WHAT IN THE WORLD IS GOING ON? A GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE BRIEFING FOR CEO’s by HERBERT MEYER
The Bear on Mar 28 2007 at 8:30 am | Filed under: Uncategorized
Herb Meyer served during the Reagan administration as special assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence and Vice Chairman of the CIA’s National Intelligence Council. In these positions, he managed production of the U.S. National Intelligence Estimates and other top-secret projections for the President and his national security advisers. Meyer is widely credited with being the first senior U.S. Government official to forecast the Soviet Union’s collapse, for which he later was awarded the U.S. National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal, the intelligence community’s highest honor. Formerly an associate editor of FORTUNE, he is also the author of several books.
FOUR MAJOR TRANSFORMATIONS
Currently, there are four major transformations that are shaping political, economic and world events. These transformations have profound implications for American business owners, our culture and our way of life.
1. The War in Iraq There are three major monotheistic religions in the world: Christianity, Judaism and Islam. In the 16th century, Judaism and Christianity reconciled with the modern world. The rabbis, priests and scholars found a way to settle up and pave the way forward. Religion remained at the center of life, church and state became separate. Rule of law, idea of economic liberty, individual rights, human rights – all these are defining points of modern Western civilization. These concepts started with the Greeks but didn’t take off until the 15th and 16th century when Judaism and Christianity found a way to reconcile with the modern world. When that happened, it unleashed the scientific revolution and the greatest outpouring of art, literature and music the world has ever known.
Islam, which developed in the 7th century, counts millions of Moslems around the world who are normal people. However, there is a radical streak within Islam. When the radicals are in charge, Islam attacks Western civilization. Islam first attacked Western civilization in the 7th century, and later in the 16th and 17th centuries. By 1683, the Moslems (Turks from the Ottoman Empire) were literally at the gates of Vienna. It was in Vienna that the climatic battle between Islam and Western civilization took place. The West won and went forward. Islam lost and went backward. Interestingly, the date of that battle was September 11. Since them, Islam has not found a way to reconcile with the modern world.
Today, terrorism is the third attack on Western civilization by radical Islam. To deal with terrorism, the U.S. is doing two things. First, units of our armed forces are in 30 countries around the world hunting down terrorist groups and dealing with them. This gets very little publicity. Second we are taking military action in Afghanistan and Iraq. These are covered relentlessly by the media. People can argue about whether the war in Iraq is right or wrong. However, the underlying strategy behind the war is to use our military to remove the radicals from power and give the moderates a chance. Our hope is that, over time, the moderates will find a way to bring Islam forward into the 21st century. That’s what our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan is all about.
The lesson of 9/11 is that we live in a world where a small number of people can kill a large number of people very quickly. They can use airplanes, bombs, anthrax, chemical weapons or dirty bombs. Even with a first-rate intelligence service (which the U.S. does not have), you can’t stop every attack. That means our tolerance for political horseplay has dropped to zero. No longer will we play games with terrorists or weapons of mass destructions.
Most of the instability and horseplay is coming from the Middle East. That’s why we have thought that if we could knock out the radicals and give the moderates a chance to hold power, they might find a way to reconcile Islam with the modern world. So when looking at Afghanistan or Iraq, it’s important to look for any signs that they are modernizing. For example, women being brought into the work force and colleges in Afghanistan is good. The Iraqis stumbling toward a constitution is good. People can argue about what the U.S. is doing and how we’re doing it, but anything that suggests Islam is finding its way forward is good.
2. The Emergence of China In the last 20 years, China has moved 250 million people from the farms and villages into the cities. Their plan is to move another 300 million in the next 20 years. When you put that many people into the cities, you have to find work for them. That’s why China is addicted to manufacturing; they have to put all the relocated people to work. When we decide to manufacture something in the U.S., it’s based on market needs and the opportunity to make a profit. In China, they make the decision because they want the jobs, which is a very different calculation.
While China is addicted to manufacturing, Americans are addicted to low prices. As a result, a unique kind of economic co-dependency has developed between the two countries. If we ever stop buying from China, they will explode politically. If China stops selling to us, our economy will take a huge hit because prices will jump. We are subsidizing their economic development; they are subsidizing our economic growth.
Because of their huge growth in manufacturing, China is hungry for raw materials, which drives prices up worldwide. China is also thirsty for oil, which is one reason oil is now at $60 a barrel. By
2020, China will produce more cars than the U.S. China is also buying its way into the oil infrastructure around the world. They are doing it in the open market and paying fair market prices, but millions of barrels of oil that would have gone to the U.S. are now going to China. China’s quest to assure it has the oil it needs to fuel its economy is a major factor in world politics and economics. We have our Navy fleets protecting the sea lines, specifically the ability to get the tankers through. It won’t be long before the Chinese have an aircraft carrier sitting in the Persian Gulf as well. The question is, will their aircraft carrier be pointing in the same direction as ours or against us?
3. Shifting Demographics of Western Civilization Most countries in the Western world have stopped breeding. For a civilization obsessed with sex, this is remarkable. Maintaining a steady population requires a birth rate of 2.1. In Western Europe, the birth rate currently stands at 1.5, or 30 percent below replacement.
In 30 years there will be 70 to 80 million fewer Europeans than there are today. The current birth rate in Germany is 1.3. Italy and Spain are even lower at 1.2. At that rate, the working age population declines by 30 percent in 20 years, which has a huge impact on the economy.
When you don’t have young workers to replace the older ones, you have to import them. The European countries are currently importing Moslems. Today, the Moslems comprise 10 percent of France and Germany, and the percentage is rising rapidly because they have higher birthrates. However, the Moslem populations are not being integrated into the cultures of their host countries, which is a political catastrophe. One reason Germany and France don’t support the Iraq war is they fear their Moslem populations will explode on them. By 2020, more than half of all births in the Netherlands will be non-European.
The huge design flaw in the post-modern secular state is that you need a traditional religious society birth rate to sustain it. The Europeans simply don’t wish to have children, so they are dying.
In Japan, the birthrate is 1.3. As a result, Japan will lose up to 60 million people over the next 30 years. Because Japan has a very different society than Europe, they refuse to import workers. Instead, they are just shutting down. Japan has already closed 2000 schools, and is closing them down at the rate of 300 per year. Japan is also aging very rapidly. By 2020, one out of every five Japanese will be at least 70 years old. Nobody has any idea about how to run an economy with those demographics.
