Ha ha - yes, it's now $16,802,416,245,118.75, which means that in the 28 minutes since I posted that it has risen by $89,954,617.55.

Other countries improving is not the same as the US worsening. There isn't some fixed amount of GDP to go around, so talking about percentages says nothing about standard of living in the US or anywhere else.

As for debt, the people that really need to worry about that are its creditors. They are the ones that will be ****ed if the US defaults or prints.

Either suicidal or very stupid. Possibly both.

Lots of people are suicidal and/or very stupid. This guy, though, was suicidal and/or very stupid, AND had an AK-47. Apparently it was just his constitutional right, so that's OK.

I disagree. Share of global GDP, especially comparative to places like China, has economic and foreign policy implications. As for local economic figures, we have seen that the US debt is unrepayable, larger than its GDP, and getting worse every year. My view is that the US right now is roughly where Britain was in about 1950.

The US will not, ever, default, because all US debt is denominated in US dollars, which it can print whenever it likes. If it did default, its credit rating would go into the toilet and the global reserve currency would go from safe haven to massive risk overnight, and the entire global financial system would collapse.

Maybe then they'd all shoot each other. Job's a good'un.

No, your initial claim was that the us and UK are in decline and you used the percentage share of global GDP to 'prove' this. This is just wrong. China becoming rich doesn't make the us poor and of course there are policy implications - but this doesn't make your original premise right.

Its good that you understand that us debt is everyone's problem though. Especially and they've got the biggest military.

No, my initial claim was that the US and Britain are contracting economies that have seen their best days. I made this statement with specific regard to the rule of law within their own societies. My secondary claim in a later post was that the US economy is getting smaller in terms of its global share of GDP.

Your argument, which in extremis is saying there is nothing wrong with the Chinese economy being 90% of global GDP and America being 10%, so long as America is rich, is wrong. The US's internal wealth is irrelevant if China is richer and more powerful, and of course economy is ultimately a zero sum game in a closed system with finite resources.

Finally, the US has the most powerful military at the moment, but it won't be able to keep this up for ever. Many projections show that the PLA will have superior forces within a generation or two, if current trends continue.

No, you said they are contracting economies. Which is false. You then gave the % share of GDP as proof. It's not. Don't extrapolate what I said beyond that - yes you are right that 90%/10% in chinas favour wouldn't be good for the US.

Are you a marxist because that's what he said.

It's not a closed system anyway; we are orbiting a huge practically infinite energy supply for starters. And then there's all that stuff floating around in space, it's only a matter of technology advances to get at it. Have a bit of optimism man!

Or probably on anti-depressants.

Yes, they are contracting economies, in terms of their share of global GDP, and this is what I was getting at, precisely. It is their relative weakness on the global stage that has changed the way the citizens perceive their own nations. I clearly referred to the US economy as having had its day, and this is patently the case in global terms. As for a comparative analysis with itself in absolute terms, it contracts and expands, like any other economy.

No, I am the opposite of a Marxist. I'm not going to relax on the subject of resources on the grounds we can mine Mars for them just yet, as no space mining has shown itself to be cost effective. For this reason, we are in a closed system with finite resources, and our economy is one that requires constant growth to stop itself imploding. All the states in the system will do whatever they have to do to secure resources for themselves. China's economy is growing, but in absolute and relative global terms, the US's is shrinking in terms of its size to China's. This will have an effect on military budgets and spheres of influence over the next 25 - 50 years, making this planet unrecognisable to what we see today.

And yet gun deaths have gone down (a little bit) since the 1990's. Although some other indicators of a broken society in the US admittedly haven't.

At least the police officers had the option of responding in kind. This wasn't an option for John Speed, Roger Brereton or Ian Broadhurst, all of whom were killed in a country where there is no constitutional right to bear arms.

Oh FFS do a bit of googling. In the UK (where the 2nd amendment is inoperative) there have been roughly 300 police officers killed in line of duty (leaving aside the RUC) since 1900. Only 50 were shot. And the sources (that I've found) don't specify whether or not they were armed at the time.

There have been more fatalities resulting from police chases than from policemen being shot.

I'm sure that their families would be consoled by this.