In a multipolar world... US will be finished as sole superpower

[flyboy56]

We get only 16% of our oil imports from the Persian Gulf. (Link.) Why bother spending billions a year to protect the shipping route? Let the countries in the region fend for themselves.

My point exactly. So why do we spend so much on protecting everyones oil?

[flyboy56]

Why bother? Because we get a discounted price I guess?

I don't think Americans want to pay what people in other industrialized nations pay for oil and gasoline

There is a documentary on Netflix streaming that goes into this. According to the documentary the US is paying the same price as everyone else. The higher prices in other countries is the VAT tax added to it.

[flyboy56]

We were the sole superpower for only the past two and a half decades or so. Perspective helps, not a sea change in the larger context.

Loss of manufacturing has weakened our power.

[soulflower]

There is a documentary on Netflix streaming that goes into this. According to the documentary the US is paying the same price as everyone else. The higher prices in other countries is the VAT tax added to it.

I'm not sure if that's the sole reason. Part of the reason is that we're an exporter of oil but the fact that our military secures the oil trade in some of the most hostile parts of the world(the Persian Gulf) also is a big factor.

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"The U.S. ranked 49th of 60 countries, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, with premium gasoline at $3.75 a gallon on July 23, compared with $10.12 in top-ranked Norway. The U.S. price was behind Japan, China and India, a country where people made 2.9 percent of what Americans earn.

Drivers in America, the biggest oil-consuming country, spend an average of 2.8 percent of their daily income on a gallon of gasoline, 55th in the ranking. In India, a gallon of premium gasoline cost 37 percent more than what a worker earned in one day. In Norway, which has the second-highest income behind Luxembourg in the list, a gallon cost 3.7 percent of a day’s wages. U.S. prices dropped 11 percent from three months earlier as domestic oil production reached a 13-year high.

“One of the reasons that Americans are able to use so much gasoline is because it’s relatively cheap,” said Peter Schiff, chief executive officer of Westport, Connecticut-based brokerage Euro Pacific Capital, which has $3 billion in customer accounts. “A lot of Americans commute long distance to work. In a lot of other countries gas is a luxury and they maybe just take the car out for a drive on a Sunday.”"

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-0...an-norway.html

[dsummoner]

Ignoring the minutiae my larger point is this: History has shown that the key to economic strength is political freedom. Countries that are politically free will prefer to do business w other like-minded countries, and will undoubtedly stand w them culturally. China will either change they way they operate or their economic power will wane. Either way, they lose.
Now if you believe China will prove to be the only exception in recorded history you're free to do so. Or you can try and make the point, as I'm sure you will in your hyperbolic way, that raising the top tax rate 2 percent and mandating that citizens buy health insurance from private providers and the continued existence of SS somehow lessens Americans political freedoms.
I think, and history shows, you're wrong. Hopefully we'll both be alive in 20 years and we can see who is right.

Paradigms remain until they change. In the broad scope of human history, political freedom is relatively new (actually quite new) as is the linkage between economic strength and political freedom. China need not and is not beholden to the Western historical ethos of relative modernity. A course or a few, in world history, without the Western slant, might be of use.

Obama's attempts to reinstitute slavery and the existence of the socialist security cancer will only aid in the diminution of the country.

[dsummoner]

My point exactly. So why do we spend so much on protecting everyones oil?

It started with the underpinnings for the Bretton Woods system and became Pax Americana with the Cold War.

[downhome]

Obama's intention is to destroy the evil colonial western powers, starting with the USA. He intends that our military power be decimated while China is on a non stop effort to become the worlds top military power. This is his dearest wish and highest aspiration and could spell the end of the USA as a super power.

yeah, but is the intention genetic?

[dsummoner]

yeah, but is the intention genetic?

If Ebeeel Whitey Guilt is genetic, in the Lamarckian sense but with transfer through the ether of space and time, then Obama's statism with fascism for the biggest corporations and socialism for the 'worth nothing more than one vote in the can' class can be as well... directly from Marx, Engels, Franco, Mussolini, Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Nero and Caligula to Obama.

[downhome]

If Ebeeel Whitey Guilt is genetic, in the Lamarckian sense but with transfer through the ether of space and time, then Obama's statism with fascism for the biggest corporations and socialism for the 'worth nothing more than one vote in the can' class can be as well... directly from Marx, Engels, Franco, Mussolini, Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Nero and Caligula to Obama.

cállate

[dsummoner]

cállate

Nyet! Tovarisch Obama ochen xorosho.