To Save the USA - We MUST Stop Being a 70+% Consumption Economy
The United States is currently a 70+% consumption economy. Meaning for every $10 of economic activity? $7+ dollars of it is someone buying something.
Of course, every economy is to some degree predicated upon consumption. But 70+% is dangerously stupid - and unsustainable. And it has led US to decades of terrible government policy - which has made matters inexorably worse.
Think about it logically for but a moment. A country that makes almost nothing - and buys almost everything? Is perpetually teetering on the edge of disaster.
The instant consumer spending slows even a little - the economy slows a LOT.
And the economy never grows very rapidly either. Because to do so it would take a vast majority of the population all simultaneously getting income increases - and then all of them instantaneously spending most or all of that money. Which, of course, almost never happens.
That likelihood is even less when you have tens of millions of illegal aliens - and tens of millions of legal alien work visa recipients - all driving down incomes.
That likelihood is WAY less when Artificial Intelligence (AI) starts replacing humans in jobs by the tens of millions. Because robots don’t buy things. Neither do the humans the robots replaced - because they are no longer making money to spend.
US Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth has been increasingly anemic for decades. Since 2005, we have had only one year of 3+% GDP growth.
And that was 2021. When government had just spent trillions of dollars on the China Virus - and had begun letting people out of their government-imposed economic prisons. The next year US GDP dropped to a paltry 2.2% - exactly what it was in pre-China Virus 2019.
Speaking of the government spending trillions of dollars…. Being a 70+% consumption economy? Is why the government’s answer to everything - is to spend trillions of dollars.
“Stimulus” bills are the government’s answer to every economic problem. Because every economic problem is: Consumers are no longer consuming fast and big enough. So the government rushes in to fund their continued consuming.
The current Republican majority steadfastly refuses to cut any of the the hundreds of billions of annual dollars in waste, fraud and abuse Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have painted with a fire hose. In no small part because there are bribing constituencies for every penny spent.
Which is too bad. Because Argentinian President Javier Milei is demonstrating the massive benefits of massively cutting government. He in 2024 emphatically reduced government spending and regulations. He cut cabinet positions by 50%. And in 2025 Argentina’s economy is growing at 8%. And inflation has dropped from 25% to 2.7%.
Meanwhile, to keep spending money - our government is perpetually borrowing more and more money. Leaving the private sector less and less money to actually, you know, grow the economy. Which is one the main reasons why we haven’t had a real 3+% GDP year since 2005.
The US government now owes just about $37 trillion. It paid $1.2 trillion last year just in interest on the debt. Both of those numbers are, of course, rocketing skyward. Which means in ten years we will look back on anemic 2.2% GDP growth as “The Good Ole Days.”
A 70+% consumer economy? Means consumers keep consuming long after they run out of money. US household debt in 2024 was $18 trillion - or $105,056 per household. Credit card debt - with its ridiculous 20+% interest rates? Was $1.21 trillion at the end of 2024 - or $6,455 per card holder.
A 70+% consumer economy? Means the LAST thing the government wants you doing is saving your money. A penny saved - is a penny not spent.
At the end of 2024 the personal savings rate was an exceedingly lame 3.8%. 27% of Americans have zero savings. 34% of Millennials (age 29 to 44) have zero savings. Almost half of Americans earning less than $50,000 per year have zero savings.
Oh: And the government that keeps spending us into oblivion? Has been stealing from our government-mandated communal savings to do it.
Social Security and Medicare, our government’s alleged savings for our lives in retirement? Are $175+ trillion short in the next thirty years.
The Social Security payouts are already a tiny fraction of most pay-ins. Because the program is robbed blind, broke and broken. And DC still currently taxes you on those anemic payouts. And though ending that taxation is the right thing to do? If DC succeeds - the total debt grows even faster.
Medicare claim-denials-by-government are ever-increasing. Because the money for your surgery? Was spent decades ago by one of DC’s very many Departments of Idiocy. Plus interest.
All of this personal debt. And corporate debt. And government debt. Are the result of the government force-converting US from a nation that makes things - to a nation that buys things.
We’re left holding the shopping bag. And the debt bag. While our nation crumbles all around us.
My cautious optimism during those early DOGE days faded fast—once it became clear that it was political optics as usual. We’d been had. Again. But this one hurt more—betrayal cuts deeper when it comes from a place you trusted.
Almost enough to make someone trade the mainland for an island paradise.
(Oh wait…😎)