What Happens to America When We Lose Our Financial Strength

Because I’ve been writing about our seemingly losing race with China in my blogs, I thought I’d write one on how other countries have handled their dethronement. Americans think we are different, but if the Democrats don’t cut spending and the Republicans won’t undo Bush tax cuts, there is no hope our debt won’t grow like a lion cub.    I study Chinese history, but I guess I understand British History the best, so I’ll try to talk about what happened there.

The 20^th Century was our century, but for the British it was tough. First they go into a stupid, unnecessary war in 1914 that leaves them in debt and diminished in power.  So many men had died in Flanders’s Field and at the Somme, that it was a country of churchyards and statues to the dead.  But the British, a hardy people, went on hoping that things hadn’t changed.

It was WWII that drove the nail in the coffin. Because Chamberlain and Baldwin didn’t stop Hitler when he took the Rhineland and then Austria and Czechoslovakia, the war left the country bankrupt. I once had some British tourists over and they marveled at the amount of food we served. England has a lot of great people, but their country has been weakened.

Since we won’t bite the bullet, American wages will fall in comparison to other nations. Clothes and food won’t be as cheap. The Wal-Mart-China partnership will raise prices, so American will be facing the choices other country’s citizens already make. Can I afford to have a cell phone and still put gas in my car for a trip? Can I pay for my daughter’s college and afford health insurance? People addicted to shopping will search 99 cent stores instead of Macys.

I love America and believe in the strength of its people. I don’t have the same feelings about our congressmen and women and about our Senators. Everyone is either owned by corporate America or the teachers’ union. They don’t care about our country, just about their wallets. When we can no longer afford to light the Washington Monument at night, they will be well invested in foreign stocks.

We won’t have the international responsibilities we have now. There will be less oil to waste and we too can have little cottages overrun by roses.

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