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Re: How will America handle being number 2?

Define #1.
In 1990 Japan's economy was bigger than the USA's in outright terms, desite a mere half the population. So what went wrong there? Obviously some large bubbles that when popped caused wrong spending decisions. China could suffer that fate. In spite of almost 20 years of little growth, Japan is still #2 by overall economic size.

Indeed Japan's per capita GDP is over $40,000 a year, China's is $4500. The USA's approaching $50,000. So in truth even if China overtakes the USA in 20 years' time, it also has 5 times the population - and the average Chinese in 20 years time will still have less than half the income of the average American today.

Of course, per capita many countries are ahead of the USA. Generally small populations, benefitting from status as tax havens, from banking, or from natural resources - primarily petroleum and natural gas.

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Re: How will America handle being number 2?

That's if the entire generation that was raised on melamine tainted baby formula lives long enough 20 years from now to make themselves useful in the job market. big_smile

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  • Nai
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Re: How will America handle being number 2?

Many in the US would be surprised to discover that Japan has never been the number one economy in the world

For those who understand, no explanation is needed.
For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible.

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Re: How will America handle being number 2?

A Conservative, Christian website doesn't count as a source. Not that I disagree with you though.

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Re: How will America handle being number 2?

interesting read Nai, and agreed as well.

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Re: How will America handle being number 2?

Lame ad hominem attack, Justinian.  hmm

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Re: How will America handle being number 2?

I didn't attack him personally. I informed him that his source was produced by an organization lacking authoritative value. It's like Acolyte citing an Austrian Economics website as a source. Austrian Economics lacks authoritative value because most authorities in Economics laugh at the Austrian school.

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Re: How will America handle being number 2?

Austrian?  Germany?!?

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Re: How will America handle being number 2?

> Justinian I wrote:

> I didn't attack him personally. I informed him that his source was produced by an organization lacking authoritative value. It's like Acolyte citing an Austrian Economics website as a source. Austrian Economics lacks authoritative value because most authorities in Economics laugh at the Austrian school.


Ad hominem applies to attacking one's source as well, rather than going for the argument itself.  He is providing a logical argument which you can attack on merits, but you instead ignored it and said "no, your source is bad."  Thus, unless you provide counter-sources (in the case of his economic analysis, definitely an easy, and preferable alternative)... it's pretty much nothing more than an ad hominem on your part.

Acolyte's citing of Austrian economists, in the same way, don't necessarily invalidate his argument.  Remember, we're in a politics forum for the purpose of debate.  Although someone else may have invalidated Acolyte's sources, you haven't, and we're left with trusting you (yes... we're relying on trust in Justinian... let me take a moment and count the possible jokes).  Long story short, it's still up to you in this thread to either cite the flaw in a source's argument, or provide sourcing to back up the flaw, so that we can better understand both why and whether a flaw exists (NOTE: I'm not asking you to go spend a day hunting down Austrian economics responses... only using it as an example).

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60 Reply by Nai (edited by Nai 22-Jul-2011 19:09:39)

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Re: How will America handle being number 2?

> Justinian I wrote:

> A Conservative, Christian website doesn't count as a source. Not that I disagree with you though.


No worries... The truth is out there, even if it's in an Unapologetically conservative, Christian, and iconoclastic website..

Utlimately, I found this article to be well presented, thought out and a good counter to some of the points made in this thread. Thus I adapted some of this presenation to that purpose without distorting its message, which I can find no arguement with.


[Edited for typo]

For those who understand, no explanation is needed.
For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible.

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