The U.S. won’t grow its way out of a debt spiral — it’ll inflate, debase, and extract. The real exit ramp is Bitcoin: a parallel system with hard rules, not political ones. Opting into BTC isn’t about returns — it’s about exiting a rigged game before the math breaks.
Conventional wisdom keeps hoping that the U.S. can grow its way out of a fiscal doom spiral:
“If GDP just grows fast enough, even the most reckless overspending by Congress won’t matter.”
But that assumes we still live in an age of manageable debt, cooperative politics, and sound incentives.
We don’t.
📉 The U.S. Fiscal Reality
$36+ trillion in debt
$2 trillion annual deficits
$1.1 trillion in yearly interest
Interest payments now exceed military spending
We are no longer debating whether the debt matters — we’re just seeing how long it can be delayed before the math breaks. Growth won’t fix this. It hasn’t yet, and it won’t now.
So what’s the plan? Inflate, extract, or collapse?
🇳🇴 But What About Norway?
Norway is often brought up as a model of fiscal sanity — and with good reason:
Budget surplus in 2024: 13.2% of GDP
Sovereign wealth fund: $1.74 trillion (largest in the world)
Debt-to-GDP around 55%, but fully offset by national savings
They even run a structural non-oil deficit, but it’s funded by planned withdrawals from their sovereign fund. In short: they spend with discipline and have assets to back it.
So why can’t every country do that?
🚫 Because It’s Not Globally Sustainable
Norway is rich in oil, small in population, and extremely disciplined in governance. They:
Save during booms instead of spending
Use their wealth fund to smooth volatility, not plug holes
Issue debt strategically, not out of desperation
For the rest of the world, especially the U.S., that model isn’t available.
Most countries are net debtors. They’ve hollowed out their productive base, offshored manufacturing, and replaced savings with speculation.
You can’t run a surplus if:
Your economy is dependent on imported energy and goods
Your entitlement promises are growing faster than your tax base
Your political class has no incentive to say “no”
Surpluses require restraint, surplus-producing sectors, and trust — all of which are in short supply.
🧱 So What’s the Real Path Out?
It’s not hoping for a miraculous growth surge. It’s not copying Norway. It’s not electing better managers of a broken system.
It’s opting out. It’s repricing trust.
🔑 Enter Bitcoin.
A monetary system with hard limits, not political ones
No printing. No bailouts. No “emergency exceptions”
Open, auditable, neutral — like a global sovereign wealth reserve for the people
Bitcoin is:
An exit for individuals
A hedge against sovereign collapse
And, increasingly, a foundation for new financial instruments — including Bitcoin-backed bonds.
🧾 Bitcoin-Backed Bonds: Repricing Sovereign Risk
Here’s a future worth considering:
Nations issue bonds backed by Bitcoin reserves, restoring credibility and reducing borrowing costs.
Instead of trusting central banks or political stability, investors trust digital collateral — liquid, auditable, incorruptible.
Governments get lower interest rates
Investors get higher real returns
The system regains trust — not by promising growth, but by tying itself to something outside its control
This isn’t sci-fi. El Salvador is already moving in this direction. Others will follow — especially as debt costs soar and trust erodes.
🧠 TL;DR
You can’t outgrow a debt spiral.
You can’t copy Norway unless you’re already Norway.
You can’t reform a system whose core logic is delay and inflate.
But you can exit.
Bitcoin offers individuals, institutions, and eventually even nations a path out — not to escape responsibility, but to rebuild trust from the ground up.
This isn’t about being early to an investment. It’s about being on time to a monetary exit.
Over the past couple weeks, I’ve been diving deep into David Shapiro’s Post-Labor Economics lecture series (linked below — all around 40 min). I’ve listened to each one twice, and then used a mix of ChatGPT, Copilot, and Grok to create four 10-point summaries — one per video. Then I asked ChatGPT to synthesize those into a single meta-summary of the core ideas.
Here are the 4 videos. Each about 40 minutes long.
