Trump Has a Point About American Decline

[Purveyor]

Mar 3, 2016 8:00 AM EST
By Noah Smith

American decline is a popular narrative these days. It’s a central feature of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign -- you can’t “make America great again” unless America isn't-so-great right now. Although Trump often seems disconnected from reality, on this issue he has a point. The U.S. is in decline. Fortunately, the slide ­­­isn't severe, and there’s probably time to arrest its progress or prevent it from accelerating.

When we say a nation is in decline that can mean several things. Historically, it meant a fall in living standards and the level of economic development. When the Roman Empire declined, the population of Rome shrank, roads crumbled and the empire's ships disappeared from the ocean. Eventually the European continent fell back into poverty and violence among regional and city-state powers. The same thing happened to China after the fall of the Han Dynasty, and again after the fall of the Qing Dynasty.

Nothing of the kind threatens the U.S. today. Yet it is true that the economic well-being of the average American -- defined as median household income -- has fallen since the turn of the century:


Household income graph

That’s bad news, obviously, although much of that effect is due to shrinking household size and an influx of low-skilled immigrants. When you adjust for those factors, median income is probably little changed rather than falling. And during that time, technological improvements have made life more enjoyable and leisure more rewarding. We have smartphones and social media now. Our houses are much larger, and most of us are living longer.

So the true standard of living in the U.S. is still going up, it’s just doing so at a very slow rate. The U.S. isn't about to turn into Rome or the Qing Dynasty. Manhattan won't become overgrown with weeds, and travelers from distant lands won't come to gawk at the ruins of the White House.

more...

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-03-03/donald-trump-has-a-point-about-american-decline

[villager]

1. "Our houses are much larger" isn't really a good thing...

More energy is used to build, heat, cool them... More "stuff" is "needed" to fill them, etc...

Larger houses -- for the same size, or shrinking, families -- is really a sign of consumer vacuousness.

[MisterP]

3. plus no lawn, no sidewalk, and they look like CPU errors in The Sims when you're designing

the houses: they're cheap-made and the complex little gables (why?) mean lots of rain infiltration: they're designed for people rich enough to have the whole thing torn down (except one pipestem so it counts as a "remodel&quot , and not to be passed on

[villager]

4. No argument here on any of that. I walk around formerly cool mid-century L.A. neighborhoods...

...and watch all the interesting Craftsmen and bungalow architecture getting torn down and replaced with ballooned-up boxes -- which, as you note, intrudes into what used to be yard/outdoor space on the lot...

[Wellstone ruled]

2. You just can not over come

a 16 Trillion Dollar wealth shift by Rethug austerity programs. With Paul Ryan's grip on the Nations Money for Jobs and Infrastructure,we a stuck in StagFlation.