Gen Y versus Gen X 3769

Straydog One french author has written a book about the collapse of empires. He says that when an empire is on the verge of a collapse -0it attacks other countries to set its own house in order (in the case of US -by invading Iraq for its oil). Not surprisingly, the WSJ when making a case ofr the Iraq invasion said that " after Gulf War i, the US economy went into the largest economic expansion in history and americans became lazy. Iraq has the world's 2nd largest oil deposits -most of it lying untapped and unlike its southern neighbour kuwait -the extracted oil doesn't need to be treated and is of good quality. The price of oil acts a s a drag on the economy and freeing up the supply of oil should help the US economy continue its economic expansion".

Now that the US govt has burnt its fingers, that should mark a point of inflection.

It means the manpower hasn't yet come to terms with new oppurtunities.

Do you have a god given right to american wages? You said in another post that "american goods cannot compete because of our high std of living and cost of living". You may want to add the term "unsustainable" to that. There is nothing about the productivity of the vast majority of americans for them to enjoy a higher living std than anybody. If you want a better std of living -you do need to work for it, and Im not sure how americans will ever be able to increase their productivity to match their living stds. The US govt can manipulate the currency market -but only for a limited period of time. In the long run -fundamentals matter more than cheap tricks.

regards -kamal