Thread by @YNot_1989

Ugh... takes like these from otherwise smart people are nothing new, but they're obviously gonna become a lot more convincing for the next decade.

Short version: The American Empire is not only not in decline, its no where near its peak. (1/11)

The fundamentals: The contiguous territory of the United States is so absurdly advantageous its basically impossible for it to not be the wealthiest and most powerful nation on the planet. RIP @brain4breakfast (2/11)

Now, B4B was quite wrong about US politics, but here's the thing: when your country naturally generates caloric surpluses and can ship goods this cheaply with no risk of invasion, the political system can be anything and you'd still be the wealthiest nation on the planet. (3/11)

The US could be a Stalinist or Fascist totalitarian nightmare, and we'd still have the biggest economy on the planet.

The risk with someone like Trump holding the reins of power isn't that the Empire would fall, its that a madman would have virtually unchecked power. (4/10)

Now, as for climate change, for the United States (and everyone) it would be very bad... for a few years.

Climate change would initially damage the intercoastal waterway, and the mouth of the Mississippi, but even a worst case scenario will take generations to destroy it. (5/11)

Eventually climate change will reach an initial "oh shit!" moment where things are bad, but no where near as bad as they're going to be, and that's when the US tends to really move its weight around. (6/11)

This country could FIX climate change if it wanted to. thousand mile long Sea walls, afforestation/reforestation, melt-water reservoirs, whatever it takes, we could deal with it before its too late. (7/11)

How? Well from 1941 to about 1946 we spent about 43% of our GDP on defense. We only spend about 3% today. If we spent the 43% we did for about 5 years during and just after WWII, that would be about 9 trillion-USD per year. The #GreenNewDeal only costs about $10 trillion. (8/11)

This country could execute 4.5 Green New Deals, and you know what would almost certainly happen? The US economy would get BIGGER as a result. And this is assuming we only spend OUR money. The US wasn't the center of global finance in 1941... (9/11)

Today the entire planet depends on American financial infrastructure. EVERY international transaction is denominated in Dollars, even between member states of the EU, and when we shut a country out of the dollar, you get post-invasion Russia. (10/11)

The whole damn planet is utterly addicted to the American consumer market. Its in the interest of national survival that these countries make sure it stays functioning.

To bring down an Empire like this would take a lot more than the problems we have today. (11/11)

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