| ▲ | apical_dendrite 5 days ago |
| How can you possibly compare Britain in 1945 to the US today? By 1945 Britain had spent all of its gold reserves, it had stopped exporting anything due to the war but as an island nation needed massive imports to survive. It had a restless global empire that was costing huge sums of money to maintain and a massive military left over from the war. The situation was so bad that food was rationed for years after the war and there were coal shortages. Britain was at a point where without massive aid from the US huge numbers of people would die of cold or starvation. The US has huge surpluses of food and energy. The idea that we're in such a crisis that we have to eat our own seed corn (massive cuts to science research which is one of the main drivers of US economic growth) is crazy. |
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| ▲ | philwelch 5 days ago | parent [-] |
| > How can you possibly compare Britain in 1945 to the US today? By 1945 Britain had spent all of its gold reserves, it had stopped exporting anything due to the war but as an island nation needed massive imports to survive. It had a restless global empire that was costing huge sums of money to maintain and a massive military left over from the war. The situation was so bad that food was rationed for years after the war and there were coal shortages. Up until you got to the rationing and coal shortages I think the parallels with the contemporary US are pretty obvious. |
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| ▲ | apical_dendrite 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | No, not really. The fact that we import so much is a function of our wealth, not our poverty. We import food because we like to have a variety of produce year round and we like alcohol from foreign countries and we can afford it. Britain was importing food because otherwise there would be famine. These are not equivalent situations. | | |
| ▲ | philwelch 5 days ago | parent [-] | | It's true that the United States does not depend on food and energy imports. However, the growing fiscal situation and unsustainable costs of maintaining global hegemony are very similar to that of Britain in the 20th century, as is the declining competitiveness of American industry. You're never going to find any exact or perfect historical parallels but there are enough similarities to cause concern. | | |
| ▲ | apical_dendrite 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | No, it really, really isn't. The key difference is that the US can finance deficits and Britain couldn't. There's huge appetite all over the world to buy US government debt and to invest in the US. The UK needed massive foreign aid just to survive. | | |
| ▲ | philwelch 4 days ago | parent [-] | | As long as you can still find someone to lend you money, debt isn’t a problem? Good to know. |
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| ▲ | patagurbon 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The US is not really in trouble because of maintaining global hegemony. It’s in trouble because of repeated tax cuts by Republicans that are too popular for Democrats to fully unravel, and deficit spending largely caused or enacted by Republican administrations. Maintaining global hegemony really isn’t that costly to the US as a percent of GDP. It’s foolishness like the Middle East wars that are costly. | |
| ▲ | OfficeChad 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | [dead] |
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| ▲ | OfficeChad 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | [dead] |
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