Don't forget military spending, we're definitely #1 in that.
this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2026
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I think we’re spending more on debt than that right now. Just read how that’s a major marker of a nation in decline, historically, spending more on debt than military updates.
The British Empire wracked up a ton of war debts and tried to levy taxes on its colonies and that kicked off the Revolutionary War. France spent so much money assisting the colonists to own the Brits that they wound up with their own debt crisis which is what kicked off the French Revolution.
Debt is a big problem but generally the way countries acquire debt is getting involved in a bunch of military entanglements. The US dumped a truly absurd amount of money into the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and nobody really acknowledges that aspect of them. We are well and truly spent, massively overextended, and we desperately need to stay out of military entanglements. We simply don't have the capacity for them. There's tons of domestic crises which have just been festering while to government goes galavanting around the world looking for glory and plunder.
There are two paths forward for the US: one where we make massive military cuts, refocus on addressing domestic problems and addressing the material conditions that have given rise to the far-right, and we start trying to play nice and win countries over through diplomacy and investment the way China does, gracefully managing the decline of the empire and leaving the door open to revitalization and possibly even becoming a positive influence on the world. The second is that we keep pouring more and more money into ensuring we have the most lethal military in the world, we continue trying to dominate the Middle East and elsewhere through military force, we ignore rising costs of living and other domestic problems, we keep becoming more and more of a global pariah, and as extremism gets worse and worse we won't have anything going for us but the military and as our only tool we'll apply it to more and more situations, losing more and more ground until we probably wind up nuking the world rather than accepting that we're no longer "number one."
It is virtually certain that we will follow the second path and avoiding that is really the only worthwhile political goal there is.
Whichever is the dumbest choice we will proudly choose that one, no matter which party holds the presidency.
The US will never cut back on the military
That spending isn't for the people, it's for the "donors"
It's a house of cards, but the American public are utterly beaten into submission, so even if they know it, they do nothing
Until they do
I doubt I'll see those days, but it's be amazing to watch from a safe distance
I don't trust them not to take exactly the same path afterwards though
It seems engrained in what passes for a culture over there
The second option would likely lead to domestic collapse and revolution before “nuking the world.”
Domestic collapse and nuking the world are not mutually exclusive.
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Yeah. I don't understand how anyone in the poor or working class can be a patriot. This country will let you die in the street if you can't pay a bill some rich asshole demands of you.
I hate this stupid holiday.
Lots of maga folks blame everyone else. And they believe if those people are gone, suddenly everything will be fixed.
You know why gas is so expensive? Immigrants.
You know why food is so expensive? Biden.
You know why movies suck? Wokeness.
You know why my children don't talk to me? Obama.
I can't wrap my head around patriotism in general. Seems like social engineering to make people more obedient.
Don’t forget “believing in angels!”
We're also #1 in per capita health care spending, and it's #1 by a lot -- literally twice as much as any other country. This goes fantastically well with that "worst in the developed world in healthcare outcomes" bit.
Capitalism is such a scam.
Gotta be up there for propaganda. Americans appear to hate the idea of taxing billionaires, socialised healthcare, etc
Hey! We're not all that stupid. Just most of us.
Oh for sure, just off of sheer spending in Hollywood, corporate media, social network algorithms, and marketing, America is by far the most propagandized country on Earth.
I figure fuck it, while I'm at it why not just shoot my buddy, take his job, give it to his sworn enemy, hike up gas prices, bomb a village, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe and join the National Guard? I could be elected President.
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- Military expenditure
- Electing a pedo
- Starting pointless wars and never remembering the folly
- Car / truck safety regulations
- Environment
- Welfare
- Taxes
- many many more........
One of the many problems is that it's also #1 on GDP. Therefore GDP must be the One True Metric of a country's success. Therefore it makes sense to shun any policy that might lower GDP.
GDP was meant to make the US look better than it actually does from day 1. Economists warned about GDP's many issues and inaccuracies immediately, but it was still pushed through. The official reason is that no other metrics were available, but it's not entirely true, because the concept of GDP PPP was created a decade or two before GDP nominal.
Wanting decent healthcare, education, life expectancy and a free press is "communism" according to Trump. But he is all in favour of giving pardons to some very unpleasant people - so I guess they're happier!
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sums up that shithole pretty good :)
Where's police abuse?
The Great US Empire is exactly that. It is #1 in projecting power and using gunboat diplomacy. And since WW2, that was all it needed.
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Thank god MAGA can’t read
Kids cant read anymore either. We pay our teachers less than babysitter pay rates, cut school funding and put cops in schools who run away and cower in the parking lots at the first sign of trouble.
Save us from American Exceptionalism.
Oh I think vacation days should be added as well
but but the dow jones!!
Quite frankly, I am OVER IT.
and none of that will change with the current administration or any offshoot thereof
imo, it's often last in citizens who believe ranked statistics.
Wow! We're number one at so many things! We're number one, we're number one!
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