I am not sure which numbers are correct, apparently no one really is, but the people who are not dodging reality all agree they are much higher than the numbers being reported.
The true amount may never be known, the debt will surely be repudiated before it is ever truly accounted for. And what will that mean for the United States?
An idea of how our life would change might be provided by looking at Argentina, which repudiated its debt in 2001. Taxes will increase drastically, along with tax evasion. Governments will continue to monopolize services they provide, like water, sewer, power, roads, trash pickup, etc, but the actual delivery of these services will suffer and be nearly nonexistent at times. Police will become aggressively corrupt as they will routinely demand bribes to supplement their faltering incomes.
When the government fails, the banks will fail, and many businesses will fail. Along with massive unemployment, supplemented by massive underemployment, delivery of basic needs to the market will be interrupted. Standing for a whole day in a line in hopes of buying a loaf of bread might become common. Food prices will skyrocket.
In Argentina, people are actually starving to death. In a country that was known as the breadbasket of Europe in post-WW2 years and is known today for mouthwatering Angus steaks, people cannot afford to buy food that is produced there. A recent story describes a cattle truck that wrecked on the highway. Some of the cattle were dead, some still alive, but it made no difference to the crowd of hungry people that descended on the herd with knives like a pack of jackals, a pack of very fortunate jackals.
Violent crime is routine. Wealthy people have body guards and the average people carry guns. Where an American would stop his car if someone ran out in front of him, Argentinians speed up. It is safer to run a red light than to stop at one. Drivers in Argentina know that you never stop for any reason. If the road ahead is blocked, you turn around and always keep moving.
Kidnapping is so common its not even reported by the news anymore. Even average people are kidnapped, usually held in a van while the family is contacted, and if all goes well, will be reunited for a small amount in the same day. Virtual kidnappings have been known to happen, where a person is out of touch for a few days, the bad guys find out about it and claim to have kidnapped him.
In general, even with food shortages, it is much safer to live in the cities than in the country. Gangs of murderous thugs roam the country side looking for victims. Once they get into a house, they will probably stay several days, subjecting the victims to rape and torture before finally killing everyone and moving on. Tent cities have sprung up in Buenos Aires as refugees from the country move to the city for protection and better access to food stocks.
As bad as it all sounds, things have been improving somewhat since 2001. The economy is starting to pick up a little. Black marketeers actually open stores in old warehouses and supply hard to get items like movies, video games and jewelry. It is surprising the things on which people will spend their hard earned money. However, the government is gripped by corruption from top to bottom. There is no real attempt by politicians to try to improve anything, they are too busy looting what's left of the treasury.
Life goes on in Argentina, but with the rotting husk of the state still trying to extort protection money from any and every new enterprise, prosperity is still far over the horizon.
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