ChatGPT – Here is a 10-bullet-point meta-summary that synthesizes the key themes and insights from all four “Post-Labor Economics” video summaries:
Automation is Inevitable and Transformative: AI and robotics are displacing human labor across all sectors, making wage-based employment increasingly obsolete while simultaneously threatening consumer demand and economic stability.
Economic Agency is the Core Concern: Individuals require labor rights, property ownership, and voting rights to retain agency. As labor rights erode, property rights become the cornerstone of financial autonomy.
The Demand Paradox: Businesses want to automate to cut costs but still need paying customers. Without jobs, people can’t spend—creating a structural contradiction that leads to economic collapse unless resolved.
Rethinking Metrics: The EAI: Traditional KPIs like GDP and unemployment are no longer sufficient. The Economic Agency Index (EAI) measures household income sources (property, wages, transfers) and highlights the need to prioritize ownership income.
UBI: Helpful but Not Enough: Universal Basic Income is necessary as a safety net but inadequate on its own due to inflation risk, governance issues, and centralization. It must be paired with decentralized, property-based income streams.
Ownership is the New Wages: Future economic resilience depends on expanding access to trusts, wealth funds, co-ops, patron equity programs, and digital tokens to replace lost labor income with ownership-based dividends.
Counties as Innovation Labs: With 3,100 U.S. counties, local governments are ideal sites for experimenting with and scaling post-labor economic models, offering granular data and tailored policy solutions.
Banks as Economic Interfaces: Banks will evolve into the primary economic hubs, managing dividend flows, investment portfolios, and identity verification, replacing the role of traditional employers in financial life.
Guardrails Against Technofeudalism: Preventing elite capture and concentrated corporate control is critical. Transparency, participatory governance, and broad-based ownership are essential safeguards.
Market-Driven, Not Ideological: Post-labor economics distinguishes itself from socialism and communism by preserving markets and private property. Its goal is not wealth redistribution through state control, but wealth inclusion through distributed ownership and market-based tools.
I continued to have a conversation with ChatGPT to understand further.
I asked it “”How does post-labor economics differ from individuals simply investing in the stock market to generate passive income?”
It gave a very nicely formatted response, below.
🧩 TL;DR: It’s Not Either/Or
Buying stocks is one tool — a good one — for individual financial freedom.
But post-labor economics is about designing an entire economy where capital income is as normal, widespread, and accessible as having a job once was.
It’s not just you winning the game — it’s everyone getting a seat at the table.
Great question — and an important one.
🤔 At first glance, post-labor economics might sound like:
“Just buy stocks and live off dividends — problem solved.”
But post-labor economics goes beyond that in a few key ways. Here’s how it’s different from individuals simply investing in the stock market:
🏛️ 1. System Design vs. Personal Strategy
Stock investing is an individual solution — you build capital and income for yourself.
Post-labor economics is a system-wide redesign — it’s about building structures where everyone can participate in ownership, even if they don’t have savings, brokerage accounts, or financial literacy.
💵 2. Barriers to Entry
The stock market requires:
Disposable income
Access to financial tools
Risk tolerance
Education
Post-labor models focus on lowering those barriers by:
Distributing residency-based dividends
Creating local trust funds
Offering non-transferable community equity (you don’t have to “buy in”)
🏘️ 3. Ownership of Local, Tangible Assets
The stock market mostly involves ownership of national or global corporations.
Post-labor economics emphasizes ownership of local assets: businesses, land, water rights, data, energy — things that create direct, community-level income streams.
Owning Amazon stock ≠ owning the gas station, solar field, or rental housing in your own town.
🤝 4. Shared Governance & Resilience
When you buy stock, you have no governance power, unless you’re a billionaire activist investor.
Post-labor structures are built on shared governance — resident voting, dividend boards, and community stewardship.
💬 5. Not Everyone Can or Will Invest
A huge portion of the population has no stock market exposure. About 45% of Americans own no equities at all — and among the bottom 50% of income, it’s more like 10–15%.
