We have a large country, our literacy rate is good, our productivity is amazing, our GDP is huge. We can afford the debt, we can afford sending our money out to the world in return for goods. We have been the major power in the world for close to a century and are coasting along quite well right now.

And I think we are living on borrowed time.

It won't last forever; it never does. The wheel will turn, and we will eventually be just another country again. Anybody who thinks otherwise is a fool, it is just a question of when.

America is primarily a service economy now, relying on 100 years of a good educational system and a serious headstart to outhink and outinvent the rest of the world, and then sell them our services. We have given up making goods; we used to be the best, but the rest of the world caught up with us in that. We are now seeing them catch up with us on the rest too. While our education system is floundering, too caught up in our social problems and religious squabbling, the rest of the world is blowing right by. Japan has long been the world leader in electronics. China is producing engineers at the three times the rate we are. India already has more IT workers than the we do. Brazil, Argentina, Korea, Malaysia; we are being attacked on all fronts, and we are vastly outnumbered.

We are on top now, and likely to stay that way for a while longer; we still have a huge head-start. But we really should take a look at who is going to be breathing down our neck shortly.