by Robert Griffith

Created on: April 29, 2009

I honestly have to answer this question No. In a hundred years it won't matter who our ruling political party is now. It won't matter how we feel about the disappearance of our nation. A 100-year perspective calls for broad-spectrum considerations of major societal, geophysical, oceanic, climatic, and population changes and events which will in large part influence the future of every currently existing nation. Within each of these categories there are historically unprecedented conditions developing now.

The historical record does provide us with an understanding of the rise and fall of nation states and empires, but today there are multiple global stressors present for which there are no records available. Global climate change, global industrialization, and global population density are all unfolding at unprecedented rates, and will produce unprecedented changes over the next hundred years.

We understand the cyclical nature of empires and recognize the elements of their genesis, expansion and decline. There is a good basis there indicating that the United States is currently entering into the last phase. Economically and politically, America is passing from a resource-rich, economically productive and militarily powerful past. Once we occupied a unique pinnacle of wealth, resources and might on the planet. Now we're moving toward a competitive, globalized future where the competition is formidable. Our natural resources are depleted, our productivity is in decline, our financial assets are rapidly being diluted as investors seek to invest in a burgeoning global economy.

American production is expensive, and our goods are produced at much higher cost in comparison to other countries. That fact in itself is a nation-killer. While America bounces against a financial "glass ceiling" of its own making, other economies can produce a loaf of bread and the crops and facilities to make it at a fraction of the cost. Cars, building materials, even traditionally local service industries are all rapidly going offshore. Investors are following because a country worth a dollar today but earning more every day increases in value more than a country worth a hundred dollars that only spends its dollars to buy bread from other countries. Follow the money and the trail of American wealth will lead you offshore. Fewer dollars are circulating within our country, the number of jobs is in decline, and in the throes of the current global economic crisis there is a strong probability

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