"The US is the only significant nation that deliberately chooses to be a very large net energy importer when there is no resource, technological, engineering, human and financial capital constraint to being, at least, net neutral and even a major net exporter.
The majority culture chooses to outsource energy supply and pay hundreds of billions of dollars a year for the consequences because it believes, rather strangely, that using large amounts of energy is fine but producing it is not.
The Federal Government need not overtly repudiate when it can conveniently and - not just with the tacit acceptance, but open acclaim of much of the majority culture - do it covertly and efficiently. The government will engineer high inflation so it can service and refinance its debt with debased dollars, which means that holders of government debt will have an appreciable portion of their capital simply purloined by inflation. Partial and systemic repudiation of US Government debt is too tempting and easy to be ignored. Of course, with high inflation will persist high unemployment, a devalued dollar and high interest rates.
The bottom 50% of the population will thus be ruthlessly taxed via a steady and cruel degradation of their quality of life and, worse, of their ability to attain the skills and opportunities to better their lot. The top 10% will cope quite handily and, as a whole, may even prosper because of their asset mix, ( real property, hard assets, inflation indexed financial instruments) their financial management capabilities and their personal pricing power. Many small businesses will also be hurt, but many large businesses will find inflation a welcome friend as long as labor, energy, material and legacy costs rise less than prices for their goods and services."
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