Much of my silence of recent note has been due to the pre- and post-effects of taking a trip across the United States. The rest is because of the trip itself, and a computer which broke very early on in the proceedings. I’ve seen quite a lot over that ~8,000 miles, much of which I hope to share with you. This will involve many different posts, which I hope to be publishing in fairly short order.
Today, however, I wanted to share a few general thoughts, which I hope to expand upon in later posts. Long story short: the USA, as a political entity, is over. As in, the political superstructure no longer has the economic and social support it needs to survive. The political USA has collapsed, but no one has realised it yet.
Returning to the long story.
The most jaw-dropping thing I saw was the pure level of socioeconomic devastation. It is so pervasive, that any example to the contrary is the exception which proves the rule. For every North Dakota, there is the Midwest. For every Brattleboro, there is an Upstate New York.
For whatever reason — avoiding that detail for the moment — the physical infrastructure of these United States has seen a near-complete lack of maintenance for at least thirty years. This slumming goes beyond mere roads: it includes the very towns and cities in which everyone lives. Suburbs — or, as I prefer, Slumburbistan — are not immune to this either. Their degradation is masked by the manufacture of new developments, like metastasising cancer.
Whatever has been done was reactive, not preventative; the very idea of preventative maintenance is spurned as ‘inefficient’. Now, three years after the beginning of the 2008 Depression, even the reactive maintenance has all but dried up. Overall, the only remaining work is the proverbial ‘shovel-ready’ projects, which are centred almost exclusively around keeping the Eisenhower Interstate System limping along. And that complete lack of any sort of maintenance is showing with glaring clarity.
It isn’t just paint looking a little tired, it’s entire towns being boarded up and abandoned without any attempt to sell the real property. The most spectacular was Florida, Massachusetts. Four years ago it was a quiet little exurban hell with a few stores and an expensive SUV for everyone over 18. Now it is empty save a mere handful of houses, and one, probably unlicensed ‘general store’ out of someone’s front yard. Everything else is literally boarded up and falling into ruin.
There is another example of this: Marmarth, North Dakota. Highest population: 1,318; present population: 136. Although much of North Dakota is doing fairly well, thanks to the State’s fiscal responsibility and ever-helpful oil revenues, Marmarth is a wreck. The view of the city from US Highway 12 is one of a late 19th Century boom town, all boarded up.
This story is repeated across these United States, in varying forms of severity. However, the situation is dire, and is beyond the ability of the US society and political apparatus to reverse. These towns which have dried up and blown away are permanently dead, simply because the boom-economy which built them is itself long since dead.
The biggest problem which these expired and expiring face is that their problems are completely unrecognised at all levels of society and government. They face what I call ‘service desertification’; that is, the contraction of the services network necessary to support habitation. Fuel stations, grocery stores, coffee shops, and so on… these are necessary to support a town, and when they go away, the town is no longer going to survive. These places have no industry or resources, and no prospects for gaining either in the future. They are, simply, the leftovers of a failed way of life, one which has become utterly unsupportable.
A lot of commentators are taking two general sides to ‘solving’ the economic and structural problems of these United States. One side is returning to some Golden Age; the other thinks that reform will bring a Golden Age. The situation has gone beyond that. It is not merely that the past is too expensive to recreate, and that the hypothetical future is likewise unaffordable. Rather, it is simply that these United States, and the political USA, have reached the end of the line, and what we see is how it’s going to end.
Pinning down that end exactly is not possible, but I expect it is much closer than anyone — even myself — expects. The political USA is heading toward a quiet and unexpected dissolution, sometime in the near future. We will all wake up one day, and there will be no more USA; the phones will ring, but no one will answer. These United States will be united no more. It will be a blessing for many if they can remain States.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Letters from a Broken Country 
Mark Mc Hale
05/07/2011
Loved the write up Andrew.
The Following is perhaps and over simplification, but anyhow. As many in the Social Anthropology arena have pointed out, this political/economic demise will manifest in all developed nations within the next few generations and in some nations has already taken root as you have described above in the case of the USA.
