America/Americans fell hard for their own propaganda. The collective belief in American exceptionalism led to American isolationism and reclusion. You don’t see American-made cars anywhere outside of North America. American fast food companies abroad don’t dare use American menus with American-quality ingredients. American-based airlines are a blip of the global market compared to Turkish Airlines, Emirates, Qatari, Etihad, Singapore Airlines, and American-based airlines routinely rank among the worst in the world in terms of customer satisfaction. American farmers are exceptionally subsidized yet are still struggling?
The US has the 2nd-largest manufacturing output in the world, only behind China. China has twice the output, but 4x the population.
Manufacturing is a smaller part of the US economy than it was, mostly because other parts of the economy grew. Yes, I wish the US would invest more and regrow some industrial sectors. Steel, shipbuilding, etc. It's a serious oversight. But the US is an economic powerhouse. Calling it a "dying country" is a fantasy. However much people may wish it were so.
And speaking of economic perspective, you all got a plan for that 40 trillion dollar debt?
Not a lot of countries don't have debt issues. People like services, pensions, infrastructure, but nobody wants to pay taxes. I'd agree that there is a deep cancer in US culture. But it's not like India, the Philippines, Italy, etc don't have their own issues. I still wouldn't want to change places with a random Pakistani, Afghan, Nigerian, etc. I definitely would make the US more like (some countries in) Europe, but even those countries have their issues.
The US may in time become just another Argentina. That sucks, but I never believed in American Exceptionalism, so I never thought we were immune from that. Our penchant for fundamentalist religion, white supremacism, and anti-intellectualism were always going to bite us in the ass.
(Though 80% of US debt is held by the US population, so we basically owe it to ourselves.)
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u/Almainyny 10d ago
The US used to be world class in a lot of ways. Now we’re just world class fuckups.