No, the sky is not falling, but it is pretty overcast.
Here’s the consoling thought, as a citizen of the world: America won’t be “the world’s only superpower” for long. Indeed, if current trends continue, it’s debatable whether we’ll be a superpower at all.
The real price of oil is on the rise. It is highly likely that this is due to a combination of factors: supply is either plateauing, dwindling, or becoming more difficult to tap while demand is rising throughout the world, both of which trends seem more likely to accelerate than to reverse. Much more so than other nations, America is incredibly dependent on that oil. Especially for its war machine.
We are spending enormous quantities of money on a foreign war, with no end in sight, no significant outside support, and a reduction in volunteerism and voluntary continuation in service. Somewhere along the line, there was a notion that war was profitable. It is, if you’re not the one fighting it. Our economic dominance originated in the world wars, which devastated much of the industrial capacity of western europe, while draining their coffers for our military hardware. As europe rebuilt their economic capacity, they were going to catch up, simple economics tells you that. But fruitless foreign wars, inflationary tax cuts, and record unemployment will only speed the process along.
Finally, any of you who believe Richard Florida’s work (see: “Rise of the creative class”) can guess where the focus of intellectual property creation will migrate: outside our borders. We’re not much noted for our brains, anyway.
So, buck up, mis amigos, it ain’t all bad.