This is the preliminary data collection for a Pestle analysis of the United States, drawn from publicly available information on Wikipedia, the CIA World Factbook and Nationmaster. The United States has the largest GDP in the world, $14.3 trillion. That's almost as much as the next four on the list combined. The United States also spends more on the military than anyone else. A lot more. U.S. spending, at $651 billion per year, is almost 10 times as much as second place China, and about 48% of all military spending is American. It is the third most populous country in the world, with 306 million people.
There has never been an entity to compare with the United States, and perhaps never will be. My five year forecast for American politics is
here. My five year forecast for the American economy is
here. My thoughts on why America will be the 'owner' of the 21st Century are
here.
I am not blind to its faults and shortcomings, and have been quick to criticize my home country--and was perfectly willing to live abroad for 13 years--but there aren't adequate superlatives to describe the size and scale of what America has achieved. Just one quick example--in the first Iraq war, George Herbert Walker Bush put together a coalition to drive Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. The other countries ponied up more money for the adventure than the war itself cost. The U.S. made a profit on their war. His son was not quite so lucky with his misadventure.
If you've been napping, the U.S. has a new president, Barack Obama, and a recession to deal with. President Obama is spending a lot of money to stimulate the economy, and will spend a lot more trying to stabilize the financial system, and a lot more trying to help unfortunate mortgage holders hang on to their properties. Troubled times indeed. And yet, as I write this on March 29, consumer spending has increased for 2 months in a row and the number of houses sold has increased... so how deep is the recession? Well, it's not good--with unemployment pushing 8.5% and set to go into double digits this year, it's a real recession, not a fake. (However, I forecast a return to growth by 4th quarter of this year.) Obama's Democrats have solid majorities in both House and Senate, although Obama is so far trying to tread lightly with his majority.
For Americans who are not poor or black, or both (God help them), access to good education and decent healthcare is at mid-European standards, though certainly not above them. But there are too many poor, and too many disadvantaged blacks. Given the wealth of the country, it is a national disgrace. Immigration is a hot-button social issue, although America would grind to a halt without its immigrants, and the repatriated salaries from immigrants in America dwarf most foreign aid efforts (and probably do more good). One issue that needs to be dealt with in this decade is the total number of people in prison (mostly on drug charges), and the very high number of young black males behind bars.
American higher education is basically the best in the world, and this pretty much guarantees that America will do well in the future. About 99% of the population is literate, most people get 15 years of education, 7 of the top 10 universities are American--but most importantly, 168 of the top 500 universities are American.
The list just doesn't stop. 153 of the world's largest 500 companies are American. (Second is Japan, with 64.) The U.S. is first in patent applications.
But there is a price to pay. Americans don't live as long or as well as Europeans or the Japanese. They have to fight for their healthcare--a debilitating struggle that consumes too much time and too many resources for both individuals and businesses. Violence in America has subsided, but it is still an everyday fact of life. And the mobility of the American labor force has fragmented the nuclear family structure in ways that will take 100 years to analyse. It's great that America created MySpace and Facebook. It's not so great that America needed them so badly.
America has done more about the environment than almost any other country, instituting cap and trade on SO2 to fight acid rain, and many more measures to fight air and water pollution. There are land use and water use policies that will need to be revisited soon, due in no small part to growing population, but those types of struggles will not be new to America.
For by art is created that great Leviathan...
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