U. S. Politics After the End

The shape of government will change everywhere after the Great Pandemic will decrease population by 80%, and the politics involved with the governments will also change. Teasing apart the results of the changes is difficult, and it is likely that new elements will arise, but the general political culture of most countries would be unchanged, and that means that there will be cut-throat politics in the U.S. Just as one can read the political satires of Jonathan Swift from the early 18th centuries and see parallels with today's politics in the UK, there will be a huge amount of similarity between today's politics in the U.S. and what we will see after the Great Pandemic. But it is likely that some things will change. The issues probably will be different, but it will be a matter of who gets to profit from the government. The parties probably will have new names, or they might switch sides again. The Democrats derived from the Anti-Federalists, who were firmly opposed to a strong government, but they had become the party of the establishment by the time that the Republican Party arose, as a populist party that opposed the status quo, especially slavery.

In addition to the major parties we now have a large collection of minor parties, and one, or more, of those might present the right program to become important after the pandemic. While a highly regulated economy will be undesirable then, there may be a desire for a protectionist import policy, or there may an imperialist trend. There are good reasons for thinking that imperialism will be seen as desirable in some parts of the world. So the U.S. my have a big government – small government split that would be defined by positions in regard to Manifest Destiny. There are good reasons for the U.S.A. to take over Canada and Latin America, and those reasons will be more valid after the pandemic, and the population of Canada will between six and seven million (34 million now), so it would not be difficult to reverse that bit of bad luck of December 31, 1775. I am not necessarily advocating the conquest of Canada; I am mentioning it as a distinct possibility.

 Any expansion to the south would be difficult, and there would be no real value it for the U.S.’ although it might be desirable for other reasons. The conquest of Mexico would be somewhat more difficult than conquering Canada. Mexico probably will have a population of between twenty and twenty-five million (probably toward the low end of that range). It would be more useful to eliminate any criminal gangs that might remain and to set up a government that would work reasonably well. Establishing U.S. control in South America would be much less likely, because Brazil would also be working at that. The economic value of combining the Americas would be considerable, but the cultural complications might be insuperable. Federation might be a practical answer, and it might be a step toward eventual world government. (Oh horror! Suggesting one world government!). Adding the Canadian provinces to the U.S. would be fairly easy, and the legal systems are not all that terribly different. Expanding beyond that would require making the Mexican economy stronger and less corrupted by crime. That would require a complete change in drug policy in the U.S. And in many other countries, and the cost of starting a new business would have to drop. These two steps would greatly improve the Mexican economy now, but they will become essential after the Pandemic.

Another issue in U.S. politics would be local versus central government. How that would play with regard to issues probably would vary with the region, and that support, or not, should be an economic issue, but there would be complications. For practical reasons it would be difficult for the Feds to intrude as much into local issues, because there wouldn’t be enough people to enforce the federal intrusions.

Issues regarding rebuilding the country’s credit rating and whether equality before the law would be enforced would be important internally and externally, but it would take considerable time for things to settle down...