Chris Power’s post at The Free Press suggests to me that there are others on the same page as I am:
Every great power—the Dutch, the British, and then the Americans—rose to dominance by building the strongest industrial base of their time. That industrial strength produced unmatched military power and global economic influence. It also gave them the reserve currency of the world. It’s not trust alone that keeps the dollar dominant. It’s the belief that America can project power, produce what it needs, and manage a war or crisis. Lose that industrial edge, and we risk losing the dollar’s central place in the global system.
That’s why the U.S. dollar is the reserve currency today—not only because of Wall Street, but because of Detroit, Pittsburgh, and the industrial base that made America indispensable. Remember: We won World War II because we had the strongest industrial base in the world. We didn’t have the best tanks; we had the strongest capacity for production.
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It starts with reindustrialization: ramping up nuclear energy, building advanced factories, and employing the millions of people we left behind when we sent our capital equipment and manufacturing jobs to China.
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All the progress we’ve seen on deregulation, manufacturing, energy, jobs, and defense over the past year is a drop in the ocean of what we actually need to do. What we have seen, and what we are seeing, was driven by a small group of people in industry and government risking their careers to fight against the system and win.
I think he’s on the right track but I would add additional priorities. We need some basic reforms in education as well, refocusing on readin’, ritin’, and ‘rithmetic. Kids need to learn to read—not just how to recognize letters and sound out words but to read books as a preferential way of gaining information and entertainment. Of the top 10 bestselling children’s/young adult books, six are Harry Potter novels. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was first published nearly 30 years ago. The non-Harry Potter books in the list are even older, some pushing 100 (like The Little Prince), others like Heidi even older. By the time I was 10 I had read David Copperfield, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, The Three Musketeers, and all of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories.
Its ironic that the current generation of LLM’s are trained mostly / solely on text.
LLM’s probably have a far more literate view of the world then the majority (maybe a vast majority) of Americans.
Sorry, the dollar is the reserve currency because of liquidity and investment opportunities. It can be replaced when another country(s) create national debt to rival the US.
When you trade using a foreign currency, there needs to be enough of that currency available to purchase. When you receive payment in a foreign currency there needs to be a safe place to invest it. Furthermore, currency is a commodity, and like all commodities, it is subject to the laws of supply and demand.
(So, China needs to take on a lot of debt before the yuan can be considered a replacement for the dollar.)
Meh, the world has changed in 80 years. His view of what made the Dutch and British successful is pretty narrow. On education I would note that our white and Asian middle class and up kids perform on tests as well as anyone in the world. They actually read quite a bit just not as much for entertainment. Reading skills on the PISA and NAEP tests have improved. While we are not very good at educating poor black people, white people and Hispanics it’s not really clear that is a deficiency in our schools or due to family structure and lack of support for kids.
Steve
I think it’s a combination of factors including those you mentioned, lack of familial support for education, and low expectations among teachers, parents, and the kids themselves.