When Did America Stop Being Great ?

[offthewall14420]

High tech industry remains at the core of American enterprise.

Chinese airlines fly Boeings made in the United States, and Airbuses made in the European Union.

The United States, and the UK continue to attract high quality graduates from around the globe...as well as unskilled labour.

Believe me, Boeing is doing everything they can to manufacture nearly everything overseas. If there's an American company selling them a part, they probably have a plant overseas. If the supplier doesn't Boeing will come in and demand they change processes or lose the contract. Plus they cap supplier margins to be no greater than their own margins (which are tiny). Many times these demands are impossible for old time suppliers (50+ years).

They may assemble in the US because you can limit skilled labor. Just have process engineers turn a complex task into a series of simple processes for unskilled laborers. Even that's going to the low-wage South Carolina.

The future of American manufacturing is in process engineering. Finding ways to write out the complexity of any task so the company can pay it's people less and deal with higher turnover. This is all done under the umbrella of quality management, which is quite proud of it. Just ask them... they want compliance to their processes and have corrective action authority to make it happen.

 

[Telstra]

Believe me, Boeing is doing everything they can to manufacture nearly everything overseas. If there's an American company selling them a part, they probably have a plant overseas. If the supplier doesn't Boeing will come in and demand they change processes or lose the contract. Plus they cap supplier margins to be no greater than their own margins (which are tiny). Many times these demands are impossible for old time suppliers (50+ years).

They may assemble in the US because you can limit skilled labor. Just have process engineers turn a complex task into a series of simple processes for unskilled laborers. Even that's going to the low-wage South Carolina.

The future of American manufacturing is in process engineering. Finding ways to write out the complexity of any task so the company can pay it's people less and deal with higher turnover. This is all done under the umbrella of quality management, which is quite proud of it. Just ask them... they want compliance to their processes and have corrective action authority to make it happen.

Since China can make almost anything now,
their skill levels will pass the US and many other countries.

Skill workers are generational. When one country get all the skills, the other country will lost the skills if they don't practice.

 

[pat grimshaw]

Believe me, Boeing is doing everything they can to manufacture nearly everything overseas. If there's an American company selling them a part, they probably have a plant overseas...

That has already happened in my country. We don't manufacture cars anymore.

...The future of American manufacturing is in process engineering. ...

Are you saying they only want low-skilled dumb workers like monkeys?

 

[luckynumbah7]

By living memory I mean pretty damned recent on the scale of time. Y'don't get to bring in neanderthals and pretend that time difference is even remotely similar. Two little old ladies living back to back is all you have before slavery.

Go back a couple of decades from now and my ass would've been shoved in an institute because various disabilities. You weren't exactly encouraged to keep us in the forties and fifties, ect, quite the opposite. You know, that 'Dream Time' of prosperity that ya'll keep harking back to. And I doubt anyone really wants to know what those facilities look like. There's documentaries, I suggest bringing a puke bucket. You can forget about schooling, too. You can still forget about schooling depending on where you're located and accomidations and disability. And the usa isn't even remotely, accessible, not from the money (all the same size and color bills? Really?) or the buildings or your basic street sign, of all things, on down. People like to complain, often, about all those 'new' disabilities that have been popping up. Newsflash, they're not new - you're just not (usually) allowed to shove all the undesirables in a box anymore.

And that's just a tiny, tiny slice of all those 'Great Expectations'.

For all the people who want to pretend history is all in the distant past I've got quite a bitter pill for you.

Tho if one wants to talk current abuse of the natives, there's plenty of those. What, ya'll think they died out? Bitch please. They're still crammed on 'reservations' people/state/gov have been chipping away at. And the list of current abuses is fuckin' long.

No one's current list is short when compared societally except middle class white men. Y'can take your Golden Age and shove it up your collective ass. Mmhm. Got there by some damn weaselly exploitation, we don't need a repeat.

