Does this include the money we owe China?

Strange counter-corollary...

Nearly every damn thing I pick up in a store says "Made in China."

"China is, to be sure, an economic powerhouse. Just as important, it's economic growth is astounding."

Well, "astounding" is one word for it.

Bogus is another.

The experts track China's economic growth by it's electricity consumption trends.

It's down.

Well, why not, Joe Friday? Our economy is bogus too. China's becoming more like us every day.

Koreyel. the manufacturing process yields relatively miniscule profits per unit. A chinese manufacturer may make $1 per pair of Nikes it produces. Nike makes much more.

There's a lot more the U.S. can and should do to position itself for the future, and it's going to take some real leadership (and perhaps a majority-rule Senate) to protect the country's global leadership role.

You mean like build a ring of military bases around China? You're right. There is more we can do. We already have bases in Japan, Afghanistan and South Korea. We just need to get into Pakistan, India, Burma, Laos, Vietnam, Mongolia, Kazakstahn, etc. The good news is that you never need the Senate, much less a a majority-led Senate, to invade a country and establish a base there.

Maybe size matters, but isn't there also the little matter of who has whom by the balls?

The United States' GDP is about $14 trillion. That's more than Japan's ($4.9 trillion), China's ($4.4 trillion) and Germany's ($3.7 trillion) -- the next three largest economies on the planet -- combined.

Based on estimates from the International Monetary Fund, five years from now, China's GDP is expected to grow considerably faster than America's, but by 2014, the U.S. economy is still expected to be double the size of China's.

Which leads one to suspect that maybe -- just maybe -- letting the top one-tenth of 1% grab a wildly disporportionate share of said exonomic pie (abetted, in part, by enhancing China's manufacturing economy at our expense) is neither necessary nor desirable.

Wait until China starts making our, and the world's, wind generators and solar panels.

Oops. I guess they are already on track to do so.

JM basically said to me that US corporations are the middlemen. Capitalism always works to eliminate the middleman, as it should.

Agreed, Gregory. The myth of merit of the top .01% in the US economy has got to go. Great business leaders, my ass.

While GDP is what economists use, I wonder if some "regular" folks are thinking more along the lines of sheer purchasing power.

China's middle class (or what passes for it) will soon be larger than our entire country. If things keep going the way they are, it'll be astronomically huge in the next 20 - 40 years or so. When that happens, America will stop being the world's largest consumer society.

And that's the thing that scares the hell out of me in terms of America's place in the world because, once we lose that purchasing power, we'll just become an also ran nation that used to be the world's leader, kinda like Britain (although at least they have health care for everyone).

Sure, we'll still have our military since our political leaders have decided that is worthy of the biggest slice of our budget, real needs be damned. But military might won't mean shit if there's no middle class left to fund and staff it.

Why would anyone think such a poll would be useful, or that people's opinions on such a matter would bear any weight whatsoever?

And the world's emerging economic powerhouse is a centrally controlled communist country.

And it's top marginal individual income tax rate is 45%, and kick's in at about $14.5k. (That's an estimate. Someone should probably fact check it 'cuz I'm not a financial guy.)

How do the free market conservative and Republicans reconcile that.

I'm not surprised that Americans badmouth their own country.

Before 2008 we were a proud nation but Obama has given the green light to give up on America.

Is that really the best you've got, Myke?

Too much of the US' industrial capacity, sad to say, has moved overseas in search of cheap labor. Given the predilection in China for slave labor (re-education camps, known as PLA Industries, the PLA standing for Peoples' Liberation Army) and sweatshops, it's to beat it for cheap.

The US middle class of the mid-20th century, which was the basis of our enormous economy, was built on these very kinds of industrial jobs. Take that away, and you're left with service industries + management, neither of which can provide the kind of employment numbers that the industrial sector can. We're left with what others here rightly called a hollowed out economy- some rich, a shrinking middle class, and burgeoning underclass. It's as if the GOP and its henchmen wanted to prove Marx right.

-Z

The United States' GDP is about $14 trillion. That's more than Japan's ($4.9 trillion), China's ($4.4 trillion) and Germany's ($3.7 trillion) -- the next three largest economies on the planet -- combined.

In purchasing power parity (but not per capita), China's total is more nearly equal to America's. Furthermore, China's is growing faster, especially all aspects of power production (nuclear and non-nuclear) and manufacturing (for example, PV cells and wind turbines, which China exports to the US.) Also, China lends more to the US than the US lends to China, and China collects more interest from the US than the US collects from China.

In economic growth, China is the world's leading power.

TomE: And the world's emerging economic powerhouse is a centrally controlled communist country.

The governing party is still called the "Communist Party", but the economy is not run like a communist economy, and central control is much relaxed (may be less centrally controlled than the US economy.)

MarkD: Sure, we'll still have our military since our political leaders have decided that is worthy of the biggest slice of our budget, real needs be damned. But military might won't mean shit if there's no middle class left to fund and staff it.

Military power follows in part from population size and manufacturing capacity. There are also the elements of perseverence and patriotism, but when these are approximately equal, big beats little (USA vs CSA, USA vs Japan, USA and GB and USSR vs Germany.) Complexities matter (such as secure energy sources, secure food sources, and others), but China is on track to exceed US military power soon.

Oh for Chist's sake, China has per capita income that ranks somewhere between 89th and 107th in the world. It's a fast growing but still poor country.

Facts, people, facts. They matter.

Thanks a lot for the very nice post.I am very much interested in political and economic kind of stuffs. So this post is really very useful for me. Thanks for sharing..

xmas gifts