As negative as I can be, I have to agree with esmith on this. The USA has a huge educational system and many natural resources available yet to tap. The one thing we’ve abdicated heavily over the last two decades is manufacturing, but we still have plenty of it here and can create more without too much difficulty. Yes, we’ll have to rethink our consumerism lifestyle and probably scale-down a lot from what we’re used to spending, but from a global perspective, we’re in pretty good shape. We can easily feed ourselves and create more energy from non-petroleum sources.

Although 3rd world countries are rising rapidly, they face huge challenges due to their lack of infrastructure and massive populations. And dont forget that having the USA as an open market where they could sell their production has been a key factor in their rapid rise.