The End Of Empire

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Alfred McCoy, The Rise of Trump, the Fall of Imperial America
Posted on November 19, 2024
[Note for TomDispatch Readers: I just wanted to thank those of you who, in response to one of my notes like this appealing for help keeping this site going, contributed recently. It was so generous of you and I see each of your names with the notice of your contribution and silently thank you. As for the rest of you, if you follow TomDispatch regularly and feel the urge to ensure that it makes it into the coming hell on Earth of a second Trump term in office, do visit our donation page and do what you can. And many thanks in advance. Tom]
Here’s how Harry Litman, a former Justice Department official, put it recently: “He’s erratic and has the attention span of a 7-year-old. But his thirst for revenge against those he views as his current antagonists is very real, and there’s no reason to think he would be deterred by legal niceties.” Of course, without a second’s pause, you know exactly who he’s talking about, right?
As it happens, thanks in part to the lack of a full-scale turnout by Democrats in the 2024 election (undoubtedly partially due to the Biden administration’s backing of the Gaza War and partially perhaps to the urge of some Democrats not to vote for a Black woman, or perhaps even a woman), that 7-year-old is just two months away from returning to the Oval Office. He will then preside (an all-too-polite word) over — TomDispatch regular and historian Alfred McCoy, author of In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power, explains it vividly today — the deep decline of formerly imperial and now disturbingly delirial (yes, that’s a made-up but appropriate word) America and the global rise of what McCoy calls “strongman culture.”
And good news! The second that Donald Trump — and, of course, that’s exactly who I’m talking about — enters the Oval Office again, he’s expected to issue a series of executive orders, including “leaving the Paris climate agreement, withdrawing from the World Health Organization (WHO), and banning entry to citizens from a list of predominantly Muslim countries” (all previous acts of his that Joe Biden reversed). And that, of course, is just to begin a potentially endless list of horrors that’s likely to include pardons for the rioters of January 6, 2021, as well as another Biden-cancelled initiative that would “remove job security from about 50,000 civil servants and enable them to be fired and replaced with right-wing loyalists.” And don’t even get me started on those “illegal immigrants” or his urge to revoke the “birthright citizenship” guaranteed by the 14th Amendment.
So, yes indeed, we’re heading for a genuine hell on earth, as the country that, in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 came to be thought of in Washington as the planet’s “sole superpower,” goes into a full-scale imperial decline. And this is happening at a moment when, perhaps all too appropriately, this planet is in its own version of decline. With all of that in mind, let McCoy, distinctly a historian of imperial collapse, take you onto a planet heading for… well, probably something like hell in a handbasket. Tom
Requiem for an Empire
How America’s Strongman Will Hasten the Decline of U.S. Global Power
By Alfred McCoy
Some 15 years ago, on December 5, 2010, a historian writing for TomDispatch made a prediction that may yet prove prescient. Rejecting the consensus of that moment that U.S. global hegemony would persist to 2040 or 2050, he argued that “the demise of the United States as the global superpower could come… in 2025, just 15 years from now.”
To make that forecast, the historian conducted what he called “a more realistic assessment of domestic and global trends.” Starting with the global context, he argued that, “faced with a fading superpower,” China, India, Iran, and Russia would all start to “provocatively challenge U.S. dominion over the oceans, space, and cyberspace.” At home in the United States, domestic divisions would “widen into violent clashes and divisive debates… Riding a political tide of disillusionment and despair, a far-right patriot captures the presidency with thundering rhetoric, demanding respect for American authority and threatening military retaliation or economic reprisal.” But, that historian concluded, “the world pays next to no attention as the American Century ends in silence.”
Now that a “far-right patriot,” one Donald J. Trump, has indeed captured (or rather recaptured) the presidency “with thundering rhetoric,” let’s explore the likelihood that a second Trump term in office, starting in the fateful year 2025, might actually bring a hasty end, silent or otherwise, to an “American Century” of global dominion.
Making the Original Prediction
Let’s begin by examining the reasoning underlying my original prediction. (Yes, of course, that historian was me.) Back in 2010, when I picked a specific date for a rising tide of American decline, this country looked unassailably strong both at home and abroad. The presidency of Barack Obama was producing a “post-racial” society. After recovering from the 2008 financial crisis, the U.S. was on track for a decade of dynamic growth — the auto industry saved, oil and gas production booming, the tech sector thriving, the stock market soaring, and employment solid. Internationally, Washington was the world’s preeminent leader, with an unchallenged military, formidable diplomatic clout, unchecked economic globalization, and its democratic governance still the global norm.
