stink, why do I have to get DC. Same size economy and 1/8th the population.
mind you I bet we can compete on the methane emissions we have 5 million cows and 20 million sheep farting and you have the GOP. ha ha fair swap!
on a more serious note our stockmarket has dropped 12 percent this year, your subprime is contained to planet earth and is dragging us all down, see you at the bottom for great depression II. Cause you can bet GWB stimulus package is going to be awsome, like he fixed new orleans!
BTW, if your economy is sound as george said the other week, why do you need rate cuts and stimulus packages and the fed forcing Bank of America to buy Country Wide...the truth is in plain sight!
So Sara, yer sayin we can weather out the horrid destruction of our nations economy due to the wretched investment and waste of warring on Iraq, and we won't fall like USSR did, due to over investment in foreign interventions?
My bet? Worst recession in our boomer's lives is here, and gonna get bad. Homeless population will triple in the next two quarters.
Boomer's will be pissed, and maybe acting out in the streets.
Who's gonna change any of this?
My guess, it's deliberate.
Eradicate the middle class, HUGELY increase the lower class, and make us a nation of a few have's, with all the havenot's scrappin and dyin for what little is left over at minimum wage.
Tax cuts to corporations at this point (what I've heard is in the works) is laughable. Sure, the Corp's will create jobs. Minimum wage jobs.
And if China calls in our debt, it's a depression of the likes that makes the 30's look like feudal times, in the 2000's, all over again.
Great map, and it should be a slap in the face of each and every citizen, to remind them we are in deep shit. Really really deep sheep shit dip shit.
And the strength of our economies is mostly a house of cards.
We'll soon be returned to regional and local survival efforts. So all y'all start thinking that way.
The cities? Well, asphalt don't grow no back yard gardens to live on.
Have a nice day!
Uh, not to nit-pick too much, but Pakistan maps on to Arkansas. 
Which makes your point even better, as there are even fewer souls in Arkansas than in Missouri.
Russia's economy is the size of New Jersey's? I'm sorry, that just beggars the imagination.
oops. You're right. Missouri's the next one up.
I'll fix it. (***sigh***)
Thanks
Culled from elsewhere, but a GREAT read.
http://www.counterpunch.org/
ali0...li01152008.html
Someone tryin to chase down Seymour Hersh, to do an interview. Hersh is MY hoss.
Is he GNB's? He should be.
Just party like it's 1999 I guess. Really. Screw it. Nothing can be done. It was all decided a LONG time ago. The taser story below is just the tip of the iceberg.
I'm with Sean.
You are using the word "empire" in a way that's fundamentally different from the way I think about it.
We'd still have the same size economies without the goddamned wars. In fact, the wars shrink them.
But an empire, now ...
Empires, the way I learned to think of them, have some combination of two different bauplans: hegemonic, and territorial. Note that both are based on military force and coercion at bottom.
(1) A "hegemonic" empire resembles Rome from about 150 BC (give or take a century) and about 100 AD. Or the USSR, from 1945 through final collapse. The outliers are theoretically independent, and have their own state structures and armies. Those armies are outmatched by the armies of the core, because those have "escalation dominance": the harder the fighting, the better the core armies do compared to the outlier's armies. So in an armed revolt, the core is liable to win.
In a hegemonic empire, control is imposed by coercive diplomacy and the visible readiness of the core's armies to march.
Hegemonic empires are thus cheaper to run on average. The downside is hightened risk of revolt.
(2) A "territorial" empire resembles Rome from the middle of the Antonine period through final collapse. The outliers don't even have notional independence, and control is exerted by troops actually stationed and active in the outliers.
Territorial empires are more costly to operate because the army is "on" all the time, with consequent higher costs to resupply and to replace casualties. OTOH, lack of notional independence permits the core to scour away all visible stubs on which an outlier resistance government could form. Thus, it's stabler, if the higher cost is sustainable.
The United States in the late 20'th century classes as a failed attempt at a hegemonic empire.
Outmoded operational doctrine (2'nd generation warfare) wrecked the escalation dominance a hegemonic empire needs to make its conquests stick.
The consequences of failed escalation dominance (can't WIN a colonial war, so they go on forever), plus systemic and malignant corruption (useless and expensive toys like the Raptor and the Osprey, multiplied times 10000), also wrecked the ability of the economy to sustain the demands that even a hegemonic structure made upon it.
My guess, it's deliberate.
My guess is, this is the sort of intellectual bankruptcy that you typically see in failed empires.
The ruling elites don't have a clue. That's why they keep on making the same mistakes, over and over and over. That's why their organizations are filled from top to bottom with flatterers and syncophants, so their own thinking is poisoned from the git-go.
That's why the thatch is burning over our heads. That's their meal ticket that's burning, too.
The parasites are killing the host.
