- Western Europe needs to figure out quickly how to adapt to a likely diminished or non-existent American role in NATO while at the same time dealing with a very assertive Russia.
- Canada, Australia, and New Zealand are nice but have astronomically high housing prices.
- Japan is struggling with three decades of stagnation, an aging population, and the weak yen.
- Taiwan faces an existential crisis should mainland China attempt to repossess it.
- South Korea is a bright spot, but it has to deal with North Korea and (to a lesser extent) China.
- The developing world is still developing and still needs more time to approach a standard of living that matches that of the developed world.
- China is probably going to overtake the United States in terms of economy, and it has a high standard of living in its urban areas, but living in China means living under CCP rule.
I’m not optimistic about the US in the next few decades, but I’m not optimistic about other developed countries. I’m in my late 30s; sadly if the next 20-30 years are rough, then that’s the rest of my working life…
Vancouver, Toronto, and the surrounding areas have crazy housing prices, but the rest of the country is still mostly okay. These are the two biggest English-speaking cities, and about a third of the country lives in either of them, so they're where most new immigrants tend to go, but there are still tons of other great cities in Canada with better housing prices.
Primary, western europe seems to be last chance for democracy. Like, last democracies standing.
Within the territory of the U.S, states like California and NY and Massachusetts continue to have robust democracies even if the federal government doesn't. In California's case it's often a bit too robust, and we often get ourselves into trouble with ballot propositions that have a lot of popular support even when they're economically unworkable.
I've retreated to a public servant tech role. I was drawn to the theoretical stability of this position and the idea that might effort might do some genuine good for my local community. After several months of being here I'm skeptical that I'll be able to do any good because I'm no good at the internal politics. The stability is somewhat comforting, but only in the sense that I will not starve to death. Inflation seems like it will continue to outpace my potential earnings.
The reason the US continues to grow and thrive despite insane debt is that other countries are worse. Try investing $100B in other markets stably. Now do that 100 times and the chaos of the US is preferred due to the massive debt of other countries, corruption, etc
We’ve lost all fiscal policy stability.
Central bank independence is being severely threatened.
Tax rates are all over the place.
Tariffs are all over the place.
Any industry/company can either be bailed out or completely destroyed based on the whims of the President (Spirit Airlines bailed out for no good reason, and offshore wind energy destroyed for good reason just as an example).
Some may like to think that this is a temporary problem, given the US’s historical fiscal and regulatory stability, but the problem with such actions is that once the floodgates are opened they’re very difficult to close back.
It will be hard for the next President, irrespective of which party they’re in, to resist engaging in similar actions. Heck, even if they’re the most upright individual, they would have to engage in arbitrary executive actions simply to undo some of the actions we have already seen, never mind what we will see for another couple of years.
There are people from scores of countries across the world that will tell us that once corruption slips in at the top, it’s very hard to stop it growing like a cancer.
Thus the US gets worse but less worse than alternatives. So US returns continue to grow.
I think the World is in a major transitional period. The next 5 years will be very rough for most regular Americans. Kind of like in 1939-40. It's going to be bad for a little while and then get better once a new world order is established.
I’ve come to appreciate how few English speaking countries there actually are in the world.
Western Europe seems cute and glamorous but it feels like a lot of people not much above poverty are just trying to survive. (Hence small buildings and their characteristic way of life). Prices are high, taxes high, incomes low. (Sure, they might say they’re less capitalistic and are happier.)
Maybe I’ve also just gotten older but I feel a kind of enthusiasm prevalent in the 80s/90s has been lost.
We went from dreaming about space, computers, and technology to a world focused on social media, analytics, and artificial intelligence. It’s hard to get excited about the latter…
I agree completely we are going through one.
1. a sort of 80 year forth turning kind of cycle (WWII was the end of one of these): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fourth_Turning
2. a larger super cycle of anacyclosis in the West:
https://anacyclosis.info/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anacyclosis
3. a ~250 year cycle of empires rising and falling (US):
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/6177860-the-fate-of-e... https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52962238-principles-for-...
Now I don't think any of these theories perfectly map to the world. It's not black and white; there are shades of gray. The real world just isn't like that. But it's clear to me there are these shorter and longer cycles and we're about to wrap up several of these and a perfect storm is forming.
The US periodically goes through periods of intense corruption, political instability and inequality. It seems like this era is worse because we are living through it right now, but talk to people who were young adults in, say, 1960 to 1975 and they will tell you that between avoiding nuclear war, a President being assassinated, his brother being murdered, a meat grinder war started in dubious circumstances, a powerful and implacable foreign adversary, cops beating the daylight out of people who just wanted their civil rights...it felt like a brutal end of times for America. The generation before then lived through the Depression, wars, scandals (Businessmen's plot), red scare, lavender scare, sputnik, similarly. Just ugh.
Concurrently with these periods the US also made huge strides in science, culture, technology, health, and civil rights. I imagine a very large part of the United States HN readership is here right now because of the 1965 immigration act, the work of ARPA, and so on. Progress is made even in dark times. (Personally, I would not look to (any) government as the creator of good times so much as the building of personal relationships in your community, whether physical or digital. The hippies of 1970 recognized this, as did the beat kids of 1960 - you can't wait for the state to make you happy.)
One question might be not, "can we get through this" but what sort of event will happen that will be the catalyst for moving past the current environment. Obviously one hopes, for example, that it will not take a war of national survival for Americans to get back together. Or a Black Death where so many people die that a new society simply must be born. I think we look at history as if there was a single such event but in reality it is more like a sequence of events over several years that history compresses into one thing.
I've lived here for several decades and I freely admit that the United States can be a violent, chaotic, wild place. But I also remember that it is full of incredible people who have never failed to lend a hand, think creatively, and be open to trying new things. So I would say that people who are discouraged by the current situation (of any political stripe) work on building individual, small scale relationships with people in their community and go from there.
OK, flame away.
The biggest issue to address your question is if the US is able to avoid succumbing completely to fascism -- it's not encouraging but there's some room for hope.
I think if we can get even semi-competent people running the government again, we'll be fine.
Given that the current world order is likely toast, I'd rather hole up in my current spot, where I've got family, friends, a home, and knowledge of the local environment and culture. Plus it's got a relatively forgiving climate, fertile soil, natural harbors, two oceans for defense, an educated populace whose values aren't too different from mine, and a set of mountain ranges if we need to defend ourselves from the rest of the former U.S. Geographically it's hard to do better than the territory occupied by what is currently the United States.
