Two nits to pick. One is that you ought to do a readover or get a spellchecker--there are five spelling errors in this. Distracts from your points.
More substantively, I question whether we have to worry about a US financial default in 15 years, because as you said, what is unsustainable can't be sustained, and what can't be sustained will stop. The US, and the world, face a real world default that is much more serious than what happens in the world of money. Democrats deal with the existential threats of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution by plastic, PFAS and others, by greenwashing and tepid actions that are never so much as a quarter enough. Republicans deal with these by denying them, and the Trump team seems oddly determined to make them all worse as fast as possible. How this plays out is impossible to predict...perhaps we get a massive hurricane, or two of them, doing enormous damage made worse by cuts to the weather service and to FEMA; perhaps the administration states explicitly what was first hinted at during Katrina in 2005--you're on your own, the feds are not going to help. Perhaps a pandemic that the HHS will not do anything to avoid or suppress, rages out of control. Perhaps in a belated attempt to rein in the cascading damage from climate change, the administration--or an empowered private consortium--engages in reckless geoengineering experiments that cause worse devastation. it's impossible to predict, but it seems likely to me that 15 years from now it will be a changed world, and the value of US Treasury bonds will be the least of our concerns. And this is because the same irresponsibility that leads to an ever-mounting debt, leads to a refusal to countenance real world limits.
Agreed. Defaulting addresses (but doesn’t really resolve) the debt issue. It will be but one piece of the nightmare of swirling excrement we will all be contending with.
We need to form networks of local friends that can, in sum, address the skills and capabilities needed for each network to weather the storm. Not the entire community, just the network.
Stealth gardening, stealth small animal husbandry, water catchment for the gardens, herbalists, sub Rosa natural medicine, caching supplies, grid down communication and, most important, a formal set of behaviors and principles that enable strangers to work together from the start.
I and many of my neighbors are on Medicaid, and I've recently done some posts about keeping Medicaid given the changes in the "Big Beautiful Bill." But, but, but ... my mind is working ahead. What if the program is largely or entirely discontinued? This could be due to politics, but it could happen because of a debt crisis, that the federal government simply can't afford it anymore and must implement austerity measures. What then? It's not like most people can afford medical care on the open market.
In that case, we need to have mutual aid programs ready to go. What would that entail? Not sure, but I'm thinking local volunteers trained in injury care, mental health care, and the like; evidence-based alternative care, including local production of more-natural medicines, e.g. psilocybin for depression, dessicated livestock thyroids for hypothyroidism; bulk purchases and possibly smuggling of manufactured medications; etc. And that's just health care!
Yes, all of this plus the decline of EROI on evermore difficult to harvest oil driving inflation, and devastating $100 billion climate catastrophes occurring routinely destroying economies. A global recession would be a rosy scenario.
Being a global hegemon, the US Empire gets away with a lot—much with the help of narrative manipulation and having a big military (bullies are like that). Arguing that it has never ‘defaulted’ on its debt obligations is not too dissimilar from it arguing that it has never been directly involved in regime change or invaded/occupied a sovereign nation…there are many who would disagree vehemently.
I’m very much in the camp that the US has technically defaulted on a number of occasions but has manipulated the system and narratives to suggest otherwise. Most go along with this as challenging it risks a lot, especially for the elite who have much invested in the situation at the time.
Those who don’t bend the knee to the Empire and its diktats are often due for a colour revolution or invasion/occupation to, you know, install ‘democracy’ and save the people.
Two nits to pick. One is that you ought to do a readover or get a spellchecker--there are five spelling errors in this. Distracts from your points.
More substantively, I question whether we have to worry about a US financial default in 15 years, because as you said, what is unsustainable can't be sustained, and what can't be sustained will stop. The US, and the world, face a real world default that is much more serious than what happens in the world of money. Democrats deal with the existential threats of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution by plastic, PFAS and others, by greenwashing and tepid actions that are never so much as a quarter enough. Republicans deal with these by denying them, and the Trump team seems oddly determined to make them all worse as fast as possible. How this plays out is impossible to predict...perhaps we get a massive hurricane, or two of them, doing enormous damage made worse by cuts to the weather service and to FEMA; perhaps the administration states explicitly what was first hinted at during Katrina in 2005--you're on your own, the feds are not going to help. Perhaps a pandemic that the HHS will not do anything to avoid or suppress, rages out of control. Perhaps in a belated attempt to rein in the cascading damage from climate change, the administration--or an empowered private consortium--engages in reckless geoengineering experiments that cause worse devastation. it's impossible to predict, but it seems likely to me that 15 years from now it will be a changed world, and the value of US Treasury bonds will be the least of our concerns. And this is because the same irresponsibility that leads to an ever-mounting debt, leads to a refusal to countenance real world limits.
Agreed. Defaulting addresses (but doesn’t really resolve) the debt issue. It will be but one piece of the nightmare of swirling excrement we will all be contending with.
We need to form networks of local friends that can, in sum, address the skills and capabilities needed for each network to weather the storm. Not the entire community, just the network.
Stealth gardening, stealth small animal husbandry, water catchment for the gardens, herbalists, sub Rosa natural medicine, caching supplies, grid down communication and, most important, a formal set of behaviors and principles that enable strangers to work together from the start.
I and many of my neighbors are on Medicaid, and I've recently done some posts about keeping Medicaid given the changes in the "Big Beautiful Bill." But, but, but ... my mind is working ahead. What if the program is largely or entirely discontinued? This could be due to politics, but it could happen because of a debt crisis, that the federal government simply can't afford it anymore and must implement austerity measures. What then? It's not like most people can afford medical care on the open market.
In that case, we need to have mutual aid programs ready to go. What would that entail? Not sure, but I'm thinking local volunteers trained in injury care, mental health care, and the like; evidence-based alternative care, including local production of more-natural medicines, e.g. psilocybin for depression, dessicated livestock thyroids for hypothyroidism; bulk purchases and possibly smuggling of manufactured medications; etc. And that's just health care!
We may need everything you mentioned and more.
Yes, all of this plus the decline of EROI on evermore difficult to harvest oil driving inflation, and devastating $100 billion climate catastrophes occurring routinely destroying economies. A global recession would be a rosy scenario.
Being a global hegemon, the US Empire gets away with a lot—much with the help of narrative manipulation and having a big military (bullies are like that). Arguing that it has never ‘defaulted’ on its debt obligations is not too dissimilar from it arguing that it has never been directly involved in regime change or invaded/occupied a sovereign nation…there are many who would disagree vehemently.
I’m very much in the camp that the US has technically defaulted on a number of occasions but has manipulated the system and narratives to suggest otherwise. Most go along with this as challenging it risks a lot, especially for the elite who have much invested in the situation at the time.
Those who don’t bend the knee to the Empire and its diktats are often due for a colour revolution or invasion/occupation to, you know, install ‘democracy’ and save the people.
Much is in the eye of the beholder.