Europe and Japan, which comprise two of the world’s major economic engines, aren’t merely in recession, they’re shutting down. This will have a huge impact on the world economy, and it is already beginning to happen. Why are the birthrates so low? There is a direct correlation between abandonment of traditional religious society and a drop in birth rate, and Christianity in Europe is becoming irrelevant. The second reason is economic. When the birthrate drops below replacement, the population ages. With fewer working people to support more retired people, it puts a crushing tax burden on the smaller group of working age people. As a result, young people delay marriage and having a family. Once this trend starts, the downward spiral only gets worse. These countries have abandoned all the traditions they formerly held in regards to having families and raising children.
The U.S. birth rate is 2.0, just below replacement. We have an increase in population because of immigration. When broken down by ethnicity, the Anglo birth rate is 1.6 (same as France) while the Hispanic birth rate is 2.7. In the U.S., the baby boomers are starting to retire in massive numbers. This will push the elder dependency ratio from 19 to 38 over the next 10 to 15 years. This is not as bad as Europe, but still represents the same kind of trend.
Western civilization seems to have forgotten what every primitive society understands-you need kids to have a healthy society. Children are huge consumers. Then they grow up to become taxpayers. That’s how a society works, but the post-modern secular state seems to have forgotten that. If U.S. birth rates of the past 20 to 30 years had been the same as post-World War II, there would be no Social Security or Medicare problems.
The world’s most effective birth control device is money. As society creates a middle class and women move into the work force, birth rates drop. Having large families is incompatible with middle class living. The quickest way to drop the birth rate is through rapid economic development. After World War II, the U.S. instituted a $600 tax credit per child. The idea was to enable mom and dad to have four children without being troubled by taxes. This led to a baby boom of 22 million kids, which was a huge consumer market that turned into a huge tax base. However, to match that incentive in today’s dollars would cost $12,000 per child.
China and India do not have declining populations. However, in both countries, there is a preference for boys over girls, and we now have the technology to know which is which before they are born. In China and India, many families are aborting the girls. As a result, in each of these countries there are 70 million boys growing up who will never find wives. When left alone, nature produces 103 boys for every 100 girls. In some provinces, however, the ratio is 128 boys to every 100 girls.
The birth rate in Russia is so low that by 2050 their population will be smaller than that of Yemen. Russia has one-sixth of the earth’s land surface and much of its oil. You can’t control that much area with such a small population. Immediately to the south, you have China with
70 million unmarried men are a real potential nightmare scenario for Russia.
4. Restructuring of American Business The fourth major transformation involves a fundamental restructuring of American business. Today’s business environment is very complex and competitive. To succeed, you have to be the best, which means having the highest quality and lowest cost. Whatever your price point, you must have the best quality and lowest price. To be the best, you have to concentrate on one thing. You can’t be all things to all people and be the best.
A generation ago, IBM used to make every part of their computer. Now Intel makes the chips, Microsoft makes the software, and someone else makes the modems, hard drives, monitors, etc. IBM even out sources their call center. Because IBM has all these companies supplying goods and services cheaper and better than they could do it themselves, they can make a better computer at a lower cost. This is called a fracturing of business. When one company can make a better product by relying on others to perform functions the business used to do itself, it creates a complex pyramid of companies that serve and support each other.
This fracturing of American business is now in its second generation. The companies who supply IBM are now doing the same thing, out sourcing many of their core services and production process. As a result, they can make cheaper, better products. Over time, this pyramid continues to get bigger and bigger. Just when you think it can’t fracture again, it does. Even very small businesses can have a large pyramid of corporate entities that perform many of its important functions. One aspect of this trend is that companies end up with fewer employees and more independent contractors.
This trend has also created two new words in business. integrator and complementor. At the top of the pyramid, IBM is the integrator. As you go down the pyramid, Microsoft, Intel and the other companies that support IBM are the complementors. However, each of the complementors is itself an integrator for the complementors underneath it. This has several implications, the first of which is that we are now getting false readings on the economy. People who used to be employees are now independent contractors launching their own businesses. There are many people working whose work is not listed as a job. As a result, the economy is perking along better than the numbers are telling us.
Outsourcing also confused the numbers. Suppose a company like General Motors decides to outsource all its employee cafeteria functions to Marriott (which it did). It lays off hundreds of cafeteria workers, who then get hired right back by Marriott. The only thing that has changed is that these people work for Marriott rather than GM. Yet, the headlines will scream that America has lost more manufacturing jobs. All that really happened is that these workers are now reclassified as service workers. So the old way of counting jobs contributes to false economic readings. As yet, we haven’t figured out how to make the numbers catch up with the changing realities of the business world.
Another implication of this massive restructuring is that because companies are getting rid of units and people that used to work for them, the entity is smaller. As the companies get smaller and more efficient, revenues are going down but profits are going up. As a result, the old notion that revenues are up and we’re doing great isn’t always the case anymore.
Companies are getting smaller but are becoming more efficient and profitable in the process.
IMPLICATIONS OF THE FOUR TRANSFORMATIONS
1. The War in Iraq In some ways, the war is going very well. Afghanistan and Iraq have the beginnings of a modern government, which is a huge step forward. The Saudis are starting to talk about some good things, while Egypt and Lebanon are beginning to move in a good direction.
A series of revolutions have taken place in countries like Ukraine and Georgia. There will be more of these revolutions for an interesting reason. In every revolution, there comes a point where the dictator turns to the general and says, Fire into the crowd. If the general fires into the crowd, it stops the revolution. If the general says No, the revolution continues. Increasingly, the generals are saying No because their kids are in the crowd.
Thanks to TV and the Internet, the average 18 year old outside the U.S. is very savvy about what is going on in the world, especially in terms of popular culture. There is a huge global consciousness, and young people around the world want to be a part of it. It is increasingly apparent to them that the miserable government where they live is the only thing standing in their way. More and more, it is the well-educated kids, the children of the generals and the elite, who are leading the revolutions.
At the same time, not all is well with the war. The level of violence in Iraq is much worse and doesn’t appear to be improving. It’s possible that we’re asking too much of Islam all at one time. We’re trying to jolt them from the 7th century to the 21st century all at once, which may be further than they can go. They might make it and they might not. Nobody knows for sure. The point is, we don’t know how the war will turn out. Anyone who says they know is just guessing.
The real place to watch is Iran. If they actually obtain nuclear weapons it will be a terrible situation. There are two ways to deal with it. The first is a military strike, which will be very difficult. The Iranians have dispersed their nuclear development facilities and put them underground. The U.S. has nuclear weapons that can go under the earth and take out those facilities, but we don’t want to do that. The other way is to separate the radical mullahs from the government, which is the most likely course of action.