Looking forward, leading historians of empire agreed that America would remain the world’s sole superpower for the foreseeable future. Writing in the Financial Times in 2002, for instance, Yale professor Paul Kennedy, author of a widely read book on imperial decline, argued that “America’s array of force is staggering,” with a mix of economic, diplomatic, and technological dominance that made it the globe’s “single superpower” without peer in the entire history of the world. Russia’s defense budget had “collapsed” and its economy was “less than that of the Netherlands.” Should China’s high growth rates continue for another 30 years, it “might be a serious challenger to U.S. predominance” — but that wouldn’t be true until 2032, if then. While America’s “unipolar moment” would surely not “continue for centuries,” its end, he predicted, “seems a long way off for now.”
Writing in a similar vein in the New York Times in February 2010, Piers Brendon, a historian of Britain’s imperial decline, dismissed the “doom mongers” who “conjure with Roman and British analogies in order to trace the decay of American hegemony.” While Rome was riven by “internecine strife” and Britain ran its empire on a shoestring budget, the U.S. was “constitutionally stable” with “an enormous industrial base.” Taking a few “relatively simple steps,” he concluded, Washington should be able to overcome current budgetary problems and perpetuate its global power indefinitely.
k
When I made my very different prediction nine months later, I was coordinating a network of 140 historians from universities on three continents who were studying the decline of earlier empires, particularly those of Britain, France, and Spain. Beneath the surface of this country’s seeming strength, we could already see the telltale signs of decline that had led to the collapse of those earlier empires.
By 2010, economic globalization was cutting good-paying factory jobs here, income inequality was widening, and corporate bailouts were booming — all essential ingredients for rising working-class resentment and deepening domestic divisions. Foolhardy military misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, pushed by Washington elites trying to deny any sense of decline, stoked simmering anger among ordinary Americans, slowly discrediting the very idea of international commitments. And the erosion of America’s relative economic strength from half the world’s output in 1950 to a quarter in 2010 meant the wherewithal for its unipolar power was fading fast.
Only a “near-peer” competitor was needed to turn that attenuating U.S. global hegemony into accelerating imperial decline. With rapid economic growth, a vast population, and the world’s longest imperial tradition, China seemed primed to become just such a country. But back then, Washington’s foreign policy elites thought not and even admitted China to the World Trade Organization (WTO), fully confident, according to two Beltway insiders, that “U.S. power and hegemony could readily mold China to the United States’ liking.”
Our group of historians, mindful of the frequent imperial wars fought when near-peer competitors finally confronted the reigning hegemon of their moment — think Germany versus Great Britain in World War I — fully expected China’s challenge would not be long in coming. Indeed, in 2012, just two years after my prediction, the U.S. National Intelligence Council warned that “China alone will probably have the largest economy, surpassing that of the United States a few years before 2030” and this country would no longer be “a hegemonic power.”
Just a year after that, China’s president, Xi Jinping, drawing on a massive $4 trillion in foreign-exchange reserves accumulated in the decade after joining the WTO, announced his bid for global power through what he called “the Belt and Road Initiative,” history’s largest development program. It was designed to make Beijing the center of the global economy.
In the following decade, the U.S.-China rivalry would become so intense that, last September, Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall warned: “I’ve been closely watching the evolution of [China’s] military for 15 years. China is not a future threat; China is a threat today.”
The Global Rise of the Strongman
Another major setback for Washington’s world order, long legitimated by its promotion of democracy (whatever its own dominating tendencies), came from the rise of populist strongmen worldwide. Consider them part of a nationalist reaction to the West’s aggressive economic globalization.
At the close of the Cold War in 1991, Washington became the planet’s sole superpower, using its hegemony to forcefully promote a wide-open global economy — forming the World Trade Organization in 1995, pressing open-market “reforms” on developing economies, and knocking down tariff barriers worldwide. It also built a global communications grid by laying 700,000 miles of fiber-optic submarine cables and then launching 1,300 satellites (now 4,700).
By exploiting that very globalized economy, however, China’s industrial output soared to $3.2 trillion by 2016, surpassing both the U.S. and Japan, while simultaneously eliminating 2.4 million American jobs between 1999 and 2011, ensuring the closure of factories in countless towns across the South and Midwest. By fraying social safety nets while eroding protection for labor unions and local businesses in both the U.S. and Europe, globalization reduced the quality of life for many, while creating inequality on a staggering scale and stoking a working-class reaction that would crest in a global wave of angry populism.
