Positive Reconstruction in 2025 - A Foul Wind Approaches

In keeping with the theme of four, we will present the next four years through the four elements: wind, fire, earth and water. Like the four cardinal directions (north, south, east and west), or the four states of matter (gas, liquid, solid and plasma), the four elements allow us an opportunity to frame the coming catastrophe in a way familiar to the ancients. And in so doing, remind us that humans have lived through such times before. If we listen to the land and our collective memory, we will get through this, and might even end up better off for it. 

You can't have one without the others.

         On the Great Plains of North America, we feel the wind ever-present. It shuffles dirt from here to there. Scatters dry leaves just to mock those foolish enough to think raking them worth their time. When it hits your home at just the right angle, it howls and moans through the rafters, raising hairs on the back of the neck. When the spring air moves thick with dew across the land, the wind brings replenishing rain. But in the dry times, the wind brings more than just desiccation and decay. A strong wind can spread a wildfire 200 feet a minute or more. To rejuvenate the land, nature decrees it first must burn. And woe to those who think they can catch the wind. For those who set the winds loose, never control where they blow. A foul wind surely blows through the land today. It dries the plants and soil. One simply has to walk outside to get a whiff of the acrid smell of smoke on the breeze. And we know what will follow it…

Something wicked this way comes...

The second half of the year plays out much like the first half. Controversial take, we know. But what do you want from a government led by an infirm old man and gray suits in corporate boardrooms. The ‘anti-illegal immigrant’ raids continue unabated. More families ripped apart, more ‘administrative errors’ dumping US citizens into concentration camps alongside those the administration believes don’t belong here. In this climate of intimidation and fear, big media companies reach merger settlements with the government. Effectively, they pony up a ‘pay to play’ tax; they pay the Feds a regulatory fee and they get to break every anti-trust law and regulation. Those running the big banks would probably shake their heads and wonder what took the media companies so long to figure out how the game is played.

Tariffs continue to get slapped on, then taken off, countries and industries at the dear leader’s whims. Which in effect means people’s taxes fluctuate month to month, or even week to week. All while the power to tax and set budgets is supposed to reside with Congress. The dangers in letting the President raise his own funds from taxes levied without the consent of the governed, sets the country up for the kind of crisis which triggered the English Civil War. To make that very long story way too short, Charles I didn’t want to call a Parliament to raise taxes, so he invented legal fictions for raising taxes on his own. In perhaps the most notorious example, Charles tried to impose ‘ship money’ taxes on English counties which did not, in fact, lie on the coast. That an English county without access to the sea should be expected to pay money to the crown in lieu of building ships for the defense of its non-existent coastline appeared as absurd to 17th century Englishmen as the national-security case being made today.

But back to the present. In modern America, we are told citizens must now pay import taxes on goods from all over the world. Why? Because fentanyl might come from some of those countries, therefore we have a national emergency which requires raising everyone’s taxes. But the money raised won’t go to pay for drug treatment or interdiction. Instead, it will pay for tax cuts for the rich. The important part appears to be that the executive can raise funds without the consent or oversight of Congress. 

History isn't even trying to be subtle.

On top of the inconsistent justifications involved, the regime's tax, opps, tariff policy, gets portrayed to the media as cunning and good negotiating. But for most sectors, it has quickly become an excuse to raise prices. Just as supply chain issues in the wake of the Covid pandemic became an excuse to raise prices. Whether or not current price hikes count as greedflation is somewhat in the eye of the beholder, but the effect on prices is not ambiguous; they go up, and don’t come back down. 

These higher prices don’t just make households poorer though. They also slow economic activity, dampening demand for goods and services. And when that happens, the rich are content to make less profit, right? Nope. Employers cut back hours, then start firing people. The job market cools off, with fewer openings posted and even fewer actual hirings taking place. This isn’t to say that overall unemployment rises, though. Many people look for work off the books, moving into a gray zone of cash-only employment. Between counting only people unemployed for 6 months and including those actively seeking work, the rate remains relatively low, ticking up only a bit to 5%.

 And as this happens, the regime leans hard on the Federal Reserve to drop interest rates by expanding the money supply. This both fuels inflation, mostly in assets, while also pushing the value of the dollar lower. Year to date, the dollar has dropped 9% against a basket of currencies. By the end of the year, the dollar will have dropped another 6% against the standard basket of currencies, ending the year 15% lower.