Seventy percent of the Iranian population is under 30. They are Moslem but not Arab. They are mostly pro-Western. Many experts think the U.S. should have dealt with Iran before going to war with Iraq. The problem isn’t so much the weapons, it’s the people who control them. If ran has a moderate government, the weapons become less of a concern.
We don’t know if we will win the war in Iraq. We could lose or win. What we’re looking for is any indicator that Islam is moving into the 21st century and stabilizing.
2. China It may be that pushing 500 million people from farms and villages into cities is too much too soon. Although it gets almost no publicity, China is experiencing hundreds of demonstrations around the country, which is unprecedented. These are not students in Tiananmen Square. These are average citizens who are angry with the government for building chemical plants and polluting the water they drink and the air they breathe.
The Chinese are a smart and industrious people. They may be able to pull it off and become a very successful economic and military superpower. If so, we will have to learn to live with it. If they want to share the responsibility of keeping the world’s oil lanes open, that’s a good thing. They currently have eight new nuclear electric power generators under way and 45 on the books to build. Soon, they will leave the U.S. way behind in their ability to generate nuclear power.
What can go wrong with China? For one, you can’t move 550 million people into the cities without major problems. Two, China really wants Taiwan, not so much for economic reasons, they just want it. The Chinese know that their system of communism can’t survive much longer in the 21st century. The last thing they want to do before they morph into some sort of more capitalistic government is to take over Taiwan.
We may wake up one morning and find they have launched an attack on Taiwan. If so, it will be a mess, both economically and militarily. The U.S. has committed to the military defense of Taiwan. If China attacks Taiwan, will we really go to war against them? If the Chinese generals believe the answer is no, they may attack. If we don’t defend Taiwan, every treaty the U.S. has will be worthless. Hopefully, China won’t do anything stupid.
3. Demographics Europe and Japan are dying because their populations are aging and shrinking. These trends can be reversed if the young people start breeding. However, the birth rates in these areas are so low it will take two generations to turn things around. No economic model exists that permits 50 years to turn things around. Some countries are beginning to offer incentives for people to have bigger families. For example, Italy is offering tax breaks for having children. However, it’s a lifestyle issue versus a tiny amount of money. Europeans aren’t willing to give up their comfortable lifestyles in order to have more children.
In general, everyone in Europe just wants it to last a while longer. Europeans have a real talent for living. They don’t want to work very hard. The average European worker gets 400 more hours of vacation time per year than Americans. They don’t want to work and they don’t want to make any of the changes needed to revive their economies.
The summer after 9/11, France lost 15,000 people in a heat wave. In August, the country basically shuts down when everyone goes on vacation. That year, a severe heat wave struck and 15,000 elderly people living in nursing homes and hospitals died. Their children didn’t even leave the beaches to come back and take care of the bodies. Institutions had to scramble to find enough refrigeration units to hold the bodies until people came to claim them.
This loss of life was five times bigger than 9/11 in America, yet it didn’t trigger any change in French society. When birth rates are so low, it creates a tremendous tax burden on the young. Under those circumstances, keeping mom and dad alive is not an attractive option. That’s why euthanasia is becoming so popular in most European countries. The only country that doesn’t permit (and even encourage) euthanasia is Germany, because of all the baggage from World War II.
The European economy is beginning to fracture. The Euro is down. Countries like Italy are starting to talk about pulling out of the European Union because it is killing them. When things get bad economically in Europe, they tend to get very nasty politically. The canary in the mine is anti-Semitism. When it goes up, it means trouble is coming. Current levels of anti-Semitism are higher than ever. Germany won’t launch another war, but Europe will likely get shabbier, more dangerous and less pleasant to live in.
Japan has a birth rate of 1.3 and has no intention of bringing in immigrants. By 2020, one out of every five Japanese will be 70 years old. Property values in Japan have dropped every year for the past 14 years. The country is simply shutting down.
In the U.S. we also have an aging population. Boomers are starting to retire at a massive rate. These retirements will have several major impacts: Possible massive sell-off of large four-bedroom houses and a movement to condos.
An enormous drain on the treasury. Boomers vote, and they want their benefits, even if it means putting a crushing tax burden on their kids to get them. Social Security will be a huge problem. As this generation ages, it will start to drain the system. We are the only country in the world where there are no age limits on medical procedures.
An enormous drain on the health care system. This will also increase the tax burden on the young, which will cause them to delay marriage and having families, which will drive down the birth rate even further.
Although scary, these demographics also present enormous opportunities for products and services tailored to aging populations. There will be tremendous demand for caring for older people, especially those who don’t need nursing homes but need some level of care. Some people will have a business where they take care of three or four people in their homes. The demand for that type of service and for products to physically care for aging people will be huge.
Make sure the demographics of your business are attuned to where the action is. For example, you don’t want to be a baby food company in Europe or Japan. Demographics are much underrated as an indicator of where the opportunities are. Businesses need customers. Go where the customers are.
4. Restructuring of American Business The restructuring of American business means we are coming to the end of the age of the employer and employee. With all this fracturing of businesses into different and smaller units, employers can’t guarantee jobs anymore because they don’t know what their companies will look like next year. Everyone is on their way to becoming an independent contractor. The new workforce contract will be a, “Show up at my office five days a week and do what I want you to do, but you handle your own insurance, benefits, health care and everything else.”
Husbands and wives are becoming economic units. They take different jobs and work different shifts depending on where they are in their careers and families. They make tradeoffs to put together a compensation package to take care of the family. This used to happen only with highly educated professionals with high incomes. Now it is happening at the level of the factory floor worker. Couples at all levels are designing their compensation packages based on their individual needs. The only way this can work is if everything is portable and flexible, which requires a huge shift in the American economy.
The U.S. is in the process of building the world’s first 21st century model economy. The only other countries doing this are U.K. and Australia. The model is fast, flexible, highly productive and unstable in that it is always fracturing and re-fracturing. This will increase the economic gap between the U.S. and everybody else, especially Europe and Japan.
At the same time, the military gap is increasing. Other than China, we are the only country that is continuing to put money into their military. Plus, we are the only military getting on-the-ground military experience through our war in Iraq. We know which high-tech weapons are working and which ones aren’t. There is almost no one who can take us on economically or militarily. There has never been a superpower in this position before.