Riding that wave, right-wing populists have been winning a steady succession of elections — in Russia (2000), Israel (2009), Hungary (2010), China (2012), Turkey (2014), the Philippines (2016), the U.S. (2016), Brazil (2018), Italy (2022), the Netherlands (2023), Indonesia (2024), and the U.S. again (2024).
Set aside their incendiary us-versus-them rhetoric, however, and look at their actual achievements and those right-wing demagogues turn out to have a record that can only be described as dismal. In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro ravaged the vast Amazon rainforest and left office amid an abortive coup. In Russia, Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, sacrificing his country’s economy to capture some more land (which it hardly lacked). In Turkey, Recep Erdogan caused a crippling debt crisis, while jailing 50,000 suspected opponents. In the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte murdered 30,000 suspected drug users and courted China by giving up his country’s claims in the resource-rich South China Sea. In Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu has wreaked havoc on Gaza and neighboring lands, in part to stay in office and stay out of prison.
Prospects for Donald Trump’s Second Term
After the steady erosion of its global power for several decades, America is no longer the — or perhaps even an — “exceptional” nation floating above the deep global currents that shape the politics of most countries. And as it has become more of an ordinary country, it has also felt the full force of the worldwide move toward strongman rule. Not only does that global trend help explain Trump’s election and his recent reelection, but it provides some clues as to what he’s likely to do with that office the second time around.
In the globalized world America made, there is now an intimate interaction between domestic and international policy. That will soon be apparent in a second Trump administration whose policies are likely to simultaneously damage the country’s economy and further degrade Washington’s world leadership.
Let’s start with the clearest of his commitments: environmental policy. During the recent election campaign, Trump called climate change “a scam” and his transition team has already drawn up executive orders to exit from the Paris climate accords. By quitting that agreement, the U.S. will abdicate any leadership role when it comes to the most consequential issue facing the international community while reducing pressure on China to curb its greenhouse gas emissions. Since these two countries now account for nearly half (45%) of global carbon emissions, such a move will ensure that the world blows past the target of keeping this planet’s temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Centigrade until the end of the century. Instead, on a planet that’s already had 12 recent months of just such a temperature rise, that mark is expected to be permanently reached by perhaps 2029, the year Trump finishes his second term.
On the domestic side of climate policy, Trump promised last September that he would “terminate the Green New Deal, which I call the Green New Scam, and rescind all unspent funds under the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act.” On the day after his election, he committed himself to increasing the country’s oil and gas production, telling a celebratory crowd, “We have more liquid gold than any country in the world.” He will undoubtedly also block wind farm leases on Federal lands and cancel the $7,500 tax credit for purchasing an electrical vehicle.
As the world shifts to renewable energy and all-electric vehicles, Trump’s policies will undoubtedly do lasting damage to the American economy. In 2023, the International Renewable Energy Agency reported that, amid continuing price decreases, wind and solar power now generate electricity for less than half the cost of fossil fuels. Any attempt to slow the conversion of this country’s utilities to the most cost-effective form of energy runs a serious risk of ensuring that American-made products will be ever less competitive.
To put it bluntly, he seems to be proposing that electricity users here should pay twice as much for their power as those in other advanced nations. Similarly, as relentless engineering innovation makes electric vehicles cheaper and more reliable than petrol-powered ones, attempting to slow such an energy transition is likely to make the U.S. auto industry uncompetitive, at home and abroad.
Calling tariffs “the greatest thing ever invented,” Trump has proposed slapping a 20% duty on all foreign goods and 60% on those from China. In another instance of domestic-foreign synergy, such duties will undoubtedly end up crippling American farm exports, thanks to retaliatory overseas tariffs, while dramatically raising the cost of consumer goods for Americans, stoking inflation, and slowing consumer spending.
Reflecting his aversion to alliances and military commitments, Trump’s first foreign policy initiative will likely be an attempt to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine. During a CNN town hall in May 2023, he claimed he could stop the fighting “in 24 hours.” Last July, he added: “I would tell [Ukraine’s president] Zelenskyy, no more. You got to make a deal.”