Importantly, the rising cost of debt service in the bond market begins to attract investment. Money that might have been lent to a small business start up or to a large firm looking to expand domestic production dries up. After all, the government is legally obligated to pay its debts, while for profit businesses can always fail and go bankrupt. Thus, as prices rise and send a potential signal that there’s money to be made producing goods here in the US, many businesses can’t find the capital to make those investments. 

         And how do the people respond to all this, in the optimistic scenario?

"Why boycott? It never changed anything!" 
- some neo-liberal think piece writer, late 2025.

Americans respond by NOT doing the thing Americans seem to love the most; they refuse to buy things from companies that collaborate with the regime. This achieves two goals: it hits the bottom lines of companies Americans perceive as directly benefitting from the current regime, and it allows people to re-localize their economies, buying from friends and neighbors. Better than simply ‘voting harder’, boycotts hit corporate bottom lines immediately, and cannot be easily manipulated or meddled with, unlike elections. Initially, finding local substitutes for typical big box slop feels alien and uncomfortable for many, but as the boycotts go on, Americans come to understand what they lost when they traded in the corner store for the franchise. In some corners of the country, people even begin liking interacting with fellow citizens they might have otherwise never met. We know this last bit is a little rosy, but we did promise a positive vision, didn’t we?

On a less cheery note, more Americans find themselves forced to hide undocumented immigrants, green-card holders, and even naturalized citizens. Even as individuals and families find refuges, the reason for this doesn't go away. The streets are not safe for anyone of the wrong skin tone, and, in some instances, for people who speak out against the government. The climactic moment of the year comes in late December. With the election of a self-described democratic socialist and naturalized US citizen as mayor of America’s largest city, the regime feels compelled to act. ICE agents descend on New York City just before Christmas with a mission to arrest the mayor-elect. The city explodes in days of rioting. More ominously, the NYPD fractures, with half of the force supporting the actions of the Feds, and the other half refusing to work with them. In an act of supreme cowardice, the New York state government refuses to intervene or even protest the Federal government’s actions. After days of warrantless searching, thousands of injuries, and a billion dollars of property damage, ICE cannot locate the mayor-elect. On New Year's Eve, he posts a video to social media showing him formally requesting political asylum in Canada. 

The regime celebrates by installing the runner-up as mayor. In response, many New York businesses cease withholding Federal taxes from their employees’ paychecks in protest. Strikes and work slowdowns follow. Renegade city utility workers shut off services to Federal buildings across the city. The regime’s actions drew condemnation in the United Nations. In response, the US State Department announces that Canada will be added to this list of state sponsors of terror. The Canadian military is put on high alert in the event of a US incursion, but the regime elects not to test the resolve of their northern neighbor. Instead of invasion, the regime in Washington announces that the US will withdraw from NATO AND the UN the following year.

This wasn't the first image that came up when I searched "angry Canada,'
but it was the best.

Next week, we will check in on Marty Jr, Allison, Bobby and Jillian, and see how this timeline treats the kids and grandkids of our protagonists from Inequality by Design, which comes out August 25th in print and e-book. And it's available for pre-order now!

Positive Reconstruction and the Four Horsemen of the Dumbpocalypse

In the interest of literary allusion, let’s call the four trends discussed last week the Four Horsemen of the Dumbpocalypse. Make no mistake, what’s being done to our country is dumb, as well as revealing the nature of the oligarchy which rules us. In many ways, the American people today are much like the Christians of first-century Rome - ruled by elites we feel powerless to challenge. And the oligarchy wants to bring about the destruction of the state and the creation of feudal technocracy. Don’t take my word for it, read what their so-called thought leaders write! 

With that in mind, it is our guess that these horsemen have been set loose quite intentionally. They seek to lay waste to this country to build a world run by unaccountable CEOs and mass surveillance. It appears their blueprint is a version of what Russia experienced after the collapse of the Soviet Union; a plummeting living standards, combined with dirt cheap assets to be bought up by the oligarchs, while reinforcing the internal security state to crush domestic dissent and maintain an illusion of power and authority.

Without further ado, let’s meet the four horsemen of the dumbpocalypse!

The Horsemen: A Rendering in Crayon and Ink. Circa 2025. Artist Unknown

ICE: The White Horse a.k.a. Conquest

Then I saw when the Lamb broke one of the seven seals, and I heard one of the four living creatures saying as with a voice of thunder, "Come!" I looked, and behold, a white horse, and he who sat on it had a bow; and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer.

• Revelations 6:1-2

Just as everyone lives as the hero of their own story, so do the agents of state power view themselves as the upholders of law and order. They’re working for the glory of Rome, I mean, Making America Great Again, so It’s appropriate, I suppose, that those building a white ethno-state would be associated with the white horse. No one these days is trying to be particularly subtle… I did not know this, but in the original Greek, this horseman is named Zelos. Translation, the first horseman is ‘zealous’ and revels in conquest and glory for the empire.

