[rightwingcrazy]

I remember similar things being asserted about Japan back in the 1980s, and talk that we’d all have to learn Japanese.

If the US continues on the current trajectory, there may be more than one economy that surpasses ours, but trajectories do change. And places like China need a foreign consumer base to buy their products. Consumers from which countries would pick up the slack? India? Brazil? The nations of Europe?

[goodnesswins]

"I remember similar things being asserted about Japan back in the 1980s, and talk that we’d all have to learn Japanese."

Yup...Japanese kanban and JIT...I remember at Intel...

[setter]

“I remember similar things being asserted about Japan back in the 1980s, and talk that we’d all have to learn Japanese.”

The US never shut down and moved 70,000 factories to Japan.
I do not take the threat of china lightly

[entropy12]

There is a BIG difference between China and Japan.

China has bigger population by orders of magnitude than Japan.
And China has more mineral wealth than Japan by orders of magnitude as well.