Charles

Expect pro-business Republicans to propose some water down form of Universal Basic Income. Something along the lines of the EIC.

Capitalism requires consumers.

As for the end of the empire, the real problem isn't the United States losing power, it's the authoritarian nature of the countries that power is shifting to.

Republican politicians don't care if American consumers have no money to spend: US corporations make better money in the rest of the world.

For nearly 100 years, Republican administrations have created a recession, depression or worldwide financial collapse by their second term.

This administration is on the fast track for an economic disaster of monumental, nuclear bomb proportions.

And no Republican politician will lift a finger to help those hardest hit, not even in the shabbiest Hoover/Trumpville they helped create.

Depraved people get what they deserve.

@ 1,

You're assuming that the Republinazis are rational, when they're not. They're all-in on the euphoric, racist revenge fantasy the Twitler regime is carrying out, in which they force all the uppity wimmins, homos, blacks, and Latinos back into our servile places or they'll lynch us.

It's more likely they'll change the national motto from "e pluribus unum" to "I've got mine, so fuck you."

This evil Republinazi regime isn't a government, it's a slow motion national murder-suicide.

@2 is spot on. The consequences could well be a revolution of French proportions -- when all the poor people with guns turn (because you can only narcotize them with propaganda for so long; eventually the pinpricks of reality will wake them up), they will turn quickly, abruptly, and violently.

The American empire has been in decline since.... oh, the Vietnam war is a convienant milestone. Obama was our Marcus Aurelius - a true statesman who appeared late in the game and was only able to slow, not halt, the rate of decline. Trump is a symptom, not a cause, of our civilization’s disintegration. However, he’s doing his level best to make sure there will be no regrouping and no recovery. This bitch is too sick. We’re done on the world stage. May take another few decades to become utterly obvious to all.

But what will we do if the American Empire doesn't collapse, and instead just sort of muddles along through Trump and beyond, more or less unchanged?

Whatever will we do if Global Capitalism doesn't do us the great favor of dramatically collapsing for us? What will we say to each other if the sky simply stays right up there where it is now, instead of falling?

Perhaps we will simply wait a bit, and then once again loudly announce the End Times are upon us, and congratulate each other for these proclamations. It feels so good to do this! It is so very gratifying! We have been perfectly satisfied with this form of release every other time the Sky has not-fallen; long experience suggests we will be entirely content with it the next time around, too.

@3 - Wishful thinking at best. The merest review of history reveals that to be clearly false. Oh, and do please define "depravity" for us, will you? kthxbai.

@6 - Or Gilead. A Christo-fascist government ruling with big data surveillance and new police technologies, pestered by a decentralized militancy of the oppressed. Not pretty. Not a future I want. I don't want a French revolution either. Too bloody, all of it.

@1 - Republicans will enact UBI? Just give out "free cash" to everyone? Everyone?? I'd be surprised. What about all that "takers" & "welfare queens" & "homelessness is personal failure" rhetoric from their Strong Father ideology? Not to mention their entrenched racism. It's a pretty deeply centered worldview, I could be wrong (and I hope I am), but that psychological stuff doesn't shift easily. Like science, institutional worldviews change one funeral at a time.

Seriously friends, if our national currency loses it's primacy in the world ("petrodollars") --and it most likely will in our lifetime, maybe even soon-- the impacts of that will be much farther reaching than most people are aware. We could end up with hyperinflation, famine, epidemics, nomadic homelessness. Blah blah scary, sure, but our artificially-sustained dollar's collapse --if sudden-- would be an economic earthquake of global proportions. A slow decline will still be awful to watch & live through. IS awful to be currently watching & living through...

Non-interest-bearing currencies, specifically local currencies, are going to likely be very important to maintaining a functioning society. Just like they were during the Great Depression.

@10

You sound like the sort of person who's got a nice little stash of bitcoin tucked away somewhere.

The primacy of the US Dollar is something far bigger than just oil pricing, futures & repo. The rest of the repo market alone is bigger, and that in turn is just a fraction of the international flows of USD.

The international status of the USD isn't understood by many, true enough, but even fewer understand just how hard it would be at this point to unravel all of the trading, pricing, contracting, swapping, insuring, and god knows what else engaging USD internationally, or to replace USD in all that with an instrument with an even slightly different set of legal statuses around the world.

It could happen, eventually, over a long period of time, but at present the Global Vampire Squid is showing no inclination to move to anything else, despite the perennial harrumphing you might hear from one corner or another -- read the ticker, not the press releases and proclamations. It doesn't help that three of the four plausible replacement candidates -- GBP, CHF, and EUR -- have all suffered much larger reputational blows than the USD in recent memory (the other is JPY, which hasn't inspired much enthusiasm in a long while).

