Is America Failing or Kicking Ass?
I. Fears of Decline
The people who most like such slogans as “USA #1” (namely, right-wing populists) are also the most likely to think that America is in decline. On the face of it, that’s weird.
But it’s part of a general phenomenon with ideologies: an ideology that values X is also most likely to be convinced that X is just about to be irretrievably destroyed. Environmentalists think the environment is on its last legs; wokists think white supremacists are everywhere; libertarians think we are on the brink of a police state; and nationalists think the country is declining and soon to be destroyed. See, e.g., the end of this video: https://youtu.be/aS2daI8dhiU?t=172
Hannity asks why Trump wants to run for President. Trump replies:
“Cuz I think our country is dead. We’re a failing nation, and I think we’re going to fail completely. We’re a nation in decline.”
Often, people’s fears seem disconnected from reality—e.g., fears about racism peaking at the very time when racism is at its lowest point in the nation’s history. In the present case, the fears of American decline are happening at a time when America is doing extremely well in most respects, perhaps better than ever.
I can’t predict the future, and I don’t know whether America is on the way down or on the way further up. But what I know is that we’re in an incredibly good position right now. Technically, we could be incredibly high yet still declining; nevertheless, there’s some tension between our exalted position and the fears of “failure”.
II. USA #1
Here are some ways in which America is not failing but is in fact kicking ass.
Economy
The U.S. has the largest economy in the world by far, with a $25 trillion GDP. China is second with $18 trillion, even though they have 4 times more people. Our GDP per capita is in the top 10 in the world, at about $70,000. China, the most commonly cited rival to the U.S., has around $12,000.
It’s common to wring one’s hands about the decline of American manufacturing, but I’m not sure why we should worry about that. America dominates the most profitable and cutting-edge industries, not the industries of the past. America is the home of six of the ten most profitable companies in the world, including all of the top three, which are Apple, Microsoft, and Google (https://www.investopedia.com/the-world-s-10-most-profitable-companies-4694526).
In Forbes’ list of the world’s largest companies, 11 of the top 20 are American, more than all other countries combined.
In Forbes’ list of the worlds’ most valuable brands, 17 of the top 20 are American.
Lastly, 13 of the 20 richest people in the world are American.
Military
The U.S. has the most powerful military in world history, by far. The U.S. accounts for nearly 40% of the entire world’s military budget. China, the #2 military spender, has close to a third of America’s military budget. Russia has under a tenth.
Don’t be misled by America’s difficulty with suppressing insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. That’s about the difficulty of a government military suppressing an insurgency. Any government military has trouble against insurgents. Consider that the Russians also failed in Afghanistan, years earlier. But if you just compare government militaries, no other nation is anywhere close to the U.S.
Take a few examples. One of the biggest tools for projecting military power is the aircraft carrier. The U.S. has 11 of the world’s 29 aircraft carriers. China has 2. Russia has 1.
The U.S. has 21 stealth bombers; Russia and China have 0. The U.S. has a thousand stealth fighters; China has 200, while Russia has 21.
Admittedly, China has more soldiers (2.2 million vs. 1.3 million), and Russia and China have more tanks. (This may be because the U.S. relies more on its Navy and Air Force for projecting power overseas and is not concerned about being invaded on land.)
Not to be overlooked, either, is our alliances. The U.S. is allied with some of the most powerful other nations in the world, such as the U.K., France, and Germany. We have allies who host our military bases all over the world. By one estimate, we have 750 military bases in 80 different countries. (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/10/infographic-us-military-presence-around-the-world-interactive)
Culture
Okay, not everything is about money and power. What about culture?
America also has the most dominant culture in the world by a huge margin. We export our ideas and cultural products all over the world. Our movie industry is so dominant that if you just look at movie sales outside America, all of the top 10 films are nevertheless American films. (https://www.the-numbers.com/box-office-records/international/all-movies/cumulative/all-time)
Of the most successful authors in the world, 6 of the top 10 are American. (https://www.wonderslist.com/10-most-successful-authors/)
Among the best-selling music artists of all time, 10 of the top 20 are American. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_music_artists)
The tech companies with the most cultural influence are almost all American—Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Apple, Amazon, YouTube. The exception here is Chinese-owned TikTok.
