Where is the US economy headed?

If you want to be an ass Builder, you are more than welcome...

It's not even remotely surprising that anyone would suggest China has taken over as the economic superpower after reading one article. Quite ignorant.

The average Chinese earns $3,000 income per year. The average American housholed income was $52,250/year.

It's almost too comical that any ignoramus would try to sell bull shyt of the kind in you post.

By no measure does China have a higher standard of living than the US since standard of living uses per capita for it's calculation.

You are quite ignorant. Do youu understand how debate works?

The Chinese are polluting their environment, and killing themselves - for your presumed economic giant.

These armies of bureaucrats serve a corporate system that will quite literally kill us. They are as cold and disconnected as Mengele. They carry out minute tasks. They are docile. Compliant. They obey. They find their self-worth in the prestige and power of the corporation, in the status of their positions and in their career promotions. They assure themselves of their own goodness through their private acts as husbands, wives, mothers and fathers. They sit on school boards. They go to Rotary. They attend church. It is moral schizophrenia. They erect walls to create an isolated consciousness. They make the lethal goals of ExxonMobil or Goldman Sachs or Raytheon or insurance companies possible. They destroy the ecosystem, the economy and the body politic and turn workingmen and -women into impoverished serfs. They feel nothing.

Sacrifice Zones graphically describes what life is like for people of color and poor people who live on the “wrong side of the tracks” and in “throw-away communities” whose residents receive unequal protection, if any protection at all; such communities contain locally unwanted land uses, or LULUs, and industries deposit pollutants just outside the factory gates. Even after more than three decades of environmental justice mobilization and activism, Lerner had hundred of communities from which to choose for his study; there is no shortage of poisoned communities.

Wow, all seven of those "problems" are mirrored (or worse) in the US, though at least China punishes corruption in their politicians. In the US, they get promoted.

Noticed that.

A long time ago.

No matter how many facts are presented about the economies of China and the USA...

China's reliance on coal reduces life expectancy by 5.5 years, says study
High levels of air pollution will cause 500 million people to lose an aggregate 2.5 billion years from their lives
Air Pollution Attacks Beijing Again : A tourist looks at the Forbidden City as PM25 covers
Heavy smog shrouds Beijing with pollution at hazardous levels. Photograph: Feng Li/Getty Images
Jonathan Kaiman in Beijing
Tuesday 9 July 2013 04.13 EDT

Air pollution causes people in northern China to live an average of 5.5 years shorter than their southern counterparts, according to a study released on Monday which claims to show in unprecedented detail the link between air pollution and life expectancy.

High levels of air pollution in northern China – much of it caused by an over-reliance on burning coal for heat – will cause 500 million people to lose an aggregate 2.5 billion years from their lives, the authors predict in the study, published in the journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The geographic disparity can be traced back to China's Huai River policy which, since it was implemented between 1950 and 1980, has granted free wintertime heating to people living north of the Huai river, a widely-acknowledged dividing line between northern and southern China. Much of that heating comes from the combustion of coal, significantly impacting the region's air quality.

"Using data covering an unusually long timespan – from 1981 through 2000 – the researchers found that air pollution … was about 55% higher north of the river than south of it," the MIT Energy Initiative said in a statement.

"Linking the Chinese pollution data to mortality statistics from 1991 to 2000, the researchers found a sharp difference in mortality rates on either side of the border formed by the Huai River. They also found the variation to be attributable to cardiorespiratory illness, and not to other causes of death."

The researchers, based in Israel, Beijing, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, gauged the region's air quality according to the established metric of "total suspended particulates (TSP)," representing the concentration of certain airborne particles per cubic meter of air.

The study concluded that long-term exposure to air containing 100 micrograms of TSP per cubic meter "is associated with a reduction in life expectancy at birth of about 3.0 years."

Air pollution has been the subject of widespread public outrage in China since January, when Beijing's air quality index (AQI) – a similar metric to TSP – regularly exceeded 500, the scale's maximum reading, for weeks on end. On 12 January, Beijing's AQI hit a record 755, 30 times higher than levels deemed safe by the World Health Organisation.

Past studies have established a link between air pollution and reduced life expectancy. One recent large-scale study concluded that air pollution contributed to 1.2 million premature deaths in China in 2010.

Yet according to Michael Greenstone, an economics professor at MIT and one of the study's authors, this study is the first to precisely quantify their relationship. "Demonstrating that people die a bit earlier [because of pollution] is interesting and helps establish that pollution is bad," he said. "But the most important question, the next question that needed to be answered, is what's the loss of life expectancy? How much should society be willing to pay to avoid high levels of pollution? This study was structured so we could answer that question."

China's central authorities are keenly aware that environmental degradation has become one of the country's leading causes of social unrest. Last month, China's cabinet revealed 10 new measures intended to combat air pollution, and state media reported that Chinese courts can now impose the death penalty on serious polluters.

I have a brother-in-law and one friend who are both regular visitors to China for business purposes, so I'm not relying solely on google here.

...respected research organizations that have built up their credibility over years or providing reliable, peer reviewed, facts.