Economy

The Chinese have already eclipsed Americans as travelers.

"Spookily enough, two months after my trip to Australia, my vague insight was confirmed by a survey, which shows that the Chinese are now the world’s most important tourists, overtaking the Germans and Americans in spending power."

This is another sign of our decline.

"Consider the stats. China (population 1.35 billion) overtook America (population 320 million) as the biggest consumer of steel in 1999. That was the beginning. China overtook America as the world’s main exporter in 2007, as the biggest user of the internet in 2008, and as the world’s greatest manufacturer in 2010 (the first time America has been supplanted in this role since the 1880s, when the USA overtook the UK).
2010 was also the year China overtook America as the world’s largest car market, as the world’s largest retail market, and as the world’s greatest producer of patents. A year later China became the globe’s greatest user of energy. In 2012 China became the world’s biggest market for PCs, and the primary source of global trade. Just three days ago China unveiled the world’s most powerful computer. As for Chinese forex reserves, they total $3.4 trillion. That is to say, the loose change in China’s pockets, from all those foreign hols, is equivalent to the entire economy of Germany.
China is therefore, in many ways, already the most important country in the world – by a distance. It will also, on present trends, finally surpass the USA in overall GDP sometime between 2015 and 2025.
Of course, China has serious problems. It will surely crash, even as it ascends – just as America crashed in 1929. But in the end demography is destiny. China is simply too big to fail. To believe that China won’t surpass America in total economic size and hegemonic power you have to believe the Chinese are so stupid they are incapable of giving themselves a per capita income equivalent to that of Trinidad and Tobago. Such stupidity seems unlikely, not least because the global education survey, PISA, now believes Chinese kids are the smartest on the planet."

While some of this was inevitable - surely not the smartest kids part - it didn't have to happen anytime soon. That's it's happening so rapidly is a function of our government's greatly accelerated looting and oppression. And it doesn't have to continue this way. If Ron Paul had been elected, we would have quickly turned things around an got back on the path of powerful economic growth. If we cut $1 trillion of government spending at the fed level, dramatically cut spending at the state and local level, do the same to regulations at all levels, and end the wars and shut down our foreign bases, we can make this another American century.