There’s nothing in my article that denies China’s current GDP growth. That’s why I said their economy will surpass our own by 2028. But America’s GDP per capita — with the exception of 2020, the year of a global pandemic — is not at all in free fall. In fact — again, with the exception of 2020 (an obvious outlier) — America’s GDP per capita is rising faster than China’s. The only reason why China’s GDP will surpass our own is because of their own rising GDP per capita, multiplied by more than triple our own population.
But what you’re missing is the effect of demographics. China’s elderly population will continue to grow and present an ever-greater drag on their economy, especially since there will be consistently fewer younger people in the workforce. It will be the same problem that Japan is facing today, but magnified by the effects of the One Child Policy.
Moreover, you’re quite mistaken in your comparison of America’s heterogeneous nature to that of the former USSR. First off, the Soviet government never allowed Russians of non-European descent to wield significant influence. We had Obama and now we have Kamala Harris, and the majority party in our nation is increasingly multiracial and multicultural — indeed, if it weren’t for the votes of Black women, the Dems would have lost the White House and control of the Senate. The USSR never had anything remotely like our Democratic party.
Second, the USSR never went out of its way to truly welcome immigrants. We are forced to try to stop people from coming to America, whereas the Soviets feared people being able to *escape* across their own borders. Really, can you possibly imagine the nonwhite son of an immigrant becoming president of Russia? Maybe you could make the case for a certain Georgian named Stalin, but he was still of ethnic European descent.
Yes, you could look at the histrionics of far-right enclaves in several rural regions in America and think that they’re going to try to secede. It’s possible that they might actually try, but impossible that they will secede. They can buy all the guns they want, but they can’t hope to match the power of our military. That, and the reactions of the military brass towards Trump show that they will not follow the right-wing lemmings over the cliff of secession. The very nature of our military today forestalls any such possibility. There will be no modern-day “warring states” period for America.
Lastly, the Right is losing America’s youth. Sure, they’ll always be able to convince tens of thousands of kids to sign up right-wing lunacy, but the great majority of our young are much more accepting of other races/ethnicities/cultures and won’t allow themselves to be a part of the ever-growing xenophobia of the Right. That, and the majority of children being born in America today are not white. By making the racist Deep South the strongest region of its support beginning with Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” (Google it), the GOP essentially laid down with racist dogs and got up covered in racist fleas…and shot themselves in the foot for the day when America becomes a majority-minority nation.