Intellectual Work
Sure, Americans may be good at producing popular content. But what about serious intellectual work?
Well, of the 860 Nobel prize-winners in history, 403 were from the U.S. The second most common country is the U.K., with 137. If you’re still comparing the U.S. to China, Chinese nationals have won 9. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_by_country)
7 of the top 10 universities in the world are American. The other 3 are British. (https://www.timeshighereducation.com/student/best-universities/best-universities-world)
Sports
American dominance is so ridiculous that we’re even dominating in sports. In the last Olympic games, Americans took home 113 medals, compared to 88 for the #2 country, which was China (again, even though they have 4 times as many people). (https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/olympics/2021/07/24/tokyo-olympics-2021-medal-count/8080071002/)
What does all this mean? It means the American system enables people to realize their potential, in whatever area that potential may lie—whether it be art, music, sports, science, or business. Other systems do not.
Well-Being
Ok, sure, the U.S. is dominating the world. But how well off are the people?
According to the World Happiness Report, America is the 15th happiest country, out of 137 that were ranked. (Finland is #1; Afghanistan is last. China is #64.) (https://worldhappiness.report)
We’re less impressive in life expectancy, only 46th out of 193 countries and territories.
One indicator of how well a country is doing is the degree to which people want to live there. Around 700 million people around the world say that they would like to move to another country permanently. When asked where they would like to go, more people name the U.S. than any other country in the world. (https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/11/these-are-the-countries-migrants-want-to-move-to/)
During the Cold War, the communists built walls to keep people in. The U.S. builds walls to keep people out.
III. Conclusions
No, the U.S. is not failing or dead. You can stop blabbering that nonsense now. The U.S. is about the most successful country in the entire history of the world.
If you’re reading this in America, you should be happy about where you wound up. If you’re not happy with this, you would never be happy.
We should probably try to preserve this system, which is working vastly better than almost everything else that human beings have ever tried. We probably should not try to shake things up or radically alter the norms and practices.
Of course, we can still try to improve things. The conviction that things can always be made better is part of what made American culture successful. But we should do it intelligently, with attention to preserving the things that are going right.
I used to be optimistic, not just about America, but about modern society in general. From Matt Ridley's book, The Rational Optimist, to Steven Pinker's book, Enlightenment Now, and others (Goklany, Lomborg, etc.), the logic was simple: as you've done in this post, let's just look at the historical evidence until today; most important things are getting spectacularly better and they are likely to continue to do so.
The COVID lockdowns shook me. I think it's even worse than whether or not America is failing. Nearly all the world's governments turned most of the world into a prison for a non-catastrophic virus. The lockdowns were temporary but the precedent has been set. The U.S. Constitution was discarded, so in that sense, America has failed, but it's worse than that. The global coordination of immoral laws based on poor science was the most worrying. We're on the precipice of a global, cyberpunk dystopia.
No longer can we indulge in a Voltairian or Caplanian Bubblism and enjoy increasing living standards while largely ignoring the government. The government cancer is, through institutional inertia, probing terminal metastasis. This does not necessarily mean that progress in well-being, science, technology, and culture will slow. Cyberpunk dystopic writers were prescient in how their imagined worlds were technologically advanced.
Most people are in denial about the magnitude of the global COVID lockdowns by governments that we just lived through, and what they portend.
The question is, why is the "America is failing" narrative so incredibly popular? As you and plenty of others have laid out, the data clearly supports the fact that in many ways, life is better now around the world, and in the U.S. in particular, than it ever has been. Why does no one seem to care?
I'd be interested in other thoughts, but I think there's a case to be made that the success of the "America is failing" narrative can be chalked up solely to negativity bias and our collective addiction to negative talking points.
In a world of pure rationalists, the data and arguments that paint an optimistic picture of where we are would win out. Unfortunately, we don't live in that world. Humans are driven by negativity bias to a much larger extent than most realize. As long as we continue to give more psychological weight to negative talking points and data, articles like this will be drowned out by a sea of negativity.
The fight against overly-negative narratives, and the hyperpolarization these narratives cause, can't be won with more or better data. Until we recognize and push back against our addiction to negativity, negative narratives and talking points will continue to win in the marketplace of ideas.