Talk:American decline/Archive 1

Archive 1

Widespread police violence

this is not 'original research'. do i need a second person to write down on a sheet of paper whats happening, so i can reference that? there's just not enough time in the day to go through everything yet to reference it. the situation is still on going. do not remove this section. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 101.98.178.115 (talk) 09:41, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

Incarceration

• @Smokefoot: Thanks for contributing to the article. Can you say how 'Incarceration rate' can be connected to the American Decline? I mean which reliable source makes such a connection? --Mhhossein ^talk 06:14, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

I thought the exact same thing yesterday! I am going to remove this and put it here to discuss! Moscowdreams (talk) 08:36, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

===Incarceration rates===

Main article: Comparison of United States incarceration rate with other countries

A map of incarceration rates by country

The United States has the highest prison and jail population (2,121,600 in adult facilities in 2016), and the highest incarceration rate in the world. Whereas the incarceration rate of the US is 655 per 100,000 population of all ages, the incarceration rate of Canada is 114 per 100,000 (as of 2015), England and Wales is 146 per 100,000 (as of 2016), and Australia is 160 per 100,000 (as of 2016). Comparing other developed countries, the rate of Spain is 133 per 100,000 (as of 2016), Greece is 89 per 100,000 (as of 2016), Norway is 73 per 100,000 (as of 2016), Netherlands is 69 per 100,000 (as of 2014), and Japan is 48 per 100,000 (as of 2014). Comparing other countries with similar percentages of immigrants, Germany has a rate of 78 per 100,000 (as of 2017), Italy is 96 per 100,000 (as of 2018), and Saudi Arabia is 197 per 100,000 (as of 2017). Comparing other countries with a zero tolerance policy for illegal drugs, the rate of Russia is 411 per 100,000 (as of 2018), Kazakhstan is 194 per 100,000 (as of 2018), Singapore is 201 per 100,000 (as of 2017), and Sweden is 57 per 100,000 (as of 2016). The incarceration rate of the People's Republic of China varies depending on sources and measures. According to the World Prison Brief, the rate for only sentenced prisoners is 118 per 100,000 (as of 2015). The rate for prisoners including estimations for the number of pre-trial detainees and those in administrative detention is 164 per 100,000 (as of 2015). In a 2010 interview Harry Wu, a U.S.-based human rights activist and ex-Chinese labor camp prisoner, estimates that "in the last 60 years, more than 40–50 million people" were in Chinese labor camps, but that period includes the mass incarcerations of the 1950s or the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) and is not representative of China in 2010.

Here is the text! (references below) Moscowdreams (talk) 08:36, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

References

Seems like an editor wanted to push his agenda against Trump

The decline of the US started with Obama and the "leading from behind". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A00:A040:19B:31A9:D888:882:9B64:7336 (talk) 21:39, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

Citation overkill

@Ranking888: Thanks for editing the page. This edit by you constitutes Wikipedia:Citation overkill. Moreover, per MOS the lead should have citations only for the challenging items. Can you remove those extra citations and leave just 2 most important and reliable one? --Mhhossein ^talk 04:06, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

No response yet, but I removed some of the citations. Please feel free to revert me if it's needed, but take a look at Wikipedia:Citation overkill. --Mhhossein ^talk 07:11, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Military bases

There were 38 large and medium-sized American facilities spread around the globe in 2005—mostly air and naval bases—approximately the same number as Britain's 36 naval bases and army garrisons at its imperial zenith in 1898.[40] Yale historian Paul Kennedy compares the U.S. situation to Great Britain's prior to World War I. He comments that the map of U.S. bases is similar to Great Britain's before World War I.[19]

Hello friends. It doesn't seem like this paragraph makes a conclusion. It just states some facts that may or may not be relevant to the article.

It was previously part of a section that was arguing "many military bases = American decline", which seems logically incorrect to me. In my opinion, "many military bases = America is not declining" would be a stronger argument.

Anyway, I'd be in favor of removing this paragraph. Thoughts?

cc PailSimon –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:14, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

I think the argument being made is geopolitical overreach. I've heard that argument being made but right now its not actually clear that the no. of military bases is referencing overreach so on reflection maybe its better to remove it or if not clarify it.PailSimon (talk) 01:23, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Thanks PaliSimon. Does anybody else have an opinion on this? To avoid getting reverted again, I'd like to gather input from multiple editors. –Novem Linguae (talk) 05:26, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

please keep in article. possibly rewrite. Infinitepeace (talk) 03:12, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

No. That argument about geopolitical overreach is valid and has been made by Emmanuel Todd. He argued that: "In late 2002, he believed that the world was about to repeat the same mistake that it had made in regard to the Soviet Union during the 1970s—misinterpreting an expansion in US military activity as a sign of its increasing power, when in fact this aggression masks a decline." That section about the military bases must be restored. Seekallknowledge (talk) 20:10, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

Seekallknowledge. Thanks. I took a stab at writing a paragraph about geopolitical overreach and Emmanuel Todd. If you and others could look it over and improve it, I'd appreciate it. It is currently uncited, and might have WP:SYNTH problems, but I wanted to give us a starting point. –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:55, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

health

The health statistics are interesting, but there is no connection made in the article to how this is the decline of the US. Please add back and expand how!