On the one hand, this makes the U.S. a magnet for bright and ambitious people. It also makes us a target. We are becoming one of the last holdouts of the traditional Judeo-Christian culture. There is no better place in the world to be in business and raise children. The U.S. is by far the best place to have an idea, form a business and put it into the marketplace. We take it for granted, but it isn’t as available in other countries of the world.
Ultimately, it’s an issue of culture. The only people who can hurt us are ourselves, by losing our culture. If we give up our Judeo-Christian culture, we become just like the Europeans. The culture war is the whole ball game. If we lose it, there isn’t another America to pull us out.
Reagan administration, U.S. National Intelligence Estimates, War in Iraq, Islam, Moslems, Western civilization, September 11, terrorism, chemical weapons, Iraq, Iraq, Iran, nuclear weapons, China, World War II, health care system, Judeo-Christian culture
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The following is a paragraph-by-paragraph correction of this flawed paper.
FOUR MAJOR TRANSFORMATIONS
Currently, there are four major transformations that are shaping political,
economic and world events. These transformations have profound implications
for American business leaders and owners, our culture and on our way of
life.
1. The War in Iraq
There are three major monotheistic religions in the world:
Christianity, Judaism and Islam.
In the 16th century, Judaism and Christianity reconciled with the modern
world. The rabbis, priests and scholars found a way to settle up and pave
the way forward. Religion remained at the center of life, church and state
became separate. Rule of law, the idea of economic liberty, individual
rights, human rights – all these are defining points of modern Western
civilization. These concepts started with the Greeks but didn’t take off
until the 15th and 16th century when Judaism and Christianity found a way to
reconcile with the modern world. When that happened, it unleashed the
scientific revolution and the greatest outpouring of art, literature and
music the world has ever known.
__________________________________________________________
There are many Jewish and Christian sects that rejected the above compromise and it continues today: Creationism, Intelligent Design, etc. Millions of Christians believe the Universe was magically created about 9,000 years ago and that science is a falsehood that is designed to tempt our faith. They wanted to stop us from going to the Moon. They also have tried to stop DNA research that could result in growing replacement hearts so that we wouldn’t have to mutilate the recently dead to harvest their organs. There are both Christian and Jewish sects that reject cars, radios, modern education, etc. What is true about the above paragraph, is that the modern world was created because only a minority of the Judeo-Christian sects tried to destroy it or ignored it.
_________________________________________________________________________
Islam, which developed in the 7th century, counts millions of Moslems around
the world who are normal people. However, there is a radical streak within
Islam. When the radicals are in charge, Islam attacks Western civilization.
__________________________________________________________
And, what were the Crusades? During at least one crusade, in 1098, the Christians ate the Muslims they killed.
_________________________________________________________________
Islam first attacked Western civilization in the 7th century, and later in
the 16th and 17th centuries. By 1683, the Moslems (Turks from the Ottoman
Empire) were literally at the gates of Vienna. It was in Vienna that the
climactic battle between Islam and Western civilization took place. The
West won and went forward. Islam lost and went backward.
Interestingly, the date of that battle was September 11. Since them, Islam
has not found a way to reconcile with the modern world.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
Partially true. In fact, according to the CIA, over 50 percent of organized violence in the world has Islam on one side of the conflict or another, and frequently on both sides of the conflict. Saddam Hussein, for all of his brutality, was a modern leader fighting many primitive sects that rejected modern civilization. This became abundantly clear in the chaos after our government killed him. President Bush used to state that nations that were friends with terrorists are also our enemies. However, the current Iraqi government has publicly stated it’s friendship with Ahmadinejad of Iran and has publicly announced support of Hamas and Hezbollah. These are actions that Bush used to use to define our enemies.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Today, terrorism is the third attack on Western civilization by radical
Islam. To deal with terrorism, the U.S. is doing two things. First, units
of our armed forces are in 30 countries around the world hunting down
terrorist groups and dealing with them. This gets very little publicity.
Second we are taking military action in Afghanistan and Iraq.
These actions are covered relentlessly by the media. People can argue about
whether the war in Iraq is right or wrong. However, the underlying strategy
behind the war is to use our military to remove the radicals from power and
give the moderates a chance. Our hope is that, over time, the moderates
will find a way to bring Islam forward into the 21st century. That’s what
our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan is all about.
__________________________________________________________________
17 of the 19 attackers on 9/11 were Saudi citizens and the purpose of the attack was to punish the United States of America for putting foreign Christian troops in their most sacred land – Saudi Arabia, the home of Mecca and Medina. Osama Bin Laden said this. So did others. He further stated that he knew he couldn’t beat our amazingly powerful military but he said he could bankrupt us. Very few Americans are willing to listen to our enemy. I am not making excuses for this evil, but in order to kill the beast you have to know the beast. Meyer is being totally naïve about the reasons we are in Iraq. Even John McCain said we are there because of the oil and Bush’s own press secretary, Scott McClelland, yesterday stated that Bush was deliberately deceptive. If we are there because of a primitive religion, why aren’t we in Burma and Sudan?
____________________________________________________________________________________________
The lesson of 9/11 is that we live in a world where a small number of people
can kill a large number of people very quickly.
_____________________________________________________________
Yes! And furthermore, modern life is a very complex grid and taking down a tiny part of that grid can cause a catastrophic chain reaction. For example, a small transformer blows in North Dakota and the whole Midwest is plunged into darkness. Our enormously expensive military machine is powerless to stop this. The military command in the US was trained to fight the USSR. There will be no more world wars due to the intertwined economies. To fight terrorists, we need CIA, DIA, FBI, and local police forces all aligning themselves with similar forces in other countries. Fleets of bombers can destroy nations but will only fuel terrorism ( I know I am talking to a pilot, Dick, but please don’t be angry with me). The only land invasion we will ever have to deal with is on the Mexican border and the US military can’t stop that, either.
__________________________________________________________________
They can use airplanes, bombs, anthrax, chemical weapons or dirty bombs. Even with a first-rate intelligence service (which the U.S. does not have), you can’t stop every
attack. That means our tolerance for political horseplay has dropped to zero. No longer will we play games with terrorists or weapons of mass destructions.
_____________________________________________________________________
I can’t figure out the above. Is he making some kind of threat?
_______________________________________________________________________
Most of the instability and horseplay is coming from the Middle East.
That’s why we have thought that if we could knock out the radicals and give
the moderates a chance to hold power; they might find a way to reconcile
Islam with the modern world. So when looking at Afghanistan or Iraq, it’s
important to look for any signs that they are modernizing.
