Debt to tax revenue would make more sense as a metric.
Just imagine if the us empire and its institutions, war machine parted ways with the country and its population. It would not be as hard as one imagines, but would reveal a country that has benefitted in parts by snuggling up to the imperial maxhine, while other paets where abandoned. It would also reveal how deeply the empire structure seeped into the privat social landscape.
I suspect we may not have to imagine this for long. The DOGEing of the federal government pulled a lot of the benefits of the union away from the people, and the recent political maneuvering around voting districts and other inter-state power contests suggest that the notion of the US as one nation and one people with a shared set of values is increasingly at odds with the facts on the ground. We have the most powerful military in the world (probably?), but in terms of the domestic situation, the federalized model is under incredible stress and the bargains that held it together seem to be failing or being intentionally broken. Your description of the empire leaving the country behind - or vice versa - feels less far-fetched than it would have a generation ago.
Several trillion dollars of the debt comes just from Trump reducing taxes for rich people and companies.
It also doesn’t appear on the ALL CAPS list of campaign priorities: https://rncplatform.donaldjtrump.com/. The word “debt” doesn’t appear anywhere in the document. And the word “deficit” appears just once in the context of the trade deficit.
Trump was the first candidate to release a list of itemized priorities in small words and ALL CAPS so the average dumbass could understand. There are many, many things you can say about this list. But it’s very hard to inject ambiguity into what he was running on.
https://static.heritage.org/project2025/2025_MandateForLeade...
Pay no attention to who has oil, how American oil interests — much less obvious ones as ancient as Bushes and Cheney — shape policy, forget the size of the economies or how many billionaires are in each category, openly splashing cash at POTUS. Numbers, boo.
Forget 9/11, do not look at Afghanistan the US was never there, ignore bribes from regional powers. Zionism is the real threat.
You see, The Elders from the malaria ridden unwanted leftover chunks of Jordan’s immaculate creation are pulling the strings of Great Satan. They do it through ‘elite donors’, donors so elite the Heritage Foundation has taken over an entire branch of the American government and in parallel obfuscated foreign funding to “elite” Universities has plagiarist anti-semites with deplorable ideologies smirking in Congress while explaining why The Intifada needs to be more present in American cities and schools. Natural conclusions of The Zionist plot. o_o
The interesting thing about name calling is that where attention is being pointed away from is often more important than the target. Logs and splinters… you know, from that Bible people used to pretend to have read, about an uppity Jew.
Miriam Adelson, Sheldon Adelson, Larry Ellison gave Trump hundreds of millions during his campaign to ensure this war happened.
Netanyahu visited Trump 7 times leading up to this war in Iran.
Every geopolitical expert on this topic has weighed in on it concluding it was obviously a move that only benefits Israel and weakens the US on the global stage.
There were 2 checks on Israel’s power in the Middle East: Iraq and Iran.
It is no coincidence that the USA has invaded both.
After Iran falls, Israel is the only nuclear power in the Middle East. They have ambitions to dominate the entire region, including Lebanon, Syria, and parts of Egypt. Just Google “greater Israel project”.
That leaves everyone dealing in fictions: the fiction that you can reduce debt by cutting taxes, the fiction you can reduce debt by increasing spending, and fictions about how much you really balance the books by targeting only “billionaires” instead of taxing the middle class.
But I agree that if we raised taxes we would just spend more. :(
Having sufficient capacity for violence is indispensable for the existence of a state. You need a military so you can kill people in other countries, and you need police so you can maintain an internal monopoly on violence. You can't have state-funded preschool if you don't have a state. The Ukrainians unfortunately are learning this the hard way right now.
With 2% of GDP USA would take care of all its defense needs. USA does not need 11 aircraft carrier groups, about 100 nuclear-powered submarines, about 2,000 jet fighters, only God knows how many destroyers, to protect itself.
Effectively, no one. The CCP doesn’t have the logistics capability or manpower to manage the largest occupation in the history of the world from half a world away.
They can and do want to destabilize American hegemony, but that doesn’t necessitate an end to the American state. My read is they prefer something like the British model for ex-imperials.
I suspect that imports would become enormously more expensive, which would reveal the catastrophic erosion in worker rights and pay due to neoliberalism. People would be suddenly aware of how much less they are making and how much more the wealthy are taking than was the case 40 years ago. This in turn might result in political instability. But who knows.
One thing would be that GDP per Capita would fall to something like Germany (and I'm been kind there assuming it would only drop that much) there isn't inherently anything about the US that says it's GDP per capita has to be ~50% higher than Germany.
Why? What is the mechanism that links being the reserve currency and (real?) GDP per capita? I can see why being the reserve currency is an advantage for the finical sector, maybe international trade. But I don't understand how if the world stopped trading in dollars and switched to gold or Bitcoin or some basket of currencies, GDP per capita would be majorly impacted.
Being the reserve currency also makes imports cheap but exports unappealingly expensive. Losing that means the inverse; imports are expensive and exports are more appealing internationally, but our economy is set up for cheap imports and not exporting much. It would take a while to realign to doing manufacturing for domestic supply and GDP via exports.
Of course taking a huge pay cut is not something most people are willing to do, so you'd probably actually see mass unemployment and salaries being inflated away.
In response the fed will do the only thing it knows, which is to rev up the money printer even more. But thats going to make all these problems worse, leading to a vicious cycle.
And in the midst of economic chaos, people's danger switches get activated and they will turn to an authoritarian strongman who will make them feel safe.
And generally speaking, once such a person is in power, they can only think of one way to solve their problems, which is to plunder their neighbors by going to war. Thats basically the imperial cycle.
It sucks to be able to see all this coming and yet be powerless to stop it..