Removed from main page:

===Health===

The U.S. placed 35th in a 2019 ranking of countries on health, vs Canada's 16th-place. "Life expectancy in the U.S. has been trending lower due to deaths from drug overdoses and suicides."

Moscowdreams (talk) 08:42, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Health section return

I've found some sources that say health in the US is in decline (or point to orgs that say so), I suppose that is enough to add that section back.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6221922/

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/11/26/health/us-life-expectancy-decline-study/index.html

https://www.livescience.com/us-life-expectancy-decline-working-age.html

https://www.acponline.org/acp-newsroom/americas-health-care-system-in-state-of-decline

https://www.globalhealthnow.org/2018-11/reversing-decline-americas-health

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2020-09-11/a-global-anomaly-the-us-declines-in-annual-quality-of-life-report — Preceding unsigned comment added by Seekallknowledge (talk • contribs) 01:45, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

References

Not neutral POV revealed

What's with the quotation marks here?

• Many of America's "leading" commentators

188.148.102.31 (talk) 16:08, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

The culture section under manifestations seems nearly exclusively right-wing. Single-parent households, births out of wedlock, and homosexuality, etc. are linked to the decline of the United States with no alternative or even explanation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by BigYeem (talk • contribs) 13:30, April 20, 2020 (UTC)

I agree. The whole article is riddled with argumentative, non-neutral statements, and the writing is so atrocious it makes me wonder whether the author is a native English speaker. Cieljaune (talk) 05:52, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

it is terribly written. I agree. Moscowdreams (talk) 00:34, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

The neutrality of this article has since worsened. There is still excessive right-wing bias in the culture section, which looking through the history, is untouched over many edits. Meanwhile a biased anti-American narrative has also cropped up, beyond academic analysis of American decline. Many of the edits are by the now-blocked user Moscowdreams, who largely added synthesis, quote mining and original research. The article is a joke now. As a first step, some parts of the article could be reverted to how they were the last edit before this user's contributions. Then subjective or contentious statements should be in quotes or larger context. Rauisuchian (talk) 04:23, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Rauisuchian, I tried to take a look at this user's edits and the article. It's a lot to take in. It sounds like you have a good grasp of what is needed to fix this article. You certainly have my support to start making changes, as time permits. –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:24, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

@Rauisuchian and Novem Linguae: As the page creator, I am ready to work to make the page better than before. --Mhhossein ^talk 06:49, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Mhhossein, awesome, it's great to see that experienced editors still have this article on their watchlist.

Rauisuchian, I ran who wrote that on the article. It looks like Moscowdreams main changes to the article were deleting 2 sections (now on the talk page), adding to the Noam Chomsky paragraph, adding 3 commentators, and adding the "In popular culture" section. Doesn't seem like he altered the article a ton.

I need to give this article a thorough read when I'm not tired, but so far it's not looking as bad as I was expecting from your commentary. Do you have any specific areas you'd like to mention/highlight so we can focus our attention on them?

Let me also say that I expect an article like "American Decline" to have more POV than a normal article, because it's basically reporting on a POV. The idea of American Decline itself is a POV. I would expect an article like United States to present all the viewpoints in a balanced way, and an article like American Decline to focus on the negative viewpoints. –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:29, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Mhhossein Novem_Linguae Cool, thanks for your interest in improving the article.

I agree I overstated that specific user's impact, I had skimmed through some of the edits. It is true that the article would include many negative viewpoints, but should present them neutrally and as attributed points of view (WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV). Chomsky's quotes in the article are done pretty well as attributions. While some other inferences are unsourced/broken out of attribution and paraphrased where it seems like they're objective facts rather than viewpoints. The nuance of the cited sources should be included.

One example of a quote mine in the article is the opening sentence of "Comparison with earlier states" and the statement of "weak, bred out basket case". The sentence is copied out of context. The citation is an article in The Atlantic by Megan McArdle, quoting Dan Drezner in Foreign Policy and Dan Bell in The New Republic. All three journalists are talking about a Dan Bell's evaluation of a 'declinism industry' exaggerating American decline. Each article's main point is roughly -- to watch out for the possibility of American decline, while criticizing overly confident predictions of doom that turned out false. Good articles to cite, taken out of context.

