Quote Originally Posted by ']['ear View Post
Wait, are you saying that the US is economically dominant because of WWII? Really? 65 years later?!?!

Every commentator I ever read considered that over and done 30 years after at the latest. Otherwise, how could German and Japanese economies have kicked such serious butt in the 80s?
Every commentator I've read didn't see the recent economic meltdown coming either.

Evidence that what economic commentators say may or may not bear any resemblance to reality.

Quote Originally Posted by ']['ear View Post
Try parsimony: the US invested far more than anybody else in basic research, and our economic dominance is based almost exclusively on science and technology. In contrast, our manufacturing dominance was gone decades ago. Hey, around the time that Japan and Germany surged in the 80s!
See Loki's post.

The figures that put the US funding on science and technology research as significantly higher than the rest of the developed world (as opposed to having it approximately on par) include the research done by those free market research labs (Bell Labs and the like)... which I find ironic, given how much we hear that the private sector can't drive basic scientific research. Good thing Bell Labs and IBM and the like didn't get that memo.

Quote Originally Posted by EyeKhan View Post
No it isn't. What it means is there are many 'projects' which are key to producing a great nation that a government is required to accomplish precisely because the government is (*often*) concerned with making a great nation whereas the private sector is chiefly concerned with serving itself even at the expense of making a great nation.
Horse shit. Bell Labs. Totally private funded (by one of those evil, mega-corporations that hate the country), and yet it alone, (to say nothing of the research arms of other large private firms) has arguably made more breakthroughs and advances in basic science and technology than the whole of the US federal government.

And anyway, if you want to live in a "great nation," move to China. The whole history of political liberalism is the history of putting the welfare and rights of individuals before the importance of having a grand empire or a "great nation."