Oh, and Slang, I TOTALLY disagree with you about the idea that, "China is coming and there's nothing we can do about it"... (well, I also disagree about the tipping thing, but *shrug*)
I hate speaking in metaphors... but... This really follows a sports metaphor. Just 30 years ago the US was the biggest, baddest team in town. It's parallel to what would happen if your local college basketball team came out and started playing all the High School teams in the area. They'd crush everyone without trying. Occasionally there'd be a close game, but in the end it always ends in victory.
Actually, I don't need to speak metaphorically... this is EXACTLY what happened to the US Olympic basketball team. We used to send our pro's and laugh at the rest of the world as we waltzed to a gold medal. Last time we had to fight to come away with a bronze.
What's true for basketball is also true for business. They're both competition. If you don't pay attention to what your competition is doing you get trounced. It's a defeatist attitude to say, "I guess the rest of the world is getting better. We're just going to lose sometimes. Ah well."
But that's my point overall... American's have, in general, a defeatist attitude. Or if you think "defeatist" is too strong, you can say it's "too accepting" of an attitude.
To be a winner you can't have the mentality, "sometimes everyone wins. I hope it's my turn this time."... you need to be hungry. So while American students are home playing Xbox, Chinese and Japanese students are going to the 2nd session schools. While Asian school systems are finding ways to make the curriculum harder and harder, the American system is finding ways to pad the grades even more, and include more fluff subjects.
Yeah, America won't crumble and fall. But Rome didn't fall in a day either. What's in our future is to become the next England. Everyone knows where we are on the map, and everyone thinks we have funny sounding accents, but we'll be side-lined as the rest of the world calls the shots.