SOURCE:
AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTEURL:
http://www.aei.org/publication/is-america-really-in-decline-what-we-can-learn-from-britain/by: James Pethokoukis
In the fantastic “The English and Their History,” author Robert Tombs explores Britain’s “corrosive sense of decline” in the post-World War II decades. It was a decline panic, really. For instance: Tombs points to a 1956 television series, “We the British: Are We in Decline?” He writes that “few terms have more frequently been applied to postwar Britain than ‘decline.'”
Tombs explains that the idea of decline rests on two assumptions: First, Britain experienced a collapse in global influence and economic dynamism. Second, those results stemmed from “long-standing failures” of the nation’s core institutions.
But Tombs finds such self-criticism overblown. He argues:
When Britain emerged as a significant force, after the War of Spanish Succession in 1713, it was the smallest and yet most global of the world’s half-dozen or so most powerful states … It occupies a similar position three centuries later. The change in the world has not been the decline of Britain, but the post-1941 rise of America, which in wealth and military power outdistanced not only Britain, but every other state. Nor has England declined economically; by the late 1950s and 1960s it was of course richer than ever. The change has been that a few other countries have caught up. This is not a quibble, but a fundamental difference of analysis, as catching up with the pioneers is a normal feature of economic modernization, as developing countries attract foreign investment and import the latest technology. England remains as in 1713, among the richest countries in the world — in 2008, among populous countries, the United Kingdom was second only to the United States in gross per capita income. Declinism has been our national narrative for several generations, a chorus of lamentation in a lucky country where life is safer, longer, and more comfortable than ever in history.
And here we are in 2016 America with “a chorus of lamentation” singing loudly in the world’s wealthiest, most powerful country. Everyone wins but America. Things used to be so much better, say populists on the left and right. (Wise words from philosopher Eric Hoffer: “All mass movements deprecate the present, and there is no more potent dwarfing of the present than by viewing it as a mere link between a glorious past and a glorious future.”)
All of which brings me to a Wall Street Journal piece by reporter Eric Morath looking at how the US has been doing lately versus other advanced economies. A few charts:
Sure, the US faces economic challenges. I write about them all the time in this blog. But if we — to use Tomb’s phrasing– abandoned “this fit of the vapors” about America past and present, then perhaps it would “a calmer, more rational analysis of our situation and our needs.” Or as presidential candidate Freddy Picker tells a rambunctious crowd in the 1998 film “Primary Colors”:
I think we need to calm down some. You know, this is a terrific country. But sometimes we go a little crazy. Maybe that’s part of our greatness, part of our freedom. But if we don’t watch out and calm down, it all may spin out of control. The world is getting more and more complicated. Politicians have to explain things to you in simpler terms, so that they can get their little oversimplified explanations on the evening news. And eventually, instead of even trying to explain, they give up and start slinging mud at each other. And it’s all to keep you excited, keep you watching. — like you watch a car wreck or a wrestling match. That’s just what it’s like — professional wrestling. It’s staged and it’s fake and it doesn’t mean anything. That goes for the debates. We don’t hate our opponents. Half the time we don’t even know them. But it seems it’s the only way we know how to keep you all riled up. So what I want to do is quiet things down and start having a conversation about what sort of country we want this to be in the next century.
