[nanairo]

There's a certain irony in hearing someone from the Reagan government talking about China's fast train. If you so much as suggested something like that in the USA you'd be billed as a socialist and the program will be immediately scrapped.

Once the USA wasn't like this. Once it had a big government who looked after its citizens and did what no private investor could or would do.

In Australia the government is building fiber optics to all houses. In Europe governments are building a network of fast trains. In China government is building pretty much everything.

Are the Americans sure that they are backing the right politics?

[yummyfajitas]

Well, the US is richer (PPP adjusted) than nearly every single one one of those countries (the sole exceptions being Norway and a couple of city states). In the one case where I've seen good data (US vs Sweden), the disparity gets even bigger if you compare Swedes to Swedish Americans.

http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/03/super-economy-in-o...

So maybe the US is doing something right after all.

[nanairo]

... or maybe that you did something right in the past.

By that meter then Nokia is doing things right too.

[nir]

Interestingly, Nokia's downfall is caused in part by its failure to compete with Google & Apple's - two American companies - innovation.

[nanairo]

Nobody is arguing that American companies can't compete, or that America isn't a great country. But the UK was an innovator once, and so was Italy before it.

That said you could very well end up with a future with very powerful and very competitive american companies... in a country with no middle-class and a strong divide between managers and those with money, and the labour force with little privileges.

Edit: I think USA got to where it is for a certain pragmatism that it seems to have lost. Now ideologies (free market, socialism, God, etc...) seem to be all that matter, and society is suffering for it. GDP is not a good indicator of the society's wellbeing and even less is current GDP for tomorrow's society's. At the end of the day the richest man in the world is Mexican, but Mexico is hardly a first world country.

[nir]

I agree the problems you're referring to are real, but it seems to me Americans are more aware of them than you might think (BTW, I live in NYC but I'm not American).

They elected a president who's decidedly a pragmatist (I think McCain would have been one as well, though not his VP candidate..), and one of the most talked about issues here is the disappearing middle class. My view is that they ultimately do have a good system in place to discuss and hopefully improve on these problems.

Their core strength is flexibility. I still remember talk of Japan overtaking the US in the 80s, and Japanese companies are still strong in the markets they dominated at the time - but the Americans have moved on to lead in software/Internet industries. That's not coincidence, in my opinion.

[jdminhbg]

Here is the President's press release on the multi-billion dollar high-speed rail project he proposed and Congress funded: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/09/04/16/a-vision-for-high-sp...

The program has surely been billed as socialist by one of America's 300 million plus citizens, but it has not as of yet been scrapped.

I do not know whether we are backing the right politics.

[nanairo]

Yep. I surely had high hopes on Obama. What's worrying me is how much opposition he has found and how much power he lost.

It was enough to talk about socialism and having a bigger governmental role, and people (on both parties) seemed to start distancing themselves from Obama.

If he doesn't succeed, I am not sure there will really be another chance in time to make a real difference (i.e. to keep USA as no.1... I have no doubt USA will continue being a rich country for a long time to come).

[jdminhbg]

It is no more true that Obama is unpopular because people call him a "socialist" than it was true that Bush was unpopular because people called him a "fascist." You are confusing cause and effect.

I think foreign observers think that the American public is atavistically motivated by invocations of "socialism" because they view the US through the lens of their own politics. In reality, Obama is unpopular because the economy is in the shitter and unemployment is running near 10%. It doesn't matter whether that's fair or not.

[nanairo]

I'll take your word for it.

My impression of cause and effect was that it started pretty much from the beginning, when Obama tried to push for economic stimulus first and universal health service later.

And now the teaparty are a force to be reckoned... and their whole point is to have a small government, and they don't want stimuli or similar (as well as no health service).

But please tell me more. American politics is quite interesting. :)

[maw]

Once it had a big government who looked after its citizens

When?

[nanairo]

Either Roosvelt?

[achompas]

The more recent Roosevelt HAD to grow the government--they were the only demanders during the Great Recession.

He also stuck us with Social Security and Medicare, which are the main drivers behind the intergenerational debt we're facing now.

So, I mean, big government isn't always the best.

[nanairo]

Why are SS and Medicare the biggest drivers? Didn't Clinton leave you with a surplus? And didn't he have to pay for SS and Medicare too? What's changed since then and now?

Anyway I am not arguing that big government are always the best. I am arguing that big government sometimes are. Or to put it another way I am arguing that SMALL government isn't always the best.

[achompas]

I'm confused, what does Clinton have to do with these programs? Worth noting that Bush Jr. signed a prescription drug bill that will cost $550 billion between 2006 and 2015 [1].

SS and Medicare are programs intended for older people which are funded by current workers. As time has passed and SS/Medicare eligibility has increased, more SS/Medicare taxes from current workers are paying for fewer people's benefits. This problem has worsened as baby boomers have reached retirement age--we've never seen SS/Medicare enrollment like this before.

Point being: my generation is paying a large chunk of taxes that it will probably never benefit from, as SS/Medicare will likely occupy too large a portion of the budget and would thus need to be scaled back (or closed down).

[1] http://www.cms.gov/ReportsTrustFunds/downloads/tr2009.pdf

[MC27]

That suggests his successors weren't very good at finishing the job he started. It's only natural for governments to become more and more corrupt as decades pass. When someone like that appears on the scene and reboots the system, their work should be acknowledged and refined before the corruption kicks in again.

[achompas]

This isn't a matter of corruption--it's an issue of public choice (or public economics, whichever you prefer).

What politician would scale back SS/Medicare when retirees are one of the largest voting blocks in America?

Governments also don't necessarily experience more corruption over time. Just look at overthrown dictatorships. If you said democratic governments, like the US, I'd agree with you, since the accumulation of wealth shifts power around.