Post-labor economics seeks to bake ownership into the system so that even non-investors receive income from capital.
🧠 6. Ownership as Policy, Not Privilege
Stock investing is optional and personal.
Post-labor economics treats ownership as infrastructure — like roads or clean water. It should be available to all by design, not just those who planned ahead or got lucky.
🌐 7. Resisting Elite Capture
The stock market concentrates wealth — the top 10% own over 85% of equities.
Post-labor models try to decentralize ownership — giving communities a stake in the economy before everything gets bought up by private equity or mega-corps.
🛠️ 8. Designed for the Age of Automation
Stock market investing was never intended as a wage replacement for the masses.
Post-labor economics is explicitly built to answer:
“What happens when jobs disappear, but people still need income?”
My next question.
“What mechanisms does post-labor economics use to avoid the tragedy of the commons when assets are collectively owned?”
✅ TL;DR:
Post-labor economics avoids the tragedy of the commons by turning shared access into structured, incentivized, accountable co-ownership.
It’s not a free-for-all — it’s a designed economy, where people are rewarded for taking care of what they collectively own.
Excellent question — and one of the core design challenges of post-labor economics.
The tragedy of the commons refers to a situation where a shared resource is overused or neglected because no one feels personal responsibility. In a post-labor economy — where ownership is distributed rather than concentrated — this is a real risk. But it’s not unsolvable.
Here’s how post-labor economics intentionally designs around the tragedy of the commons:
🧩 1. Move from “Common” to “Co-Owned”
The key shift is from open access (commons) to structured, governed co-ownership.
Think: community trusts, resident shares, dividend boards — where everyone has skin in the game, not just access.
📜 2. Define Clear Rights and Responsibilities
Successful post-labor models include smart governance charters:
Who can vote?
Who maintains assets?
How are profits used?
What happens if you leave?
This clarity prevents freeloading and aligns incentives for stewardship.
💰 3. Tie Participation to Rewards
Dividends aren’t just handed out — they can be tied to local contribution:
Show up to meetings
Volunteer hours
Local residency
Use the service or shop locally
This ensures that ownership feels earned, not distant or abstract.
📊 4. Transparency and Dashboards
Many models propose using public dashboards to show how community-owned assets are performing.
When people see the numbers — usage, revenue, maintenance costs — it creates accountability and pride.
🧑🤝🧑 5. Decentralized Governance Structures
Rather than one central authority, post-labor systems push decisions downward:
Counties manage their own trusts
Co-ops elect local boards
Banks help automate compliance and distribution
Local control = stronger stewardship.
🏦 6. Hybrid Ownership Models
Some assets are shared (like land or solar arrays), while others are individually owned (tokens, local equity).
This creates a blended structure where people benefit both as individuals and collectively, reducing the temptation to abuse shared goods.
🛡️ 7. Guardrails Against Elite Capture
Ironically, many “commons” in the modern economy (like housing or water) have already been captured — just not by the public.
Post-labor models bake in protections: voting caps, local-only ownership, anti-speculation rules, etc.
It’s a powerful framework. Personally, I’m still focused on achieving my own financial freedom — and I encourage everyone to do the same. But once we secure our own foundations, we’re in a much better position to help build a freer, more equitable world for everyone.
“ the US government or every government in the world is the largest spender of things and they are pushing the price of things up. For example, all the money that the US spends on buying tanks and airplanes and other things consumes some steel and electronics and such and that pushes the price up when Ford or John Deere or Apple wants to buy steel or electronics for their cars or tractors or phones.”
I like Gary Economics. He has a book and a youtube channel. But his message is just so diluted and garbled and he is blinded by his knowledge that he misses some things.
To start off with, I don’t hate rich people. But this is probably one of the best descriptions of the actual problem with wealth inequality.
And to note, if you have even $50,000 worth of assets, you are probably in the top 10% of the world. So, well this guy is describing the difference between multi-millionaires and billionaires and the middle class he could just as easily be describing the middle class in the USA out paying for services of people in India. For example, many Indian doctors come to the United States and leaves less doctors in India.