 

[LittleDove]

Pat's numbers are interesting, but there are others as interesting, and perhaps even a bit more so.

By the time the second quarter of this century rolls around, demographics predict that China will be the country having the most elderly on the planet. Between one-fifth to one-quarter of all those sixty-five and older will be Chinese.

A good portion of those elderly are going to be women, many of them illiterate,many of them with no viable or remaining family connexions, and many with job skills which don't rise much above the rudimentary, like pushing a broom, pulling weeds, or feeding chickens. Essentially no place to go, and not much of a way to earn a living.

The last reliable figures I've seen -- somewhere between four and five years back -- put the portion of China's population enrolled in their equivalent of Social Security or an Old-age Pension at under one-tenth. It was somewhere between six and seven percent. Read carefully, and note that does not say that six to seven percent are currently collecting that pension. It says that six to seven percent will eventually collect that pension ... if they can.

To fully fund those pensions and to pay out as promised to that proportion of the population eligible at that time would have required 200% +/- a bit of China's entire GNP.

At every age below the mid-70s, men outnumber women in China. The flip to more women than men takes place around the age of seventy-four or seventy-five, but enough about cranky old people. Let's look at China's young.

For those twenty and younger, there is a deficit of somewhere between twenty to thirty million girls. The last official census put the deficit at around twenty-five million which, since it falls in the middle, seems a good number to go with. If that's put the other way, there are twenty-five million more boys than girls twenty and under. Keep in mind that that deficit continues at every age up until seventy-four or five. That's going to have some pretty profound social and economic implications.

And then there's the subject of water the demand for which is steadily increasing, for agricultural purposes, for industrial purposes, and for the various purposes such as drinking, cooking, and washing, to which individual humans put it. Leaving to one side all that water which the Chinese government itself admits is polluted beyond the possibility of redemption, and one can see a problem -- and a growing one.

 

[KaraBulut]

This thread is a joke about Trump kallipolis
Trump said "America Stop Being Great but he will make America great again" LOL

To that end...
“To keep any great nation up to a high standard of civilization there must be enough superior characters to hold the balance of power, but the very moment the balance of power gets into the hands of second-rate men and women, a decline of that nation is inevitable.”
― Christian D. Larson

The United States remains an example worth emulating, despite which there is room for improvement.

True. There's a reason that 14,397,887 people applied for the green card lottery last year.

July 4, 1776... or when they put the 3/5th clause in the Constitution.

It was a bad compromise but it at least gave some representation to people who were otherwise unrepresented. Dred Scott [1857] was far worse because it said that the children of slaves would never be recognized as citizens of the US and could never be truly "free". Even a five year war and over 700,000 dead couldn't completely undo the stain of that decision.

 

[NotHardUp1]

Greatness is notional. Like "liberal" or "conservative" or "well educated," it only has meaning in some context.

Psychologically, it probably stopped being great when it became the fashion to not require the citizenry to ascribe to American greatness as a prerequisite to patriotism. Today, you can be a "good citizen" without contributing anything, swearing to anything, or liking anything.

Various categories still see American greatness by competitive standards: GDP, military might, industrial innovation, information technology, pop culture, national parks, liquor consumption, gang shootings, fat gram consumption, imagined gluten intolerance, Starbuckification of common commodities, gorilla shootings, and celebrity overdoses.

Other areas plainly show America lagging: health care, education, living wage, voter participation, dogmeat consumption, drug cartel beheadings, and wholesale gang rape of women on the street when they really shouldn't be.

It's a bit of a mixed bag, isn't it?

The Age of Empire has passed, and perhaps grandiose self-images if we are fortunate.

In my calculation, greatness is measured in large degree (including women, blacks, rednecks, flaming liberals, hardcore racists, and Juggalos) by the lack of Exodus. For all the talk of how white Prostestant male 1 percenters are the only ones with anything to celebrate, folks of every stripe are simply not headed for Canada, Denmark, Liberia, Japan, or the rest of the places that have it better than the US. Maybe the desirability is greater than gun rights, gay marriage, living wage, Hollywood, Microsoft, and the lot. Maybe it's the stew that is America.