Just two days after the November election, according to the Washington Post, Trump reputedly told Russian President Vladimir Putin in a telephone call, “not to escalate the war in Ukraine and reminded him of Washington’s sizable military presence in Europe.” Drawing on sources inside the Trump transition team, the Wall Street Journal reported that the new administration is considering “cementing Russia’s seizure of 20% of Ukraine” and forcing Kyiv to forego its bid to join NATO, perhaps for as long as 20 years.
With Russia drained of manpower and its economy pummeled by three years of bloody warfare, a competent negotiator (should Trump actually appoint one) might indeed be able to bring a tenuous peace to a ravaged Ukraine. Since it has been Europe’s frontline of defense against a revanchist Russia, the continent’s major powers would be expected to play a significant role. But Germany’s coalition government has just collapsed; French president Emmanuel Macron is crippled by recent electoral reverses; and the NATO alliance, after three years of a shared commitment to Ukraine, faces real uncertainty with the advent of a Trump presidency.
America’s Allies
Those impending negotiations over Ukraine highlight the paramount importance of alliances for U.S. global power. For 80 years, from World War II through the Cold War and beyond, Washington relied on bilateral and multilateral alliances as a critical force multiplier. With China and Russia both rearmed and increasingly closely aligned, reliable allies have become even more important to maintaining Washington’s global presence. With 32 member nations representing a billion people and a commitment to mutual defense that has lasted 75 years, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is arguably the most powerful military alliance in all of modern history.
Yet Trump has long been sharply critical of it. As a candidate in 2016, he called the alliance “obsolete.” As president, he mocked the treaty’s mutual-defense clause, claiming even “tiny” Montenegro could drag the U.S. into war. While campaigning last February, he announced that he would tell Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to a NATO ally that didn’t pay what he considered its fair share.
Right after Trump’s election, caught between what one analyst called “an aggressively advancing Russia and an aggressively withdrawing America,” French President Macron insisted that the continent needed to be a “more united, stronger, more sovereign Europe in this new context.” Even if the new administration doesn’t formally withdraw from NATO, Trump’s repeated hostility, particularly toward its crucial mutual-defense clause, may yet serve to eviscerate the alliance.
In the Asia-Pacific region, the American presence rests on three sets of overlapping alliances: the AUKUS entente with Australia and Britain, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (with Australia, India, and Japan), and a chain of bilateral defense pacts stretching along the Pacific littoral from Japan through Taiwan to the Philippines. Via careful diplomacy, the Biden administration strengthened those alliances, bringing two wayward allies, Australia and the Philippines that had drifted Beijing-wards, back into the Western fold. Trump’s penchant for abusing allies and, as in his first term, withdrawing from multilateral pacts is likely to weaken such ties and so American power in the region.
Although his first administration famously waged a trade war with Beijing, Trump’s attitude toward the island of Taiwan is bluntly transactional. “I think, Taiwan should pay us for defense,” he said last June, adding: “You know, we’re no different than an insurance company. Taiwan doesn’t give us anything.” In October, he told the Wall Street Journal that he would not have to use military force to defend Taiwan because China’s President Xi “respects me and he knows I’m f—— crazy.” Bluster aside, Trump, unlike his predecessor Joe Biden, has never committed himself to defend Taiwan from a Chinese attack.
Should Beijing indeed attack Taiwan outright or, as appears more likely, impose a crippling economic blockade on the island, Trump seems unlikely to risk a war with China. The loss of Taiwan would break the U.S. position along the Pacific littoral, for 80 years the fulcrum of its global imperial posture, pushing its naval forces back to a “second island chain” running from Japan to Guam. Such a retreat would represent a major blow to America’s imperial role in the Pacific, potentially making it no longer a significant player in the security of its Asia-Pacific allies.
A Silent U.S. Recessional
Adding up the likely impact of Donald Trump’s policies in this country, Asia, Europe, and the international community generally, his second term will almost certainly be one of imperial decline, increasing internal chaos, and a further loss of global leadership. As “respect for American authority” fades, Trump may yet resort to “threatening military retaliation or economic reprisal.” But as I predicted back in 2010, it seems quite likely that “the world pays next to no attention as the American Century ends in silence.”
Copyright 2024 Alfred W. McCoy
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel, Songlands (the final one in his Splinterlands series), Beverly Gologorsky’s novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt’s A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power, John Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II, and Ann Jones’s They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return from America’s Wars: The Untold Story.