Over the past months, we’ve watched the administration transform ICE from a duplicate enforcement agency (it was created in 2002 to do the job USCPB already did, meaning it’s a duplicate agency), into an unaccountable secret police force. With the recently passed budget, ICE funding goes from about $20 billion to $180 billion, making it better funded than the US Marine Corps. On top of that, the current regime allows ICE to operate outside the law, with little-to-no accountability. They’ve already built one concentration camp and have been given a mandate to fill it, in addition to the numerous private prisons they currently operate. Alligator Auschwitz gets billed as a pass-through facility, which would be funny if it wasn’t a human rights violation in the making, but the regime also sends deportees to gulags in El Salvador, thus outsourcing prison jobs and making a mockery of both their claims to be making America safe and bringing good-paying jobs back to America. 

If ICE were a starter kit for dictators, it would be the deluxe package, with human rights abuses thrown in for free! And if you feel that this won’t affect you, we know they’re already deporting naturalized citizens. Do you really think a lawless agency operated by a man-child who told a reporter they’re looking at suspending habeas corpus, would hesitate to start snatching US citizens off the street if the dear leader said so?

I suspect that turning ICE into a secret police force, thus ripping off whatever veneer remains on the notion that all the policing going on in the US is ‘for your protection,’ will make people MORE likely to resort to radical action in the face of state repression. The counterpoint to this argument would be that Americans are fat, lazy cowards who won’t stand up for themselves. Or put more charitably, we’ve got enough nice things we won’t want to see broken by taking on a heavily armed and increasingly repressive state. 

Ten years ago, I might have agreed with this sentiment. After all, we watched both Democrat and Republican administrations turn the weapons of the empire against the American people. And instead of pushback, the media justified these violations of the Bill of Rights as acceptable in the context of the War on Terror. When the Bush administration kidnapped ‘terrorists’ and held them indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay, they weren’t targeting US citizens. (except that one time…) When the Obama administration used drones to kill Afghans 8,000 miles away, they weren’t targeting US citizens (wait, they did that too?).

How long will Americans be able to call ourselves the land of the free while being, in fact, quite unfree on our own streets?

Tariff - The Red Horse a.k.a. War

When He broke the second seal, I heard the second living creature saying, "Come". And another, a red horse, went out; and to him who sat on it, it was granted to take peace from Earth, and that men would slay one another; and a great sword was given to him.

• Revelations 6:3-4

Second, the regime has ramped up the class war, disguised as a trade war. By placing large tariffs on the roughly $3.5 trillion in goods and services imports to the US, the regime instituted one of the largest tax increases in US history. And those taxes will be felt most by everyone outside the richest ZIP codes. This escalation of the class war will not only make imported goods more expensive because of higher taxation, it is coupled with policy intended to drive down the value of the US dollar abroad.

Against a basket of currencies, the US dollar has dropped 10% over the last six months, and down 6% over the last year. A stronger dollar makes the cost of imports cheaper, and the great many things the US imports at lower prices allows meager incomes to stretch further. Additionally, 10% isn’t necessarily a huge drop, and, in a different context, would go unnoticed by much of the population. But 2025 is not ‘a different context.’

At the same time the dollar loses value and drives up the costs of imports, the current regime keeps slapping tariffs on imports, driving their cost up even more. And not just on economies we might consider rivals, but on allies and friendly trade partners. And on goods like copper, which we don’t produce here, because we mined all the cheap sources. This will make new construction of houses and businesses more expensive, at the same time the demand for new housing and construction of factories to supply domestic manufactured alternatives to imports is also on the rise. Truly, we are living through the dumbpocalypse. 

As the trade war turned class war drives down the value of the dollar and drives up the prices of imports, Americans will experience a real decline in standards of living. To be clear, we’ve been experiencing that for decades, but the sudden drop due to costlier imports will be acutely felt. A sharp rise in the cost of imports due to a collapse in the value of the Russian rouble led straight to the 1905 and 1917 revolutions. But let’s not jump straight to the Petrograd Soviet yet. After all, this is supposed to be a positive scenario.

 All this comes at a time when real wages continue to decline. Apologists for the regime would say that this will stimulate demand for domestic production of goods, which might be manageable if the government or private sector were spending money to build industrial facilities. Even if the government and private sector spending where there, the regime is driving up the cost of building out the industrial base, as mentioned above. Instead of well-crafted industrial policy, Congress pulled funding from industrial policies put in place under the previous president, and just passed a massive tax cut for the rich.