@9 so you even understand what the fuck you type? Do you picture some science fiction Road Warrior dystopia? Or can you grasp what the trends already in motion actually mean? Or is it too much for you.

The data is out there. It doesn’t look good. I mean it’s not a complete apocalypse. But shouldn’t we act before that? It’s pretty fucking stupid to wait until trends become irreversible certainties so dumbshits like you panic.

Our middle class is shrinking.
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/12/09/the-american-middle-class-is-losing-ground/

Our rate of infant mortality is rising in comparison to the other wealthy democracies.
https://www.npr.org/2017/05/12/528098789/u-s-has-the-worst-rate-of-maternal-deaths-in-the-developed-world

US life expectancy is actually contracting.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db293.pdf

You know Russia didn’t blow away and disappear. Neither did Argentina. Or Greece. Or Iraq. Or... hundreds of examples. But they did “collapse” in one drastic sense or another.

You think America is some magic exception to the laws of demographics, economics, environmental science, and thermodynamics or something?

According to a whole slew of important metrics America is already a shadow of what it was thirty years ago. So, gee, let’s all pretend everything is fine. Seems legit.

@10

The old school, business-minded Republicans have already been talking about it.
Marco Rubio was talking about expanding the earned income credit (EIC).
It's a way to incentivize people to continue to work low-paying dead-end jobs.
It's also a way to keep money circulating in the economy, and it has good Optics.
It will also help prevent real Universal Basic Income.
It's the same sort of strategy that was used when the Heritage Foundation came up with the Affordable Care Act during the Clinton administration. Mitt Romney, a Republican, was the first to implement the Heritage Foundation health care plan.

Bitcoin, I wish I'd bought some in the early days! No, I have no bitcoin. I'm not sure I really trust it either. Seems volatile. Not what you want in a complementary currency.

True, there may be no obvious replacement for the USDs position in the world's economies, but it if becomes untrustworthy, or more volatile... (Iraq switched oil sales to Euros, and look what we did to them in retaliation) ...people might use whatever is handy and available at the time.
Or, perhaps corporations will actually follow B. Lietaer's suggestion and create the "Terra", a non-interest-bearing global exchange currency backed by a "basket of goods". That would be non-national too, putting all nations on a back foot.
The sky may not 'fall", but it's definitely getting lower... haven't you noticed?

@2, @4 & @5, @6, @7, @10 & @14 (treacle, not Ken): Agreed, and thank you all.
@Ken: Um....the U.S. doesn't need to be a fossil fuel exporter now. Climate change is real, and we are already experiencing the impact hrough bizarre weather extremes (just ask anyone in the Midwest, on Atlantic Coast and Gulf of Mexico)! If oil prices are higher, how is that good for us? Did you just fall and hit your head on a rock?

"...The consequences could well be a revolution of French proportions..."

Man. I really hope not. Because that was an abject disaster.

The French revolution led to The Terror and and a Monarchy/dictatorship, Napoleon, and a decade and half of war that slaughtered millions of people. Napoleon was the first leader in history to mobilize an entire population — man, woman, and child — of a country and ALL it's assets for war. (But they did get some fantastic bridges, roads, architecture, and an few looted obelisks out of it.)

And then there was an another monarchy on top of that.

It took almost another 70 years of horror and poverty after the revolution for there to be anything close to a lasting peaceful democracy in France (the Third Republic in 1870).

What the revolution did was murder or starve two generations of intellectuals, merchants, and teachers. It crushed France and provided fertile ground for a murderous dictatorship to "rescue" the starving populace.

@12

But whatever will you do if, by some chance, America manages to deny you the the satisfaction of a properly dramatic collapse?

What if the big dumb thing just keeps lurching and wobbling along without ever falling over, like an elderly alcoholic finding his way home? What on Earth will you do with yourself?

@17 Please stop if it starts to hurt.

Allow an Independent to play devil's advocate here - First, my overall reaction and merely my for-what-it's-worth opinion, even on a second reading - BS. There is nothing worse than a bowl of "scary" hyperbolic pseudo facts, mix in wads of divisive and negative opinion, season with a post-apocalyptic image and there we have it - the perfect recipe to scare the shit out of casual or partisan readers so, yeah BS. Second - this 'Republicans are Nazi racists' messaging is just plain tiring and fallacious. In fact the rather all-to-easy pejorative stereotyping in the article takes it from something of possible interesting content to purely a divisive opinion piece.

