27 Replies to “The Decline And Fall Of The American Empire”

  1. They’ve changed places. Now we have a government sector to drive our economy, but with taxpayers’ money.
    Trump is right and wrong on free trade. Yes, tariffs are a fool’s errand but OTOH American workers haven’t quite evolved past the need for good paying factory jobs. China is brutal on reciprocity while Mexico is not as bad as Trump says, except on illegal immigration, which is another matter.
    This chart is evidence of the overall economic decline of manufacturing bases throughout the developed world with only government delivering stimulus.
    How can anyone think that is a good idea? That’s easy, it’s not THE idea, progressives pillaging their way to their, but not our prosperity.
    It’s going to take a lot of hurt for people to reject the idea of government by free stuff.
    The GOP is right; if the Dems take power the country will go full Euronomics, right into the financial trash can, if not there now.
    Yes, we’ll get through unlimited government. We’ve done it before, but because of them it will be harder; how ironic since the easy vote is for statism.
    Too bad the party isn’t united around Trump. Even so, according to some polling, she’s losing Dems and he’s gaining Republicans.
    But she’s still ahead in that game and it’s significant.
    My sense is at some point the voters will turn and make a clear choice, as happened here in the last federal election.
    I’m not saying they’ll make a good choice, just a clear one.

  2. So how long before they blow the working peoples money?
    Would that be the end?
    Would Buffet, Gates and the other spend their money to help the government they said is not taking enough money from them.
    This is confusing.

  3. Silly graph. Manufacturing jobs are shinking relative to almost all other sectorssince the second world war.
    If memory serves the service sector employment levels in the US passed manufacturing back in the ’70s
    And manufacturing jobs will continue to fall as robotics are deployed even more than they already are. This is a good thing.
    rising public sector employment is – obviously – a bad thing…

  4. The problem with free trade is there is no such thing as free trade. Europe and North America keep adding layers of taxes and regulation while China has next to none. Free trade should only be with countries that require employers to provide the same level of services to employees and meet all the same health and safety standards as ourselves. Manufacturing has become a race to the bottom.

  5. I wonder what the graph looks like for Alberta. Actually, I would like to see it for each province, and Federally as well.

  6. If you believe that having 100 million (former middle class) Americans sitting around idle is a GOOD thing … you are sadly mistaken. It usually ends in bloody revolution … when the freebies dry-up, or USURIOUS TAXES drive even more people out of the workforce.
    Service jobs and Modernization are all well and fine … until … the vast underclass left in the wake … get bored.

  7. No, Gord is right. Service sectors covers a huge area, including a lot of very high paying, high skill sectors. Things like contract engineering design and health care. Most of R&D are classed in service sectors. This sector is about a lot more than McJobs.

  8. In the book, The Great Divide, Why Liberals and Conservatives Will Never, Ever Agree, author William D. Gairdner talks about tripartite states. Tripartite states are jurisdictions where roughly:
    ● ⅓ of people are employed either directly or indirectly by government
    ● ⅓ of the people receive social benefits from the government
    ● ⅓ of the people provide the economic wherewithal of the economy
    Problems occurs when elections are called. Those dependent on the government for their income (⅓ of the people) and those dependent on the government for social benefits (⅓ of the people) vote for the party that promises to increase their income and/or their social benefits.
    Elections become like two wolves and a sheep deciding what’s for dinner.

  9. Service sectors covers a huge area, including a lot of very high paying, high skill sectors. Things like contract engineering design and health care.
    Or you could call them support sectors…mostly supported by those who take the risks and create the wealth. Things like health care only circulate existing wealth, nothing new created. Same as gov’t workers, just circulate existing wealth.

  10. Alexander Tytler had it all figured out…”A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.
    The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to complacency; From complacency to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.” ..We are at the dependency stage

  11. The parallel to Jim’s comment above is that at the time of the American Revolution you could literally divide the 13 colonies this way:
    ● ⅓ of people were British Monarchy loyalists and wanted to continue serving the King
    ● ⅓ of the people were indifferent and would support which ever side was better for them
    ● ⅓ of the people were the Patriots and Individualist who provided the energy, courage and initial sacrifices that created America
    It took two years after the fighting started for the Patriots to finally win over the middle third and get the majority support needed to win the war. It seems the war between Monarchy Ruler Governments and the Will of Individualists has continued ever since until today and the ratios between the takers, fence sitters and providers remain the same.

