Krauthammer: 'People Are Talking about American Decline

Over the last few years, with an economy in decline and the rise of certain developing nations, there have been murmurs of the end of American exceptionalism throughout the media.

Don’t believe a word of it, says syndicated columnist and Fox News contributor Charles Krauthammer.

On the Christmas Eve edition of Fox News Channel’s “Happening Now,” Krauthammer was asked to reflect on the last two years. He explained there was similar rhetoric about the nation’s decline at the end of the 1970s.

“Well, I think this is mostly a reflection of the recession,” Krauthammer said. “The mood of the country going back 20, 30, 40 years, almost always reflects the state of the economy. The late ‘70s was a period of malaise. People were saying oh, the American era is over. The big dictatorships in the world are going to dominate us. That was a reflection of the terrible economic conditions, the stagnation and the inflation late ‘70s.”

With the 1980s, however, the economy came back and the calls of the end of the so-called Pax Americana went by the wayside. He predicted the same would happen this time around.

“When the economy recovered in the ‘80s there was a morning in America,” he continued. “So I would not over-read the move. People are talking about American decline — don’t believe a word of it.

“Instead, we could do a simple mental exercise - name 10 top software companies, then cross out all American corporations. You would be hard pressed to have more than 3 names left on the list.”

It’s irrelevant where a company is domiciled. What’s relevant is where they are doing their new hiring, and for what positions. And I’d love to blame Obama, but he is really not the cause of the problem; he just has done nothing whatsoever to help.

My company recently had a 6-figure job opening for Canadian data processing work, and Canadian law required that the person hired be physically located in Canada. In contrast US law allows US data processing work to be done over the internet from anywhere in the world. So 99% of those new job openings are now going to very capable people in low-wage English-speaking countries. Employers do this for the same reason you and I shop at Wal-Mart: to get a bargain. And I don’t blame the employers. The fault lies with a US Congress that has systematically betrayed the people it is elected to serve.

Heinlein, over the time I’ve known of him, doesn’t seem to blame “democracy”, but parasites. His words are usually edited for brevity; in the full, two paragraphs his disdain for for the post-literate, the intentionally-unenlightened, shows thru more clearly, I think:

“The America of my time line is a laboratory example of what can happen to democracies, what has eventually happened to all perfect democracies throughout all histories. A perfect democracy, a ‘warm body’ democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally, has no internal feedback for self-correction. It depends solely on the wisdom and self-restraint of citizens… which is opposed by the folly and lack of self-restraint of other citizens. What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all. But what does happen is that he votes his own self-interest as he sees it… which for the majority translates as ‘Bread and Circuses.’

‘Bread and Circuses’ is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure. Democracy often works beautifully at first. But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader—the barbarians enter Rome.”
— Robert A. Heinlein

I am not trying to win an argument with you. I am merely running a public relations campaign. I am merely showing everyone that you are a naif, and I will let them decide for themselves whether to give your arguments any additional thought. BTW the financial services leeches are one of our weaknesses, not one of our national strengths. If you look at all the ways that Wall Street got itself into trouble through malinvestment of liquidity that was publicly provided, requiring continuing massive public bailouts, little if any is because they overinvested in productive enterprises (physical, human and intellectual capital to increase our ability to provide goods and services). Most of it is shopping malls, high rise condos in LA, provided no principal, no down payment mortgages on speculatives property deals, etc.

You, just like the financial "experts" who got us in this mess, would not recognize a genuinely productive activity if you were smacked across the face with it like a cold dead fish.

And just for the record, I am descending from sarcasm to personal insult. It is your intelligence I am insulting, in the hope that you will wake up, realize that God gave you eyes to see and a brain to think about what you see and and eyes again to see whether what your brain thinks corresponds with what is really going on.

> It’s irrelevant where a company is domiciled. What’s relevant is where they are doing their new hiring, and for what positions.

Actually, company’s domicile provides an extremely important insight into the economy. It is in the United States that the new companies are created. Today, in spite of all the gloom and doom there are thousands of new companies formed in this Country. Many of them will become tomorrow’s leaders. It is this dynamism that will drive American economy. All that is required is the removal of the economic uncertainty introduced by Obama’s regulations and massive spending binge. If Republicans can limit the damage over the next two years and if we can manage to elect a conservative President we will see the recovery as strong as the one under Reagan.

Granted, these are two very big “if’s”. But I can hope.

> It is your intelligence I am insulting, in the hope that you will wake up, realize that ...

Not a great way to bring people over to your side either ;-) .

> If you look at all the ways that Wall Street got itself into trouble through malinvestment of liquidity that was publicly provided, requiring continuing massive public bailouts,

I realize that I am wasting my writing effort. However, its a holiday ...

Financial mis-investment did not cause the 2007/2008 problem. It was caused by mis-direction of investment due to government interventions. No private enterprise would willingly invest into losing causes. It is government subsidies funneled through the Fannie/Freddie monstrosities that created the ground work for the disaster. This was made worst by the bailout. Keep in mind that even in 2007/2008 there were many well managed and profitable financial companies. Under normal circumstances, we would have had a massive cleanup taking place on Wall Street. Bad firms would go under and their resources would be absorbed by those organizations that were well run. Unfortunately, the bailouts made sure that this cleanup would never occur. The really horrible mistake of the Bush bailout is it effectively transferred financial resources from well run companies to the the mis-managed once.

No private enterprise would willingly invest into losing causes.

LOL! Like I said, your naivte is touching.

It was Alan Greenspan himself who admitted his great surprise (and grave error) upon discovering that individual officers at investment banks would operate to maximize their personal gain at the expense of the welfare of the shareholders. Lots of losing causes made lots of money for individuals while tanking the whole operation.

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