I believe so. It is also what allows us (Americans) to live well beyond our means through exporting our debt to other countries.
That stops if we are no longer the world's reserve currency.
The way I understand the situation is that our way of life will drastically change should this come to pass. Mortgages, car loans, personal credit cards - we are a debt based society.
Hopefully most on this site have been eradicating their debt as much as possible these past few years as part of their prepping.
Consider the shock and behavior shift it would take to move back to one where if you didn't have the money, you would do without until you did because the credit just is not available.
Let's be real, we aren't living beyond our means. We have one of the largest landmasses in the world, and it is replete with resources.
We would've been and should have been totally self sufficient, as American companies have basically made most innovations the world has seen and had we not allowed them to give them to China for cheap manufacturing, we would have had essentially a world monopoly on everything.
Which we could do again.
Bring jobs back to the U.S., cut frivolous spending on social bullshit and we would generally be fine.
Without skilled labor at all levels, those 'resources' will stay where they are and not become intermediate or final goods.
We have 10 lawyers for one engineer. Twenty (or more) realtors per engineer. Paper pusher to producer ratio is about 100 to 1, and rising. Most engineers are old, getting older. Plants are closing, technicians aren't replaced.
But tattoo 'artists' are increasing in numbers.
It's not that easy to come back from a loss of technical knowledge. It takes a while.
Just starting out of college, I was talking with an older engineer about a well known company that was in the process of going down the tubes. I asked him what he thought was causing that company's demise, and he said "They lost their technology". I'm like "what??" Then he said "They lost their 3 key engineers, and would never recover from the lost talent". He was absolutely correct. Some people are very hard to replace, in spite of what some managers like to think.
Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't that the only thing giving the dollar any value?
I believe so. It is also what allows us (Americans) to live well beyond our means through exporting our debt to other countries. That stops if we are no longer the world's reserve currency.
The way I understand the situation is that our way of life will drastically change should this come to pass. Mortgages, car loans, personal credit cards - we are a debt based society.
Hopefully most on this site have been eradicating their debt as much as possible these past few years as part of their prepping.
Consider the shock and behavior shift it would take to move back to one where if you didn't have the money, you would do without until you did because the credit just is not available.
Let's be real, we aren't living beyond our means. We have one of the largest landmasses in the world, and it is replete with resources.
We would've been and should have been totally self sufficient, as American companies have basically made most innovations the world has seen and had we not allowed them to give them to China for cheap manufacturing, we would have had essentially a world monopoly on everything.
Which we could do again.
Bring jobs back to the U.S., cut frivolous spending on social bullshit and we would generally be fine.
Without skilled labor at all levels, those 'resources' will stay where they are and not become intermediate or final goods.
We have 10 lawyers for one engineer. Twenty (or more) realtors per engineer. Paper pusher to producer ratio is about 100 to 1, and rising. Most engineers are old, getting older. Plants are closing, technicians aren't replaced.
But tattoo 'artists' are increasing in numbers.
It's not that easy to come back from a loss of technical knowledge. It takes a while.
Just starting out of college, I was talking with an older engineer about a well known company that was in the process of going down the tubes. I asked him what he thought was causing that company's demise, and he said "They lost their technology". I'm like "what??" Then he said "They lost their 3 key engineers, and would never recover from the lost talent". He was absolutely correct. Some people are very hard to replace, in spite of what some managers like to think.