  12. Umm…no. That’s why I included things like engineering consulting. Also added would be things like architecture. These are NOT like government by merely ‘recirculating existing wealth’. Go look under StatsCan classifications groupings to see how wrong you are.

  13. Umm…no. That’s why I included things like engineering consulting. Also added would be things like architecture.
    They are only the hirelings who are supported by those who create wealth. Simply re-circulating existing wealth.
    Like the farmer, who creates new wealth every year…hires labour support and pays them with existing wealth. The hireling simply re-circulates existing wealth.
    Engineers and architects are the same, just hirelings re-circulating existing wealth.

  14. “It’s going to take a lot of hurt for people to reject the idea of government by free stuff.” It took the Russians about fifty years to finally realize that and another twenty to get rid of the system.
    Back to the graph. The left wants that brown line to encompass all employees.

  15. I understand your point, but without the engineers, nothing would get manufactured. There is no need however, for huge human resources empires.

  17. Of course it is. It’s even happening in China. This is the fingerprint of advanced industrial economies with stable population growth. It’s what Strad doesn’t understand.
    Robotics is making industrial labour surplus.Just as an example, back in the 1980s, Sylvania build a light bulb factory somewhere in the US. Had the capacity to produce the entire national demand for some common type of bulb. A dozen people worked on shift.
    Same thing in uranium mining. About 10% of the world’s supply of uranium comes from McArthur River, Saskatchewan. Less than 20 miners actually work underground.

  18. So how do we continue?
    I am fine with automation , but someone or something has to mine the ore , and run the wires in the walls Ect Ect . We are truly coming to a point that human labour and literally human bodies are in such a surplus it will come to the boiling point.
    Time for another war except this will be the war to end all wars lol …..kill as many men off as possible literally send 3 billion men to fight over land of wich there is so much it’s rediculous to even fight over …this is how the elitists will achieve the un agenda 21 population control these people will have 7-10 super models to breed with and have slaves to build fix and repair their shit and it’s a wonderful life …..I won’t have it I will go down fighting against the elitists……sound familiar ……comrades?

  19. This is the fingerprint of advanced industrial economies with stable population growth. It’s what Strad doesn’t understand.
    Lol, I understand you’re defending being a cog in somebody else’s wheel…and it not even somebody else’s wheel, these public corps are like gov’t. Everybody (investors) own them, therefore nobody owns them. Nobody ultimately responsible.
    Even then I don’t have a problem with them, I don’t have to buy their junk. I do have a problem with regulatory capture. A small example is the CSA and how companies buy influence to edge out competition. Many, many other examples, and we all pay the price.
    That wouldn’t happen if there were true free enterprise. You can be part of the Borg if you want too…

  20. RnD is not service sector.
    If it is classified that way it shouldn’t be.
    I designed circuit boards.
    I made something.

  21. there soon will not be enough wealth producers to pay the wealth destroyers. that goes for Canada as well.

  22. Strad, your understanding of “engineers” seems startlingly minimal. Without engineers, there would be no mines, or the wealth they create. Without engineers, there would be no machinery, and consequently no modern agriculture, nor the wealth that creates. Ditto manufacturing, fishing, entertainment, construction, transportation, communication, or pretty well anything else you value.

  24. I farmed and ranched for 40 years and about the only contact I had with engineers was to swear at them for building things so gawddamn hard to get at…other than that I do notice very little uniqueness nowadays.
    In general, kind of a follow the leader bunch. Pretty much all the automobiles look alike nowadays…Suppose not surprising, all the big discoveries have been made. Wouldn’t expect too much from the present soft generation. So far, haven’t been disappointed heh

  25. As for agriculture, most of the farm machinery was invented by farmers. Engineers may have copied and expanded on the machines, they sure didn’t invent them. Most areas of endeavor evolved the same way.

  26. “As for agriculture, most of the farm machinery was invented by farmers.”
    That’s commie talk. It doesn’t matter who invented something, it matters who mass produced something to get it into the hands of every farmer. that was done by engineers designing factories.

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