Who’s next?
Dear Republic:
Ah, another Canadian with a fishbone stuck in his throat about the USA. (Dan Crawford, “The Iranian line in the sand,” The Republic issue 120).Gee, isn't it rather funny that guys like him want to slam America while cozying up to the criminal mulahs in Iran. We're the United State of America, not some banana republic, and we'll have plenty to say about our own future and our own destiny no matter what currency they use for trading oil. In the very near future we'll turn our technological genius loose and we'll come up with an alternative to their oil and then they can drink it. No one will ever hold a gun to our head and get away with it. Iran had best watch its step or it'll be next.
- Bob Catinazzo, Proud American
We’ll see . . .
Dear Republic:
At the start of “America’s Fall Has Arrived,” (Issue 117), Kevin Potvin manages to misspell Dick Cheney’s surname, and things go downhill from there, journalistically speaking. Unencumbered by facts, Mr. Potvin conjures up a chilling but silly scenario in which ballooning national debt, the Iraqi war and spiking oil prices coalesce to tip the world’s most potent economy over the edge.
Had he done a little research, Mr. Potvin might have
discovered the following: Oil prices are increasing, but adjusted for inflation, a barrel of crude actually costs less now than it did in 1981; the United States consumes vast amounts of energy, but does so more efficiently than ever. Total energy consumption per dollar of gross domestic product has been slashed nearly in half in the US since the early 1970s, due largely to energy efficiency measures. US debt as a percentage of GDP places it 134 th among 203 nations worldwide—about average, in otherwords. (Canada ranks 21st, by the way.) Debt as a percentage of GDP is actually much lower now in the US than it was during the 1980s, and the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office recently projected the federal budget deficit will actually shrink next year.
Even as billions are spent in Iraq, the US economy grows stronger. US GDP grew at a rate of 4.4 percent last year compared to an anemic 1.7 percent in Germany, 2.1 percent in France and 2.4 percent in Canada—three countries that have largely shunned involvement in the war. Unemployment, meanwhile, stands at 5 percent in the US, compared to a whopping 11.6 percent in Germany, 10.1 percent in France and 6.8 percent in Canada.
In historical terms, current US wartime spending is relatively low. In 2004, military expenditures represented 3.3 percent of GDP, compared to 9.4 percent in 1968, at the height of the Vietnam War, and 37.5 percent in 1945, the climax of World War II.
It’s worth noting that, far from being rendered an economic weakling by the enormous military cost of World War II, the US emerged in the postwar era as the world’s economic superpower. That’s a fact of history known to any grade schooler, but one that apparently eluded Mr. Potvin as he penned his overwrought and under-thought column.
- T Rogers
****
|