Alfred W. McCoy, a TomDispatch regular, is the Harrington professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power. His newest book is To Govern the Globe: World Orders and Catastrophic Change (Dispatch Books).

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Patriot123

Active member
Nov 12, 2024
169
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They can’t fall any further than where they are now u see Biden/Harris
Completely pathetic weak leadership in Biden
They don’t know what a women is
They make trannies more important than anyone else
How more pathetic and weak can it get
 
They can’t fall any further than where they are now u see Biden/Harris
Completely pathetic weak leadership in Biden
They don’t know what a women is
They make trannies more important than anyone else
How more pathetic and weak can it get
What fall? "The envy of the world" by Economist magazine and others. One of highest GDP.s, record breaking highs in stock market, US Dollar soared, near record low unemployment.

Weak Leadership? Reunited world leaders after they worried about the US in decay in global leadership under Trump, got massive legislation done to restore US manufacturing, the infrastructure bill which Rep state Reps are praising new roads, bridges even those that voted against the bill. CHIPS Act to assure we have the most modern chip technology including 3 massive new fabs being built here in Phoenix and other states.

Trans folks are EQUAL in rights as others. MORE important is BS ignorant rant of MAGA

Grocery prices had nothing to do with Biden, supply demand and the surge in egg prices due to massive dead chickens from bird flue as well as climate change wiping out supply as with many other grocery items. Food price inflation is global not just US, likewise gas prices, now down are based on global market (WTI in US and Brent in Europe)..

We desperately need more immigration but the system is broken. The bipartisan bill that went far more to right wind demands than ever before with more money for border agents desperately needed more judges, more modern drug detection at the ports of entry where most of the illegal drugs come in, and more. Trump told his minions to not bring it up in Congress since instead of problem solving he wanted it as a campaign issue.

Trump has been a fraud all his life his fake University, fake Charity, tax fraud, inflating his net worth for like Trump Tower for property insurance but lower for property taxes, abuse of women, etc etc and the only criminal in US history that is above the law and not accountable for his illegal acts. He sleeps with Hitner's book on his nightstand per Mary Trump, and his heroes are strong men like Orbon, Putin, and the North Korean leader. Many of his terminology and ideas just happen to be very close to the rise of Hitler.

He said he would be the last President needed in America, and because he is so wealthy, he doesn't have to raise any campaign money. There are so many lies easily fact-checked.

He won by the slimmest "We the People Vote" in 20 years of only 1.6%. The Electorial College was formed based on distrust of voters so the landowners could control not the people.

We desperately need more immigrants.

On our Statue of Liberty it says, "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door." With a drawing of massive ships in the harbor heading for our shores.

Actually, Biden did order a "stay in Mexico" policy, where they were supposed to register via an app (as if they all had smartphones) and get documents before they crossed, walked or swam into the US.

Mass deportation, if ever done, will decimate many farmers and the businesses where many of them work and pay taxes (Fed, State, Social Security). We desperately need more immigrants since we have so many unfilled jobs with such a strong economy—"the envy of the world" per foreign reports—one of the strongest global GDPs, record-high stock markets, and near-record low unemployment.

We are not replacing deaths with new workers, especially after us baby boomers, who are reaching havoc with our social security system since we were supposed to retire at 65 and die by 70, when Social Security began. I am part of the problem since I have lived too long now at 78 and have no medical issues, so I should live many more. We need more workers (immigrants) to pay for our old folks' benefits that we paid for - I have, over the years, put in about $200k in FICA taxes to fund it, and I am still working, so paying in more, but we need more younger immigrant workers since our birthrate has declined so much.
 
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squeezer

Well-known member
Jan 8, 2010
20,673
15,222
113
What fall? "The envy of the world" by Economist magazine and others. One of highest GDP.s, record breaking highs in stock market, US Dollar soared, near record low unemployment.
The delusional and misled will call the last 4 years a fail and the next 4 years a great rise of success and power no matter how shitty of a job and hatchet job Trump does to the country.
 
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jalimon

Well-known member
Jan 10, 2016
6,592
6,309
113
They can’t fall any further than where they are now u see Biden/Harris
Completely pathetic weak leadership in Biden
They don’t know what a women is
They make trannies more important than anyone else
How more pathetic and weak can it get
The article dates back to the early 90's with plenty of examples around the world.

And you spit out your Bidden/Harris/Wokism poops that trumpy has put in your brain.