If the wake of the 2008 financial crisis is any indication, the rich will use the gains from their tax break to buy up assets, rather than invest in industries which may, or may not, receive tariff protection. In effect, both imported consumer goods AND assets, like housing, will go up in price, as wages remain stagnant. Speaking of which, let’s look at the third horseman.

Stagflation - The Black Horse a.k.a. “Famine” 

I When He broke the third seal, I heard the third living creature saying, "Come". I looked, and behold, a black horse; and he who sat on it had a pair of scales in his hand. And I heard something like a voice in the center of the four living creatures saying, "A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius; but do not damage the oil and the wine"

• Revelation 6:5-6

*said in an Austin Powers voice* 

“Stagflation is back, baby!”

Based on the bitter feelings old folks catch about President Carter, it wasn’t any fun in the 70s, and won’t be this time. For those who missed this lesson in economics because you weren’t alive at the time, stagflation describes a situation in which an economy experiences BOTH above-average inflation and a decline in hiring or job creation. In short, even if you can get a job, it won’t pay you near as much as it did the year before. 

Funnily enough, our current situation almost mirrors the aforementioned passages from Revelations. As the regime’s policies bring about stagflation, making necessities like “wheat and barley” more expensive, the regime specifically exempted tech imports from the tariffs placed on Chinese imports to keep luxuries like ‘oil and wine’ from becoming prohibitively expensive. God forbid we inconvenience the rich even in the slightest. But back to the economics of it all! 

Currently, the rate of inflation in the US is still above the Federal Reserve’s target rate of  2% or lower, and will probably go higher due to the trade war. At the same time, the rate of new private-sector hiring dropped into negative territory in June, and had been declining before then. Add to that the 250,000 federal employees which have been laid off over the last few months, who will cut back their spending while they look for new jobs, and you have a recipe for declining wages and rising prices.

 With fewer jobs and stagnating wages, we can look forward to even more economic pain than the country experienced in the 1970s. For starters, at that time most consumer goods were still made in the USA. Also, we weren’t fighting a trade war with literally everyone at the time. Granted, people probably wanted to fight a real war with OPEC over high oil prices, but that’s beside the point. In the 70s, Congress was not pursuing a policy of cutting spending that benefits Americans in favor of tax cuts that benefit the very, very few. For now, get used to higher prices generally, fewer jobs, lower wages, AND more expensive imports. The upside, I suppose, is that people will have to get good at reducing, reusing and recycling, so the economy might be a bit greener. Speaking of green, one translation of the color of the next horse isn’t just pale, but pallidus, or pallid, as in the green-yellow color of a corpse…

Debt - The Pale Horse a.k.a. Death

When the Lamb opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, “Come!” I looked, and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth.

• Revelations 6:7-8

Lest we be accused of hyperbole, make no mistake; driving up the nation's debt to finance tax cuts for the rich, while cutting spending on programs American citizens actually benefit from, WILL cause deaths. Many, many deaths. But to reach that conclusion, come with us on one last dreary journey through the minutiae of fiscal policy.

 

We should say up front that the problem won’t just come from cutting federal programs and services combined with debt piled up by cutting taxes. We can expect a sharp increase in interest payments on the debt, ie, the cost of debt service. This process is already underway, as bond ratings agencies have downgraded US government debt several times over the last year. These downgrades drive up interest paid on the debt, as those lending the government money want a higher return in case the government were to default on the underlying debt. Assuming the government still wants to pay for agencies like ICE while having to spend more on debt service, Congress will be forced to cut spending elsewhere. As discretionary spending continues to fall, this leaves cuts to defense spending, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

We should add that not all government debt is bad. We, as a society, get returns on investments in health care, education and infrastructure, even if those returns aren’t always literal repayment of debt. Instead, those returns often show up in terms of longer life expectancy, scientific advancement or greater economic activity. The current lack of investment in those fields which most benefit the most Americans, will probably shave percentages off GDP growth over the coming years. And kill people. We know what happens in societies that don’t invest in vaccines and public health. But back to the dollars and cents.

