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moonsion t1_j9e3lnt wrote

The US may not be that great in the future, but other countries will be worse.

With the whole geopolitics and climate change, one thing good about America is we are pretty self sufficient in terms of natural resources. It's a big country with different ways of living. No adjacent enemy states is also a big plus. Worst come to the worst, the US may just go back to the old policy of neutrality and non-interventionism like it did before the second world war. Our budget may not support a global military presence anyway, but definitely enough to defend North America.

Most countries in the world depend on other countries to feed them, to provide for the energy, as well as raw material to manufacture essential goods. The "global south" is also more vulnerable to climate change. Countries like Japan and New Zealand have high standards of living, but prone to natural disasters. Europe, on the other hand, has its own cost of living and refugee crisis.

But the above is just for basic living. I think in America the odds of running out of essentials is pretty low. We will have food on the table. As a surgeon though I do recommend people to live near a metro area. Lots of rural hospitals are shutting down and they are not coming back.

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king_o_cats t1_j9eaxyj wrote

I'm not sure that sucking resources and dirt cheap labour from across the world is being self-sufficient

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NotJavii t1_j9ec7wb wrote

He meant relatively self-sufficient.

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bluemagic124 t1_j9ecfa3 wrote

Self sufficient when you take into account neo-colonialism and the fact that the US remains the world’s superpower. Even not factoring that in, OP’s point about the US’s natural resources makes it one of the more self sufficient countries.

It has weaknesses, but it’ll probably get on pretty well relative to most other countries.

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moonsion t1_j9i7jiu wrote

Not necessarily sucking resources from other countries. US is a net producer/exporter for lots of stuff. Oil, natural gas, corn, soy beans are good examples of that. Even enemy states such as China needs to purchase them from the US, particularly corn and soy beans, even in these tense geopolitical times. People gotta eat.

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