[Issaquahking]

We cannot be a nation of "service workers" and expect to advance as a society. It's about natural resources and the management of them. Second teir is support industry that actually makes the harvesting of the resources possible, and so on, and so forth. If you don't control the resources of your country, how will your country ever hope to prosper? We are the only country in the world where we have property rights like we do. You obviously are not relizing how important that concept is....This country is free because we have fought to keep it that way....damn anyone who thinks that they can waltz on in here and take it away( read up on the U.N. agenda's...we have days of reading here in the forum on who,what,when,why,where and how they operate).

[RHINO369]

No you are wrong we can be a nation of service workers, because we own all the foreign means of production. I'd rather let some starving chinamen get money to live and give the factory worker here keeping track of their expenses. Most imporantly in a high tech era we are the ones coming up with the lastest and greatest so they have to keep coming to us to buy the ideas. I see no challenge to American power, that has any chance of working, except Russia if in 50 years it can get its act together. The only way we will fail is if we lose are cowboy capitalist additude which is uniqly american.

[BranMakMorn]

If natural resources were the answer to building wealth, then Hong Kong would be an empty rock island, and Africa would be home to the wealthiest countries on earth.

You need property rights, and the rule of law, which we have in the U.S.

You also need human capital, which is well supplied by the U.S. population. And you need a free market and a working price system so that resources are used where they are most needed.