Congress took a hatchet to Medicaid this spring, though those cuts won’t kick in until after the 2026 midterms. While it may be bold of me to assume there will be any more free and fair elections, clearly the ruling party in Congress feels there will be. But when those cuts do kick in, forecasters expect literally tens of thousands of Americans to prematurely die due to more expensive health care. At the same time, these cuts will likely bankrupt rural and urban hospitals alike. And this says nothing of the potential risks of cutting CDC, NWS and NOAA funding at a time of resurgent infectious diseases and a more unstable climate. Look at what recently happened in the Texas hill country, keeping in mind that funding cuts to the Weather Service and state cuts to local responder agency funding, and tell me with a straight face that these fiscal policies do not resemble the approach of a Pale Rider, with Hell following close behind.

This begs the question, which big-ticket item will be up next on the chopping block? And how will the various populations affected by those cuts react to those cuts?

This version is way better than that crayon sketch up there!
But it's a bit too gloomy. 

Before We Turn the Horsemen Loose…

… we want to thank you for making it this far. We promised an optimistic scenario, and so far, this series of posts have read as litany of chaos and class warfare. Fear not, dear reader, for this story has a much happier ending than the Book of Revelations. Or maybe I'm not reading the final book of the Bible correctly? Seriously. It’s great that Jesus comes back and establishes the New Jerusalem at the end, but did it really require quite so many trials and tribulations? 

There are additional trends which will happen in the background, but may not have impacts quite as overt as those mentioned above. Watch labor force participation. In the 60s and 70s we saw a demographic shift as women entered the workforce. Now we are seeing labor force participation dropping. Why are they dropping out? Where are they going? Also, student loan and credit card debt continue to drag down household income and average earnings. As with workforce participation, increasing household debt will drive the sense of desperation that puts people in a revolutionary mood… 

And all of this will happen against a backdrop of increased Federal spending on debt service, which, historically speaking, crowds out private sector lending. And if those payments on interest on the debt reach levels that threaten the fiscal solvency of the government, what happens? Besides a further cratering of the value of the dollar and the monetary foundation of our country coming into serious question for the first time since the 1861-1865 Civil War?

We could have written entire posts about each of the aforementioned trends. Indeed, people have written entire books on the subjects of government repression, disastrous tariff policies, stagflation and government debt default. Our goal here is to tell a story, and the factors driving the story can’t get too much in the way of pushing the narrative forward, and ask the question, what happens when, sooner or later, Americans feel they have nothing to lose?

Our guess is that people will get up off the couch and lash out at anyone who seems like a good target. And with the current regime driving the news cycle and loudly claiming they are in complete control of everything going on in the country, they will likely make a very inviting target. And that’s where we will start the narrative next time.

Positive Reconstruction and the Next Five Years

In the longer series of posts I wrote about the next hundred years of the dystopian future we’re building right now, The Long 21st Century, I outlined a number of factors influencing North America. The posts focused on the US, Mexico and Canada, going forward in five-year chunks, all the way to 2050. While I do plan to circle back and finish up those posts going at least through 2075, for now, I want to take a more optimistic look at the near future. 

    Up front, it should be said that this is a rosy path forward, and I don’t think it the most likely scenario. If the range of possibilities before us exist on a spectrum, this scenario would fall on the far end, in the best potential 5% of possibilities and I won’t drop any deus ex machina contrivances into the scenario. No LLM will suddenly gain self-awareness and fix all our problems. Nor will some genius in mom’s basement figure out how to make cold fusion work. Even as promising as gene splicing appears, we won’t all receive a shot making us immune to infectious diseases and cancer. As great as those outcomes may be, it doesn’t look like any of them will happen any time soon, if ever. Alas, the future we will get, will be one we build, so let’s put our work boots on, shall we?

It is officially off to the printers!

What Sort of World Have We Been Building?

For some excellent background reading, I suggest you check out our forthcoming book Inequality by Design (available for pre-order now, out August 25th, 2025). The short version is that no matter how bad you think economic inequality is, it's actually much worse. That said, pick up a copy of the book, as the longer version is more nuanced, and a bit more hopeful than the short version. 

In addition to the trends discussed in the book, certain actions taken by the US Government since January 2025 will have to serve as the backdrop for this more positive scenario. First is the transformation of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) into a secret police force, complete with concentration camps and a complete lack of accountability. Second, the sudden and massive tax increase disguised as ‘fighting a trade war’ initiated by the President will make imported goods more expensive. Third, the warning signs abound in the data that stagflation isn’t just trying to get in the house, that it’s in the room, right behind us, driving up grocery prices and looking to feed on us next. Finally, thanks to recent legislation passed by Congress, even more debt will pile onto the Federal government’s balance sheets, and paying ever-higher interest on that debt will crowd out useful spending on things like highways, schools, public health, in favor of a police state bearing a cross and wrapped in red, white and blue.