* Ports on both the Atlantic and Pacific
* A very effective transportation system in between
* In the big growth sector where points 1 and 2 don't matter, tech, it's still #1 in the world anyway
* A market of 350 million high income people (by global standards) under one regulatory framework
No other country can compare. No one else has this. These in-built advantages are incredibly hard to beat.
There will be crises but the key insight for me was that because of these advantages the US is almost always going to be better prepared to weather those crises than the rest of the world. That is why it enjoys such a huge inflow of capital and immigration (currently #1 recipient of FDI in the world, most immigrants of any country in the world).
It's just a big risk to bet your money against the success of the US, no matter how dumb its leaders get.
It probably also helps that Americans tend to flip out and go full doomsday mode when anything goes wrong inside of their borders, I mean it's stressful, it's not very well planned, but it does make problems hard to ignore.
China almost has the same number of millionaires. Per capita it’s not as good, but in terms of volume. And I’d say they’re closer to a single regulatory framework than the US which has all sorts of conflicting state laws which get in the way of interstate commerce (despite the commerce clause). Sure there are a lot of advantages as you say. But they’re not indefinitely insurmountable.
And it lacks all the other inbuilt advantages I mentioned.
Remember, the USA can ship goods back and forth between itself and what... 90% of the ex-US global economy? With very little geopolitical interference.
This is largely a function of geography, plop a cargo ship in the water, sail it, boom you arrive in Western Europe, or East Asia, without getting anywhere near some other country's sphere of influence.
China can't say the same. To ship cargo to America they have to sail near multiple political rivals (and they seem to enjoy antagonizing America itself as well). To ship cargo to Europe they need to do the same. So there are all these countries and political forces that could disrupt Chinese trade at any time. In the long run they have inbuilt geographic risk, the US has inbuilt geographic immunity.
By itself China won't be able to feed its people in case of a US naval blockade, but that's where the alliance with Russia comes into place. Transporting grains by rail instead of by sea is not as cost effective but will do the trick, and Russia has lots of grains. The same Russia has also lots of raw minerals.
That's why throwing Russia into China's open arms is such a geo-strategic stupid thing to do from the West's point of view, really, really stupid.
Russia could have been Westernised with a little more effort, and turned into an ally and partner. (Which is not to say it would have been easy, but it would have been possible.)
Instead Russia was neoliberalised, turned into a mafia economy with huge concentrations of wealth on top of raging poverty, and its imperial pretensions were tolerated for two decades.
Ukraine and Russia are both direct US foreign policy failures.
> Instead Russia was neoliberalised
The West has also been neoliberalised.
Sadly I think that's why nothing better happened to Russia; everybody was comfortable with having a strongman to deal with and oligarchs to take money from. Even to the extent of overlooking crimes like the Salisbury poisonings and the airliner shootdown. It's a common pattern in US partner states.
Most of the former USSR and Yugoslavian states have sought freedom, although there are questions about Serbia, Hungary and to a lesser extent Poland.
I think you underestimate the importance of "plasticky trinkets." Exports are the backbone of the Chinese economy. Without them it can't afford to import food, and millions of Chinese starve. If China declares war and isolates itself so that Russia is its primary remaining trade partner, millions of Chinese starve.
The biggest importers of food to China today are the US, Brazil, Australia, and a handful of Southeast Asian countries - basically that's all gone if China goes to war or isolates itself in some other way.
Now I mean sure anything can happen in a war and the CCP might very well choose to let millions of Chinese starve, they've done it before. My point here was that isolation would inflict terrible and permanent damage to China. A war is unlikely to happen in the first place because not only is this damage so great, but China would probably lose any battle that wasn't very close to their home theatre.
By the way, Chinese food security is a great topic for illustrating how dysfunctional they are as a country. Here's an article on the topic - https://www.cfr.org/article/china-increasingly-relies-import... - basically they don't have food security, achieving it is one of their top priorities, and they are failing to achieve that priority. The cost to grow soybeans in China is 30% higher than in the US, and the yield is 60% lower!
Clearly a lead that can be overcome, but now with China’s turn back to proper communism, they will probably never get there.
[0] Page 27: https://www.credit-suisse.com/media/assets/corporate/docs/ab...
Anywhere but China. It is a failing state with a plummeting economy and subject to even more arbitrary control over the money, its citizens own than the USA.
Thanks for inserting that comma, Siri
China has a larger domestic market. The downside is the domestic market is still relatively poor and its state controlled by a uniparty government. When tough decisions need to be made, the CCP will protect the CCP over China.
It's why it's on our currency - "e pluribus unum".
