Reply #88: One of my professors says the same

[Lars77]

He is American but has chosen to move to Norway, where he teaches at the University of Oslo.

He says that the US is slowly becoming a third world country, at least in terms of the monumental difference between rich and poor (closing on Brazil), which is due to the way jobs are continually exported overseas, completely destroying the lower middle and working classes.
And this will continue as long as unregulated capitalism and empire are seen as core values in US society. Right-wingers are always trying to claim that these are core values from the founding fathers, but anyone with a remote understanding of US history (or the John Adams TV series box set) will know that it is not the case.

The US still manufactures a lot, but simply not enough. I think that in 50 years people will look back on Globalization as the era where the west finally lost its dominant place in the world.

Europe is headed the same way, but we will last longer because as the EU expands eastwards we will have a steady stream of cheap labour to exploit (which is what i believe the grand plan of the EU to be), so that we can continue living in a non-sustainable way. But if you look at countries like Poland, the migrant workers are starting to return to Poland because of better opportunities, which is why Romania was brought in. Eventually Turkey will join the EU despite an atrocious human rights record and massive corruption.

In the not-too distant future, i think we could start seeing the beginning of a profound wave of migration moving from the northeastern/rust belt US to Canada, while retirees who previously went to Florida might move to Latin America or maybe even Cuba.