European Union is now world's largest superpower

Militarily, the US is the undisputed champ. But in eceonomic terms, and in notions of freedom, the welfare of its citizens, and in human rights, we've been lapped.

http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2004/11/15/europe/index_np.html

We're imploding, just like Russia. Only we have a far more tarnished image and are far more despised by the world than Russia was. THANKS, bush!

Except for the fact that I live here!

Jeesh, think there will be an exodus to Europe coming?
My mom used to take in lots of foreign students from Europe. Towards the last few years, they were really starting to hate America and want to go home after studies...hmmmm....

did a good job of showing how the economy in Southern China is booming and how that is tied to Walmart's booming with it's $256 Billion+/year.

Meanwhile the factory workers in China make 25-50 cents and hour and live on the factory site (like slaves or something) and American workers lose their jobs because you can't compete with 25-50 cent an hour wages ever here.

I wonder how many people still think Walmart is doing their "buy American" thing they did in the 80's to support American workers.

unsafe factories and have a lot of room to improve. However, they do deliver a pretty big percentage of the wealth created down to the working class and are building a huge middle class. I've read that they've completed eliminated hunger, for example.

They aren't using economic growth as a way to make the super rich even wealthier, the way the US does under Republicans, and they rely less on deprivation for profits than we do in the US.

I got in the show - with the fancy new office buildings on the one hand and the very unhappy looking workers, on the other.

It wasn't clear where all the money was going - but it didn't look like the workers were benefitting much.

...however, it is one of the goals of Chinese industrialization to build up a very wealthy middle class.

In the US, the goal is to impoverish the middle class so that they're opportunities are so limited that all they can do is accept low paying jobs and go deep into debt.

Israel will.

The anti-Israel EU will screw Israel big-time, much to the jubilation of most of the anti-Israel crowd here who love losing elections as a result of that stance.

And who is it that had an anti-Israel stance that we lost with Benji?

Amazing.

“America was betrayed and murdered on Nov. 2, 2004. Also killed during this time of madness were the following virtues: truth, justice, integrity, freedom, compassion, brotherhood, tolerance, faith, hope, charity, peace, and respect for other cultures and nations.”
-- Pravda, Russia's top newspaper, feeling sorry for the loss of freedom in America

Until they have a unified foreign policy they're not a superpower. Until they figure out how to get their economies cranking, they're dead meat economically as well.

A friend of mine in Brussels tells me that unemployment in Brussels is 0.1% less than the rate that the US had during the peak of the Great Depression in 1933. France is looking at a "growth" rate of 0.1% this year.

Europe has to clean up it's act. I'm not sure that, fragmented as they are, that they're up to the job.

Yeah, and I am quite sure that the US count unemployed exactly as well as they count votes.

than all those silly experts!

From original link:

Europe has surpassed the United States in several high-tech and financial sectors, including wireless technology, grid computing and the insurance industry. The EU has a higher proportion of small businesses than the U.S., and their success rate is higher.

"European children are consistently better educated; the United States would rank ninth in the EU in reading, ninth in scientific literacy, and 13th in math.

Twenty-two percent of American children grow up in poverty, which means that our country ranks 22nd out of the 23 industrialized nations, ahead of only Mexico and behind all 15 of the pre-2004 EU countries.

The new EU constitution, currently being considered by the member states, is an unwieldy, jargon-laden document that runs to 265 pages in English (and even more in Spanish and French). It should also serve as an inspiration to progressives around the world. It bars capital punishment in all 25 nations and defines such things as universal healthcare, child care, paid annual leave, parental leave, housing for the poor, and equal treatment for gays and lesbians as fundamental human rights. Most of these are still hotly contested questions in the United States; as Rifkin says, this document all by itself makes the European Union the world leader in the human rights debate.

The EU has a lower poverty rate than the US and probably counts ALL unemployed people, unlike the US which effectively hides the real rate of unemployment.

