Replying to Prophets of Decline

The final section in the end of my U.S Economic History book I just finished reading had something I felt to be appropriate. I'm not gonna type out word for word since it would take to long but heres the summary.

'What of the future? The slowdown in productivity growth until the past decade along with the rise in vairous social indicators of social malaise such as murder rate, brought to center stage a series of pundits woh claimed that Amercians faced a long-term decline in their living standards if they did not quickly shape up. Some focused on the lack of savings and the government deficit; others stressed America's dependance on oil; still others decried the spoiling of the envionment.

In his widley acclaimed book, 'The Ride and Fall of the Great Powers', Paul Kennedy, one of the most thoughtful prophets of decline, stressed the tendency of great empires of the past to delcine once they had reached a preeminent position because they had exhausted all their resources in foreign adventures. It was natural for Americans who had witnessed the destructive domestic consequences of the war in Veitnam to see the force of his point.

Most students are familiar with prophecies of decline based on environmental dangers, such as global warming. We do not wish to argue that the problems adressed by the prophets of decline are not real ones or that the solutions they propose might not make things better.

But it is important to remeber that the prophecies of decline are not unique to our age. For the British, Thomas Robert Malthus 1798 wrote 'Essay on Population' which predicted that eventually Britians growning population would turn into its declining ability to produce food. (after all agricultural land was limited)Wages would eventually fall untill they reached the minimum necessary to sustain life. Disaster could only be avoided only if the population could somehow be held in check.

This shit goes on for numerous examples which I don't have time to type out. We cannot say that the Jeremiahs of the current generation are wrong. The economic historian, looking at the long record of growth acheived by the American economy, is likely to be skeptical. The point was well put long ago by the English Historian Thomas Babingston Macaulay.

('We cannot absolutley prove that those are in error who tell us that society has reached a turning point, that we have seen our best days. but so said all who came before us, and with just as much apparent reason')


We pay our debt sometimes.