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Oh no, the United States has earned the contempt of David Aaronovitch, Anatole Kaletsky, Caitlin Moran, your friends, maybe even Zanny or Xanny or whatever her name is. The Brit chattering classes are talking tough because their pride, what's left of it, has been deeply wounded, but more in the manner of a scrawny kid who just got wedgied/swirlied/etc. by the jock twice his size. Oh he's gonna kick his ass someday, he's gonna go all out, he did karate lessons! The reality is, there is no pares going on. There's a financial sector that could always evaporate overnight, hooked up to an economy about as dynamic as East Germany, with an ever-shrinking military who, by the way, are starting to despise the London types. The French have a claim to freedom of action, Germany had one until recently, but the only way the UK can stay relevant is clinging to America. Hence the equivocation between "Brits are malding" and "the EU should do something".
If you are in the UK, and want to do something that matters to thumb your nose at the US, volunteer for Democrats Abroad or donate to some outlet like the Guardian that Democratic voters read. Seething from the cuck chair of history isn't going to get you anywhere.
You're not wrong, but neither is he
The UK does seethe in the cuck chair of history (LMAO), but a world in which the USA loses the mandate of free market heaven is a world that's much shittier for the USA.
And the way the USA loses said mandate is by doing exactly what is happening, generally being an irrational and chaotic actor who insists on shooting itself in the foot a lot, and then making fun of the people going "hey maybe stop doing that?".
Nothing crazy has happened yet, and maybe nothing will. But the tiny dominos are starting to shift, and they could get bigger. A non exhaustive list:
Some Saudi oil and natgas trades are now settled in RMB.
Some Russian bonds are now denominated in RMB.
SWIFT is absolutely garbage technologically but the USA laughs at anyone who points this out and China is grinding hard to set up an alternative.
BRICS is looking into using a basket of currencies to settle trades. You may say "hah who the fuck cares about BRICS" which is fair. But if BRICS is looking to get away from you, and then you also alienate the EU (and make no mistake, regardless of the cuck chair, the vibes are shifting) you have actually lost your dominant position over the vast majority of humanity
As someone who greatly benefits from Pax Americana, please wake the fuck up and avoid this obvious fail state
It doesn't matter which currency is used to conduct/settle trades: totally economically meaningless, because currencies are freely swappable for any of the buyers & sellers (before and after the settlement). So the only thing that slightly matters in this realm is what currency anyone chooses to save in.
So in this regard (of the US getting some free benefit from being the big dog), the 'dominos starting to fall' would look like the US trade deficit shrinking, as past savers start trying to spend down their USD reserves instead of amassing them. But we're currently in an environment where trump and some of his people are trying their damnedest to intentionally reduce the US trade deficit... So it's muddy, with various winners & losers there, and probably better to look at more solid economic indicators entirely (for any story of the world getting shittier for the US).
As for the prior comment about "the exorbitant privilege of running 6% yearly deficits", it simultaneously seems like a pretty big burden (requiring correct macroeconomic management). Because decade-after-decade, century-after-century, new people continually come along with an incorrect gut-notion understanding of money, freak out about government deficits and debt, and try to wreck the economy in their misunderstanding. So if foreign & domestic people/firms/governments stopped having such a desire to increase their USD savings, and the US government no longer needed to run as large of a deficit to supply those desired savings, quite a lot of people would be even happier & content with that state of affairs (even if it meant taxes were relatively a bit higher compared to spending).
I gesture to those as indicators of shifting sentiment and soft power. You're right, but the journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step, and those are steps. They might stall, I hope they do, but dismissing everything outright is how you eventually get clapped.
I agree with the entirety of the middle of your comment. I was recently exposed to the idea that the CCP would start increasing the strength of the RMB to promote domestic consumption, which I thought was interesting. I think it would both lower the US trade defect and increase desire to save in RMB, especially if it was telegraphed as a long term trend. That being said, the CCP is so locked in on export dominance I'm not sure if they want to (or can). But an interesting thought.
Lol, lmao even. There is nothing people love more than gibs, and nothing they'll irrationally oppose more than taxes. There is no world in which that is politically tenable or happiness increasing.
I don't think that really fits the evidence we've seen in the world. There are tons of people who appear to get warm fuzzy feelings when the government deficit shrinks closer to balanced or even flips to surplus. Many still think fondly of the clinton/gingrich era in the late 90s, even though in reality that was the worst possible case for a government surplus: the rest of the world was still increasingly accumulating USD savings, but the US domestic private sector was dis-saving and running up big private debt unsustainably.
And the taxes going up scenario is about taxes paid, so it need not be the rates changing at all. It would be people spending down savings more and supercharging economic activity, automatically driving up the amount paid in taxes as incomes go up in aggregate. It's kind of hard for anyone to 'feel' that dynamic result as negative.
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I agree. But note that nothing you have said has anything to do with UK elites (who all hate and fear the free market except insofar as it brings foreign capital into London).
I guess my point was they're a canary in the proverbial coal mine, sure maybe they're idiots to laugh at, but eventually once you've bucketed the majority of human beings and economic activity into the "idiots to laugh at" bucket, you might actually be the idiot being laughed at
Ask the Macedonian Phalanx - or for a modern example, it's worth studying elite theory.
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