RE: 63% of Americans support getting "free money" to combat inflation
“I don't know what needs to be done in order for people to start to understand that there is no such thing as "free"”
Over the past 40 years, especially over the past 30, the US has accelerated our reliance on debt, increased domestic deindustrialization by exporting our manufacturing base and supply chains overseas, specifically China, eroding national economic and industrial policy by decentralizing policy to the states, focusing on short-term monetary gains, at the expense of long-term economic benefit to the nation at large.
These events have done a few things:
Globalization since the 1990s, has exported industry and jobs, mostly to China, with no real benefit to the US. This has been deindustrializing the US, reducing our Defense Industrial Base, building China's economy, and their military, fueling and encouraging their global ambitions, which is now overlapping the current global order, which will eventually turn into a World War.
This has decelerated per capita income growth in the US, accelerated debt growth, increased debt to income and debt the asset ratios for households and governments. Burdening more Americans with financial stress. And all the while, core credit interest rates, like the FED funds rate, have continually dropped from 1982 until 2016, making debt cheaper and encouraging Americans to be less financially responsible and exploding the US's Debt to GDP ratio. Which has translated into wealth and income inequality, and eventual political polarization.
We have to reverse this process. We have to reshore and nearshore our supply chains. Build out our defense industrial base, have coherent national industrial and economic policy to accomplish these objectives. Improve our domestic infrastructure, harden our cyber security for critical infrastructure, create redundancies for all of the above.
Create comprehensive policy for our friends and allies (Europe, Japan, Australia, South Korea, India, etc…) for economic, diplomatic and military spheres. We will have to help Mexico with their drug cartel problem and encourage stronger political and economic governance. So as we move business operations out of China, we can nearshore them in Mexico (mostly in the US and Canada). We need to strengthen our ties with nation-states across the Americas, by reinvigorating the Organization of American States. We have to establish a type of Monroe Doctrine with the Americas.
We are going to war. We need to be self-sufficient, self-reliant, and establish strong economic, political and military ties with our friends, neighbors and allies. These kinds of policies will increase income in the US, decrease reliance on debt, provide more American jobs, less polarization, more fiscal responsibility, greater work ethic, and a stronger place domestically and in the world. And we have to do this now!
that was amazing! Did you write that all off the top of your head?
Thank you…yeah, I guess I like chasing the rats in my skull, lol.
Kidding aside…I spend a great deal of my time on economics, finance and geopolitics. I'm a macro kind of person. Meaning I look at the big picture stuff. The long-term global history stuff. And on a relative basis (compared to China), the US is in decline.
This makes me incredibly sad, and concerned. But what makes me optimistic is we (US) have been through this before, we've lost our way, initiated policy that was detrimental to our health, then bounced back. And since 2008 we have been more focused on our problem…and we just got a huge fire lit under our ass after Trump, the Woke and the pandemic (Populist “Rightist” President, “Leftist” Social Movement and supply chain vulnerabilities). The infighting, the polarization, Trump, the Woke, and the craziness in the US is a symptom…not the problem.
The problem collectively is we’ve (the US) been on top (sole global power) for too long…we adopted an attitude of “we can't lose,” which has led us to not try as hard. We've gotten spoiled…complacent…decadent…and indolent. People got used to getting something for nothing. Racking up debt and obligations…and not worrying about how it is going to be paid back. People have learned to expect “buy now pay later,” forming into entitlement.
A pervasive focus on identity politics is a symptom of this. A core piece of identity politics is that “I am born with certain attributes, which make me special, which entitles me to something.” And if you don't agree to that entitlement, then you're the enemy, and I'm going to take it from you. Hitler used that philosophy against the Jews, and Slavic peoples. And it was an easy sell to the German population, because they were hurting economically.
The British went through this phenomenon at the tail end of the Victorian Age...which was right before the two World Wars that buried the British in debt, loss of an Empire and reserve currency status.
It's going to take a lot of work to change this trajectory. That is why we have to make these changes now for the betterment of all Americans...and our friends and allies. And we don't have that long. We probably won't see war in the 2020s, but it looks much more likely in the 2030s. So our economic, political, and military complex needs to be tip-top by then.