For example: women being brought into the work force and colleges in
Afghanistan is good. The Iraqis stumbling toward a constitution is good.
People can argue about what the U.S. is doing and how we’re doing it, but
anything that suggests Islam is finding its way forward is good.
2. The Emergence of China
In the last 20 years, China has moved 250 million people from the farms and
villages into the cities. Their plan is to move another 300 million in the
next 20 years. When you put that many people into the cities, you have to
find work for them. That’s why China is addicted to manufacturing; they
have to put all the relocated people to work. When we decide to manufacture
something in the U.S., it’s based on market needs and the opportunity to
make a profit. In China, they make the decision because they want the jobs,
which is a very different calculation.
________________________________________________________________________________________
When I received special permission from the Commerce Department to travel to China in 1985, I saw a very disturbing sight in Shanghai. A row of people were on their knees on a golf course snipping the grass with little scissors. I asked my interpreter why didn’t you use lawn mowers and he seemed offended. He said the grass blades will be much more uniform and besides, they were giving jobs to people who would otherwise be idle. When there is a massive demonstration in Baghdad I wonder how could all of these people get Wednesday off from their jobs? The answer? They had no jobs. When you have a 60% unemployment rate, it doesn’t matter what your religion is, you are going to be on the street protesting. The Iraqi government only seems to offer military jobs to it’s people. They now have billions in oil revenue. Why aren’t they building factories and jobs? The surge isn’t doing that.
______________________________________________________________________________________
While China is addicted to manufacturing, Americans are addicted to low
prices. As a result, a unique kind of economic codependency has developed
between the two countries. If we ever stop buying from China, they will
explode politically. If China stops selling to us, our economy will take a
huge hit because prices will jump. We are subsidizing their economic
development; they are subsidizing our economic growth.
________________________________________________________________________________
Almost true. Our economic growth has been so stratified that less wealthy Americans (whose good jobs are now in China) are worse off, but the very wealthy are getting much better off. The Bush administration has produced more billionaires than all of the other administrations combined but they number in the hundreds. The poor bankrupt foreclosed Americans now number in the 10s of millions.
___________________________________________________________________________________
Because of their huge growth in manufacturing, China is hungry for raw
materials, which drives prices up worldwide. China is also thirsty for oil,
which is one reason oil is now over $100 a barrel.
By 2020, China will
produce more cars than the U.S. China is also buying its way into the oil
infrastructure around the world. They are doing it in the open market and
paying fair market prices, but millions of barrels of oil that would have
gone to the U.S. are now going to China. China’s quest to assure it has the
oil it needs to fuel its economy is a major factor in world politics and
economics.
We have our Navy fleets protecting the sea lines, specifically the ability
to get the tankers through. It won’t be long before the Chinese have an
aircraft carrier sitting in the Persian Gulf as well. The question is, will
their aircraft carrier be pointing in the same direction as ours or against
us?
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Huh? What’s the point? Our military spends as much as the rest of the world combined. The reason why China spends 1/10th as much on military as the US is because they are focused on defeating us economically. And like Osama bin Laden’s threat of military bankruptcy, the Chinese economy is also winning. They don’t need to beat us militarily. We are over a trillion dollars in debt to them. They can destroy us economically whenever they feel like it but they won’t for two reasons. We are their biggest trading partner and America has more Chinese citizens than any other country in the world except China.
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3. Shifting Demographics of Western Civilization
Most countries in the Western world have stopped breeding. For a
civilization obsessed with sex, this is remarkable.
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Wait a minute, we are obsessed with pleasure, not procreation. Why is that remarkable? We are not allowed to raise kids the way we see fit. We are not allowed to punish them. We cannot make them strong through adversity. Schools are also subject to PC scrutiny. Teachers are under tremendous pressure to not embarrass or humiliate students – no matter how richly deserving they are. Corporal punishment is long gone. Our greatest leaders rose up through adversity and built the strength of character to lead nations and armies. We stopped breeding because both parents have to work outside the home, child rearing is no longer honored, and any form of punishment puts the parent at risk. At a minimum we should have daycare available in any company that hires women. We are not willing to pay the price for the things that would encourage breeding.
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Maintaining a steady
population requires a birth rate of 2.1. In Western Europe, the birth rate
currently stands at 1.5, or 30 percent below replacement. In 30 years there
will be 70 to 80 million fewer Europeans than there are today. The current
birth rate in Germany is 1.3. Italy and Spain are even lower at 1.2. At
that rate, the working age population declines by 30 percent in 20 years,
which has a huge impact on the economy. When you don’t have young workers
to replace the older ones, you have to import them.
The European countries are currently importing Moslems. Today, the Moslems
comprise 20 percent of France and Germany, and the percentage is rising
rapidly because they have higher birthrates. However, the Moslem populations
are not being integrated into the cultures of their host countries, which is
a political catastrophe. One reason Germany and France don’t support the
Iraq war is they fear their Moslem populations will explode on them. By
2020, more than half of all births in the Netherlands will be non-European.
The huge design flaw in the postmodern secular state is that you need a
traditional religious society birth rate to sustain it. ………………………………skip……………………………………………………….
The world’s most effective birth control device is money. As society
creates a middle class and women move into the workforce, birth rates
drop. Having large families is incompatible with middle class living.
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This is not true. Education is the most effective birth control device, not money. Every study that I have ever seen has shown that our happiest workers are educated women. They love their jobs more than men in similar positions. Educating women in every religious group results in a drop in birthrates. Even primitive religions understood the power of keeping women pregnant. The ancient Catholic church didn’t want the peasants reading the Bible so it was in an undecipherable language and to this day it opposes birth control. The fastest growing religion is Islam and if you study the demographics, it is through denial of education that the women accept a life of constant pregnancy. This is true in even rich countries like Saudi Arabia. But as they gain greater education their birthrate declines.
___________________________________________________________________________________________
The quickest way to drop the birth rate is through rapid economic
development. After World War II, the U.S. instituted a $600 tax credit per
child. The idea was to enable mom and dad to have four children without
being troubled by taxes. This led to a baby boom of 22 million kids, which
was a huge consumer market. That turned into a huge tax base. However, to
match that incentive in today’s dollars would cost $12,000 per child.
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When I was in Australia, they were offering $4000 per delivered white child, even if the woman was not married. This has resulted in an increase in births by poor, uneducated women and there is an expected crime bubble due in about 18 years from all the poor fatherless boys being conceived.
