"America Is in Decline": Truth or Informational Indoctrination?

> Do you believe that the United States is in decline today?

> Now imagine you asked an American this question 30 years ago. How would they have responded? No one would have even talked about it with you. Every American citizen was, first and foremost, a patriot of their country and firmly believed that Americans are the greatest nation at the peak of its powers with a great future ahead.

1995 was smack in the middle of the rise of gangs and deterioration in many inner city environments. If people would not have talked about it with you, it's because they were preoccupied with other things.

> Patriotism is falling, public attitudes are deteriorating, and confidence in the future is waning. Yet, despite these gloomy sentiments, according to major economic indicators, America continues to prosper. It’s a paradox

It's not a paradox. Non-rich people do not really care about major economic indicators, they care about the specific particular economic indicator of their paycheck and what their paycheck can buy. That's taken a serious hit in the last 10 years and a giant hit in the last 4. Show me all the bar charts you want, they don't matter if half my check goes to food, if I can't afford a house and won't realistically be able to afford one in 10 years.

This article is like a clueless company that is making profit at the moment that will buy employees pizza but refuse to understand that low paychecks are the reason they can't get people to stay. Seriously the article explores almost every possible avenue of dissatisfaction but that, it's almost comical.

>Do you believe that the United States is in decline today? Now imagine you asked an American this question 30 years ago. How would they have responded? No one would have even talked about it with you. Every American citizen was, first and foremost, a patriot of their country and firmly believed that Americans are the greatest nation at the peak of its powers with a great future ahead.

I disagree with this assertion, and I'm in my 50s so I remember the 1990s well. Sure, there was maybe a bit more optimism than now given that the USSR had collapsed and the former Soviet nations were just gettting started (and China had yet to rise), leaving the USA as the only superpower, but there was a lot of concern that we had "gotten soft" and that the "Greatest Generation" during WWII was the real peak.

Essential lie. Look across history, and practically every society in which self-criticism was permitted constantly predicted its own peril. Sometimes, in prescient ways; out of those, sometimes corrective action was taken.

This piece reads like a shot in the tribal warfare games the US politic is so fond of playing, from side that benefits from the answer being "no". If you measure "decline" using GDP the answer is probably "no" for almost all countries, so it was a good straw man to shoot down.

But if your is the relative position of your country to others then it's not so clear cut. My guess is identify of the USA is very much tired to be being the biggest fish in the pond. 30 years ago, that changing looked very unlikely. But it has been evident for a while economies of the historically poorer countries in Asia, such as China, India, Vietnam and Indonesia have been growing much faster than the USA's economy. The GDP of most OECD countries used to tower over them. Now, not so much. Short of war or AI unending things, in the near term China will surpass the USA, in the longer term perhaps India will do so as well.

The unease the question "America's Is In Decline" triggers becomes understandable if you rephrase it as "Is America about to be pushed from the top of the heap"?

>After COVID-19, the US’s financial standing has improved faster than in most other advanced economies thanks to the speed of the country’s economic recovery. According to CBO’s latest forecast, the deficit fell by $1.7 trillion between fiscal years 2021 and 2022, and this is the fastest deficit reduction in history.

The deficit fell by 1.7 trillion because of the expiration of COVID stimulus money. Then it started rising again.

>As the figure shows, the US deficits were higher during the pandemic. CBO’s latest budget projections show that deficits have fallen to 4 percent of GDP and will remain around that level, which is well below the pandemic levels and even below the Administration’s estimates for the FY2023 budget.

The CBO projects budget deficits to explode to 8.5% of GDP by 2054: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59711

This is an optimistic case. It assumes no new wars, recessions, tax cuts, social programs, and interest rates never climbing above 4%. I just checked, and the 10Y treasury is at 4.681%.