The US Bigger Picture

[Jon Freise]

I think it helps me to move my thinking from the bigger picture (locationally, or through time) to more locally and now.

The US faces some unique challenges as we move through the Limits to Growth that I think are contributing to the stresses causing our current political upheaval.

The challenge is that the US has roughly 5% of the world's population but consumes 25% of the world's material resources.

To come into balance with the rest of the world, adjust for climate change and depletion, that needs to change to be 5% of the world's population consuming 2.5% of the world's resources.  A major decline.

https://www.clubofrome.org/publication/2052/

A lot of those resources are being consumed because of the suburban housing pattern that was built up after WWII.  And that pattern is very resource intensive.  And not maintainable.  The US was the sole surviving industrial center after WWII and became, briefly, unprecedentedly wealthy.

The "solution" to material abundance was to create the suburbs that required a lot of material throughput.

80 years on, the rest of the world has industrialised or reindustrialized and the price of materials is rising.  And we now cannot afford the lifestyle our grandparents and parents constructed.

Here is a really good article by Strong Towns looking at the finances of Houston.  It cannot make ends meet.  It is living on debt and grants from the Federal government.

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2025/3/31/the-growth-ponzi-scheme-revisited-houston-as-a-case-study

Houston is cutting maintenance in the areas that are tax profitable to pay for new development that will never pay for itself.

And now the budget of the Federal government is being slashed.  But even if it were not, it is also running a deficit.  Nothing breaks even.

When you look at the system from this point of view, the future is some kind of medium density multifamily with solar PV and solar heat powered super insulated housing.  (I wonder if there will be sewage systems or if there will be grey water septic fields some kind of bucket collection system?) Only the wealthy will live in single family homes on country estates.

The article makes the case that eventually cities will not have the funds to repair roads, sewer and water pipe.  And that outlying areas will eventually just be cut off.  They will return to private wells and private septic.  or just be abandoned all together.

Given climate change, I imagine that the North East US will see a population increase.  If social security fails, then states that are surviving on retirement fund transfers will see an economic collapse.

-Jon