Anyway, his whole message is a little garbled all the time. I’ve read his book and listened to enough stuff that I get it but I feel like he’s not that great of a communicator. In general, his argument is we need to tax the rich because they have too much money and push the price of goods up.
If you heard the bit where he was talking about the rich buying doctors services to do cosmetic surgeries instead of normal surgeries that does a similar thing to Medical care costs as we talked about house is getting the monetary premium. So his argument is we need to have the rich have less buying power so they can’t push the price of goods up for the average person
You sent
And he is right to some point. But a thing he misses is that the US government or every government in the world is the largest spender of things and they are pushing the price of things up. For example, all the money that the US spends on buying tanks and airplanes and other things consumes some steel and electronics and such and that pushes the price up when Ford or John Deere or Apple wants to buy steel or electronics for their cars or tractors or phones.
The whole world is at competition for goods and services. This is explained in a great book, Economics in One Lesson – Henry Hazlitt which you can read here for free or buy here.
Donald Trump imposed a 25% tariff on goods imported to the USA from Canada and Mexico. I am hoping to do a small experiment tracking a few goods from each country to see how their prices change as well as a few similar goods in the USA as a baseline to compare to track inflation.
I know that John Deere 6E tractors are imported from Mexico, 1 oz Gold Mexican libertads are also imported from Mexico and 1 oz gold Canadian Maple leaves are imported from Canada. I am interested how the price of these goods changes over the next years.
I am also going to track a few things that are made in the USA.
One will be a John Deere 8R that is manufactured in the USA and also 1 oz Gold buffalos and 1 oz Gold eagles.
The Fed has no power to stop government spending, which is the root cause of inflation!
Below is a quote from Senator Elizabeth Warren, during a grilling of Fed Chair Jerome Powell
Senator Warren: In other words, you don’t have a plan to stop a runaway train if it occurs. You know, Chair Powell, you are gambling with people’s lives. And there’s a pile of data showing the price gouging and supply chain kinks, and the war in Ukraine are driving up prices.
You cling to the idea that there’s only one solution: lay off millions of workers. We need a Fed that will fight for families. And if you’re not going to lead that charge, we need someone with the Fed who will. – original link here.
What does Senator Warren think he is going to do about price gouging and supply chain kinks, and the war in Ukraine?
The Federal Reserve literally has 1 tool in their tool box, and that is to raise rates. He can’t stop the war in Ukraine. He can’t fix supply chain kinks. While she has identified some things that are nominally impacting inflation, it’s not all of them. There is 1 big one she is missing, which she could impact as a Senator, Government Spending!
To be clear, what the Fed is trying to do is reduce spending by individuals so they aren’t buying so many things. They try to reduce spending by offering higher rates on bonds. The thought is that people will buy bonds paying 5% interest instead of spending their money on goods. The fewer people trying to buy goods, the less money is chasing the same amount of goods and the prices will go down.
Elizabeth Warren lives in her own kayfabe financial world. She is bullying the Fed Chair, Jerome Powell, to lower interest rates because she thinks he is hurting the economy. She is right that higher rates are one of the things that is likely to hurt the economy in the long run. But the real thing that is driving inflation in the USA is government spending. The US government debt is rising by $1 trillion about every 100 days.
Like I mentioned above, if the goal is to reduce spending in the economy by taking individuals’ money out of circulation by getting them to buy bonds, then the government comes in and is spending $1T, there isn’t less money chasing the same amount of goods, there is more money!
The Fed has no power to stop government spending, which is the root cause of inflation!
More money chasing the same amount of goods causes inflation. It is that simple.
Think of it as if you are at an auction and you have $100 in your wallet and 5 other people also have $100 in their wallets.. There is another bidder who has a printer who can literally print $100 bills at will and outbid you and all others at anything you want to buy. This bidder with unlimited buying power will bid up the price of things until they are beyond your reach. Are other bidders, who also all have $100 causing the problem? Or is the bidder with the money printing machine outbidding everyone causing the price of things at the auction to go higher?
