America's Middle Class - Global Loser

"There are essentially three exclusive characteristics whose simultaneous development have served as the foundations of the United States's success up until now -- and they only appear in this particular combination in America. They are not only the country's biggest strengths, but also its greatest weaknesses," as Gabor Steingart writes in his book World War for Wealth: The Global Grab for Power and Prosperity. They are:

• "Nowhere in the world can you find such a high concentration of optimism and daring"
• "The United States is radically global"
• "The United States is the only nation on earth that can do business globally in its own currency"

However, these very strengths have hurt the U.S. workforce by inadvertently causing:

• A "Blur [in] the line between optimism and naivete," that has given rise to "public, private and corporate debt far exceeds any previously known dimensions
• "Globalization [to] strike back...the United States has promoted the worldwide exchange of commodities like no other nation, and the result is that their local industry has begun to be eroded"
• "The dollar [to not] just strengthen the United States; it also makes it vulnerable. The government has pumped its currency into the world economy so vigorously that the dollar can now be brought to the point of collapse by external forces"

And "the rise of Asia has only led to a relative decline of the US national economy. At least so far. But for many blue- and white-collar workers, this decline is already absolute because they have less of everything than they used to. They possess less money, they are shown less respect in society and their chances for climbing up the social ladder have deteriorated dramatically."

America's Middle Class Has Become Globalization's Loser - [Spiegel Online]

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