Rod Kapunan, 10 April 2021
Many are speculating whether the US has the budget to sustain the cost for the long-delayed rehabilitation of America’s infrastructure. It was announced it will cost the Biden administration a whopping $2 trillion to undertake the repairs of the country’s mostly aging infrastructure.
As observed, the US economy is saddled with great contradictions. It is deeply mired in debt that it cannot just do all things at the same time. Some say the problem is for the US economy to undergo some kind of economic metamorphoses, similar to what China did to overcome the obstacle inherent in the US system.
One must remember that the greatest enemy of the US is the contradiction from within its own system. The US is hampered in what Marx says “internal contradictions” – that the interest of the various pressure groups could stymie most of its objectives.
Russia has reduced its defense budget and for that the US enjoyed the status of being the only superpower in the world. Russia’s defense budget is much lower than China’s, Saudi Arabia’s, India’s and France’s, but its nuclear arsenal has not been diminished to recklessly allow others to attack it. The end of the Cold War allowed Putin to redirect its budget to improve Russia’s standard of living. Russia today is much more prosperous than it was during the socialist era.
On the other hand, the US cannot unshackle itself from the arms race. It is trapped in a con game initiated by the military industrial complex and financiers from Wall Street. It cost the US around $5.8 trillion, and involved itself in numerous and countless wars that contributed to its own financial ruin.
