Re: the future long term financial apocalypse of the USA

On Wed, 14 May 2024, Scott Dorsey wrote:

D  <nospam@example.net> wrote:

That's not my view of things, having lived in sweden for at least 2
decades. Can you tell me more of what you experienced in sweden?

>
I didn't see any homeless people.  Of all the people that I met on the

Come to Stockholm and I can show you plenty of homeless people. There's an invasion of gypsies who earn their living by begging, selling drugs, stealing and prostitution. There's also the odd mentally ill person and drug addict in the subway walking from subway car to subway car.
There's been an increase the last couple of decades.

street or in the grocery store, I think I saw only one or two with obvious
untreated major medical conditions.  I have friends who have fairly

This is tricky. I've been to the US more times than I can imagine, and when I see crazy people on the street I don't know if they have untreated medical conditions or not. Is that what you mean? Mental illness?

low-paying jobs and they don't worry from day to day about whether they
will keep their job and whether their apartment will still be available

This is true, in my opinion, compared with the US. In sweden, salaries are low, and workers rights are so strong that companies are less and less competitive internationally. If you're crafty you can live your entire life on government money. Many immigrants from the middle east could net 3000 EUR per month in government money for decades.
That is what paying the worlds highest taxes brings you.

tomorrow.  In doubtful neighborhoods in Stockholm and Gothenburg nobody
came up to me trying to sell me an empty spray can or a stolen cellphone.

Has never happened to me in the US either. But! I have not been to the US for at least 5 years and I mostly visited Chicago, Las Vegas, Boston and Orlando, so could be that other cities I never visited have these problems.
In sweden, if you want to buy stolen phones or drugs, you do it through tiktok or whatsapp. The dealers don't want to get caught, so you won't find them on the street corner but more online. Also goes for prostitution.

Admittedly I have only been for a few months in a couple cities and in
the country near Varberg, but compared with Italy and large chunks of the
US, things seemed stable and well-run.

I give you this. I think swedens public sector is better run than italys. It is way more wasteful, there's more dead-meat in the form of people who do nothing in the public sector all their life, but on the whole, it kind of works, although services have gotten a lot worse the last couple of decades.

Needless to say, there is a reason I moved to another country, and that is
because swedens systems are comind apart and society is breaking up. In
sweden people will stay wage slaves until they are 72 unless they are part
of the golden generation born after WW2 who basically stole everything and
left debts to the rest.

>
Is there any place in the world that isn't that way?  But I'd rather be a
secure wage slave than an insecure one.

Being a secure wage slave is a short step away from being a secure slave. It is so far away from my core values to build my life around safety, that it is difficult to describe.
I'd much rather be free than safe. But, this is a matter of taste, and to a certain amount, of economics. Science has shown that economically free societies are better off in the long run, than socialist planned economies.
But, yes, the socialist planned economies were "safer", but that's a safety I would never want in my life. I value being free and doing what I want with my life too much for any amount of safety.
Oh, and just to be clear, safe/unsafe does not mean taking stupid risks, but I think that should be obvious. But just pointing out to be clear.