Here are a couple of facts, or even yes if you like, merely differing opinions, to mull over before we write off America as a dystopian, isolationist wasteland born from the loins of deplorable Trumptards...

1) Socialism and the Current Day Democratic Party are so similar as to be one and the same. May I present you Venezuela; a current-day financial, cultural and social disaster counter-offer littered with hard, irrefutable facts. Do not roll your eyes - this is a perfect fishbowl study of Socialism at its best and its worst - yes, it's the same socialist messaging that Bernie and Sawant tout. Do it - take a hard look at both the Venezuelan Socialism appearing to work; then when it doesn't - as the cracks appear slowly, slowly - followed by the very rapid and predictable escalation of collapse as socialism inevitable and EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. fails the Citizens it was "supposed" to help. There is always an end to other people's money along with the mysterious acquisition of massive amounts of loot always turning up in the tip-of-the-pyramid family's coffers. It's a human thing. At bottom, we are all rapacious animals - just with different prices. Ask yourselves - how much money is Chávez' daughter currently worth compared to the ENTIRE monetary worth of all Citizens of Venezuela today. Jeez - how'd that happen?

2) Republicans are no more racist than Democrats or Independents. This is a flipped and quite dishonest, disingenuous script from the 60's. Let's not visit that rathole here. Just knock it the hell off - it merely fans the flame of the divisive, bigoted, biased and partisan garbage we all seem to be mired in lately. Certainly not constructive or helpful if we can't even talk to each other without tucking up our skirts and pulling out the knives...

3) Yes, it certainly would be very nice if we did not SUPPORT THE ENTIRE planet's war-like bickering mendacious tendencies. Our overwhelmingly large bear-share percentage payments of NATO - which gets us nothing for our massive outlay of money but DEAD AMERICANS, the UN - nothing again but contemptuous but quite enthusiastic money grubbing, Foreign Aid to sworn Enemies that want us ALL dead, the Military Bases, the Military payroll - it's ruinous and it's happening on ALL our backs. If the EU could stand on it's own two feet without starting another big honking war as soon as our back is turned, and refrain from dragging us in once-a-flippin-gain... we would be a far wealthier and healthier Country and far better able to clean our own stables first before we start pitching hay to everybody else. If you want to squabble about the strikes on Syria for the chemical attacks or not-chemical-attacks - that's a different subject for a different time.

4) Odd that you would discount Japan, Australia, England, Canada, South America, much of Asia, the Baltics, Egypt, Russia and many other Countries that would certainly continue, and very happily, trade and partner with America. The European Union is nothing special other than a disturbing Dictatorship of Brussels and Merkel... and how anybody thinks that's good is beyond me - and, in reality, it's a bit rag-tag these days. The EU is slowly but surely running out of, your guessed it - other people's money. And we know, that's never a good time after the belt-tightening event - and everybody is always SO surprised, every single time. Historically, to escape the much deserved blame, "somebody" starts a war to refill the pockets of the Elites and Corporations none of us have ever even heard of before - while all us little folks die for some kinda-sorta-unknown-why-are-we-here reason. The culmination - all our shit is gone in rubble, our kids are in the ground and the same rich that caused it all in the first place - well, they just get even richer. Schengen is all but dead at this point. The EU can't even do what the United States has accomplished very handily, with no particular trumpet blowing, for a couple hundred years. Do NOT sell our Country short versus the EU. That is CRAP propaganda. We are 50 united States with a land mass and population two and a half times the size of the European Union. Our population is about 3/4 the EU population size; we generally share a common language, a common currency and yes, we get along - other than our incessant bickering - pretty darned well - especially on an individual basis - to know each other is to like or at least tolerate each other. And our Federal Government would NEVER get away with what Brussels gets away with on a daily basis.

5) We have, at least at the moment, a decently strong and still World-traded dollar as our currency. Of course we don't have the gold to back it up anymore - and more fool us. Another subject, another day. Bottom line - if push comes to shove - even the most bitter of our American Citizens, regardless of our political or ideological differences would snap shoulder-to-shoulder with defensive fury if anybody pokes our anthill. It's an American thing...

So - there is my devil's advocate - a bit more opinionated, less fact-based and certainly more biased than I intended - I see how you can get on a roll there. That said, there are solid facts, not easily manipulated statistics, but facts that are available for all of us - it would be nice if we could all get in the same boat and THEN fight over who gets the red or blue oar....

