Trillion dollar deficits have an upside that the other injustices of modern America don’t – they carry within themselves the seeds of their own destruction. As a deficit whisperer, I’ve done my best to make a timetable for when out-of-control spending will bring the whole rotten system tumbling down.
Classical
liberals such as myself have a lot to complain about when we look at how America
is governed. Of all the things that rankle us – be they endless wars, judicial
despotism, bureaucratic overreach, mass incarceration, what Planned Parenthood
does, or any of the other rampant injustices in our society – deficit spending
stands out as the thing which contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction.

In other
words, unlike most of the awful things the US government does, deficit spending
will actually crash the system if it keeps going on like this. And because I am
passionate about all those other injustices, I can watch each uptick of
the deficit looking forward to the coming denouement.
So what
does it mean to be a deficit whisperer? It means I pay careful attention to
where the deficit is now and where it is heading in the future, as I try to
make a timetable for when it brings the whole rotten system tumbling down – which
is bound to happen once the dollar starts looking weak in the eyes of foreign
countries, and America loses the ability to mooch off of other countries’
workforces by exporting dollars.
Back to
the present situation: Sometime in the past week, the US federal budget deficit
exceeded a trillion dollars. I can’t say for certain when it happened;
usdebtclock.org’s estimate of the deficit jumped from $999 billion to $1.007 trillion
overnight on Sunday when they updated their source data. But whatever the
particulars, the outcome is that trillion dollar deficits are back in America,
and this time, they are here to stay.
Unlike
under Obama, when the trillion dollar deficit was a temporary measure taken
during an economic downturn, the Trump deficit has come during a boom time,
with every indication of being the new normal. Indeed, if present trends
continue, the deficit will reach $2 trillion less than three years from
today!
But numbers like a billion and a trillion only have
meaning when you put them in context, and for that, the all-important number is
the debt-to-GDP ratio. For the US, it’s currently 105.6%, but it’s forecast to
reach 121.5% four years in the future. From then on, we can expect a steady
rise. My own prediction is that sometime before 2035, debt will reach double
the GDP.
And then comes the economic meltdown. It probably won’t
be a matter of the US defaulting on the debt, as there is no need to default
when a country can print its own currency. Rather, foreign traders will simply
lose confidence in the dollar once they realize that the US can only remain
solvent by rapidly inflating its currency.
This will spark a chain reaction, as the dollar will
lose most of its value once international trade has moved on to some other
currency. Trillions of US dollars will be shipped home in short order, leading
to severe inflation, an end to most imports, and an economic collapse worse than
the Great Depression. I predict that, due to inflation and economic decline, the
price of oil will reach $1000/barrel sometime before 2045.
The central government will prove unable to meet the
challenges posed by the aging population and the end of material security and
military power. Without the ability to maintain order or keep the goods
flowing, the regime in Washington is bound to fall. I predict that by 2055, the
United States will have broken up into separate countries, putting an end to the
imperialistic
wars, judicial despotism, bureaucratic overreach, mass incarceration, and taxpayer
funded abortions.
It will
be brutal, but it will be worth it. And once the people have been rudely
awakened from the state of thoughtless torpor in which they are presently
maintained by their endless comforts and amusements, then maybe, just maybe,
one of those new countries will evolve into something that resembles the kind
of republic that the Founders intended for America to become.
