Is America Heading Towards a Major Collapse?
Hey folks,
Lot of cnocern right now in the global economy with where things are headed in the future. Is the US headed for major collapse? Something to think about, especially for the students out there. Please share your thoughts/opinions and read this article before you do so, it's short.
If we don't have social security, medicare & medicaid reform in the near future we're going to be screwed in about 25yrs.
US hegemony will last for at least another half a century. Nothing to worry about haha
I know one thing , if the US loses its naval hegemony , physical commodities traders are going to be in some pain. So much of our economy is built on global trade , which requires freedom of the seas and a guarantor of freedom of the seas.
But since US naval displacement is greater than that of the next 5 navies put together , it is unlikely.
Credits
Do you think that the South China Islands dispute is a threat to freedom of the seas beyond that land dispute ?
Or Iran's shut down the straight of Hormuz if attacked ?
I think both cases could be avoided through non interference. The US has 4 aircraft carriers in the gulf seems kinda provactive to me isnt that how vietnam Started with the gulf of tokin incident.
The British had a doctrine of having a navy twice that of the next country. I think in 2013 the major powers no longer fight with conventional warefare.
One thing that you need to consider is that even if the US cedes some of their naval hegemony to another country (China is the only viable candidate, but not for a long time) just remember that other countries may very well have parallel interests in terms of freedom of the seas as the US. If China were to deny trade inside its perimeter islands, it would hurt itself much more than the US or any other western country.
In fact, all developed nations have a vested interest in freedom of the seas in order to foster trade. The main threats come from things like the Somali pirates and maybe a gangster-state such as a Putin-run Russia. Fortunately for the rest of the world, Russia does not have the most convenient access to world shipping lanes.
Social Security is in surplus till 2030s it will need reform but its not bankrupt today . What has happened is the feds borrowed from the SS fund and now decided they wont pay it back. How about cancelling the debt to the federal reserve before screwing people that paid into the system.
Medicaid is in trouble because of rising health care cost but at the least the govt program has lower over head costs
The real reason is huge security spending at home 2 million people in prison costs more to send someone to prison than college. Thanks to the prison industrial complex
Plus the overstretched empire which will drive this country bankrupt. The us has many advantages that allow us to keep taxes lower than other countries like cheap land, mineral wealth and economies of scale. Countries like canada need higher marginal tax to maintain the same standard of education, roads etc
If SS isn't reformed soon, the problem is going to get bigger each year as income and payrolls taxes would have to increase exponentially to cover the cost. Or the Federal Govt. could implicitly default on the debt by printing a ton of money leading to hyperinflation.
True, I just dont like the term SS is bankrupt. The Federal govt decides to raid SS and issues t-bills and now wont pay them back.
i forecast arctic warfare in the near term future... seriously
many of us won't live long enough to collect SS
I'm not saying that other major economies don't have an interest in freedom of the seas. It's just almost certain that a group of several countries co-ordinating among themselves will eventually have conflicts. Some of those conflicts will escalate. Global trade has been around for a while. So has war.
The idea that major powers can perpetually co-operate for perpetual peace ignores the fact that major powers have other , competing interests. Moreover , there were plenty of books written at the turn of the 20th century with just this logic. That ..uh .. didn't work out so well.
The US needs meaningful reform plus a return to traditional limited government
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No, the US is not heading towards a "major collapse". Are you actually serious with this? Do you really think this could possibly be the case? Like the US will resemble Zimbabwe or the Central African Republic in 20 years because of Social Security spending? Look, we just had a massive financial crisis in 2008, about as close to a "collapse" as we could have, and the country, while worse off, still is more or less the same as it was in 2007.
People make these ridiculous sensationalist claims all the time because they know it will get people to read their stuff, and because no one ever calls them out for being wrong, and if people do, they can just say the collapse hasn't come yet but rather will come at some vague point in the future.
i feel sorry for you and your future employer
Oh yeah I'm totally an incompetent investment banking analyst because I don't believe that America is headed for a major collapse. Believing that social security and medicaid spending will spell the end of America is pretty much a prerequisite for being able to properly align graphs in slides and search for precedent transactions.
Please provide insight as to how a lack of SS reform won't cause a huge problem in the future. Not necessarily a collapse, but an issue.
It certainly will be an issue, America constantly has tons of "issues", and yet none of them have caused a collapse. If starting two wars while simultaneously lowering taxes didn't end us, nothing will. Most empires end when they overextend themselves internationally, we've been doing that for decades and are still here.
"There is no comparison between fear and greed. Fear is instant, pervasive and intense. Greed is slower. Fear hits."
Literal answer: no, the US isn't going to collapse in the next year or so, it's just a lot of people who are losing their cool. There have been a lot of structural changes and more are coming. See this as an opportunity.
Why do you think I chose to switch to this industry in late 2007? Because......anytime the establishment is shaken, there are opportunities. Capitalize on them.
There's a very good argument for raising the age of Social Security to 75. When SS was first instituted , male life expectancy was 50 or so. Now it's 79. The system was never designed to support people who cannot work for 15 years. It was also designed with the implicit assumption of a perpetually increasing working population.
Long story short / big picture, the system was really great when it was built but the routine upgrades and adjustments have been neglected. Part of it is stupidity/laziness (dems, really, c'mon), but also keep in mind that the GOP argues against the existence of many programs and does its part to run them into the ground so that they can justify dismantling them. Honestly, between the two parties, the average person (aka....everyone on this site, and anyone making more than $20K and less than $10MM) is getting totally screwed. Eventually, people will wake up, but not after a good hard kick in the ass.
But what the hell do I know, I'm a liberal arts major.
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