...undercounted unemployment. Sweden, for example, didn't count anybody who was doing job retraining as being unemployed. There were LOTS of people doing retraining programmes in Sweden when I lived there. A few people I knew went from one programme directly to another without taking up a job for what they'd retrained for. Retraining was a requirement for long-term unemployed people there if you wanted to get your subsistence check.

until the republicans start a war with it.

want to have to compete with the EU on a level playing field.

The EU is proving that if you shift a lot of wealth to people who work for a living (if you reward hard work with wealth) you grow a middle class which creates a great deal of wealth.

For the Republicans to beat the EU on a level playing field would require a commitment to liberal principles that they're not willing to make (such as good, affordable public education, and no monopolistic advantages for large corporations).

So, to prevent the US having to turn from fascism, they're turning to fascism even more coupled with chaos around the globe. It's sad that after 200 years of being the champion of democracy, the last 30 years of US history have been more about figuring out ways to stop putting people first and protecting the hegemonic power of a very vew people.

The Soviet economy simply couldn't handle competition with the US because it was operating under Stalin's unwieldy, inefficient command economy structure instituted in the 1930s where the Kremlin determined what was produced and how much of it to produce. The people no longer had a direct say. The result is a system that was no longer held accountable to market forces or consumer demand, and it was sluggish to respond as a fault. This is why they had only black and white televisions in the 1980s, while we've had color tvs for decade. Their money was comparatively well spent on military hardware, but it was all but wasted on domestic products due to corruption and poor management. However, the Soviet economy devoted upwards of 14% of its GDP just to keep parity with the US. The US was somewhere under 5%.

The US economy operates differently. Here, it is the owners of production that freely determine what is produced and what isn't. It's a race to see who can build a better mousetrap. Our economy is better able to answer the needs of the people compared to Stalin's command economy; however, a pure capitalist economy will almost always create a situation where income inequity is high. The same goes for wealth distribution as well. US GDP per capita only measures the average income per person, but that does not reveal true income distribution. A better guage is to look at median income instead of GDP per capita. If we look at median income instead, we see that wages for the middle class have largely stagnated, while the poor continues to grow in ranks.

What's happening in the US economy is that as social programs are scaled back and eliminated and regulations over the markets are weakened and removed, the path money flows would increasingly flow upwards towards the wealthy few, while everyone else's standing stagnates and begins to shift backwards in many cases. What we're moving towards is an economy resembling Brazil's: A relative few with extravagant wealth with a majority in poverty. Their GDP per capita may be impressive for a South American nation, but the average is only as high as it is because it factors in the immense income of some of the people at the top compared to everyone else. Another example is Venezuela. The majority of its population live in abject poverty, while the upper class controls the majority of the nation's wealth. This is the biggest reason why Hugo Chavez is so popular. He's a democratic socialist.

The European nations have opted for a mixed economy that combines elements of both socialism and capitalism. The result is a system that is innovative (competition leads to innovation), while social programs ensure that money flows to people who need it most. What happens is you can sustain a large middle class. Presently, the Eurozone is trying to come out of a depression. French and German unemployment is hovering in the 9 percent range, and they're worried a weakening dollar is going to hurt them. Consumers are more likely to buy US goods the cheaper they are, which would hurt European firms.

Sorry for the terribly long post. It's just I'm taking econ. classes in college presently.

Considering that (AFAIR) 3% of the American workforce are in jail, but "only" 0.3% of the German or French, not including them would mean equal "real" unemployment numbers.

On Edit:
Indeed I do think the US are underregulated. The uninsulated windows, overhead cables, ancient central-heating boilers, old cars (the streets in general), sometimes appaling workmanship...
But Ok, one tends to be a harsh judge when visiting a country, especially a poor area.

We are the only superpower and we must do "whatever it takes to extend that as far into the future as possible"....PNAC 101.

This kind of administration we have will protect our interests however it wants to define "protect" and "interests". We won't tolerate competitive superpowers in any arena.

Kind of like Damien in The Omen.

We won't be top dogs forever, though....we're going to wish we had not squandered the good will and alliances it took decades to build. We chose global domination instead of global leadership (Brzezinski) and it's not going to play well in the long run.