America The Insolvent
July 23rd, 2018
Watching the world these days, I’m experiencing the same fury that rises up from my gut when the driver in the car ahead me is weaving drunkenly, endangering everyone on the road.
Fury is a normal and rational human response when threatened with unnecessary harm. Women who are groped (or worse) by a disgusting predator like Harvey Weinstein, pensioners whose funds are stolen by Wall Street shysters, everyone who is being fleeced by corporations in search of a few extra dollars this quarter — all have the right to be infuriated.
It’s been especially hard of late for those of us who are “reality”-based; who value data, fundamentals and historical context.
I earn my living by reading, analyzing and making sense of the world, and then working to help orient people’s actions to align with both the current reality and future probabilities. But that’s become pretty damn difficult in a world where the financial markets are rigged and the main news outlets are unwilling (unable?) to cover the real issues, preferring instead to focus on distractions that mainly serve to keep us isolated and divided.
The trajectory our global society is on will not end well, and that infuriates me. And the fact that most of the coming suffering is unnecessary if only we’d make better choices — that really pisses me off.
Here’s just a small smattering of the threats we’ve created for ourselves:
- $247 trillion of global debt, growing exponentially
- Off-budget liabilities well over a quadrillion dollars globally ($220+ trillion in the US alone)
- Massively underfunded pensions mathematically unable to meet their future obligations
- A coming peak in world oil supply somewhere between 2020-2030 (and around 2022 for the US)
- A global economy that requires perpetual growth, but can’t grow for much longer due to planetary resource constraints
- Huge demographic imbalances in Japan, the US, the EU and Russia that will leave too few workers supporting too many elderly
- Collapsing ecosystems and increasing heatwaves on both land and sea, threatening crop failures and food chain disruptions.
Collectively these all point to a future of less. Perhaps even a future of nothing.
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