Leftist historian Immanuel Wallerstein, for example, asserts that the U.S. has been "a fading global power" since the 1970s.

FORBES: It will take more than a recession to keep the country down.

But as David Autor, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, points out in a new paper on labour market polarisation, fading union power has been more the effect than the cause of occupational shifts.

ECONOMIST: The middle-class task- force

Taking to Crowd Supply for funding, Gridcase's Reactor features an internal 400mAh battery and a crank-powered 500mAh generator that allows users to manually distribute power to their phone's fading cell.

ENGADGET