Its been a priviledge to be born in America, I count my blessings each day that we live in the richest country in the world. Unfortunately, I see that things in this new century are not going to be as good. America still enjoys a considerable technological and economic lead over the rest of the planet. That lead is eroding, and eroding quickly, because of globalization, the technology that has made the US and the West prosperous is helping modernize the rest of the planet. It used to be that countries with smaller populations and high technology were able to prosper more than those who were low tech with high populations. Now a lot of high population countries are becoming high tech. The two poster boys for the new world are China and India, both are still low tech by Western standards but their pace of modernization will mean that they will be wealthier and more advanced than much of West within three decades or by the middle of the century at the very latest.
There is plenty of evidence of this, China and India's economies have nearly doubled since 2000, American and European firms continue to pour investments into these places, the US dollar continues to lose value on the world markets(a strong dollar encouraged a strong domestic consumer market), the gap between rich and poor in America is becoming so wide that the USA's income distribution could be as uneven as Brazil's within a couple of decades(I am no communist but when you have too many poor people, its going to cause trouble).
Australia, with the world's largest reserves of uranium, is going to be the number one supplier of the material to China which will make the country a nuclear superpower within a decade. Like it or not, I don't see the USA in its current rosy position in the next 15 to 20 years. The next two decades will probably be some of the most difficult in American history. Britain experienced this decline in the past but it was a very well managed decline, the British today still have a high quality of life, I am not sure how America is going to handle this.

And the places where we could be making advances - like biotechnology, computers - our conservative government is holding us not just back but way back. So I see the US losing it's edge within the next five years. It will be a second rate washed up country that exports an army for hire. Also Bush's wars will put a huge tax burden on the future earnings of the US and most likely they will cut research even futher. Is has already been cut by over 75% since Bush was elected. He has killed projects like the X33 & X34, the areospike engine and other aerospace projects.

Some where in Texas a town has lost their village idiot. Please help return him and his friends back to their rightful places...

We're losing ground in education as well.. Although the US has top research facilities and universities, our high school students are becoming less competitive in math and science. That leaves me wondering what has No Child Left Behind done for the next generation..

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Ross U. '10
Rutgers U. '05

I've been increasingly concerned about education, and it seems more and more like Americans are losing any ability to evaluate claims and are encouraged less to pay attention to current events and current research, not that we were ever great at it.

Without offending anyone, this concerns me from a medical perspective as well. I link the increasing numbers of people who place no value in modern medicine OR the FDA on a drop in education, particularly in reference to evaluation of claims. I have no trouble with combined approaches and putting traditional (and nonharmful) approaches into medicine for patient comfort, but it seems like an increasing number of people honestly feel that medicine has nothing over whatever "all natural" variety of snake oil is being sold to them.

People particularly seem to have problems deciphering pseudoscience. If it sounds smart, it works. The write up for justifying a 17 dollar vial of water that had been sitting NEXT to lithium sounded like a graduate chemist's thesis, but amounted to "unsupported crud... more unsupported crud, send money."

in my grandparent's day, a high school degree meant something.
in my parent's day, a bachelors was all you really needed.
now it seems like you need post grad training for most things, Masters, PhD, MD, ect.

our kids might not have a fighting chance unless they have that MD, PhD, ect. You need more and more education just to get by.

Education isn't the only problem, because of the internet, the medium we are using to communicate with one another, a corporation can hire talent in low wage countries. For example, in India a company can get up to 10,000 applicants for one programmer position, this gives the employer a tremendous amount of leverage in hiring. Computer programmers in India work 16 hours a day and make about $400US a month. If the same company goes to San Francisco, they will have to give a fresh grad at least $50K a year, benefits, vacation, etc. How can we compete like this??? A lot of European countries faced this issue when the US became the Superpower after WW2, they set up elaborate mixed socialist-capitalist systems(Australia, the UK, and Canada have this), the US will probably become more socialist protectionist unless we are going to work 16+ hour days for a $1 an hour. Thinking about it, the US can thrive on an isolationist policy, we make enough food to feed 3 Billion + people(yet we still have a lot of hungry people especially children). Globalization just isn't going our way.

well i tell you what, we started off pretty bad...think.... president Bush (2000-2008) NOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!


Once he is out, by impeachment hopefully, and we start thinking about things such was global warming and the other injustices brought on by this man (war(S)) we will then be heading in the right direction. Furthermore, education is becoming more AVAILABLE to people as well nowadays and thus it can be seen that people are EXPECTED to attend now then before/

Globalization is indeed a very tough issue. And given the unpopularity of the US' recent foreign policies, it's easy to see us slipping back into a state of isolationism, like before WWI and WWII (does this mean WWIII is on the way?).

With China gearing up for a massive growth, we're facing a monster that'll be hungry for the same resources we are and border disputes with countries we've promised to protect. Well, at least Asian women are good looking..

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"Peace through strength." Ronald W. Reagan

Quiet Penguin Little!

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