US is a terrible country to be poor although good for middle class and rich. Has many great brands and companies but has a huge trading deficit because it imports most goods. Much of its success is due to its size. It's easy for a company trading in to a 350 million market to takeover a company trading to 10-60 million but not vice versa. I'm just making the point its easier for larger companies to take over smaller companies.

I think generally we need to push for more local assembly of goods, even if that pushes up prices, not just for US but everywhere. This already goes on a lot for cars but should be applied to smaller goods too. Included warranties should go much higher too to prevent low quality products which break easily and go to landfill and push for more repair of goods. I.e. a shovel comes with a 15 year guarantee as standard which you can return to the store if broken. If you expand the service sector with a larger amount of repair centres instead of importing new goods that helps too. Push for more standard fittings on goods so they can be upgraded. I.e. a new circuit board for a phone or a new engine in a car rather than replace the whole product.Try to become self-sufficient in most foods so we aren't importing cheap food from Africa which lets face it in many countries of Africa needs to feed their own people. At the moment we are making China the most powerful country in the world, a country with very low values of democracy and high amounts of torture and injustice. For all its faults the US is the best option to remain as the most powerful country on the earth and its influences. Maybe if Europe can get their shit together in the next 20 years they can take that position and promote high values of democracy and justice.

America is not the gold standard for many things except the military right now @gtaguidelng. China will soon be the largest economy in all metrics and it already is in a number of metrics. They are also investing more in science, engineering and advancement while USA is decreasing its funding to EPA, education, NASA and science. They will soon be taking that crown from the USA if they haven't already. Are you looking at what China is doing in all sorts of departments. Education in like 40+ countries is better than USA and healthcare in USA is a joke and in some aspects is worse than countries like Pakistan and India which are not gold standards in any way. It still does have some of the best universities in the world but they are private and they are the best according to old metrics so who knows what'll happen in that department in the very near future. Infrastructure is a joke in USA and poverty and gun voilence are big problems still. So all USA really has going for it is its military might and being the largest economy. It is basically that rich guy with huge muscles that comes to the gym only to mock other people

Nuke 'em.

One way or the other.

Someone who literlally listens to trumps lies and believes them.

First, let the rest of the world take care of itself. Yes, that mindset did result in WW II in the past but ... well, maybe this time the rest of the world can not fuck up so badly? Who knows. It's just that we spend so much in foreign aid and so much lending military strength to allies. Meanwhile, they use the US as a political boogieman while taking all the help they can get.

Cut them free. Russia can have Europe and China can have Japan and South Korea. I have no idea what will happen with India, though. Anyway, as long as they don't come across the ocean, let them sort out their own continents.

As for the rest, we need jobs. I'm not a fan of Trump but I'm fully willing to give him credit if he can sort this out. Time to stop worrying about the economies of other countries and start using our market as leverage. If you want to do business here they you'd better contribute. China sure as hell didn't get where they are today by playing nice.

Funny enough, one of America's greatest strengths has been that people continue to migrate in huge numbers to this day. If we get too scared about immigration going forward we can basically be assured that we'll fall behind as, much like all of the western world, our native growth has stagnated around the minimum 2.1 kids per couple (in those countries in Europe without mass migration it has lead to population decline).

The more welcoming we are of outsiders, the better our future will be. That's always been true, and hopefully we remember as much at some point in the near future.

Otherwise, there's one heck of a population problem for most of the major countries over the next few countries (just look to China and Japan where a rapidly aging population is about to become one heck of a burden). That's yet another problem that can be alleviated by immigration.

Competition between world powers, while inevitable, should be avoided as much as possible. The ambition should be to succeed together.

If you want good salaries with huge benefits to population then Scandinavian countries should be the gold standard, as a Swedish and Portuguese I can say to Live Portugal is top notch but for money health-care etc Sweden is unbeatable.

We need to get rid of the notion of patriotism and nationalism anyways, and strive for a world without borders, states and economic competition.

Yup. This is 100% guaranteed to work.

It even makes me wonder why hasn't everybody yet realized the brilliance of such line of reasoning. Silly human beings!

Why don't you take the first step, VGPolyglot? Like, donating all your stuff and opening the doors of your house. As Diogenes would agree, none of it has any intrisic value in nature. Someone has to start it, after all.

I assure I'll fully support you down the way, so no worries herre buddy.