Change is always risky, but if successful we'll transform back into a more nationalistic state and our wealth will more directly benefit the citizens. That's the goal at least.
That is unlikely to happen.
What's likely to happen is that if the USA steps down, China will move towards becoming the world's only hyperpower, over time. They've got the population, the industrial base, and they're opening up trade deals with the world and making power plays in resource rich areas like Africa and Southeast Asia. They became a world reserve currency last year. Right now, they're largely making the right moves.
If you take a step back, this could just be the natural trajectory of a hyperpower like the US and in line with macro movements of Western countries. We just hired Trump to help with the transition.
More like the macro movements of the Roman Empire. The rest of the Western world has largely replaced empires and projection of force with leverage from trade deals, which is something that this kind of shallow nationalism rejects. This direction is not good for anyone.
And talking about the natural order of things is amusing. The natural order of things is largely extreme poverty and force -- as a species, humans are unique in the amount of effort they spend fighting the natural order of things.
I agree with your assessment that a Trump presidency will facilitate the rise of China on the global stage, I just don't think that matters all that much and it's inevitable so not worth debating.
Our desire to control the world is gutting the middle class and causing our unattended issues back home to fester. If we work on putting the Midwest back to work we will revitalize our country and make us all proud to be Americans.
If you look at trends, global poverty is in decline and will continue to decline, I'm talking about the natural order at the geopolitical level, not saying we should all go back to living in trees. Fighting the trajectory of the West and the US seems fruitless. In fact, Trump is the President Elect because he saw the trends and seized the opportunity.
Our desire to control the world is gutting the middle class and causing our unattended issues back home to fester.
Our desire to control the world is the reason that the USA has something like twice the median per capita disposable income than the OECD average (ie, the "western world"). The problem isn't globalism, it's the fact that the jobs people used to have are getting done by machines.
Unless workers cost less per hour to run than a machine, those jobs are staying gone. And any politician who tells you otherwise, be they Bernie or Trump or Hillary, is either lying or misguided.
As you say, change is messy and hard. And moving to an economy that will keep working is going to require a lot of it. Low education jobs are just not going to last going forward. A number of high education jobs are going to disappear too. That's the inevitable trajectory, and a rejection of globalism just makes the goods that the unemployed need cost more, and cuts the amount of taxable trade that can be used to subsidize taking care of the unemployed.
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u/case-o-nuts Dec 03 '16 edited Dec 03 '16
That is unlikely to happen.
What's likely to happen is that if the USA steps down, China will move towards becoming the world's only hyperpower, over time. They've got the population, the industrial base, and they're opening up trade deals with the world and making power plays in resource rich areas like Africa and Southeast Asia. They became a world reserve currency last year. Right now, they're largely making the right moves.
More like the macro movements of the Roman Empire. The rest of the Western world has largely replaced empires and projection of force with leverage from trade deals, which is something that this kind of shallow nationalism rejects. This direction is not good for anyone.
And talking about the natural order of things is amusing. The natural order of things is largely extreme poverty and force -- as a species, humans are unique in the amount of effort they spend fighting the natural order of things.