The disintegration of the American empire

[Adam Strange]

@FreelancePoliceman, it is the opinion of at least three people whose opinions I respect AND WHO HAVE BEEN CONSISTENTLY RIGHT IN THE PAST, that China’s average household income will never catch up to that of the US. At least, not until the average US household has eaten all of its pets.

I don’t know if there will be another world war; I hope not, but you never can tell.

I believe that WWI was caused by European populations overrunning Europe’s ability to grow and import food from the US. Other people have other opinions, but that’s mine, and a resource war is very plausible in the near future, especially since most of China’s food is grown on lowlands that will be threatened by rising seas.

Germany was driven into WWII by its economic treatment by its WWI enemies, who insisted that Germany pay war reparations in addition to its debt, even after its source of future wealth, the coal and industrial lands, were given to France.
Without an industrial sector, other countries lost faith in Germany’s ability to pay for anything and they insisted on receiving more and more Marks when they sold something to the Germans. Hyperinflation ensued, impoverishing Germany further.
Germany’s only recourse was to generate internal demand to keep the factories running. They did this by building weapons for their own government.

Notice that after WWII, the US, in direct contrast, insisted on canceling Germany’s debts and went further and helped them rebuild their economy, which led to the happy land that is Germany today.

Russia is currently being impoverished by its kleptocrats and can’t really win any major wars. The fact that it has nuclear weapons is a problem, but I imagine that Putin does not want to trade his wealthy old age for a radioactive casket.

China’s rulers are facing some huge problems. The country got richer by selling to the US, but its workers are beginning to want a life that is different from slavery, now that they are past starvation, but other countries are competing with China as low-wage sources, so China has to innovate.

China is also facing a declining work force and an aging population. This leads directly to a reduction in internal demand (old people don’t buy stuff). This, coupled with loss of external market share, will mean a general decline in average wealth if another source of demand for their production can’t be found.

This could lead to one of two scenarios.

One, China restores full production to its factories by building weapons to be used against…. Somebody. Anybody. This is not only bad for the world, it would be bad for China.

The second scenario would be one in which China stimulates its economy by investing in cleaner technologies. Lord knows the world needs them.

Now, we (the US) could grow our economy the same way. We could have Biden create a new stimulus program which would put rural Americans back to work in state-supported solar and wind and electric bike, etc., factories.

But will we do that? Probably not. The US government is heavily influenced by people who watch Fox News and Fox News is funded by men who own very polluting industries. Clean energy is not in their interest, so Fox shits on Biden’s stimulus packages and that c***sucker Manchin enables it.

China, in contrast, is not a Republic governed by the rich (yet), and so can implement the better path for themselves and for the world.

But once again, I have to say, prediction is hard. We don’t know how things will go.