I say it's great yet, with many flaws, but as our sister nations, has much room for improvement, as do all.

Trump is dead wrong, and his cadre is unprepared for the dashing in the teeth that is coming in the fall. Bitter will be the end. Bitter.

 

[gsdx]

Perhaps this is the safest gay Country in the World, but we've still got a long way to go.

This has been mentioned a few times in this thread. I did a Google search and found quite a number of websites listing the most gay-friendly countries in the world over a number of years. Most of the lists were 'Top 10', but I never found the United States on a single list.

Are you differentiating 'gay-friendly' with 'safest'?

 

[kev]

It hasn't...why do you think that?

America is the greatest country in the history of mankind.

The Left hates that.

 

[peeonme]

I remember when a guy named John Engler was seeking re-election as Governor of Michigan. He was going on and on about all of the problems that we had and how he would fix them.
From the other side of his mouth he spoke of what a wonderful job that he had done in his first term, I sharpened my pencil and sent a letter to our local paper that appeared on the editorial page in the Sunday edition, I asked the Governor why so many things needed to be "fixed" if he had done such a great job in his first term.

Everyone who runs for a public office will tell us of all that needs to be done and how they will do it, they will site the flaws and failings of our nation, how we border on being terminally ill as a country and how only "they" can fix it.
Saying that they desire to make America great again or better is nothing new, Nixon had a secret plan, Johnson had his great society,
Reagan also used "let's make America great again" in more than one ad.

We as a people have settled for mediocrity, the mundane the bleacher seats. We have no high and lofty goals, no plans to explore and learn, no, we exist. We are a nation adrift, a people with no vision. Most live hand to mouth, pay check to pay check.
The middle class is comparable to a battered spouse, our self-image and self-esteem is so low that we just take it. Hell, we loath ourselves... after all, we are ruining the whole fucking planet.

I marvel at how some will argue for evolution (and rightfully so) and then act as though man is some alien invading the earth rather than a higher form of life that nature has spawned. We shouldn't eat, shit, piss or fuck because we have no right to mess things up, was it not nature that gave us the ability to light a fire? Should we put it out and eat raw food again as our ancestors did thousands of years ago? Maybe we will grow hair if we don't freeze first.

I make no apologies for my life, it's what I am, that dreadful human white asshole that was born in a land that was stolen from those who took it from the "animals", I want to see a greater nation, a greater world, we don't make the rest of the world better by making America mediocre.

 

[fabulouslyghetto]

It hasn't...why do you think that?

America is the greatest country in the history of mankind.

The Left hates that.

Greatest in what sense exactly?

 

[xbuzzerx]

So THAT'S why Walmart pays their employees nothing, because immigrants are here demanding low wages. And here I was thinking corporate greed and business-oriented politics were at fault. These large companies WANT to pay us more, they are so eager and hungry to lift their wages but those damned immigrants just won't let them. Ok, I get it now, thanks.

As silly as you rightly make his position sound, he's been touting this exact crap in CE&P for years. Yes. He thinks that well meaning super rich corporate American interests want to do right, but they're simply forced to pay low wages because we inflict so much glut into the labor force by allowing immigration. He maintains this argument even in years we point out that net immigration is negative.

But, he's against raising the minimum wage. So go figure.

 

[fabulouslyghetto]

As silly as you rightly make his position sound, he's been touting this exact crap in CE&P for years. Yes. He thinks that well meaning super rich corporate American interests want to do right, but they're simply forced to pay low wages because we inflict so much glut into the labor force by allowing immigration. He maintains this argument even in years we point out that net immigration is negative.

But, he's against raising the minimum wage. So go figure.

Oh, so he's a psychopath. Understood and noted.

 

[Taralen]

Greatest in what sense exactly?