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China and India do not have declining populations. However, in both
countries, there is a preference for boys over girls, and we now have the
technology to know which is which before they are born. In China and India,
families are aborting the girls. As a result, in each of these countries
there are 70 million boys growing up who will never find wives. When left
alone, nature produces 103 boys for every 100 girls. In some provinces,
however, the ratio is 128 boys to every 100 girls.
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When I returned from China in 1985 I made the prediction that China would start a world war in 20 years to absorb the 50 million surplus young men with raging hormones. I was almost right. I thought it would be a violent war and instead it is an economic war. And, they are winning.
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The birth rate in Russia is so low that by 2050 their population will be
smaller than that of Yemen. Russia has one-sixth of the earth’s land surface
and much of its oil. You can’t control that much area with such a small
population. Immediately to the south, you have China with 70 million
unmarried men who are a real potential nightmare scenario for Russia.
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Russia will join the EU and become a big trading partner with China. China isn’t going to kill people. They plan on buying people.
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4. Restructuring of American Business
The fourth major transformation involves a fundamental restructuring of
American business.
……..skip…….
There are many people working whose work is not listed as a job. As a result, the economy
is perking along better than the numbers are telling us.
____________________________________________________________________________________
I agree, but again, this is not fairly distributed. 60 million people are living in a Great Depression, another 60 million are in a deep Recession etc. Only about 3 million Americans are living in a booming economy.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Outsourcing also confused the numbers. Suppose a company like General
Motors decides to outsource all its employee cafeteria functions to Marriott
(which it did). It lays-off hundreds of cafeteria workers, who then get
hired right back by Marriott. The only thing that has changed is that
these people work for Marriott rather than GM. Yet, the media headlines
will scream that America has lost more manufacturing jobs.
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I’ve never seen a scream resulting from the above scenario. Actually Marriott will hire illegal immigrants if it can, then it will offer former GM workers less pay and less benefits for the same work. The only thing America will have lost is it’s soul.
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All that really happened is that these workers are now reclassified as
service workers. So the old way of counting jobs contributes to false
economic readings. As yet, we haven’t figured out how to make the numbers
catch up with the changing realities of the business world.
Another implication of this massive restructuring is that because companies
are getting rid of units and people that used to work for them, the entity
is smaller. As the companies get smaller and more efficient, revenues are
going down but profits are going up. As a result, the old notion that
revenues are up and we’re doing great isn’t always the case anymore.
Companies are getting smaller but are becoming more efficient and profitable
in the process.
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The military acutely understands the importance of redundancy and robustness of systems — the Internet is impossible to shut down completely. We need to break up large banks and conglomerates and have thousands of smaller, efficient, and interacting companies so losing one (economically) won’t bring down our economy.
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IMPLICATIONS OF THE FOUR TRANSFORMATIONS
1. The War in Iraq
In some ways, the war is going very well. Afghanistan and Iraq have the
beginnings of a modern government, which is a huge step forward. The Saudis
are starting to talk about some good things, while Egypt and Lebanon are
beginning to move in a good direction. A series of revolutions have taken
place in countries like Ukraine and Georgia.
There will be more of these revolutions for an interesting reason. In every
revolution, there comes a point where the dictator turns to the general and
says, ‘Fire into the crowd’. If the general fires into the crowd, it stops
the revolution. If the general says ‘No’, the revolution continues.
Increasingly, the generals are saying ‘No’ because their kids are in the
crowd.
Thanks to TV and the Internet, the average 18-year old outside the U.S. is
very savvy about what is going on in the world, especially in terms of
popular culture. There is a huge global consciousness, and young people
around the world want to be a part of it. It is increasingly apparent to
them that the miserable government where they live is the only thing
standing in their way. More and more, it is the well-educated kids, the
children of the generals and the elite, who are leading the revolutions.
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Now you’re talking. Education is far more powerful in dealing with terrorism than fleets of ships and planes. If we educate the hell out of a terrorist’s kids, they will be highly tempted to not be terrorists. But if we kill their dad and bomb their school we all know what we can look forward to.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
At the same time, not all is well with the war. The level of violence in
Iraq is much worse and doesn’t appear to be improving. It’s possible that
we’re asking too much of Islam all at one time. We’re trying to jolt them
from the 7th century to the 21st century all at once, which may be further
than they can go. They might make it and they might not. Nobody knows for
sure. The point is, we don’t know how the war will turn out. Anyone who
says they know is just guessing.
______________________________________________________
This is patronizing gibberish. They know more about the American culture than we know about them and they would love to send their kids to our schools. You want to jolt them out of the 7th century? It can’t be done at the end of a gun, but it can be done with a wireless laptop. They are irresistible to kids…
____________________________________________________________________________________
The real place to watch is Iran. If they actually obtain nuclear weapons it
will be a terrible situation. There are two ways to deal with it. The first
is a military strike, which will be very difficult. The Iranians have
dispersed their nuclear development facilities and put them underground.
The U.S. has nuclear weapons that can go under the earth and take out those
facilities, but we don’t want to do that.
The other way is to separate the radical mullahs from the government, which
is the most likely course of action. Seventy percent of the Iranian
population is under 30. They are Moslem but not Arab. They are mostly
pro-Western. Many experts think the U.S. should have dealt with Iran before
going to war with Iraq. The problem isn’t so much the weapons, it’s the
people who control them. If Iran has a moderate government, the weapons
become less of a concern.
______________________________________________________
We can either nuke 52 million people or try to educate them about their alternatives in governance. Hmm, tough choice.
_______________________________________________________________________________
We don’t know if we will win the war in Iraq. We could lose or win. What
we’re looking for is any indicator that Islam is moving into the 21st
century and stabilizing.
______________________________________________________________
First, it’s not a war. Ask any WWII vet what a war is and you will get an earful. Second, it’s not even an occupation, since they have a legal, democratically elected government. So what is it? It is some kind of poorly planned police action operating in a quasi-independent fashion from the legal Iraqi government. The government and 80% of the people have asked us to leave so I really don’t have a word to describe it. They are killing us and we are debating the meaning of “victory with honor”. Does it mean Iraqis have to change their religion and then we can declare victory? Are you willing to send your children to their death in Iraq for that goal? Meyer, do you realize that this is almost identical to what the Crusades were? And another thing – if you want to bring a country into the 21st century you don’t start by bombing them back into the Stone Ages. Study and Law would have been a lot cheaper than Shock and Awe.