The same ref is also paraphrased out of context in the "Culture and soft power" section to suggest that Huntington believed in constant decline. In fact, Huntington was a long time critic of declinism, and the "distinct waves" in his writing were waves of declinist rhetoric he observed, rather than decline. That said, he is probably an opinionated-enough source to attribute specifically rather than as generalized statements.

Other issues. The second sentence in the lead, for example, presents an absolute dichotomy between declinists and exceptionalists as if there are no other viewpoints. None of the 6 cited sources for this statement make such a dichotomy. They are good sources for this article, but totally out of context for that claim.

And the viewpoint of Dmitri Orlov is broken out of citation among others. Anyways, I will edit here and there as time permits. Rauisuchian (talk) 16:45, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

I think the article now is neutral. Perhaps the Disputed Neutrality tag should be removed? Seekallknowledge (talk) 00:13, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

It looks to be much improved now. Rauisuchian (talk) 16:37, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

The second paragraph of the lead ("Some analysts suggest the decline stems from the foreign policy of the Trump administration...") clearly has POV issues. While I personally agree that Trump damaged America's reputation (more than other presidents), I'm sure many right-leaning Republicans/conservatives would strongly disagree. I also noticed that not one of the six sources is an academic scholarly book or journal, they're all news sources (left-leaning to varying degrees). Spot checking the source contents also reveals issues: The Huffington post source is used to support the claim that "the decline stems from" Trump FP, and the Sydney Morning Herald for the claim that Trump merely caused an "acceleration". However, the HP source actually says "...acceleration of the American decline by President Trump’s erratic...", while the SMH source doesn't say even that. I noticed that in general the article seems to be mostly news rather than academic sources; as an encyclopedia, might the article benefit from less of the former and more of the latter? Yaakovaryeh (talk) 18:05, 13 January 2021 (UTC)

Dollar collapse/decline?

The page is not paying to dollar as much as the sources do. There are some sources saying dollar is facing a decline/collapse as more bilateral or multilateral economical agreements are made across the world. Do you think we can dedicate a subsection to this topic? --Mhhossein ^talk 06:29, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Isn't the dollar fine though? Doesn't seem like a strong argument. Unless I'm missing something. Feel free to give more details, maybe the RS's make a convincing argument. –Novem Linguae (talk) 08:05, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Currency Composition of Official Foreign Exchange Reserves (2000-2019), in Trillions of U.S. Dollars

I wonder how/why would this be the case given that the U.S. dollar is increasingly being used as the world's reserve currency. Normchou ^💬 16:56, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Indeed. The claims that the dollar is declining are greatly exaggerated. [1] [2]. The dollar's percentage of global reserves remained above 60% through 2020, and higher than it was in the 1980's and 1990's. Rauisuchian (talk) 18:07, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

@Rauisuchian, Novem Linguae, and Normchou: Many thanks for your thoughts. Can you take a look at the following sources please? [1], [2], [3], [4], [5] and [6]. Look, I am not saying dollar is declining or not, rather there are important points raised by sources regarding the furfure of US dollar which I think deserve to be covered here. --Mhhossein ^talk 18:15, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

I think most of what you've listed are just typical daily doses of market trend intepretations among business and finance news outlets that may or may not have much to do with the actual status of the underlying subjects. There may be some POVs from RSes that you can introduce to the article, but I can see that there will be even more counter-POVs from RSes that say just the opposite [7][8][9][10][11][12]. When taken together, do these narratives warrant a dedicated, WP:DUE section on the future of U.S. dollars? I am not sure. Also, WP:CRYSTAL may be relevant here. Normchou ^💬 23:35, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

@Normchou: We may use the sources dealing with the current trend of the dollar status and avoid going too far – for the sake of WP:CRYSTAL. Also, yes, POVs and counter POVs should be included. --Mhhossein ^talk 13:10, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

We actually have an article on the Internationalization of the renminbi (with a subsection on Renminbi as a reserve currency) that describes what has been happening so far. The Global currency reserves table in the Reserve currency article shows the latest reserve currency shares per currency, include the renminbi. And let us indeed steer clear from crystal-balling. Morgengave (talk) 22:09, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

There is a consensus that the power of the United States is diminishing

Most analysts say that American power is diminishing. From the many sources in this article that is made clear. Only a few argue that it isn't, and some say it is temporary. Therefore, I propose the removal of the word "perception" in the lede. I will edit it in a few days in case no other editor opposes this. Seekallknowledge (talk) 20:23, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

@Seekallknowledge: Looks fair enough. --Mhhossein ^talk 13:50, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

