Our clients know we are unabashedly bullish on America. That might seem out of vogue these days with contentious politics, soaring federal debt, and legitimate worries over immigration, overdoses, and a host of other issues. But a recent interview with Robert Bryce, author of many articles and books, including Smaller, Faster, Lighter, Denser, Cheaper: How Innovation Keeps Proving Catastrophes Wrong, caught our eye. He details five reasons to be bullish on the United States.

• Education:Our higher education system continues to be the best. According to recent rankings in the Times Higher Education (THE), seven of the top 10 universities in the world are in the United States, and 16 of the top 25, 22 of the top 50.

• Demographics:As he explains in his book, “the U.S. is the only developed country on the planet with a large and growing population. That will be increasingly important in the future as Europe, Japan and China all have low birth rates and rapidly aging populations, and the U.S. is younger than most of its peers. It ranks 69^th among countries’ median age, Japan ranks third, with its median age of 49.9, with the U.S. at 38.9 years.” He quotes Nicholas Eberstadt, an author and longtime scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who did numerous studies on the aging of countries’ populations and concluded, “The United States is the third most populous country in the world. It has an extraordinarily productive population due to our legal economic system, education, and relative health. Given those advantages, it’s very hard to see how another country is going to surpass the U.S. economically anytime soon.”

• Geography/Agriculture: The U.S. has terrific geography. Unlike China, Russia, Japan, India, and numerous other countries, we don’t have enemies at or near our borders. An excellent book on this topic is calledThe Power of Geography by Tim Marshall. In addition to this, Bryce points out we have some of the world’s most fertile farmland, water with which to farm that land, and an incredible network of inland waterways, including the Port of Catoosa and the Mississippi River System, that allows us to transport vast quantities of farm commodities and other goods at low cost. The U.S. is the world’s leading exporter of agricultural commodities, topping the list for corn, seed cotton, and rice. In fact, the U.S. ranked the top three for 10 out of 21 of the most common agricultural commodities in the world, with a combined production of these commodities totaling nearly 668M tons in 2020. From eggs and milk to beef and cotton, America’s ability to feed itself gives the U.S. food security, and thanks to overseas demand for our farm products, there are significant foreign revenues.

• Energy: According to Bryce’s research and the data available through the Statistical Review of World Energy, the U.S. ranks #1 in natural gas production, #1 in oil production, #1 in nuclear energy production, and #2 in electricity and energy consumption (China is first).

• The Constitution: Bryce rightly points out that 237 years after it was crafted, we are still invoking tenets of this amazing four-page document…whether it’s the amendments, or different articles, the Constitution remains the thing that, imperfect as it may be, holds our great country together. Nowhere else in the world do people talk almost daily about the founding document of their government. It is the envy of the world and the document that created the United States of America, the greatest force for good the world has ever known. Learn more about the Constitution here.

Stay bullish on America!

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