Victor Davis Hanson: American Decline Is a State of Mind
[Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author, most recently, of The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern]
We are hearing all sorts of reasons why the United States is doomed to decline.
After all, America is piling up deficits at a record rate of about $1.5 trillion a year while other countries are slashing their spending. The national debt cascades over $13 trillion and is on track to reach $20 trillion within a decade.
The current recession is heading into its third year. Unemployment still hovers at nearly 10 percent....
In the midst of our current malaise, we feel overwhelmed by largely short-term problems and our current inability to address them — without appreciating our long-term strengths and present bounty, or learning from past recoveries.
We are soon to revert to the Clinton income-tax rates last used in 2000, when we ran budget surpluses. If likewise we were to cut the budget, or just hold federal spending to the rate of inflation, America would soon run surpluses as it did a decade ago. For all our problems, the United States is still the largest economy in the world, its 300 million residents producing more goods and services than the more than 1 billion in either China or India....
America may well soon decline and become no different from any other nation. But such a depressing future would largely be our generation’s own free choice; it is not a historical inevitability.
Read entire article at National Review
We are hearing all sorts of reasons why the United States is doomed to decline.
After all, America is piling up deficits at a record rate of about $1.5 trillion a year while other countries are slashing their spending. The national debt cascades over $13 trillion and is on track to reach $20 trillion within a decade.
The current recession is heading into its third year. Unemployment still hovers at nearly 10 percent....
In the midst of our current malaise, we feel overwhelmed by largely short-term problems and our current inability to address them — without appreciating our long-term strengths and present bounty, or learning from past recoveries.
We are soon to revert to the Clinton income-tax rates last used in 2000, when we ran budget surpluses. If likewise we were to cut the budget, or just hold federal spending to the rate of inflation, America would soon run surpluses as it did a decade ago. For all our problems, the United States is still the largest economy in the world, its 300 million residents producing more goods and services than the more than 1 billion in either China or India....
America may well soon decline and become no different from any other nation. But such a depressing future would largely be our generation’s own free choice; it is not a historical inevitability.