It's also why Russia and China are constantly working to erode the unity of the American people, whether it's through false narratives that "we're more divided than ever", driving a wedge into political parties, fomenting rage-mode across social media, utilizing Twitter for propaganda or TikTok to keep American minds drained of their creative motivation while they ban the apps in their own countries... the list really goes on.
A cord of many stands is not easily broken, but others will do their damnedest to try.
It's been a while, but I translate that as "From many, one".
I think it's an allusion to the thirteen British colonies becoming one United States.
> It's why it's on our currency - "e pluribus unum".
"United we stand, divided we fall."For example, South Korea’s USD reserves has been sharply going down as they’ve been trying to resist following the recent rate hikes to soften the blow to the economy. This is happening all across the globe.
However, US can do (and seems to be doing) whatever they want.
When Korea buys something from Japan, they don’t have to pay in USD. They can use whatever currency they want.
[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/putin-strengthening-yuan-role...
Money flees China now despite the capital controls.
Even the Chinese would rather keep their money in Singapore, Switzerland or the US than at home.
It's not inconceivable China could take over. Russia won't (lol...) and the EU doesn't have much interest in becoming militarised.
You left out the most important advantage: the US has plenty of oil and gas;
Quite frankly, I always knew oil / gas was big in US, when I realized it's THE largest petrostate, it felt weird.
42% of Saudi GDP is petroleum. 35% of Kazakh GDP is petroleum. 8% of US GDP is petroleum.
* Issues the global reserve currency
* Maintains the largest military
* Has the widest media reach
* Has significant natural resources
There are problems too, but the unfair advantages are quite strong, and self-perpetuating.
Which is fortunate for Americans, because very few countries could be so haphazardly managed, without failing.
I lived through two growing up, and both times almost everyone lost almost all money. I will take the risk on my US bank account over those any time. My 2c.
It just makes headlines.
That only works when the US has to fight military super-powers that rely on sea-transport in order to feed their people and their military, like Japan had to do in WW2.
The moment another super-power stops depending on sea routes in order to provide basic needs for its people and its military then things start getting more complicated. Case in point, the current Russia + China alliance. They could basically sustain a conventional war against the West while avoiding sea routes basically forever, thanks to Russia's fertile lands and minerals and with the help of China's human capital. There's no US aircraft carrier that would be able to stop the logistic links going through Central Asia.
If Russia and China decide they're going to get together and be super trade buddies but the US denies them the trade lanes with everyone else, that's fine, they can share food and oil which are certainly important, but they'll still be broke and their economies will still collapse, especially China's which is super export dependent and seemingly approaching collapse right now anyway. China needs huge exports to survive in its current state and Russia doesn't have that much purchasing capacity.
China imports a fuckton of it. But not from Russia, but the Middle East (by sea) because it’s cheaper and easier.
It’s actually very difficult to move that much oil over land. The best way is by pipeline but that takes many years and is fairly easy to disrupt. And it still leaves you with the problem of having to distribute it at the other end.
Now consider grain can’t flow in a pipe.
In case of a war starting I do think China won't look at the money getting spent anymore, so at that point importing oil from Iran via train [1] or from Russia (again, via train) won't be a problem for them in terms of money.
I also do think they'll switch to "war economy" mode pretty soon after the war starting, so no more private cars on the roads and such, which will greatly alleviate China's oil-related needs.
Later edit: And there's also the Northern route. I don't think any US aircraft career will be brave/stupid enough (depending on how you look at it) to position itself close to the Sakhalin Island or close to Kamchatka, that's prime hunting ground for the Russian subs. Never mind going into the Arctic Sea itself.
The utility they provide is the ability to deploy a US airbase and a full air wing within strike distance of any foreign capital.
I’d argue the real power are the US underwater assets.
It can not be overstated how good this is for an economy, and it's something emerging markets struggle with, and even some of the advanced economics.
It'll always be easier to start and run a business where you can rely on tribunals to solve problems quickly and somewhat fairly.
Contenders, in my mind:
- China, second largest economy, but generally still considered developing, so I don't think it counts as "advanced"
- Russia? They've been a big player in the world economy long enough it is hard to call it a developing country.
[1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.EXP.GNFS.KD?location...
[2] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.EXP.GNFS.ZS?location...
But the total net worth per person in the States is even further ahead of the rest of the world. Only Switzerland is ahead of the US in per-capita net worth (only by a hair though) and one suspects that’s partly due to so many Americans parking their money there.
Having had the biggest GDP for decades led to a amazing amount of wealth being concentrated in the USA.
