Re: ...after the second American Civil War....
It seems to me it's already over and the fascists/Jacobins/Trotskyites/neocons have won....
Actually, by "second American Civil War" I mean New Orleans' current mess writ large, that is, civil unrest affecting large swathes of the US....
Re: Maybe? But one must remember that it takes more to make a leading nation than 1.3 billion hard workers and an artificially cheap currency.
Indeed. As I said, it also take "soft power" --and military muscle. As far as soft power is concerned, a big asset of the US is its worldwide appeal to graduates and PhDs. Yet the reason European (would-be-)executives want to get an MBA from a prestigious US university/business school stems from the fact that US corporations themselves are better than their European, Asian,..., competitors. That might no longer be the case, however, in ten years, when China's champions --Haier, Lenovo,...-- will be the world leaders in their fields. Of course, you may retort that Japan already has several "world leaders" --Toyota, Sony, Mitsubishi,...-- yet few students around the world apply to Japanese MBA schools. But most observers have posited that the Chinese story won't be a mere replica of the Japanese one. Unlike Japan, China doesn't nurse an insular, jingoistic, fortress mentality.
Gus |