@Seekallknowledge: I highly suggest that you continue your work on this article as it seems like a specific user has recently made major changes to the article towards a pro-American perspective/slant, which at this point deserves a "globalize" tag, and almost no international perspectives (e.g. from Asia and Europe). They even decided to emphasize words such as "subjective or objective" despite the fact that terms on Wikipedia don't start with that – You don't see "Pax Americana", "Managed decline" being described as "subjective or objective". Of course a term is subjective or objective, so why the need to specifically emphasize on that here exactly? This isn't the Simple English Wikipedia. It's like stating that the decline of the British Empire was "subjective" even despite the fact that many sources around the world were in a general agreement. 122.11.212.118 (talk) 12:12, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

I completely agree with you, (122.11.212.118). That user clearly is biased and removed important information, like China's GDP (PPP) surpassing the US. I don't have the time to continue my work in this article, sadly. Maybe in the future, once the decline reaches a critical level, I will update it again. Seekallknowledge (talk) 21:45, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

These are the edit summaries for why I removed your "PPP GDP" thingy: [13][14]. If you have a sound economic reason other than prettying up China to make the U.S. appear "in decline" in this one very narrow dimension (a metric that is highly misleading when applied to China anyway) for the satisfaction of your own bias/POV, how about starting an actual argument with logic and facts? Normchou ^💬 21:59, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

By the way, according to the International Monetary Fund's 2021 report on the global economic outlook, China is the one expected to be in decline relative to the U.S. in terms of its economy in the foreseeable future. By the end of 2024, the Chinese economy is expected to be smaller than what was previously projected, while the U.S. economy is expected to be larger. Normchou ^💬 22:41, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

I went ahead and changed the first sentence just now, to remove "subjective and objective", and to hopefully be a bit clearer. The rest of the edits seem fine to me. Anyone is welcome to examine them and make changes. –Novem Linguae (talk) 13:15, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for showing the diffs for other editors to see. All my additions (incl. the "subject and objective" part) were based on POVs that already exist in RSes, and I have listed them in the citations. This is standard WP:NPOV practice, so the IP user's pro-American perspective/slant accusation is simply false. If they have international perspectives supported by reliable sources, then they are free to make additions. Also, my removal of content was fully explained in corresponding edit summaries; mostly it was because of WP:V and WP:RS issues. Normchou ^💬 15:56, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

References

Comparison with Rome

There was a subsection comparing the Roman empire's decline with that of US. I have missed the developments leading to its removal. Can anyone please say why we should not have such a subsection? --Mhhossein ^talk 11:45, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

Here are some sources supporting this parallel [15], [16], [17], [18], and etc. --Mhhossein ^talk 11:51, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

@Mhhossein: I'm not sure either. You should add it back. 122.11.212.118 (talk) 19:00, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

Subheading for secession?

I think it'd be interesting to include polls and surveys regarding public opinion and the idea of secessionism. Should this be included in a completely new subheading under "Assessment", or should it be included in the already existing subheadings, either "Public opinion" or "Political polarization"? --Pisiu369 (talk) 19:54, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

Pisiu369: That can be an informative addition to the page and I recommend having it under "Public opinion". --Mhhossein ^talk 06:23, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

Political Polarization

This discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Political Polarization peaked during the Civil War and the article is saying modern america looks like what it looked like in 1860 without considering evolution or development of the Country. Red States vs Blue States. Union Vs Confederates. 2603:7000:B901:8500:A470:2AFD:D495:ABDE (talk) 14:43, 26 July 2022 (UTC) We just follow what reliable sources say. No original research or original opinion. Andrevan@ 16:40, 26 July 2022 (UTC) See the political polarization of the civil war and then contrast into what your presenting today. THE SAME THING. The world has changed since 1860 and the Union won that war. So actually by now the entire country ought to be democrat. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_map_1864_Civil_War_divisions.svg 2603:7000:B901:8500:ACAA:A395:E9CA:E167 (talk) 23:15, 26 July 2022 (UTC) Maybe you have a more specific statement in the article that you are objecting to? Or a specific source to cite? Andrevan@ 23:16, 26 July 2022 (UTC) The country is not declining becuase of Political Polariztion, you could say it can be unraveling or even developing more than it was but in fact we do not know the extent of these facts existing today as the unraveling of the United States of America. 2603:7000:B901:8500:ACAA:A395:E9CA:E167 (talk) 23:20, 26 July 2022 (UTC) How was that either a specific statement in the article or a specific source? Andrevan@ 23:21, 26 July 2022 (UTC) The historical arugument is the blue states won the civil war then one hundred years later the federal goverment created the federal reserve and federal intervention but the resistance still existed. The truth is the BLUE STATES SLAUGHTERED THE RED STATES and none of these debates ought to exist today. Lincoln killed off the confederate states of America. 2603:7000:B901:8500:ACAA:A395:E9CA:E167 (talk) 23:28, 26 July 2022 (UTC)