It’s pretty clear in this situation that the money printer is driving prices higher. People don’t study fiscal policy (use of government spending and taxation to influence the economy) very often. Most people just want to work and then come home and live their lives. Because people don’t study it often, and it’s a pretty big and abstract thing to most people, it’s very hard to wrap their heads around.
There is also, unfortunately, almost nothing anyone can personally do to impact government spending.
I can only think of a few things you can do personally.
Learn what is actually causing inflation instead of listening to the news tell you what they think is causing it.
A couple of books I recommend to understand money and its role as a tool
Have a personally sound balance sheet. Spend less than you make. Invest your excess income in sound assets. Stocks, Real Estate, Gold, Bitcoin.
Communicate with others about personal finances and government finances. If we all become more fiscally literate we might form a large enough coalition that we can start impacting government spending. But first we need to understand it ourselves. It is my hope that writing this and sharing it helps educate just 1 or 2 others about the topic.
As an addendum to the above, I have copied the 2023 Congressional Budget Office report below, in case it disappears in the future. It highlights how the government spending is projected to grow as a percent of GDP every year going forward. Do we really want the government spending more and more of our money? Do we think a central authority is better at knowing what we need than we ourselves do? I think not.
Each year, the Congressional Budget Office publishes a report presenting its projections of what the federal budget and the economy would look like over the next 30 years if current laws generally remained unchanged. The long-term budget projections typically follow CBO’s 10-year baseline budget projections and then extend most of the concepts underlying them for an additional 20 years. This year, the long-term projections are based on CBO’s May 2023 baseline projections but also reflect the estimated budgetary effects of the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 (Public Law 118-5), which was enacted on June 3, 2023.
Deficits
In CBO’s projections, the deficit equals 5.8 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2023, declines to 5.0 percent by 2027, and then grows in every year, reaching 10.0 percent of GDP in 2053. Over the past century, that level has been exceeded only during World War II and the coronavirus pandemic. The increase in the total deficit results from faster growth in spending than in revenues. The primary deficit, which excludes interest costs, equals 3.3 percent of GDP in both 2023 and 2053, but the total deficit is boosted by rising interest costs.
Debt
By the end of 2023, federal debt held by the public equals 98 percent of GDP. Debt then rises in relation to GDP: It surpasses its historical high in 2029, when it reaches 107 percent of GDP, and climbs to 181 percent of GDP by 2053. Such high and rising debt would slow economic growth, push up interest payments to foreign holders of U.S. debt, and pose significant risks to the fiscal and economic outlook; it could also cause lawmakers to feel more constrained in their policy choices.
Spending
In 2023, outlays fall to 24.2 percent of GDP as federal spending in response to the pandemic diminishes. Outlays continue to decline through 2026 but increase thereafter, reaching 29.1 percent of GDP in 2053. (By comparison, from 1993 to 2022, outlays averaged 21.0 percent of GDP.) Rising interest rates and persistently large primary deficits cause interest costs to almost triple in relation to GDP between 2023 and 2053. Spending on the major health care programs and Social Security—driven by the aging of the population and growing health care costs—also boosts federal outlays significantly over the next 30 years.
Revenues
Revenues fall to 18.4 percent of GDP in 2023 and continue to drop until 2026, when the scheduled expiration of certain provisions of the 2017 tax act causes tax receipts to increase. Revenues generally rise thereafter, reaching 19.1 percent of GDP in 2053, as an increasing share of income is pushed into higher tax brackets. (By comparison, from 1993 to 2022, revenues averaged 17.2 percent of GDP.)
Changes From Previous Projections
Measured as a percentage of GDP, federal debt is now projected to be 2 percentage points higher in 2023 and 9 percentage points lower in 2052 than it was in last year’s report. Overall, CBO’s projections of debt have increased through 2042 and decreased in later years.
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