____________________________________________________________________
2. China
It may be that pushing 500 million people from farms and villages into
cities is too much too soon. Although it gets almost no publicity, China is
experiencing hundreds of demonstrations around the country, which is
unprecedented. These are not students in Tiananmen Square. These are
average citizens who are angry with the government for building chemical
plants and polluting the water they drink and the air they breathe.
__________________________________________
True, as many as 17,000 disruptions in a year.
____________________________________________
The Chinese are a smart and industrious people. They may be able to pull it
off and become a very successful economic and military superpower. If so,
we will have to learn to live with it. If they want to share the
responsibility of keeping the world’s oil lanes open, that’s a good thing.
They currently have eight new nuclear electric power generators under way
and 45 on the books to build. Soon, they will leave the U.S. way behind in
their ability to generate nuclear power.
____________________________________________________
Not to mention pollution and water shortages.
_______________________________________________________
What can go wrong with China? For one, you can’t move 550 million people
into the cities without major problems. Two, China really wants Taiwan, not
so much for economic reasons, they just want it. The Chinese know that
their system of communism can’t survive much longer in the 21st century. The
last thing they want to do before they morph into some sort of more
capitalistic government is to take over Taiwan.
We may wake up one morning and find they have launched an attack on Taiwan.
________________________________________________________
Are you that paranoid, Meyer? Taiwanese were almost the first to enter China to help with the earthquake. It’s political. Taiwanese and Chinese are joined at the hip economically. They never attacked Hong Kong militarily did they? Taiwanese businesses have billions invested in China. There’s not going to be a military solution, it will be a Hong Kong solution and everyone in the foreign service knows this.
___________________________________________________________________
If so, it will be a mess, both economically and militarily. The U.S. has
committed to the military defense of Taiwan. If China attacks Taiwan, will
we really go to war against them? If the Chinese generals believe the
answer is no, they may attack. If we don’t defend Taiwan, every treaty the
U.S. has will be worthless. Hopefully, China won’t do anything stupid.
_________________
Like you, right?
_________________
3. Demographics
Europe and Japan are dying because their populations are aging and
shrinking. These trends can be reversed if the young people start breeding.
However, the birth rates in these areas are so low it will take two
generations to turn things around. No economic model exists that permits 50
years to turn things around. Some countries are beginning to offer
incentives for people to have bigger families. For example, Italy is
offering tax breaks for having children. However, it’s a lifestyle issue
versus a tiny amount of money. Europeans aren’t willing to give up their
comfortable lifestyles in order to have more children.
In general, everyone in Europe just wants it to last a while longer.
_______________________________________________
I guess you’re not counting all the Muslim citizens of Europe
_________________________________________________________________________
Europeans have a real talent for living. They don’t want to work very hard.
The average European worker gets 400 more hours of vacation time per year
than Americans. They don’t want to work and they don’t want to make any of
the changes needed to revive their economies.
________________________________________________
When did Meyer write this? It’s so wrong. The Euro has doubled against the dollar. While Americans are the most productive in total, the people with the greatest productivity PER HOUR are the French. In other words, French workers accomplish more in 35 hours than American workers but then they go home to their families while the American worker keeps grinding away. Personally, I’d rather work smart than work hard.
____________________________________________________________________
The summer after 9/11, France lost 15,000 people in a heat wave. In August,
the country basically shuts down when everyone goes on vacation.
That year, a severe heat wave struck and 15,000 elderly people living in
nursing homes and hospitals died. Their children didn’t even leave the
beaches to come back and take care of the bodies. Institutions had to
scramble to find enough refrigeration units to hold the bodies until people
came to claim them. This loss of life was five times bigger than 9/11 in
America, yet it didn’t trigger any change in French society.
___________________________________________________________
Ok, what country are they going to bomb back to the stone ages? Frigidairistan? They could always buy millions of Chinese Haier A/C units since the French use modern nuclear power for their electricity with a fraction of the pollution of U.S. powerplants.
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When birth rates are so low, it creates a tremendous tax burden on the
young. Under those circumstances, keeping mom and dad alive is not an
attractive option. That’s why euthanasia is becoming so popular in most
European countries. The only country that doesn’t permit (and even
encourage) euthanasia is Germany, because of all the baggage from World War
II.
_________________________________________________________
Works for me. I’m not going to any nursing home. Why don’t they send us old men to fight the wars? Most warriors are only pushing buttons or driving vehicles these days. War is something that old men do to young men. At least that’s how the ancient Greeks described it.
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The European economy is beginning to fracture. Countries like Italy are
starting to talk about pulling out of the European Union because it is
killing them. When things get bad economically in Europe, they tend to get
very nasty politically. The canary in the mine is anti- Semitism.
When it goes up, it means trouble is coming. Current levels of
anti-Semitism are higher than ever.
Germany won’t launch another war, but Europe will likely get shabbier, more
dangerous and less pleasant to live in. Japan has a birth rate of 1.3 and
has no intention of bringing in immigrants. By 2020, one out of every five
Japanese will be 70 years old.
___________________________________
My god! The karaoke parties will be torture.
___________________________________
Property values in Japan have dropped every
year for the past 14 years. The country is simply shutting down. In the
U.S. we also have an aging population. Boomers are starting to retire at a
massive rate.
____________________________________________________
That is entirely false. Demographers are quite surprised at the lack of rush to the retirement door. Check with Businessweek, May 2008.
___________________________________________________
These retirements will have several major impacts:
Possible massive sell off of large four-bedroom houses and a movement to
condos.
An enormous drain on the treasury. Boomers vote, and they want their
benefits, even if it means putting a crushing tax burden on their kids to
get them. Social Security will be a huge problem. As this generation ages,
it will start to drain the system. We are the only country in the world
where there are no age limits on medical procedures.
An enormous drain on the health care system. This will also increase the
tax burden on the young, which will cause them to delay marriage and having
families, which will drive down the birth rate even further.
Although scary, these demographics also present enormous opportunities for
products and services tailored to aging populations. There will be
tremendous demand for caring for older people, especially those who don’t
need nursing homes but need some level of care. Some people will have a
business w here they take care of three or four people in their homes. The
demand for that type of service and for products to physically care for
aging people will be huge.
____________________________________________
Not if we send the old folks out on another Crusade.
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Make sure the demographics of your business are attuned to where the action
is. For example, you don’t want to be a baby food company in Europe or
Japan. Demographics are much underrated as an indicator of where the
opportunities are. Businesses need customers. Go where the customers are.