As societies mature they become more complex and the institutions and services needed to to run these societies become more and more complex, resulting in an over-stretching of resources and finances. Factor into this an aging population and a rapidly decreasing young age group ( capable of carrying out the running,repair, upkeep and maintenance of these complex systems). This has the knock on effect of an increasing shortfall in revenues due the serious imbalance in the labor market ( as alot of the money goes to pay for the upkeep of the aging populous) and already strained systems. It then transpires that this obviously cannot be maintained due the fact that the money put into the services/systems and used to keep these institutions afloat, eventually gives a “net only” return and then a loss because of this imbalance in labor.Thus, you then have a situation where said services/systems and institutions become seriously degraded and cannot be repaired, or are just closed/abandoned.
Andrew McInnes
14/07/2011
Hi Mark,
Thank you much for your comment! My apologies on taking so long to get back to you.
I would agree with the systemic implosion you outlined, so long as there is a constant slumming of the infrastructure necessary to maintain the society. It is perfectly feasible to establish a steady state economic system, as there are examples of this to be found in history. However, it does necessitate maintenance and infrastructure replacement on a proactive, not reactive, basis.
The underlying economic assumption in what you wrote is that the economy is geared exclusively toward growth, which is of course what we have today. The most critical part of the entire system is the resource restraints: this, more than anything else, including an aging population, will always bring growth-oriented economies to its knees. Growth cannot overcome resource restraints ever, no matter what techno-Utopians might blather.
The end result is not pretty, as you point out. And yes, we get to go there. Sigh…
Thanks again for your thoughts. 🙂
–Andrew
Andrew Brown
05/07/2011
Welcome back from your travels Andrew! And thank you for sharing some of your impressions in this very interesting essay. If I may, I would like to add a comment or two about what your wrote.
Yes, the USA has indeed been undergoing substantial de-industrialization and de-funding for decades now. The incumbent American political duopoly has not seemed to mind that much though as both of them have actually encouraged this trend with their consonant public policies. Moreover it has picked up steam in the last two decades as substantive differences between the two political parties became almost unrecognizable. In short, a Reagan Republican was actually a Clinton Democrat, who was in turn just the same as a Gingrich Republican, who was himself the same as a Bush Republican. Completing the circle, the Democratic President of Change actually modeled himself on being a Reagan Republican. In all instances, and all political incarnations of recent decades, the same ideology remained intact.
Meantime an enormous feeding frenzy was taking place in the USA. As sick as it may sound, while manufacturing in America was being hollowed out and sent overseas to cheaper wage paying regions of the world, the Wall Street financiers were making record profits. It was so perverse in the halcyon Wall Street 1990s that every time a US Corporation announced job cuts, then its stock price would immediately sky rocket. This was the greedy time of enriching the few at the expense of the many.
And the candy land days, back then, seemed to stretch on and on. After all, the computer revolution was throwing in new inventions on a regular basis, and even the normally Conservative US Federal Reserve, believed that good times were here to stay.
They were wrong.
However, for me, a crucial factor that has often been overlooked during the last two decades in the USA, was the rapid economic rise of India and especially China. Between them both, they have half of the world’s population. Better yet, the bulk of their people are willing to work for a fraction of their North American counterparts’ wage. This, for me, is one of the major reasons why the USA has been deliberately hollowed out.
The other major reason for America’s economic decline has been the rapid rise of loosely regulated Trans National Corporations. Once these Corporations got the green light from the American political establishment to shift production overseas, then it has been all downhill for working America.
In a sense, the futuristic and “enduring” New America that President Eisenhower helped build has been systematically destroyed by his grandchildren. For those familiar with history and patterns of collapse, this is nothing new. What is new this time around is that it is happening in a country, that is without peer in terms of military strength and ability in the world. Moreover, if one bothers to look closer at this ironic situation, then one sees that it is not an accident. The annual GDP of the USA has disproportionately favored the Pentagon needs over all else for decades. Consequently, the USA enforces its “will” over overs simply because of its lavishly funded Military Industrial Complex.
Still, even with all of the weapons and fancy military that money can buy, it must be noted that the USA has not managed to win a single War since World War Two. This despite being regularly in a state of War for decades.
Does this mean a total economic collapse in the USA? Well, to be perfectly frank with you, I am not sure. There has been examples in history of similar economic trends. Ancient Rome springs immediately to mind (See Andrew’s excellent section on Rome and US here at Time Out Corner). So, in theory, the crooked political elite in the USA could continue indefinitely ruling from a posture of military strength, but economic weakness.
