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What you’re saying is not wrong, but you still have vastly underestimated the toll it’s going to take on America’s economy if the US can no longer rely on the dollar to get what it wants.

Let’s put it this way: what does America have to offer to the world?

Typically, countries trade with one another because they have something to offer that the other wants. The US is a unique case in that what it offers is a hard currency, something that every country in the world would like to get their hands on. This is what allows the US to run such huge trade deficits and practically get everything on the cheap without having to offer much to the world.

Who wants to sell to America when you can no longer offer the dollar as a highly desirable asset?

Let’s imagine what happens when America can no longer leverage on the strength of its currency, what can America offer to the world?

Boeing planes? Intel chips? 5G telecommunication infrastructure? Google and Amazon services? The tech sector is already being surpassed by other Global South countries, and many of the technical deficits after half a century of neoliberalism will take years if not decades to restore.

Military hardware? Sell them to whom? To fight whom?

Hollywood/Netflix/cultural exports? This can be one of the surviving industries, but the investment cash that used to flush these industries would also be greatly diminished if the dollar is no longer the attractive asset that it is.

Fossil fuel and food/grains? These can also serve as export goods, but they’re pretty low value to sustain a high income society.

And we’re not even talking about how America as an immigrant country will no longer have the pull it has to poach skilled labor from other countries who raised and fed their own people for decades, only for America to just take these labor away through offering them a strong currency that they cannot obtain in their home country.

Who’s going to come to work in America? Who wants to come to America? These will also be big question marks. (The Soviet Union was able to take in talents from America thanks to the Great Depression, but who is America going to poach talents from when the empire itself finally falls?)

So, yes, even the working class in America will have to take a plunge in their purchasing power and hence living standards. This is simply what happens what you have little to offer to the world, and your wealth is built on financial colonialism.

And I’m going to be honest here: if it ever comes to this, you should consider yourself lucky if no Global South demands reparations from America. Otherwise it’ll put on an even heavier toll on the economy.

So, don’t be surprised if your average America chooses to rather be a slave worker under imperialism, who still benefits from the plunders of imperialism even if it’s just crumbs, than to accept the reality that America is no longer at the pinnacle of the world and rebuilding the country will take decades of hardship.