Entertainment, Equality, Economics, Technology, Freedom of religion, Racial diversity.

Our freeways are safer, we have affordable healthcare options.

 

[fabulouslyghetto]

Entertainment, Equality, Economics, Technology, Freedom of religion, Racial diversity.

Our freeways are safer, we have affordable healthcare options.

Entertainment? Typical uncultured American babble. Equality? Go to Texas and try to marry your Muslim boyfriend let's see if you're treated as an equal. Economics? Yeah the 1% is doing so awesome, nevermind the irrelevant 99. Racial diversity? An ordinary gun just sold for $120 for no other reason than it was used to (maliciously) murder an unarmed black teenager. Donald Trump sailed to the top of the republican ticket using George Bush's "I'll save you from the scary brown foreigners" routine.

 

[luckynumbah7]

^By any of those standards we're not even in the top five.

 

[kallipolis]

On a point of pedantry the indigenous populations of North, and South America had a well established track record for doing just this in what is now termed tribal warfare, before the arrival of the British, French, Dutch, German, Spanish, and Portuguese colonists. I haven't overlooked the Vikings who arrived in North America some centuries earlier. I gather from my cousin living in Crete (Dimitrios) that the Minoan civilisation also discovered America much, much earlier than the Italian fellow, Christopher Columbus.

"They do it too" isn't quite the moral highground most four year olds think it is. That's usually who y'hear that kind of 'argument' from, anyway.

-there's also a big of a difference on scale. There's a difference between arguing (even lethally) with your neighbors and sailing across seas in great numbers t'boot/trick/kill/cheat someone off the land they're using. Oh, and living memory. Living memory is a big one.

Ah! but the facts of history add some balance to the equation when recognising that tribal warfare in North, and South America was already a regular feature of life, before the arrival of the European settlers. Even four year olds appreciate balance in any discussion.

- - - Updated - - -

^By any of those standards we're not even in the top five.

Perspective is a reminder that each of us views life through our own unique lens.

 

[kallipolis]

Well noted, I am surprised that some have not made an issue of the homo sapiens taking Europe from the Neanderthals.

Our well noted pedants must contribute something to represent their input. Be it that their view of history is one sided.

 

[Taralen]

Entertainment? Typical uncultured American babble. Equality? Go to Texas and try to marry your Muslim boyfriend let's see if you're treated as an equal.

I'm single. If I had a Muslim boyfriend, I wouldn't have any issues marrying him in the south. That's our business, and yes the south is homophobic at times, and that's our issue to deal with, not anyone elses.

Economics? Yeah the 1% is doing so awesome, nevermind the irrelevant 99.

Those people in the 99 percent have many opportunities if they are in financial turmoil. There is no excuse. Don't live beyond your means. Save. Start your own business.

Racial diversity? An ordinary gun just sold for $120 for no other reason than it was used to (maliciously) murder an unarmed black teenager. Donald Trump sailed to the top of the republican ticket using George Bush's "I'll save you from the scary brown foreigners" routine.

You just had to bring up that George Zimmerman shit didn't you?

Yes there is racism here, but I feel safe here. As opposed to Germany, The Netherlands, France, Russia etc. where black people are looked at like they are rotted meat.

I'm also not a Brown foreigner. Bitch I'm American. I'm Christian African American, and my ancestors came here from the slave trade. So I can't relate.

 

[fabulouslyghetto]

^By any of those standards we're not even in the top five.

Right! Enertainment? We've got Rihanna. Taylor Swift. Movies? Hollywood, which has always been notoriously vapid and shallow, has reduced itself to an unapologetic stream of reboots featuring talentless sexy interchangeable vapid clowns. Economics? The cost of education has increased a trillion percent a year for how long?

From what I've gathered, the best argument is that America is great in comparison to povery-ridden third world countries. Kinda like how Rosie O'Donnell could be considered a superior athlete as long as you're comparing her to Stephen Hawking.