America’s Most Vital Economic Asset is Its People

America is not hopelessly lost. 

Despite what fatalists say, America’s collapse and decline are not inevitable. Those who hate this nation and want to see it fall, however, would love for us to believe in the inevitability of its eventual demise. People’s beliefs tend to manifest in reality; believing in success and triumph breeds success, while belief in the inevitability of failure results in a self-fulfilling prophecy of defeat.

This is why Americans must understand that, despite all of the rhetoric and media spin about superpowers such as Russia and China leaving America behind in the dust, this nation is still equipped to remain the most prosperous, creative, and vigorous economic force in the world.

We may not have the population of states such as China and India. It doesn’t matter. America possesses something far greater that no other country on Earth can replicate: Its people.

There are various factors that contribute to a nation’s prosperity — access to natural resources, geographic position, governmental system — and the caliber and character of its people.

A nation is not a place or a government, but the people themselves. And a great people can excel anywhere and under any circumstances. The men and women who sailed across the Atlantic to settle the Western Hemisphere, forging the American nation, were resourceful, perseverant, God-fearing, independent, creative, daring, and vigorous.

They had to be; who else but such people would risk the dangers of the sea and of an unknown wilderness when they already had all the comforts of civilization back at home in Great Britain? Once here, they had to be able to subsist without the luxuries of urban life.

And subsist they did. In fact, they did far more than subsist. They thrived, quickly building an advanced civilization that in a relatively short time frame rivaled and eventually exceeded that of the mother country.

As Americans, that is our legacy. It is a legacy that has run through the veins of our people and materialized time after time in innovation. Inventions as diverse as the lightbulb and telephone, the television and cardiac defibrillator, the hearing aid and chemotherapy, all are the product of American ingenuity.

Ultimately, this ingenuity has been the true driver of American greatness. While America has waded into playing empire throughout its history, it did not become rich and flourishing, as have so many empires throughout history, by conquering and plundering other nations (despite what the Left would have us believe). On the contrary, America’s wealth and excellence is the result of ingenious citizens who continually discover new, better, and more efficient ways of doing things.

Imagine, for a moment, that the competition between nations in the economic sphere is one of businesses competing against each other in the market. Certainly, some firms thrive due to cornering markets, collusion, and other unethical tactics. But at the end of the day, even such actions will not keep a company at the top if it does not come up with the best products. It will fail in the end unless it remains competitive by continually innovating.

In the same way, a state such as China may gain great advantage by clever political maneuvering — stealing the intellectual property of Western companies, using government subsidies to give its firms an edge over Western competitors, leveraging wage slavery to entice manufacturers to cheaply set up shop within its borders.

But, ultimately, a nation can only get so far through slyness, just as a student can only get so far by cheating. Eventually, the student’s lack of knowledge is exposed when confronted by the real world. Likewise, the unoriginal nation eventually runs out of ideas and loses steam.

Another example is the world of professional sports. Islamic businessmen, wanting to get into the lucrative sports industry, are paying big money to get in the game. Middle Eastern soccer clubs are buying popular players from European leagues, such as Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo getting picked up by the Saudi Arabian club Al Nassr for the highest salary in soccer history, a whopping €200 million (over $215 million) per year.

There’s also the recent merger between PGA Tour and the Saudi state-owned LIV Golf. The move was a hole-in-one for the Saudi crown prince and an example of sportswashing — questionable regimes trying to rebrand themselves favorably by associating themselves with beloved sports.

As Vox notes:

If you want to buy influence, buy golf. That’s in essence what the blue-chip consulting firm McKinsey told the Saudi sovereign wealth fund when it provided it with a blueprint for “a high-risk high-reward endeavor” in 2021.

It was codenamed Project Wedge, and sought to boost Saudi Arabia’s global reputation, particularly after the 2018 killing of [journalist Jamal] Khashoggi, [Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s] war in Yemen, and the blackmailing of Saudi royals at the Ritz Carlton in Riyadh.

… Later that year, LIV Golf launched with billions of dollars of Saudi backing. Money was hard to ignore. “LIV, financed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, distributed $255 million in prize money in 2022, including $30 million in bonuses. In all, 52 golfers earned more than $1 million,” according to Golfweek.

This shows that these oil-rich Muslim regimes, far from doing something original, only know to use their petrodollars to figuratively put their logo on things already created and popularized by America and the West.

America will persevere and remain a great power on the global stage. Other nations may copy our ideas and systems and technologies. But one thing they cannot replicate is our people. So long as our people exist, American greatness cannot be rivaled.