No Falling Skies

Jan. 22, 2016

There seems little doubt the United States is headed for the scrap heap. At least that’s what most of the presidential candidates would have us believe.

Campaign messages of doom and gloom are a rare bipartisan effort. It is mostly Republicans this cycle, but you’ll recall the world was near an end when Democrats were running against George W. Bush.

We’re being told our economy is terrible and our defense is weak. The sky, it seems, is preparing to fall.

Perhaps it’s time for a brief review, most of which is good news.

According to the World Bank, which apparently uses some of its money to keep track of such things, the United States still has the most productive workers in the world, grinding out $18 trillion worth of goods and services annually. We have the highest per capita gross domestic product (GDP) and we’ve practically lapped the field.

Measuring economic productivity by using GDP per worker, the actual value of the goods being produced anually, brings reality into sharper focus. China’s per worker GDP is about $17,500 annually, Mexico’s about $19,000. The United States? More than $70,000 per worker, the highest in the world.

Our economy is three times bigger than that of any other country and the gap has grown slightly as China’s economy stumbles.

It is true enough that we import more goods than we export.

But a trade imbalance doesn’t mean we aren’t doing plenty of exporting. More than ever, actually, including exporting more oil than we import. And consumer choice is the primary engine of imports, not policy.

Trade, while important, does not drive our economy. One reason we export less is that so much of what we make in this country is purchased and used by American consumers. We produce more goods for domestic consumption than any other country by miles and miles. And only Brazil relies less on trade than the United States.

We aren’t even being bruised on trade, much less killed.

Nor are we weak on national defense.

We spend 10 times more on defense and a higher percentage of our GDP than any other industrialized country (North Korea, which seems to spend all of its money on military parades, failed missile tests and pretend underground nuclear tests, doesn’t count).

We have more planes, ships, submarines, bombs, bullets and missiles than anybody. That we sometimes use, or refuse to use, all that power foolishly, or in foolish conflicts, doesn’t diminish its very real existence.

If there is a problem, it’s that no president has unraveled the nightmare that is the defense procurement system wherein every project takes years longer and billions more to complete than we’re told. Budget overruns have become so much a part of the culture Congress just routinely, without much debate, appropriates more and more until we end up with $3 billion submarines and $300 million aircraft.

Spendthrift our military might be, but weak it is not.

All of this is in addition to the fact that our faltering economy isn’t really faltering – running slowly but hardly faltering.

Remember that in January 2009, our economy was in deep trouble. We lost 800,000 jobs that month on top of five previous months of job losses. Unemployment was careening toward double-digits, the banking industry and major Wall Street firms were near collapse. Here in Michigan the auto industry was in tatters and the stock market had plummeted below 9000. General Motors had somehow managed to lose $31 billion and Chrysler $17 billion in 2008.

And we were already neck deep in the mess that is the Middle East.

Now, the economy continues slowly recovering. We’ve seen 55 consecutive months of private sector job growth, the longest streak in our history. Unemployment is near 5.0 percent and still coming down. The markets have recovered sufficiently despite recent teetering, the auto industry is healthy again, banks and brokerage houses -- at least the big ones -- are awash in profits. Real income has started to creep up.

You can argue we’ve made a mess of the Middle East but there is little evidence trying to “bomb the sh*t” out of anyone is going to make things better. Especially when our military leaders tell us it isn’t a very good idea.

That makes us smart, not weak.

To be sure, we could use some improving. No candidates seem willing to discuss any solution, or even hint at a solution, to the Social Security/Medicare budget issues that keep getting worse. We still have too much poverty. Public education still gets shorted financially while federal and state governments keep tinkering with test requirements and curricula.

No candidate has a realistic solution for our 11 million undocumented guests.

Challenges aplenty, but no falling skies, no matter what the candidates say. We need only look up to see it isn’t so. Sometimes the sun even peeks through.