While I agree that the U.S. has an enormous built-in advantage over other countries, I would really highlight one other piece of data: In terms of median wealth, the U.S. is eclipsed by half the E.U. and many Asian countries including diverse economies like France. This points to a terrifying concentration of wealth, which has also been highlighted by researchers like Picketty and this could (or arguably already does) put the social fabric of the U.S. under enormous strain.
I'm currently in the EU, in a country that outperforms the US in median wealth by about 20%. While it's clear that life here is good, I'm also struck by how much worse everything looks here, from the rental real estate where I'm staying, to the generally unprofessional standard of business.
So just looking at the slightly-higher median and ignoring the 2-3x higher mean also skews the picture.
Where America is great, it is great. But for the rest of it, it can be a very differently life for most of the inhabitants.
There's no comparison. It's hugely, vastly better in the States. The only other places that have large backwater areas that can compete are maybe Canada and Australia. This is due to investment by rich people in rental real estate and businesses such as Walmart, Costco, Amazon, etc.
When a family like the Waltons have a net worth in the 100's of $Bn's, this money isn't kept in gold bars in a safe. It's actively deployed in a variety of businesses. So the poor don't get a cut of the 100's of $Bn's, but they do benefit from the investment. And in very equal countries, the opposite is true. Everybody's OK, but there aren't really any systems that stand out as being amazing.
Personally I would absolutely not want to be a poor person in the US. High crime, police violence, abusive work conditions, random shooters, health care bankruptcy, Fentanyl being pushed by medical professionals, zero Covid protections - it's a dystopian horror show.
This may surprise you, but there are locations around the world with much lower GDP and much happier people.
To address some of your other points:
A poor person in my country is allowed to take time off for illness without fear of being fired. That time isn't subtracted from their legally mandated minimum number of holiday days.
A poor person in the US will show up to work sick because they know their boss can let them go. Their colleagues might then get sick.
While I'm not sure how common it is, I've seen US news articles lauding co-workers for donating sick days to a colleague with a life threatening illness. While they're obviously doing a good thing, the necessity of the act honestly comes across as barbaric.
Yes, there are many countries where being poor is even worse. But among developed economies (so about a quarter of all countries), it is hard to come up with a worse place for being poor than the U.S.
https://www.justfacts.com/news_poorest_americans_richer_than...
First of all, it compares figures from two different data sets. That is usually something that is quite hard to do correctly, because different data sets usually use different definitions for stuff like "household consumption" etc. Without a peer review it is really hard to tell if they've done it correctly and given the intricacies of economic statistics, my guess is they didn't.
But maybe even more importantly, the data concentrates on "private consumption" and thus leaves out all the goods and services that governments pay for – which is the entire point of public services like a public health care system. I.e. when a poor person in the U.S. visits a doctor, they pay for it out of pocket, the transaction will be registered as "private consumption". If I (in Germany) visit the doctor, no money ever changes hands. My contributions to the public health care system are deducted from my income before it ever reaches my account and about half don't come out of my own paycheck anyway, they are the responsibility of my employer.
So my guess would be that this "study" undercounts exactly what it professes to account for: Goods and services consumed (but not necessarily paid for) by the poor.
But how about we measure outcomes? For example in terms of life expectancy, the U.S. is much more "unequal" (if you are poorer, your are more likely to die younger) than other developed economies: https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy#inequality-of-lif...
And because the U.S. has worse life expectancy than other developed economies in general, poor people are likely to die younger in the U.S. than in, say, Germany in absolute terms as well. That is just one indicator but if you accept that "the number of years you live" is an important indicator for general quality of life, the U.S. seems to score quite badly on this.
(then ended moving back again, because Florida)
The individual taxpayer was paying ~hundreds of millions per year into an $86 billion dollar budget. It's kind of wild that an individual would be paying a tenth of a percent (or so) of a state's income taxes, but it's maybe not a substantial fraction.
So now there are banks that will never take an American customer, and banks that specialize in Americans.
Seems like in economics it’s also useful to analyze qualitatively. Of course you cannot run doomsday headlines with that.
Indeed. American doomerists are just ridiculously parochial. Panicking about the dollar when it's the currency that everyone else runs to as a safe haven. The biggest risk to America is its debt ceiling mechanism; the opportunity to completely destroy America's credit and economy to own the libs is very tempting to some people.
Except canada. The coasts. The transportation system, the tech industry... and canada has a far better-regulated banking sector, one that surfed past 2008 almost without incident. And for every natural resource, from water to uranium, Canada has more than it will ever need. I would far rather ride out the comming climate/economic crisis in calgary/vancouver than LA/SF.