Case-in-point for a Typical American. You own a big SUV. You live in a big McMansion (mortgage underwater) that is a 100 mile commute from your job but in typical American fashion, mass transportation has never been built that can take you where you want to go.
Ever heard about “carpooling”? Or even “buying a Toyota Yaris, then carpooling”? Dangers of expensive gas for American exurbs are greatly exaggerated.
Oh, and let’s not forget that the dollar has by then ..say fallen to less than 1/10 of its value today.
So now you go to Walmart, but unfortunately all those made-in-China products are now expensive relative priced in a very weakened dollar.
Presumably, then, Chinese people will have to eat those made-in-China products themselves, because they won’t sell them here. So your picture will necessarily involve unemployment in industrial China that’s on the order of U.S. Great Depression.
Sorry, that’s too much doom-and-gloom for me.
BTW, United States are third in the world by exports, and our exports are tech heavy. If the dollar falls to 1/10 of its value, it’ll be really good for American high tech industry, and exports in general. It will also be really good for mining and agriculture – we will be able to drown the world in corn and wheat, and all the minerals that are abundant in the Rockies but just not profitable to extract at current wages and exchange rates. United States have MORE arable land than China, and one fifth of population. United States have huge oil shale reserves – maybe 1/2 of all world’s known oil shales, enough to satisfy the entire world’s demand for oil for 30+ years if they were fully developed. They were just not profitable with $50 oil, but things are changing.
