I wouldn’t oversell the power transition thing. First there are very few data points on empire shifts. Nothing like a data set you can draw conclusions from. What about the Byzantine Empire? What about the Ottoman? They don’t fit your model. Second the US isn’t insolvent. We are just spendthrift. There’s a difference. We’re like the kid with a massive trust fund but we only get an allowance every year. We spend that allowance in a month and run up our credit bill, but there’s still $100m in the bank, we just can’t get to it. The US can raise taxes a couple of points and raise the retirement age a couple of years and all the budget howling ceases. The doomed narrative is fundamentally wrong.
I wouldn’t oversell the power transition thing. First there are very few data points on empire shifts. Nothing like a data set you can draw conclusions from. What about the Byzantine Empire? What about the Ottoman? They don’t fit your model. Second the US isn’t insolvent. We are just spendthrift. There’s a difference. We’re like the kid with a massive trust fund but we only get an allowance every year. We spend that allowance in a month and run up our credit bill, but there’s still $100m in the bank, we just can’t get to it. The US can raise taxes a couple of points and raise the retirement age a couple of years and all the budget howling ceases. The doomed narrative is fundamentally wrong.