What America’s Great Unwinding Would Mean for the World.

[cnm]

You’re still doing it. Wreaking threads.

It is true, my participation does tend to cause threads.

 

[cnm]

With relatively minor and very temporary exemptions, that hasn't been the case since WW2. The idea of freedom of the seas is practiced by the world and protected by the US.

Lol. Tell it to Nicaragua and Gaza...

 

[gipper]

1. Social Security and Medicare are earned and paid for entitlements. Welfare and Medicaid are charity. Healthy people need to get off their asses and earn their benefits. Welfare was supposed to have a 2-year time limit.

Policy Basics: Where Do Our Federal Tax Dollars Go? | Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

In fiscal year 2023, the federal government is estimated to spend $6.3 trillion, amounting to 24.2 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP). Of that $6.3 trillion, over $4.8 trillion is...

www.cbpp.org

View attachment 795430

2. The DOD Budget is about $760b. Cutting defense as China builds up its military is moronic. Who would stop a militaristic China from world domination?

3. My solution to the Budget mess is to add a 5% Federal Sales Tax on all goods and services. That would turn a $1T deficit into a $0.25 surplus. Plus we would need a new "Grace Commission" to identify where we could save even more money and eliminate waste and duplication.

You may want to live in a country where the poor die in the gutter, but most Americans don’t. How about cutting corporate welfare and fairly taxing the extreme wealthy?

If we didn’t have a MIC which is a racket, we wouldn’t have so many wars.

China is a major trading partner because our capitalist class moved our manufacturing base there to further enrich themselves. No need to make them an enemy, unless you want to further enrich the war machine.

The Grace Commission was a great idea that died. Nothing of it was ever implemented.

 

[cnm]

The idea of freedom of the seas is practiced by the world and protected by the US.

In regard to trade routes, the Oz experience mirrors that of the US...

 

[22lcidw]

I am sure that the French wish they once had a great superpower status to lose.

France and Spain screwed themselves over and the U.K. became the dominant world power. China was advanced and turned inward with its caste system.

 

[Skylar]

In regard to trade routes, the Oz experience mirrors that of the US...

In terms of the 'unravelling' of an empire, the freedom of the seas is where you'll see the most tangible, impactful effect first.

 

[gipper]

What the US has brought to the world, probably more than anything else, is open oceans. The freedom of traffic on the seas that we take as axiomatic is historically not so at all. And it has transformed the world's economies.

You’re living in the past. The US has become a tyrannical empire imposing its will throughout the world, using its powerful navy to intimidate and murder. No nation in the history world has imposed greater economic sanctions on nations it hates than the US. The US navy enacts these sanctions, which cause great harm on poor nations.

 

[Mac-7]

It has territories taken by force of arms. Empire.

Puerto Rico can become independent whenever it wants

Otherwise you got nuthin’

 

[kyzr]

You may want to live in a country where the poor die in the gutter, but most Americans don’t. How about cutting corporate welfare and fairly taxing the extreme wealthy?
If we didn’t have a MIC which is a racket, we wouldn’t have so many wars.
China is a major trading partner because our capitalist class moved our manufacturing base there to further enrich themselves. No need to make them an enemy, unless you want to further enrich the war machine.
The Grace Commission was a great idea that died. Nothing of it was ever implemented.

1. If we don't fix the Federal Budget and the Deficit soon there will be a lot more people dying in the gutters.
2. Cutting corporate welfare means that cheap foreign labor undercuts US products, so many jobs would be lost. Not a good option.
3. Taxing the wealthy won't fix the problem. They would just move to tax havens.
4. The Military Industrial Complex isn't the boogeyman either. We need a strong military, and to be able to supply our allies with complex systems. More US jobs.
5. Agree moving 6m factories to China was a mistake. Soon Wall Street will pay the price for that error.
6. Correct. Politics stopped the Grace Commission before. Now we need those ideas or we're toast.

 

[Skylar]

You’re living in the past. The US has become a tyrannical empire imposing its will throughout the world, using its powerful navy to intimidate and murder. No nation in the history world has imposed greater economic sanctions on nations it hates than the US. The US navy enacts these sanctions, which cause great harm on poor nations.

I'm talking about the present. I'm not talking about justice or intimidation or murder, or how poor countries fare under the system.

I'm talking about the power of empire. What does it entail, what would its unraveling look like.

