Most Americans are not aware that the debtor status of our nation is not particularly novel; we have been a debtor nation for most of our history. This fact serves as one of the major linchipins in Eric Rauchway's Blessed Among Nations: How the World Made America, a economic historical look at how globalization made America then, and is making it now. One of the major points that Rauchway attempts to hammer home is that American exceptionalism is posterior to the conditions which framed the republic, it is not the cause of the peculiarities of the American condition.
One of the major ways in which America is exceptional is its relatively small public sector. In other words, our state doesn't do nearly as much as is the norm among wealthy countries. Rauchway shows that in 1910 there is a close linear relationship between per capita production and the amount spent by the state per capital. The United States stood outside of this trendline, a wealthy nation which spent relatively little in public monies. And so it still is, more or less.
Why? One of the major parameters for Rauchway is the fact that the United States had a diverse stream of immigrants. In contrast, Canada, Australia and Argentina tended to have large immigrant populations, but from only a few nations. The British Dominions naturally drew primarily from the British Isles; while the sources of Argentina and Brazil's immigration streams were mostly from Iberia and Italy. In contrast, the American immigrant stream was polyglot, and no one group dominated the others around the turn of the century. The consequence was that labor was not able to coherently argue for its interests against capital because it was riven with ethnic faction, and the linguistic diversity made even basic organizing different.
Today approximately the same proportion of the American population is foreign born as it was in 1900. We are also again a debtor nation. Finally, we are clearly in the second age of globalization, as flows of capital and labor are on the same order of magnitude as what was the norm before 1914. Rauchway offers one major difference: we are military power, the global policeman. But there is another way in which America differs somewhat: there is one nation which looms particularly large in origins of the foreign born, Mexico. Additionally, adding other Latin American nations into the mix means that a substantial proportion of American immigrants are united by a common language.
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The nature of our debt currently however is different from in the past. We are a debtor nation now primarily as a means to finance our own consumption (housing, credit card, useless college, etc. debt). Previously we actually produced stuff. The debt was foreign investment. Currently it's just the intellectual inertia of foreign central banks that keeps them buying US treasuries.
The consequence was that labor was not able to coherently argue for its interests against capital...
Rather, its (mis-)perceived interests. Hence GM.
The languages you need depend on where you want to do business. In East Asia, it's English and Chinese. In the USA its English and Spanish. In South Asia it's English and Hindi. In Africa its English. Strictly speaking you can do business over the whole planet knowing English only. The other languages may give you a competitive edge.
It is going to matter less that we are the biggest military power in the 21st century because 1. the world will see that it's impossible for a single nation to be the world's policeman (our failures in Iraq and Afghanistan are the first signs of this truth becoming apparent), and 2. the real power to be had will be economic, not military.
America's trading in of their economic power for military power will turn out to be trade we are going to wish we hadn't made. We will end up sitting at the world's bargaining table with our guns, but unable to gain leverage unless there's a fullscale shootout, which of course, all other nations will avoid. Thus the only scenario in which we have the advantage (standing army vs standing army) is going to be largely neutralized at the world's bargaining table in the 21st century.
I'm afraid it is going to turn out to be whoever can manufacture stuff the fastest and sell it the cheapest, wins. Right now, the US is not a player in that game.
China has staked out an early lead so far.
Also see Ed Glaeser's Why Doesn't the U.S. Have a European-Style Welfare State?
"it's just the intellectual inertia of foreign central banks..": and, essentially, only three contribute - China, Japan and Saudi.
After China's population peaks in a few years time, the world may again begin to look different.
I agree with the past statement, countries with advanced economies will become the global superpowers, but I have to disagree with China. History shows that China has always had foreign powers ruling it, and it stayed united. But China has also been its own self destruction. China is a political mess, there is no way an oppressive government will be able to sustain 1.6 billion people. The people will demand change, higher salaries, safer consumer products, and that will make China less competitive. Also, I do not think China has the potential to ever become a superpower (neither the US) China is too reliant on its exports, especially to the US. The US can cut trades with China, and still manage, but China's economy would crumble. There is no global superpower now in a world that is flat.