hippoSquid

The US absolutely chose to get involved in the Vietnam war. The US could have easily just stayed out of it and let North Vietnam conquer South Vietnam from the start. That's what ultimately happened but a million Vietnamese could have kept their lives.

It was also insane that the US was paying France billions before the war in order to help them maintain their Vietnamese colony. We usually consider colonial powers to be "the baddies".

We should never have invaded Afghanistan. If we wanted to kill the Al-Qaeda leaders then we should have sent the CIA or special forces (which is what we ultimately did). The Taliban did not attack us. We might not like how the Taliban runs the country but we have no business in invading a sovereign country over that. Invading other countries is usually a baddie move.

I think its absolutely straight forward. Just don't start offensive wars if you really think you aren't one of the baddies.

Those past wars included millions of casualties and tons of atrocities. You don't want to be invaded by a baddie and you definitely don't want to be invaded by the US!

176k people in Afghanistan died during the war[1]. Up to 1 million died due to the Iraq war[2]. We left almost all of Korea and Vietnam completely destroyed after those wars.

The US has actually has been at war for nearly every year of its existence[3]. I find it really hard not to consider America "the bad guys".

I don't think there are "proper baddies" though. The US acts just as much of a baddie as any other country. Every country will do what it wants to advance its interests (especially a superpower)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualties_in_the_war... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_Uni...

Yes we would need to immediately start running a balanced budget. It would probably be a long time before we could borrow again. If we ever did borrow money again, we would be paying a higher interest since we've shown lenders that we can default.

It would also mean $33T in assets disappearing from the economy. That's a massive amount that would bankrupt tons of individuals/companies that lent the money. $2.8T of that amount is the social security trust fund which means we need to also instantly cut social security too. $7T of the debt is held by other countries who wouldn't be happy with us either.

China has 1.4B people with a GDP per capita 1/6 as high as the US. There isn't any reason to think the average Chinese person will permanently keep producing 1/6th as much value as the average American. Chinese GDP growth is still about double the US at the moment.

By the 2030s the US national debt will reach about $50T. Interest payments could be up to $2T per year if rates stay high. That would be unsustainable. The US would have to either cut government expenses or increase inflation to deal with the debt, both of which would hurt GDP.

Both countries probably have negative outlooks in the short/medium term but I wouldn't bet against China simply due to their much larger population. Their population could start decreasing and aging but they will continue to have vastly more working age adults than the US for a long time to come.