The Ailing Country, Part II: Economic Issues And Their Solution

I have just written about the vast degradation – moral and religious – of the United States in the last decades (basically, since the time when the end of the Cold War persuaded the US that they could make their own rules, which then took a big turn for the worse when the rules became sexually perverted and enviro-motivated, from Obama on). I would like, here, to touch on some issues that will greatly influence the United States as a power in the next decades. They are (almost) all solvable, if they are recognised.

The problem is that they are, largely, not being recognised. Let us see them together:

Crumbling education

I have just written that the US higher education has become woke, and this is destroying the moral fabric of America. But higher education is also becoming weak, meaning that the quality of knowledge that it imparts is going down. I cringe when I see American Youtubers candidly admit that they don’t know who this guy, “Sergei Prokofiev”, was, or what a “Ministry of Foreign Affair” actually does. There is simply no basic knowledge, no awareness of the fundamentals of Western culture. These are, by the way, people with degrees or studying at university. Cringeworthy in itself and, again, the more so in the blessed lack of awareness of one’s own ignorance. It means that the education system produces people not even aware of their mediocrity. They have a degree, therefore they are fine.

As a Country, you pay for these blunders. I have now told my reader several times than the Russians are running in circles around the Americans in military technology. Why? because they have an excellent education system. If you don’t produce excellence (because even your allegedly elite schools admit too many mediocre people, likely because of their skin colour or grievance score), you will become more and more unable to excel where it really matters. Yes, you can be on the cutting edge in mobile phones largely designed by engineers coming from India and China, but the latter don’t get clearance for military research. The military work, you have to do with your own people. Google “Zumwalt” (not the admiral) or “Gerald Ford” (not the President) to get an idea of how wrong it can go. Meanwhile, a single Kinzhal or Zircon will take down a Gerald Ford, every day of the week. But don’t say that to the Slava Ukraini people!

This problem can be solved if it is recognised and tackled seriously. Harsher curricula, better teachers and professors, way more demanding schools, and no excuses whatever. I can’t see anywhere of that, though.

Crumbling Infrastructure

Trump had sounded the alarm on this, big time. It does not seem he was heard. This is, for sure, an issue that will impact the US economy more and more in the decades to come. A crumbling infrastructure means a stagnating, or worse, economy. There is, at the moment, no money for that, or for Trump’s wall, but for the Ukraine there is all the money you can imagine. Meanwhile, trains carrying toxic cargos derail, people drink polluted water, etc. Apparently, the US have a record number of derailments already. It’s just that most are not of trains carrying toxic materials.

This problem can also be easily solved. A reduction of military expenses deriving from the obvious consideration that the US do not need hundreds of military bases abroad would go some way in freeing the necessary resources at the Federal level. At the State and local ones, it will be about deciding what level of subsidy the staggering number of non-active US population in working age should get. Tough, uh? But you know what: not doing anything will also be tough.

Stupid Military Procurement

Talking of Military: it has long been a problem of the West that their procurement (the European one, too; but most notably the American one) is inefficient and stupidly planned. The idea is that super-duper arm systems – costing two arms and three legs, and 20 years before they work – would allow the US to wage localised expeditionary wars with very little losses and make them, therefore, acceptable to the voters. Stealth airplanes like the F-35 are the best example, but this extends to everything, from tanks to mortars to the above mentioned Zumwalt. As a result, the US have extremely expensive equipment, produced (unless the program is cancelled) in little numbers because it’s so super-duper. Meanwhile, the likes of Rockwell and Northrop-Grumman have become, basically, research institutes spending vast amounts of money in research for very little practical military impact.

This problem is solved by taking leave of the idea that the US must be in every war. War will be waged only if the Country is in danger. If the country is in danger, the Country must accept that a lot of people will die. This will allow the production of vast quantities of not super-super, but certainly lethal, fairly cheap weapons to be used when it is really necessary; which is what Russia does and, in fact, works so well.

