Supply Chain

How Can 53% of Americans Be So Wrong?

Feb. 13, 2012

It seems a lot of the American people still don't get it.

The most recent Gallup survey of U.S. adults revealed that 53% of them wrongly believe China possesses the world's largest economy.

Dishearteningly, this number has kept going up over the past several years.

Even worse, this majority is really, really wrong.

According to the most recent numbers from the World Bank America's economy remains far and away the globe's biggest - almost 2.5 times bigger than China's ($15 trillion to $6 trillion).

How can so many be so misinformed?

It might be presumptuous inferring too much here. But this serious disconnect from reality mandates at least a few observations.

As the dominant political, cultural, military, and economic player on the planet, America constitutes an empire on a scale far greater than anything humankind has ever seen.

Yes, we face big problems as a people. And, they are real problems. However, they pale in the face of our power.

Ask any American who has spent time overseas and they will tell you the reach of our country is truly remarkable.

Having a majority of the population failing to recognize this truth puts our Republic at risk. It threatens the ability of the Nation to define and maintain our core principles both home and abroad.

Clearly a lot of us need to turn down the noise and ramp up our understanding of what is truly going on in the world.

History doesn't care whether we like being an empire or not.

About the Author

Andrew R. Thomas Blog | Associate Professor of Marketing and International Business

Andrew R. Thomas, Ph.D., is associate professor of marketing and international business at the University of Akron; and, a member of the core faculty at the International School of Management in Paris, France.

He is a bestselling business author/editor, whose 23 books include, most recently, American Shale Energy and the Global Economy: Business and Geopolitical Implications of the Fracking Revolution, The Customer Trap: How to Avoid the Biggest Mistake in Business, Global Supply Chain Security, The Final Journey of the Saturn V, and Soft Landing: Airline Industry Strategy, Service and Safety.

His book The Distribution Trap was awarded the Berry-American Marketing Association Prize for the Best Marketing Book of 2010. Another work, Direct Marketing in Action, was a finalist for the same award in 2008.

Andrew is founding editor-in-chief of the Journal of Transportation Security and a regularly featured analyst for media outlets around the world.

He has traveled to and conducted business in 120 countries on all seven continents.