Yet, one simple action could undermine even that likely scenario: If the default currency for the purchase and sale of petroleum shifts away from the US Dollar, then America’s pipe dream of living off other nation’s credit will be ended forever.
And, as much as it pains me to say it, the US political leadership, Wall Street, and especially the Pentagon all know this. That is why the USA is determined to militarily remain in the Middle East for as long as it can. If it means overthrowing sovereign governments and killing millions of people in the process, then that is deemed a price worth paying in order to maintain USA geopolitical dominance.
A manifest destiny is not yet manifest.
Andrew Brown
05/07/2011
Welcome back from your travels Andrew! And thank you for sharing some of your impressions in this very interesting essay. If I may, I would like to add a comment or two about what you wrote.
Yes, the USA has indeed been undergoing substantial de-industrialization and de-funding for decades now. The incumbent American political duopoly has not seemed to mind that much though as both of them have actually encouraged this trend with their consonant public policies. Moreover it has picked up steam in the last two decades as substantive differences between the two political parties became almost unrecognizable. In short, a Reagan Republican was actually a Clinton Democrat, who was in turn just the same as a Gingrich Republican, who was himself the same as a Bush Republican. Completing the circle, the Democratic President of Change actually modeled himself on being a Reagan Republican. In all instances, and all political incarnations of recent decades, the same ideology remained intact.
Meantime an enormous feeding frenzy was taking place in the USA. As sick as it may sound, while manufacturing in America was being hollowed out and sent overseas to cheaper wage paying regions of the world, the Wall Street financiers were making record profits. It was so perverse in the halcyon Wall Street 1990s that every time a US Corporation announced job cuts, then its stock price would immediately sky rocket. This was the greedy time of enriching the few at the expense of the many.
And the candy land days, back then, seemed to stretch on and on. After all, the computer revolution was throwing in new inventions on a regular basis, and even the normally Conservative US Federal Reserve, believed that good times were here to stay.
They were wrong.
However, for me, a crucial factor that has often been overlooked during the last two decades in the USA, was the rapid economic rise of India and especially China. Between them both, they have half of the world’s population. Better yet, the bulk of their people are willing to work for a fraction of their North American counterparts’ wage. This, for me, is one of the major reasons why the USA has been deliberately hollowed out.
The other major reason for America’s economic decline has been the rapid rise of loosely regulated Trans National Corporations. Once these Corporations got the green light from the American political establishment to shift production overseas, then it has been all downhill for working America.
In a sense, the futuristic and “enduring” New America that President Eisenhower helped build has been systematically destroyed by his grandchildren. For those familiar with history and patterns of collapse, this is nothing new. What is new this time around is that it is happening in a country, that is without peer in terms of military strength and ability in the world. Moreover, if one bothers to look closer at this ironic situation, then one sees that it is not an accident. The annual GDP of the USA has disproportionately favored the Pentagon needs over all else for decades. Consequently, the USA enforces its “will” over overs simply because of its lavishly funded Military Industrial Complex.
Still, even with all of the weapons and fancy military that money can buy, it must be noted that the USA has not managed to win a single War since World War Two. This despite being regularly in a state of War for decades.
Does this mean a total economic collapse in the USA? Well, to be perfectly frank with you, I am not sure. There has been examples in history of similar economic trends. Ancient Rome springs immediately to mind (See Andrew’s excellent section on Rome and US here at Time Out Corner). So, in theory, the crooked political elite in the USA could continue indefinitely ruling from a posture of military strength, but economic weakness.
Yet, one simple action could undermine even that likely scenario: If the default currency for the purchase and sale of petroleum shifts away from the US Dollar, then America’s pipe dream of living off other nation’s credit will be ended forever.
And, as much as it pains me to say it, the US political leadership, Wall Street, and especially the Pentagon all know this. That is why the USA is determined to militarily remain in the Middle East for as long as it can. If it means overthrowing sovereign governments and killing millions of people in the process, then that is deemed a price worth paying in order to maintain USA geopolitical dominance.
A manifest destiny is not yet manifest.
Andrew McInnes
14/07/2011
Hello Andrew!
…I have nothing to add! Want to publish that as a guest post? 😀
Best,
–Andrew
Andrew Brown
15/07/2011
Sure! Why not? It is basically what you and I have already talked about on many occasions. Thank you for adding it as “guest post”!
Regards,
Andrew B