Posted on 06/02/2014 3:57:20 PM PDT by Lorianne
Santiago, Chile
Along with history, travel is by far one of the best teachers. Formal education in classrooms can be stifling to the mind. It makes people believe that the world actually conforms to all the snazzy theories we read about.
But there’s no economic textbook on the planet that can come close to showing you how the world really works.
It’s not about stocks and flows, efficient markets, or official statistics. None of that stuff really matters.
The world runs on people. And even though our politicians go out of their way to highlight the differences among us, human beings all over the world are fundamentally the same.
We all love our children. We cheer for our favorite teams. We work hard to put food on the table for our families. We get frustrated with where we’re at in life. And we desire to achieve more.
This desire to achieve is fundamental to all humanity. Human beings aspire. We push ourselves to accomplish more and improve our stations in life. And this desire spans generations.
Parents always want their children to enjoy a better life than they had. And they work their butts off to ensure this happens.
This isn’t exclusively a western phenomenon. All over the world, the need to provide a better life for one’s children is practically a subtext to the social contract. And people in developing countries want exactly the same thing.
They’re succeeding.
A child born in China today will have a far richer life than his/her parents and grandparents.
And in my travels to over 100 countries over the last 10+ years, I’ve seen other frontier and developing markets that are bursting at the seams in a similar trend.
Myanmar. Colombia. Tanzania. Georgia. Sri Lanka. Botswana. Indonesia. Mongolia.
The growth rates in these places are staggering, and you can see first-hand the hundreds of millions of people being lifted out of poverty.
In these developing countries, they look across the water to the West and can see a rich and consumptive lifestyle. They want this lifestyle, especially for their children.
They’ve spent decades toiling in factories, saving money, and building for the future. It’s time to cash in.
Decades ago, the vast majority of wealth and production was in the West– specifically the United States.
Most people across Asia and Latin America were absolutely impoverished, and felt honored just to be able to work hard and export a product to the US.
Today, it is those same countries (particularly in Asia) that now hold the majority of the world’s wealth and production. And it is their growth that pulls the global economy along.
The West, on the other hand, is full of debt and consumption. America’s greatest exports are now infinite quantities of paper currency, drone attacks, and arrogant regulations like FATCA.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see where this is going.
The West is running out of steam, and the Social Contract subtext is breaking down. Parents are no longer able to provide a better life for their children.
It’s not from lack of trying. But when you’re bogged down by tens of trillions in debt, rising taxes, increased regulation, and a government that rules by fear and intimidation, it’s like swimming upstream in the middle of a hurricane.
Wealth and power are shifting. Developing nations are rising quickly, and western nations are sinking. It’s happening. Ignoring this reality doesn’t make it go away.
Providing a better life for our children now means breaking away from a 20th century paradigm and embracing the new rules of the game.
The world isn’t coming to an end. But it’s changing, just as Hemingway wrote– gradually, then suddenly.
This is fundamentally a good news story… and it opens up a world of opportunity for those who are willing to see it.
It's coming to an end.
Reason is simple.
There are more “takers” than “workers” every day.
Every country in history of world who tried that always declined.
He didn’t mention Liberalism.
They key change was taking God out of the schools, and launching a secular war on religion.
The key to the strength of the west was/is Christianity.
“human beings all over the world are fundamentally the same. “
Wrong. People who believe in Islam are fundamentally different. Islam is religion incompatible with the rest of the world. It needs to reform itself. It needs to reform or we need to destroy it.
Amen! Preach it!
“The strength of the west was/is Christianity”
Even according to a Chinese study.
Obama declared the US no longer a Christian country. That’s where you can mark the line on our downfall. Or his election, same thing.
by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
More than half a century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.
Since then I have spent well-nigh fifty years working on the history of our Revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous Revolution that swallowed up some sixty million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.
Ø is but a symptom of an illiterate electorate. The disease remains after this tumor is excised in 2016.
FOX NATION 5th ANNIVERSARY CLASSICS: FLASHBACK: Paul Harvey, 1965: ‘If I Were the Devil’ (Warning for a Nation)
http://nation.foxnews.com/paul-harvey/2012/03/21/1965-if-i-were-devil-warning-nation-paul-harvey
“Today, it is those same countries (particularly in Asia) that now hold the majority of the world’s wealth and production. And it is their growth that pulls the global economy along.”
Lots of simplistic hogwash in this article. Manufacturing a cardboard bookcase with cheap veneer that falls apart in three months, or incorrectly tempering a steel bolt that busts apart when it’s torqued down won’t lead a country to the top of the economic hill.
Asia takes shortcuts for temporary economic gains. It will all fall down on their heads and bury them.
Private equity is leaving Asia by the tens of billions.
bump
They are crashing this country on purpose, all the way to the end.
This article is a cop out. Americans have struggled against worst and came out on top. Economic decline is a sidestep of the real issue of moral decline and a willingness to take the easy way out with what a big government promises.
One of those is in my truck's block, underneath the water pump.
Also just had a Chinese LED bulb fail after three days (it goes on and off intermittently).
Then why are non-christian nations growing their economies and prosperity at a faster rate now? With prosperity comes better health, improving environment, more opportunities, more education. All of this is happening right now in China, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Dubai, Hong Kong, all of whom are not predominantly Christian countries.
Third world countries prosper by cheap labor, polluting industries and unfettered capitalism. While I agree travel is an education, it has not yet convinced me that non-Western economies are the future as there are moral and cultural values that accompanied westernn influnece and which made the US a preeminant world power. Our decline will not present economic opportunities in places other than the US ...only wishful thinking. Cash out, get some land and wait.
The most reliable cars are made in Asia.
I see more and more on American roads everyday.
There is nothing occurring as to the fate of the US that the voters of this country didn’t ask for. They elect criminals who set about destroying it slowly but steadily... American voters chose this continued path in November 2012.
Why is America in decline?
That’s so easy a child could answer.
Catering to the lowest common denominator - characters with their hands out in exchange for their vote.
You keep stealing from the producing class to transfer large sums to those who do absolutely nothing but piss and moan, you bankrupt a nation.
End of story.
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