Experts Wonder, Is America Truly in Decline?
Is the U.S. toast? Reports of America’s death have been greatly exaggerated for decades. But every human endeavor does, eventually, come to an end. Now RAND, the granddaddy of think tanks, has a report out that takes for granted the decline of the United States and asks if it can be returned to its former glory. For those of us living amidst seemingly growing chaos, it’s a reminder that nothing is forever—except perhaps the hubris of experts who see opportunity in a crisis.
“History is full of great powers that hit their peak of competitive power and then stagnate and eventually decline,” wrote Michael J. Mazarr, Tim Sweijs, and Daniel Tapia, authors of The Sources of Renewed National Dynamism. “There are fewer cases of great powers that have confronted such headwinds and managed to generate a repeated upward trajectory—to renew their power and standing in both absolute and relative terms. Arguably, that is precisely the challenge that faces the United States.”
Tales of Decline, Old and New
Predictions of the nation’s demise aren’t new. In the years of “malaise,” the 1979 movie Americathon portrayed a bankrupt United States placing hopes on a televised fundraiser. It’s opposed by the United Hebrab Republic, a Middle Eastern superpower founded on “the hots for anything blonde with a tush.”
On a more serious note (unfortunately), after a decade of 1980s prosperity, Michael Prowse noted for the Harvard Business Review in 1992 that “a nation once celebrated for its irrepressible optimism now appears to be obsessed by decline.” He described still-familiar concerns about productivity, wage growth, neglected infrastructure, and federal deficits.
Sixty-nine percent of respondents told pollsters for The Hill in 2011 that the country is “in decline” because of economic woes and declining international clout. Fifty-seven percent thought kids wouldn’t live better lives than their parents.
In 2024, the whole MAGA movement assumes America needs to be made great again.
Jacques Barzun’s impressive 2001 book From Dawn to Decadence took a broader view, arguing that western civilization has run through its life cycle and lost dynamism. “The forms of art as of life seem exhausted, the stages of development have been run through. Institutions function painfully.” The result is less collapse than inertia and cultural erosion.
Reversing Decline
So, worries about decline aren’t new. But, whatever the timing, all things eventually end. The authors of The Sources of Renewed National Dynamism take it for granted that we’ve passed peak America. Slowing productivity, an aging populati
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