@20

So when socialism fails, it's a structural fault, baked in to the process itself, but when capitalism fails (and it does, regularly, for millions of people; don't pretend otherwise)(if you need help: child sweatshop workers from the global South come to mind), it's clearly because they're immoral, lazy bastards with drug problems, from broken homes.

Uh huh. Sure thing.

That was a throw away loser rebuttal, if it actually was, there... There is no structural fault built into Socialism - it cannot survive when human beings are involved. Maybe machines, not humans. Not now - not in the near future. Capitalism has never failed in America. Wobbled once or twice but failed - no. And, FYI, we ARE talking about the United States of America - if you want to talk about other Sovereign Countries - chose another forum. I'm not sure who you are referring to as lazy, immoral, etc but if you are referring to South Americans, that's a pretty big asshole thing to say in my opinion - either by inferring that's what the business owners of America think or in actual accusation of the people themselves. You can say it was sarcastic but it wasn't. I knew what you meant and it does you no credit.

Yawn, isn’t it about time we try the otherside of the record. Pretty soon these articles wont be worth the bottom of the birdcage.

@20,
Well put. You score some good points. Personally, I believe Charles' predictions are a bit of a stretch.

First of all, America is a Republic not an Empire. Pres. Trump, whether one likes him or loathes him is an elected executive not an emperor. America has no colonies (we do have Territories some of which want to become States) and doesn't wish to collect any. Capitalism is our economic system for better or for worse. Sure, I can to a degree agree that America is on the decline economically. We're no longer producing as much as we are consuming. It's been this since the late 70's. But unemployment is decreasing. And economic growth is happening albeit slightly.

America will morph in many ways. But America will remain the "land of the free and the home of the brave" among other good things well into Charles' retirement here, in America decades from now.

Yes, Trumpism is accelerating the fall from primacy of the US. But tilt the map and just as much is attrubutable to the economic rise of China; depends on the perspective. As for Europe, there Trumpism is forcing the leading countries to reconsider their traditional (and oh so quaint) history of bickering and guarding their Regionalisms. European countries resist acting like adults, resist learning how to play cohesively together to leverage their potential power. And as for Europe, it's unclear that they will eventually pull it together (Brexit), or that they wouldn't ultimately pull it together without Trump. From America's perspective, it's easy to characterize this as a negative, as apocalyptic; and maybe it is all that. But, Events/History have an inexhorable quality. Thus IMHO we spend way too much time on this lamenting, blaming, dire-making. Whatever it is, it's coming in some form, Trump or no Trump. How will we deal with it, is the question. Great piece Charles!
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Yes, Trumpism is accelerating the fall from primacy of the US. But tilt the map and just as much is attrubutable to the economic rise of China; depends on the perspective. As for Europe, there Trumpism is forcing the leading countries to reconsider their traditional (and oh so quaint) history of bickering and guarding their Regionalisms. European countries resist acting like adults, resist learning how to play cohesively together to leverage their potential power. And as for Europe, it's unclear that they will eventually pull it together (Brexit), or that they wouldn't ultimately pull it together without Trump. From America's perspective, it's easy to characterize this as a negative, as apocalyptic; and maybe it is all that. But, Events/History have an inexhorable quality. Thus IMHO we spend way too much time on this lamenting, blaming, dire-making. Whatever it is, it's coming in some form, Trump or no Trump. And life will be life. Great piece Charles!

@22
Lol.

Daimler and Airbus should defy the sanctions and force the issue.
They cannily spotted their US plants in some deep-red states. No way will Republicans allow the value of those assets to be eroded.
Boeing they would punish, but not their competitor, the one who provides a fair portion of good jobs in the backwards South.
And no Republican in the country supports increasing the price of a Benz or the gas to run it.

“It turns out that Trump's dismantling of the work of a black president is the dismantling of the American empire.” Perhaps, not such a bad thing.

Prolly gonna take down Social Security too.
(the list is long) That’s a damn shame.
Buh-Bye! Social safety net.
Nice knowin’ ya.

I shouldn’t bitch, I suppose, hell -- they bought our Government, fair and square, and were motivated, dedicated and bright enough to make it all totally legit. SSTFU.

Is there a bottom to this American catastrophe/far alt right wing Utopia?

Read Charles, read. https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Fall-Great-Powers-ebook/dp/B004774792

Diamond’s “Collapse”, too.

The end of the empire is a good thing. Hopefully it will result in the decomposition of the US into affiliated bioregions.

Meanwhile, Putin is laughing his filthy, putrid ass off.

Ok Chicken Little, let's get back together in 7 years... maybe you can do a part II to your little essay stating how absurdly wrong you were?