Is The U.S In Decline

In this article the writer covers the basic premise of the life cycle of empire a country a nation. Today in America and in other parts of the world we seem to be moving at light speed, in this  the modern age.
The new becomes the passé almost overnight, concepts and ideas seem to be born run there course and end in weeks or months. Earlier civilizations lasted albeit with transitions and changes for sometimes thousands of years.

We see the examples of the Roman empire, the several Egyptian empires, the Austria -Hungarian empire as well as the examples of china and japan.  All these and more were great civilizations they developed expanded grew prospered then stagnated and died, some were killed by faster smarter and stronger newer nations, others fell due to there very size.

Young nations by their very nature are energetic, they have to be to survive  but when they reach the point of critical mass, too big to change and adapt to new conditions, or they stagnate resting on the laurel's of earlier more capable citizens and topple from the wight of there own inertia.

Many of these empires fell from the weight of there own hubris there own sense of entitlement there unrealistic opinion of there own importance there refusal to believe that they would not always endure, more that they had the right to endure and too late they found they did not.

Will we rise to the occasion or fall into the history of forgotten nations.


 Excerpt :  By Niall Ferguson
February 28, 2010


LA Times America, the fragile empire

Here today, gone tomorrow -- could the United States fall that fast?
For centuries, historians, political theorists, anthropologists and the public have tended to think about the political process in seasonal, cyclical terms. From Polybius to Paul Kennedy, from ancient Rome to imperial Britain, we discern a rhythm to history. Great powers, like great men, are born, rise, reign and then gradually wane. No matter whether civilizations decline culturally, economically or ecologically, their downfalls are protracted.

In the same way, the challenges that face the United States are often represented as slow-burning. It is the steady march of demographics -- which is driving up the ratio of retirees to workers -- not bad policy that condemns the public finances of the United States to sink deeper into the red. It is the inexorable growth of China's economy, not American stagnation, that will make the gross domestic product of the People's Republic larger than that of the United States by 2027.