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Originally Posted by The Lone Ranger
I'm perfectly serious when I say that I think of emigration more and more frequently these days.
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You and me both, pal.
But, perhaps it was inevitable, as predicted in Paul Kennedy's book The Rise and Fall of Great World Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict 1500-2000 (published 1987). It's been a long time since I read it, so I grabbed this quote from an outdated (pre-Iraq War) review:
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Originally Posted by Paul Kennedy
Once their productive capacity [is] enhanced, countries...normally find it easier to sustain the burdens of paying for large-scale armaments in peacetime and of maintaining and supplying large armies and fleets in wartime. It sounds crudely mercantilistic to express it this way, but wealth is usually needed to acquire and protect wealth. If, however, too large a portion of the state's resources is diverted from wealth creation and allocated instead to military purposes, then that is likely to lead to a weakening of national power over the longer term. In the same way, if a state overextends itself strategically--by, say, the conquest of extensive territories or the waging of costly wars--it runs the risk that the potential benefits from external expansion may be outweighed by the great expense of it all--a dilemma which becomes acute if the nation concerned has entered a period of relative economic decline.
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One could argue that as a percentage of GDP, the US, even with it's Iraq War,has not even come close to World War II military expenditure levels. Add to what we are spending to the size of the national debt and the deficits as far as the eye can see along with declining energy production, I can see how the USA might indeed become marginalized globally in the future, out of economic necessity. But, the question is, will it go quietly, or go down kicking and biting all the way?
Warren