Re: "Castigo Cay" by Matthew Bracken

On 7/22/2025 5:12 PM, William Hyde wrote:

Lynn McGuire wrote:

On 7/21/2025 11:35 PM, John Savard wrote:

On Sat, 19 Apr 2025 17:55:16 -0500, Lynn McGuire wrote:
>

In the not so distant future, the USA Dollar has lost most of its value
and annual inflation is running 20% per year.  Gasoline is $60 per
gallon and rationed at 10 gallons per week, so is electricity.  Food and
housing are comparatively expensive.  The taxes have gone up including
new personal healthcare taxes and such.  Many people have left the USA
looking for cheaper places to live.

>
Financial collapse is perhaps the last disaster I would imagine to
hit the United States first and harder than anywhere else.
>
But precisely because the United States seems to be the world's
wealthiest nation, I suppose that overconfidence can lead it to
make mistakes.
>
John Savard

>
I think that financial collapse of the USA is the most prevalent future.   The USA is deficit spending at 30% to 40% and the deficit is increasing.  Keeping old people alive is very expensive as Medicare and Social Security costs are rising rapidly (My wife and I are the beneficiary of both).
>
However, I do not know of any other country on Earth that is in very good financial shape with even 1/10th of the population of the USA.

 The national debt of south Korea is about 40% of GDP, Germany about 65, France 90, the UK 100.  Canada and  the US are both about 120, Japan near 250.
 Where you draw the line of "in very good shape compared to the US" I do not know, but the first two should qualify, and possibly France also.
 Canada would have qualified pre-Covid.  Things can go downhill fast.
 William Hyde

The USA Dollar is the reserve currency of the Earth.  Many countries are holding billions of Dollars as a part of their stability or their requirements as a protectorate of the USA, such as Japan, etc.
That allows the USA to wildly abuse the the rest of the world in our indebtedness.  But, the USA is testing that indebtedness level now and in the future as it rapidly increases with huge annual deficits in the trillions of dollars.
Lynn