This guy usually knows what he's talking about.
Most nations first rot from the inside before some barbarian finally kicks the door down to the palace. If they hadn't rotted that barbarian would have never gotten over the border. Look at the culture, it's values, it's elites and the state of the institutions and infrastructure. The fact that most of our advanced weapons platforms have either been cancelled or toned down to such a state as to make them into only show case toys, should say a lot to us.
If Paul Craig Roberts knew what he was talking about, we would be all on the corner selling apples and pencils by now.
The dollars' decline will drive up the price of all inputs except U.S. labor, which is being substituted out of production functions and replaced with foreign labor.
The decline of the U.S. dollar would make U.S. labor more competitive against foreign labor. What he's basically saying is this: "The decline of the U.S. dollar will drive up the price of everything except U.S. labor -- but since there's a positive side of that I have to pretend those jobs are going to disappear some other way."
They either hold them just as they do now, as currency reserves. Or they spend them on real exports from the US. There are no other options.
If they want tons of export goods, it doesn't make much sense to worry about lots of imports or loss of US jobs. If they hold them, it doesn't make much sense to worry about loss of US purchasing power over our own imports.
If they all do the same thing at once, they get a vastly worse price. They sell dollars back into the US, when it is weak. Meaning we wipe out the overhang on relatively favorable terms. (The effective US money supply is also goosed, unless the Fed deliberately counteracts this).
There can indeed be economic dislocation costs from changing the direction of flows, from changing the detailed pattern of demand, helping this and hurting that industry or service. And there can be financial disruption. But none of these things are the cause of US prosperity and economic growth.
That is caused by real productivity of US workers and industry. Which is high, about the highest in the world, and increasing. The US economy continues to grow 3-4% per year like clockwork. Can we have a recession for a year due to dislocations, and slower growth for a couple years? Certainly. We had that when the stock market fell. But it didn't end the world, nor did the economy stay down for long.
Because, for the nth time, US prosperity is caused by US work, not by foreigners' currency speculations.
Those who bet against the continued vitality of the US economy are always wrong. As wrong as those who bet against the US military, proclaiming quagmires everywhere. They do not understand the underpinings of US successes. They imagine they are all some kind of trick, smoke, exceptional and temporary. They are nothing of the kind.
True enough. I didn't read much I disagreed with at all. The only thing that made me suspicious was when the author mentioned privatization of SS. I couldn't find the connection with that and loss of jobs and currency value.
Corporations including airlines are even now outsourcing SERVICE jobs which are about all that is left. Soon there will be nobody left that can afford to buy anything the corporations make [overseas] and they will have shot themeselves in the foot. Much in this article makes sense even though a few sentences are irrelevant hyperbole.
We are indeed destroying the middle class and creating a multi-cultural third world nation. No denying that...