1. You did not read the article
2. You are incapable of thinking (and especially not critical thinking)
 
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jalimon

Well-known member
Jan 10, 2016
6,592
6,309
113
You know when i realized the next generation of Americans are pitiful spoiled brats?

At the end of World Cup 2018. A network in Canada showed a pic of what the locker room of the US team looked like upon their last game. Trashy. This rich brats didn't care. There is cleaners for that right.

Then they showed the Japanese locker room. Spiky clean as the team had done a full clean up. With a note to thank the organization to give them this wonderful opportunity.

The US has too many gullible misogynists (often un educated). These people can lead the country to nowhere.
 

Frankfooter

dangling member
Apr 10, 2015
91,866
22,264
113
What fall? "The envy of the world" by Economist magazine and others. One of highest GDP.s, record breaking highs in stock market, US Dollar soared, near record low unemployment.

Weak Leadership? Reunited world leaders after they worried about the US in decay in global leadership under Trump, got massive legislation done to restore US manufacturing, the infrastructure bill which Rep state Reps are praising new roads, bridges even those that voted against the bill. CHIPS Act to assure we have the most modern chip technology including 3 massive new fabs being built here in Phoenix and other states.

Trans folks are EQUAL in rights as others. MORE important is BS ignorant rant of MAGA

Grocery prices had nothing to do with Biden, supply demand and the surge in egg prices due to massive dead chickens from bird flue as well as climate change wiping out supply as with many other grocery items. Food price inflation is global not just US, likewise gas prices, now down are based on global market (WTI in US and Brent in Europe)..

We desperately need more immigration but the system is broken. The bipartisan bill that went far more to right wind demands than ever before with more money for border agents desperately needed more judges, more modern drug detection at the ports of entry where most of the illegal drugs come in, and more. Trump told his minions to not bring it up in Congress since instead of problem solving he wanted it as a campaign issue.

Trump has been a fraud all his life his fake University, fake Charity, tax fraud, inflating his net worth for like Trump Tower for property insurance but lower for property taxes, abuse of women, etc etc and the only criminal in US history that is above the law and not accountable for his illegal acts. He sleeps with Hitner's book on his nightstand per Mary Trump, and his heroes are strong men like Orbon, Putin, and the North Korean leader. Many of his terminology and ideas just happen to be very close to the rise of Hitler.

He said he would be the last President needed in America, and because he is so wealthy, he doesn't have to raise any campaign money. There are so many lies easily fact-checked.

He won by the slimmest "We the People Vote" in 20 years of only 1.6%. The Electorial College was formed based on distrust of voters so the landowners could control not the people.

We desperately need more immigrants.

On our Statue of Liberty it says, "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door." With a drawing of massive ships in the harbor heading for our shores.

Actually, Biden did order a "stay in Mexico" policy, where they were supposed to register via an app (as if they all had smartphones) and get documents before they crossed, walked or swam into the US.

Mass deportation, if ever done, will decimate many farmers and the businesses where many of them work and pay taxes (Fed, State, Social Security). We desperately need more immigrants since we have so many unfilled jobs with such a strong economy—"the envy of the world" per foreign reports—one of the strongest global GDPs, record-high stock markets, and near-record low unemployment.

We are not replacing deaths with new workers, especially after us baby boomers, who are reaching havoc with our social security system since we were supposed to retire at 65 and die by 70, when Social Security began. I am part of the problem since I have lived too long now at 78 and have no medical issues, so I should live many more. We need more workers (immigrants) to pay for our old folks' benefits that we paid for - I have, over the years, put in about $200k in FICA taxes to fund it, and I am still working, so paying in more, but we need more younger immigrant workers since our birthrate has declined so much.
If rump enacts his 25% tariffs, and he's not just bullshitting as usual, it'll take the US into a depression.
 
If rump enacts his 25% tariffs, and he's not just bullshitting as usual, it'll take the US into a depression.
I bet he will back down like most of his day 1 promises to do something are usually just lies. He doesn't say "if.....then..." but just lies which is usual for him.
 

jeff2

Well-known member
Sep 11, 2004
1,570
851
113
What fall? "The envy of the world" by Economist magazine and others. One of highest GDP.s, record breaking highs in stock market, US Dollar soared, near record low unemployment.