The consequences of failed escalation dominance (can't WIN a colonial war, so they go on forever), plus systemic and malignant corruption (useless and expensive toys like the Raptor and the Osprey, multiplied times 10000), also wrecked the ability of the economy to sustain the demands that even a hegemonic structure made upon it.
It's also a factor that Middle American parents don't want their precious Joey, Josh, or Jason conscripted into being canon-fodder.
It's also a factor that Middle American parents don't want their precious Joey, Josh, or Jason conscripted into being canon-fodder.
Yup.
But to a large extent, that's a consequence of endless unwinnable wars. Which itself is a consequence of a military doctrine that's obsolete by not one, but two paradigm shifts.
Another consequence of prolonged wars was hinted at in "The Prince". Consider two possible Iraq War scenarios, in light of the quote following them. Emphasis mine.
(1) An Iraq War which was ended quickly and decisively. Within six months to a year, say.
(2) The Iraq War we have to contend with in the real world. Five years, ten years, a hundred years, who knows? No end to it either in sight or in plan.
Which scenario is going to cause more domestic unrest?
.. in seizing a state, the usurper ought to examine closely into all those injuries which it is necessary for him to inflict, and to do them all at one stroke so as not to have to repeat them daily; and thus by not unsettling men he will be able to reassure them, and win them to himself by benefits. He who does otherwise, either from timidity or evil advice, is always compelled to keep the knife in his hand; neither can he rely on his subjects, nor can they attach themselves to him, owing to their continued and repeated wrongs. For injuries ought to be done all at one time, so that, being tasted less, they offend less ..
the eleites in this country have been working hard to end the middle class, they are workign on both sides of the isle and have floks in the upper echalon of both parties.
My faterh was upper middle calss, my wife and I have to kil oursleves to mantain that same standared of living, my sister has allready slipped down a noch or two. dad was home at five eery nigth and was able to take vacation..the same is not true for us.
look around, there are cash based cottage industry typ busnesses spring up every where. out of peoples basemnts and what not. This is not a good sign, infact I beleive it is a sign that a depreshion has allready started. our "betters" better wake up soon, as much as they hate it the New Deal kept them in power by throwign us a bone. they have rolled it back too far.
We are at teh brink again, if things go south as they very may well there will be anotehr civil war (revolutions allways come from the middle class, you dick us over enough and we will rise up). dose the goverment work for teh people again, or do we replace it?
Gee, it looks like Minn and Norway are completely interchangeable!
Gee, it looks like Minn and Norway are completely interchangeable!
I described Minnesota's social and cultural idiosyncrasies to an online acquaintance who lives in Norway, and she indicated to me that Minnesota sounded to her very much like a transplanted version of Norway.
But to a large extent, that's a consequence of endless unwinnable wars. Which itself is a consequence of a military doctrine that's obsolete by not one, but two paradigm shifts.
Vietnam really was the watershed example of this. I mean, we kept throwing blood and treasure and firepower at the North Vietnamese military and the communist guerillas, and while we fucked them up pretty bad (the USA was at the height of its military power at the time), the communists just kept going and going like the fucking "Energizer" bunny! And that they were able to do so was to a large extent due to our inability to adapt to the military paradigm-shifts of which you speak.
moonglum:
I agree with the mindset of your comment, but you should also keep in mind that we are experiencing the principle of diminishing returns that all rich and powerful great empires experience. So the elites would have to be willing to live with a more decentralized society where wealth would be distributed rather more equally and they would have a lot less power, and they're not having that. They tolerated the New Deal for a while because we were so rich that they could have their obscene power and wealth and throw us peons a bone at the same time.
Loveandlight: the elites need to understand that they dame will ahve to live with it...they have taught us that every one is replacable...guess what, that applies to them as well.
This map pretty accurately reflects the US being by far the most dominant economic power in the world and also being the third most populous country in the world. It also points to what many of the comments here have been about: economies with no middle class are extremely stifled. And you can see that with the poorer states being compared to countries where most of the people are extremely poor(though that was more coincidence than intention).
As a Minnesotan with Norwegian ancestry I can tell you that Norwegians could've tried to settle elsewhere but it just wouldn't have felt right. Very cold winters with tons of snow are a prerequisite. As is soil that is OK to farm but not as great as say Illinois. That would be getting way too greedy. I think they worked out their greed issues when they were Vikings.
Of course being that the Norwegian economy is democratic socialist with a large reserve of North Sea oil, they have the pesky problem of what to do with the massive surplus of money that is clogging their government's coffers.
With a ten trillion dollar deficit, two wars with no end in sight, and a third war Bush is just itching to get into, rule by the old Anglo-Saxon northeast aristocrats is obviously not the way to go. We should've elected Humphrey in '68 and we might not have had this problem(though Nixon compared to Bush looks like a wild-eyed progressive).
wengler and yet this nation is goign that way once again...
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