_______________________________________________
Meyer, do your research. Toothless elderly people eat a lot of baby food.
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4. Restructuring of American Business
The restructuring of American business means we are coming to the end of the
age of the employer and employee. With all this fracturing of businesses
into different and smaller units, employers can’t guarantee jobs anymore
because they don’t know what their companies will look like next year.
Everyone is on their way to becoming an independent contractor.
_____________________________________________
Yes, because of education and the internet.
_______________________________________________________________
The new workforce contract will be: Show up at my office five days a week
and do what I want you to do, but you handle your own insurance, benefits,
health care and everything else. Husbands and wives are becoming economic
units. They take different jobs and work different shifts depending on
where they are in their careers and families. They make tradeoffs to put
together a compensation package to take care of the family.
This used to happen only with highly educated professionals with high
incomes. Now it is happening at the level of the factory floor worker.
Couples at all levels are designing their compensation packages based on
their individual needs. The only way this can work is if everything is
portable and flexible, which requires a huge shift in the American economy.
The U.S is in the process of building the world’s first 21st century model
economy. The only other countries doing this are U.K .and Australia The
model is fast, flexible, highly productive and unstable in that it is always
fracturing and re-fracturing. This will increase the economic gap between
the U.S. and everybody else, especially Europe and Japan.
___________________________________________________
This is not true. Our economy still revolves around a 20th century military-industrial complex designed to fight the Soviet Union. The Chinese are the first 21st century model economy. For 30 years I have said that a benevolent dictatorship has the potential to vastly outperform a democracy. Imagine a country that does not put much money into the political process, does not have endless debates on what to do, does not threaten to invade other countries, increases standard of living by 10% or more every year, etc. Such a country has far more resources than a democracy for competing in a global economy. Strong capitalist companies resemble benevolent dictatorships. The danger in creating a capitalist organization to run an entire country is that it all falls apart when no longer supported by the people. Such a country may be China.
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At the same time, the military gap is increasing. Other than China, we are
the only country that is continuing to put money into their military. Plus,
we are the only military getting on-the-ground military experience through
our war in Iraq. We know which high-tech weapons are working and which ones
aren’t. There is almost no one who can take us on economically or
militarily.
_________________________________________________
Ridiculous claim. We have already lost the economic war because of our crushing government and personal debt, and we can’t fight terrorists with a military designed to take on the USSR. There is mounting evidence that China and other nations that we owe trillions of dollar to, are now asserting more and more influence over our foreign policy and economic policy. 50% of the recent financial bailout is money that went to creditors outside of the USA. But boy! It sure would be fun to build another 6.2 billion dollar aircraft carrier like the George H W Bush – now, where can we put this thing to good use? Maybe we can sail George around the world and steal back the trillions of dollars held by China and others.
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There has never been a superpower in this position before. On the one hand,
this makes the U.S. a magnet for bright and ambitious people. It also makes
us a target. We are becoming one of the last holdouts of the traditional
Judeo-Christian culture. There is no better place in the world to be in
business and raise children. The U.S. is by far the best place to have an
idea, form a business and put it into the marketplace.
______________________________________________
This is changing dramatically. The generation currently in high school will be the first generation in which more people will leave the country for jobs than people who enter the country for jobs.
_________________________________________________________________
We take it for granted, but it isn’t as available in other countries of the
world. Ultimately, it’s an issue of culture. The only people who can hurt
us are ourselves, by losing our culture. If we give up our Judeo-Christian
culture, we become just like the Europeans.
________________________________________________
Hmm. If I’m going to be like the Europeans then I guess that means I will live longer, work less hours, have better health care, pollute the environment less, have better educational attainment, have far less fear of gun violence, learn two or three languages, be less fat, have much better mass transit and visit more countries while vacationing. All of these assertions are true.
_______________________________________________________________
The culture war is the whole ballgame. If we lose it, there isn’t another
America to pull us out.
______________________________________________
The problem is that Meyer sees it as a culture war. The issue is that we are a warrior culture. Is this a model that will work in the 21st century? The rest of the world is betting no. Your bankrupt government is betting yes. What did the Soviet Union bet?
In conclusion: Sweeping generalizations. Thinly veiled racism hidden behind a paternalistic attitude toward other cultures. Poor and inaccurate research. Many false assertions. One more excuse for the use of violence to conquer other people – it was weapons of mass destruction, then it was liberation, then stabilization, and now it is religious conversion. Education has always been the least expensive way to a better future. Let’s fight for the future of capitalism and free enterprise — our weapon is education.
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“Hmm. If I’m going to be like the Europeans then I guess that means I will live longer, work less hours, have better health care, pollute the environment less, have better educational attainment, have far less fear of gun violence, learn two or three languages, be less fat, have much better mass transit and visit more countries while vacationing. All of these assertions are true.”
You also have a much greater risk of being marched into a gas chamber and slaughtered en masse. You have far less upside salary potential, a far greater chance at unemployment, and if you do have a job, a much higher tax rate. If you want to start a business, you’ll likely find that adding employees is incredibly difficult and getting rid of one even harder yet. You’ll have a much greater risk of being bombed by one or another separatist movement while riding on the awesome mass transit. A higher probability of being assassinated if you happen to write a book or publish a comic about Mohammed. And far few freedoms in general.
And by the way, don’t worry, Europe is rapidly catching up on gun violence. Most notably England has had a huge increase in gun violence in London. Home invasion rates are much higher since there’s no chance you can fight back, so even if they don’t hurt you with their gun, they’re far more likely to walk into your house and relieve you of your personal property.
I’m not sure if you follow the news but since the G20 this week, I wouldn’t count a lot on the mass transit and health care staying that good for long.
I’d also point out that *you* place an emphasis on the number of languages spoken and the number of countries visited and the proliferation of mass transit. I can tell you that these are not universally recognized as “party-time”. Many people are more than happy to stand in a freezing river which runs through their own backyard and not say a word to anyone. It takes quite a cynic to cast aspersions on this personal contentment because it doesn’t involve a very long, carbon emitting, flight and the conjugation of verbs in Serbo-Croatian.
But what I’ve never understood is why don’t you move? I’m not saying ‘like it or lump it’ or you’re Anti-American. I’m saying that if I knew of a place that was such a Nirvana and matched my personal desires, I’d move there in a heart-beat. But I’m guessing you’re not going to, so can you tell me why not? What’s so important that you’d stay in such a hellhole?