Buchanan: Why America's decade of decline?

Was America's decade of decline inevitable? The classical-liberal Globalists would say yes: the rise of developing markets in Asia, Lat. America, and E. Europe meant a bigger pie for everybody but unfortunately less pie, relatively, for the USA. The America Firsters like Buchanan would say no: we chose to outsource all our production of actual stuff, and decided to put all our eggs in the financial services basket, which collapsed and cracked our economy to pieces. The Neoconservatives (who don't really understand economics) might say, "The decline was the price of the War on Terror."

Is there another, correct perspective? I think all three might lend insight; however I doubt that all 8 percentage points of forfeited global GDP was inevitable.

A Decade of Self-Delusion

By Patrick J. Buchanan

December 29, 2009 | Human Events

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"According to the International Monetary Fund, the United States began the century producing 32 percent of the world's gross domestic product. We ended the decade producing 24 percent. No nation in modern history, save for the late Soviet Union, has seen so precipitous a decline in relative power in a single decade."

URL: http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=35018