COLLAPSE

The New Normal Won’t Be Normal

Tariffs, inequality and authoritarianism are dragging us toward collapse

The Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. Photo by Florian Wehde on Unsplash

Nothing has been normal for a while. We had a pandemic that killed more than a million Americans, and we elected a madman whose policies may kill millions more. Artificial intelligence is eliminating our jobs. The planet is burning.

We appear to be standing on the edge of recession

If we are lucky that is all it will be. It could also be a full-blown depression or the end of America’s golden age.

If you wanted to engineer America’s collapse, you’d design policies exactly like Trump’s. The tariffs are an obvious one. So is the determination to take the last few pennies from the poor in order to benefit the rich. Income inequality is an existential threat to the U.S., and we are doing everything possible to increase it.

Trump destroyed all respect other countries had for us by turning away from our allies and cozying up to dictators. He gutted international aid because he is indifferent to the deaths that followed and blind to the power of soft diplomacy.

But consider Germany