Manufacturing in China for consumption in the US is predicated on freedom of the seas. China is resource poor. It imports raw materials based on that freedom, protected by the US, and exports finished products. Resources flow around the world, food flows around the world. Ukrainian wheat fed Africa. Avocados from Chile feed the US.

This is all facilitated by freedom of the seas.

 

[cnm]

Puerto Rico can become independent whenever it wants

Otherwise you got nuthin’

I expect the definition of words to be changed by MAGAts so that they can convince themselves their arguments are valid.

 

[cnm]

It imports raw materials based on that freedom, protected by the US, and exports finished products.

From whom is the US protecting China's trade routes with Australia? Just curious...

 

[Mac-7]

I expect the definition of words to be changed by MAGAts so that they can convince themselves their arguments are valid.

I blew your argument out of the water with Puerto Rico

And you answer with mindless babble

 

[Mindful]

The premise of the topic.

What America’s Great Unwinding Would Mean for the World.​

This is not an America bashing thread, or what they did or didn’t do in the past to gain hegemony.

It’s what would be the effect on the rest of the world if America imploded, atrophied, collapsed, failed.......whatever.

 

[Skylar]

From whom is the US protecting China's trade routes with Australia? Just curious...

Your point demonstrates mine.

There are no hostile seas now. There is very, very little piracy. There are no blockades. There's no privateering. History is *rife* with such attacks on the open sea. But not today. The seas are so open and have been for so long, that the idea that China could be attacked shipping iphones, is a on its face, ludicrous.

That doesn't happen by accident. Freedom of the seas is not the natural state of commerce. That is the result of Empire, the result of careful alliances, a vast military that roams the ocean, and a system of commerce dependent on this freedom of the sea AND America as the indispensable nation enforcing it.

Commerce runs through the US as well, with the backbone of the overwhelming majority of transactions done in dollars.

America's empire is built on business. Not being loved, but being necessary and indispensable.

 

[cnm]

I blew your argument out of the water with Puerto Rico

As though it's not a territory taken by force of arms. Empire.

 

[cnm]

History is *rife* with such attacks on the open sea. But not today.

Since before US hegemony. But you don't answer the question. From whom is the US protecting China's trade routes with Australia?

 

[Skylar]

Since before US hegemony. But you don't answer the question. From whom is the US protecting China's trade routes with Australia?

No one is attacking CHina's shipping....or in almost every case, anyone else's. This is not accidental. This doesn't just 'happen', as demonstrated by history rife with hostile seas, rampant piracy, privateering and blockades.

We've created a system of freedom on the seas so profound and world wide, that generally speaking no one is attacking anyone's shipping.

 

[Richard-H]

The conundrum facing America’s allies is how to cope with a great imperial power in decline that is still a great imperial power.

peculiar cognitive dissonance seems to have taken hold in the world. The Western response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—led and propped up by the United States—has reminded the world that the international order is, if anything, more dependent on American military, economic, and financial might now than only a few years ago. Yet everywhere you turn, there is a sense that the U.S. is in some form of terminal decline; too divided, incoherent, violent, and dysfunctional to sustain its Pax Americana. Moscow and Beijing seem to think that the great American unwinding has already begun, while in Europe, officials worry about a sudden American collapse. “Do we talk about it?” Michel Duclos, a former French ambassador to Syria who remains well connected within Europe’s diplomatic network, told me, somewhat indignantly, after I asked whether an American implosion was ever discussed at the highest levels of government. “We never stop talking about it.”

What America’s Great Unwinding Would Mean for the World

The conundrum facing America’s allies is how to cope with a great imperial power in decline that is still a great imperial power.

www.theatlantic.com

The world has been waiting for America to implode since 1784. It ain't gonna happen no matter how hard Trump's supporters try.

It's particularly humorous that China & Russia are dreaming of this implosion - 2 countries that have barely evolved past feudalism - and only then by copying Western Civilization.

It's only their feudalistic attitudes that compel them, along with European neo-monarchists, to dream of an implosion of Democracy.

The one good thing about Trump and his supporters is that they have caused Americans to stop taking Democracy for granted.

America is, once again, WOKE to fascism, dictatorships and monarchists.

 

[Mindful]

As though it's not a territory taken by force of arms. Empire.

That’s not what this is about. Your petty little hobby horse notwithstanding.

Start your own thread about it if it bothers you that much.