To answer your original question (as a non-American) -- is America the greatest nation on earth?
German Guy, how have you been man? Haven't seen you post in a while.
Yes and no. You also have hilarious amounts of debt.
Yes, but what really is "national debt?" In the United States it's defined as the value of outstanding Treasury Securities. But treasury securities pay almost no interest. In other words, if I buy a T-bill worth a dollar, the government gets a dollar, and I get a promise of future payment of a dollar (most are relatively short-term loans).
The only people who buy t-bills are individuals with a pissload of money, corporations, and foreign nations. In other words, I want to protect my money instead of having it sit in a bank, so I buy a t-bill. Since no interest is paid, all it amounts to then is a voluntary tax. Or, better put, all it amounts to is liquidity for the government to function normally at no cost to itself.
So long as people continue to do it, there is no problem. Only when people stop buying treasuries will the government need to think about either austerity or managed inflation as an answer.
Europe follows the same model. At the end of the day, GDP is the best measure of the wealth of a nation.
Take away the leading role of the dollar, and it doesn't look so rosy anymore. Also, your producing sector is much worse than in case of other countries (such as Germany
).
Perhaps, but that's a hypothetical. How realistic is it that the leading role of the dollar gets taken away anytime soon? All we can do is to assess things as they stand today.
Also, while there may be more money in America than anywhere else , it is not as well distributed as in other countries....
This is true. If parity is how you define "economic greatness," which is a reasonable position to hold although I do not share it, then you have no argument from me that the United States does not lead in that realm.
The United States invented modern capitalism as we know it today. Capitalism, at its core, is a political-economic system designed to encourage competition, the idea being that you get the most out of people when they are competing with one another. We believe in rewarding winners and punishing losers, within reasonable limits, and we feel this is what makes those of us who do win succeed not only domestically, but globally.
That's true.
But here too, it goes what was said about the distribution of wealth. America is the one Western country with the very best schools and elite universities. But it is also the one Western country with the largest number of very bad and below average schools and universities.
This goes back to the American capitalist mentality. We believe in encouraging competition and rewarding winners. If you measure success by how the middle of the pack performs, America is probably never going to come out on top. If you measure success by the opportunity to become a nobel prize winning researcher, then America wins hands down. We'll back the winner. We fund our best universities and our best high schools very well. We don't back our under-performers. We let them see what's possible, and try to claw their way up the ladder.
Yes. But that's past. Today, America does not produce remotely as much anymore as it consumes.
American businesses are more successful than any other in the world. The Chinese, who, by the way, outproduce the Germans by a huge margin, produce the majority of their goods for American (and now European) businesses.
You see, it goes back to another tellingly American quality. We love cheap labor. We were the last western nation to end slavery. During our early capitalistic years (1860-1920), we had no minimum wage, no unions, child labor, and factory workers were, more or less, indentured slaves.
So they got rid of all that. Doesn't work in America anymore. So what do the industrious Americans do? They open up China. Chinese factory workers are essentially slave labor for American companies. Think about it. What are they building over there? Shoes, knick knacks, stuff that is labor intensive. But they're not building Chinese-branded shoes. They're building Nike's. They're building Apple iphones.
They're building our cheap stuff for us for pennies, and, the stink of it is.... we made them think it's THEIR idea.
We control all the designs, the global brands, the distribution networks, and the operating capital. They do all the work and we get all the benefits.