$123,000,000,000,000

He expects that by 2040 China’s GDP will be $123 trillion, or three times the entire world’s economic output in 2000. He says China’s per capita income will be more than double what is forecast for the European Union. China’s 40 percent share of global GDP will be almost triple that of the United States’ 14 percent.

Fogel finds many reasons for this, including the increased productivity of the 700 million (55 percent) rural Chinese. But he especially stresses “the enormous investment China is making in education.”

While China increasingly invests in its future, America increasingly invests in its past: the elderly. China’s ascent to global economic hegemony could be slowed or derailed by unforeseen scarcities or social fissures. America’s destiny is demographic, and therefore is inexorable and predictable, which makes the nation’s fiscal mismanagement, by both parties, especially shocking.