiously a block that countrirs want to join
  - graemep 4mo ago
    its second biggest economy left a few years ago, a number of smaller economies which collectively are much smaller want to join. Negotiations with by far the biggest of those economies have been started over 20 years ago and have been frozen for a decade.

gyanchawdhary 4mo ago

[flagged]

vitally3643 4mo ago

If both of these views are true (and they appear to be becoming more true every day): what happens? I find it a little hard to believe that Russia or China or whoever in the East or South is quietly puppeting all the bullshittery happening now. Maybe a little less hard to believe that the West has just collectively decided to huff lead gas fumes and lose our collective minds for a generation. Maybe this is just how corrupt capitalistic societies die and the East is happy to sit back and watch us burn ourselves to the ground.