I don't think this is necessarily true.

The American economy is propped up by the unequal exchange of imperialism. The small luxuries that are within our grasp are only possible because of a global economic imbalance where an average hour of work in the US can buy the equivalent of 2.4 hours of labor from someone in the global south, assuming equally productive labor hours.

So even though necessities like housing, education, healthcare and the like keep getting priced further and further out of reach to make sure we're all subservient to capital to have our needs met, we still get cheap TVs and iPhones and such.

Which, may seem trivial, but these are markers of the American way of life. You have ghouls on Fox News who will say, "sure, I had to climb over a bunch of homeless people in the street on my way to the office today, but one of them had an iPhone which means you're better off being poor here than you are in one of those dirty socialist countries."

But the unequal exchange that is founded on is only able to be maintained by the virtue of the American military empire. It's maintained by having the ability to project power around the world, to invade, sanction, blockade, bomb, coup, and otherwise crush any government that doesn't comply with the interests of US business. And I don't know how much longer the US can wield that power.

We're currently collapsing under the weight of funding this military empire. We've already cut the social safety net down to the bone to put more money toward the military, and there's not much else that can be squeezed. And in the meantime, the rise of China as an economic power has resulted in a lot outsourcing and capital flight from the US. Any attempt to roll back the tax cuts and squeeze the capitalist class to juice our military is likely to result in even more capital flight.

The ability of the Treasury to keep printing money and having that money still be valuable is tied to the status of the USD as the global reserve currency that nearly all global trade is conducted in, but it's dangerously close to losing its status as a reserve currency.

Maybe I'm just not creative and ghoulish enough, but I don't see how this charade can be kept up much longer. I think the gross mishandling of COVID is going to tip this country over the edge, and the economic aftershocks are going to send America into an unrecoverable depression.

What comes after that, I have no idea.