Weak Leadership? Reunited world leaders after they worried about the US in decay in global leadership under Trump, got massive legislation done to restore US manufacturing, the infrastructure bill which Rep state Reps are praising new roads, bridges even those that voted against the bill. CHIPS Act to assure we have the most modern chip technology including 3 massive new fabs being built here in Phoenix and other states.

Trans folks are EQUAL in rights as others. MORE important is BS ignorant rant of MAGA

Grocery prices had nothing to do with Biden, supply demand and the surge in egg prices due to massive dead chickens from bird flue as well as climate change wiping out supply as with many other grocery items. Food price inflation is global not just US, likewise gas prices, now down are based on global market (WTI in US and Brent in Europe)..

We desperately need more immigration but the system is broken. The bipartisan bill that went far more to right wind demands than ever before with more money for border agents desperately needed more judges, more modern drug detection at the ports of entry where most of the illegal drugs come in, and more. Trump told his minions to not bring it up in Congress since instead of problem solving he wanted it as a campaign issue.

Trump has been a fraud all his life his fake University, fake Charity, tax fraud, inflating his net worth for like Trump Tower for property insurance but lower for property taxes, abuse of women, etc etc and the only criminal in US history that is above the law and not accountable for his illegal acts. He sleeps with Hitner's book on his nightstand per Mary Trump, and his heroes are strong men like Orbon, Putin, and the North Korean leader. Many of his terminology and ideas just happen to be very close to the rise of Hitler.

He said he would be the last President needed in America, and because he is so wealthy, he doesn't have to raise any campaign money. There are so many lies easily fact-checked.

He won by the slimmest "We the People Vote" in 20 years of only 1.6%. The Electorial College was formed based on distrust of voters so the landowners could control not the people.

We desperately need more immigrants.

On our Statue of Liberty it says, "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door." With a drawing of massive ships in the harbor heading for our shores.

Actually, Biden did order a "stay in Mexico" policy, where they were supposed to register via an app (as if they all had smartphones) and get documents before they crossed, walked or swam into the US.

Mass deportation, if ever done, will decimate many farmers and the businesses where many of them work and pay taxes (Fed, State, Social Security). We desperately need more immigrants since we have so many unfilled jobs with such a strong economy—"the envy of the world" per foreign reports—one of the strongest global GDPs, record-high stock markets, and near-record low unemployment.

We are not replacing deaths with new workers, especially after us baby boomers, who are reaching havoc with our social security system since we were supposed to retire at 65 and die by 70, when Social Security began. I am part of the problem since I have lived too long now at 78 and have no medical issues, so I should live many more. We need more workers (immigrants) to pay for our old folks' benefits that we paid for - I have, over the years, put in about $200k in FICA taxes to fund it, and I am still working, so paying in more, but we need more younger immigrant workers since our birthrate has declined so much.
U.S. has some very stong economic metrics but where do the gains go? Unfortunately this chart only goes to 2013.

Workers produced much more, but typical workers' pay lagged far behindDisconnect between productivity and typical worker's compensation, 1948–2013
Workers produced much more, but typical workers' pay lagged far behind: Disconnect between productivity and typical worker's compensation, 1948–2013

Note: Data are for compensation (wages and benefits) of production/nonsupervisory workers in the private sector and net productivity of the total economy. "Net productivity" is the growth of output of goods and services less depreciation per hour worked.
Source: EPI analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics and Bureau of Economic Analysis data
 
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U.S. has some very stong economic metrics but where do the gains go? Unfortunately this chart only goes to 2013.
Latest charts of strong employment data below the discussion and comments at
 
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Butler1000

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Oct 31, 2011
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Latest charts of strong employment data below the discussion and comments at
Ask the actual workers how they are doing.

This reliance on data that can be manipulated it what cost the Democratic Party the election. The experts made out like bandits.

But you can't use data to create charisma, to speak to people about their daily lives. The Democrats spend their their time telling people why they should vote for them , and how bad they are if they didn't. Instead of asking people what is wrong in their lives, what they wanted, and how they could get there.

The election was about inflation/economy, immigration and overseas wars. In the eyes of common voters they failed on all three.
 

HungSowel

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Mar 3, 2017
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The US has not reached the apex of its power, it will survive Trump just like last time it survived Trump. The only systemic economic issue with the US is unaffordable housing, everything else is more than fine. Trump is a sledgehammer when what is needed is a screwdriver to tighten things up a bit. People are a fan of sledgehammers and watching train wrecks even if they are part of the train wreck.
 
Ashley Madison
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