De-Industrialisation

This is a social and religious besides being an economic problem. The US have outsourced their industrial production to, say, Mexico and China. As a result, they have become a country of consultants and baristas. Consultants and baristas have this in common: they tend to be more (the latter) or less (the former) rabid leftists. The old-school blue collar specialised workers, on the other hand, were generally based people with no desire to have more than two sexes, often going to church, and raising their children properly. The growing influence of Socialism in the US is also a by-product of this phenomenon, then baristas are urban proletariat (with or without a gender studies degree), and they know it.

This problem is solved by re-importing, first, all strategic industries, and then much of the others. The increase in production costs will be largely compensated by the decrease in transfer payments to the army of unemployed people. The multiplicator effect of countless well paid job will create wealth in the US instead of China. Once again, Trump got it. But he was Orange Man Bad, so he could never be right.

De-Dollarisation

This is the biggest threat to the US economy in the next one-two decades, and one that has no real remedy. To simplify: the US have been able, for decades, to run a big deficit by printing dollars in the form of bonds that were sold the world over. As the Dollar was both the world reserve currency and the most used trade currency, these “dollars” disappeared in the coffers of foreign central banks, which were able to absorb the huge US deficit. This means that the US could live above their means, at the only cost of printing paper, as this paper was in high demand everywhere. Instead of paying this deficit with high inflation, the country could count on, so to speak, countless foreign mattresses below which the money would end. The world needed dollars as – again – both reserve and means of international exchange, so everything was hunky-dory.

But this started to change when the US started not only to bully everyone (as explained in my last post), but also to seize dollar assets of foreign countries and to try to use the financial muscle for political reasons (I will cut you off from the international money markets and prevent you from getting dollars, so you won’t be able to buy abroad the things your economy needs). What started last year was a massive process of de-dollarisation, by which countries are creating mechanisms allowing them to exchange goods and services between them without using dollars (or euros) to pay for them. The consequence of this is that the US not only lose their power of monetary political pressure, but are in deep doodoo themselves; then if I don’t need to have dollars in my coffers to pay for my imports, I do not need to have massive dollar reserves under my mattress, either. Farewell, foreign central banks absorbing any quantity of US bonds. Welcome, new flood of dollars put on the market, and coming from all those mattresses under which they were kept as underpinning of one’s own currency, as trade currency for foreign trade, and as strategic reserve for a rainy day.

This will be a massive problem for the US, because the time will come when the deficit causes inflation, which is exacerbated by the loss of value of the currency due to the vast quantities of dollars the world does not need anymore. Granted, this may well take ten or twenty years; but it’s coming, because you don’t try to seize, together with your fellow highway robbers, $300 billion of another country without everyone wondering who is next.

There is no solution to this. The porcelain has been broken. The West has chosen to be the greatest robber in the history of mankind. The markets are ruthless. You can’t remake yourself a virginity on this. Perhaps the only – partial – remedy would be the immediate reverse of the policies described now (the Great Robbery and the use of the currency for political purpose), the abject apology and the factual show that the US have stopped bullying people around. But again, I think it’s already too late for this.

This means that the US will have to either stop the excessive Federal spending, or pay the price for it (inflation and weakening of the currency, sharpening of social conflicts, increase in strikes, etc…) like everybody else. Again, being Big Homo Rottweiler will become more and more difficult to finance.

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There are challenges ahead for the US, but also opportunities. Renouncing to the military adventures and to the massively expensive, worldwide military bases net will help in solving some of the problems mentioned above. The overhaul of the education system will allow to put the Country of a solid footing for decades to come. The budgetary pressure will contribute to the reduction of the welfare state. The reimporting of manufacturing will create a solid class of reasonably based, hard-working, solid thinking and, very possibly, churchgoing people.

What might come out of it is a Country with a better education, a better morality, a stronger religious feeling, and no desire to bully small countries in Africa (or big countries in Europe) because they don’t believe in affirming perversion.

You never know. Being humiliated in the Ukraine could be the turning of the tide for the old, dear U S of A.