North Dakota is the best run state in the country. A sub-2.0 murder rate (LITERALLY Honduras brahs), an incarceration rate closer to Norway's than the US national average, the death penalty has been abolished since 1973, there's been one 'mass shooting' in the last 25 years, and lawmakers have been pushing strong reforms to make its prisons more humane and slash recidivism even further. In addition, it has the lowest unemployment rate in the country, a state-owned bank - the only of the 50 states - and a growing multi-billion dollar sovereign wealth fund for the public salted away from its petroleum resource revenues.
https://www.governor.nd.gov/news/north-dakota-ranks-1st-quality-life-4th-overall-us-news-world-report’s-best-states-rankings
Shocker.
"The kicker is that this—all of this: the dissolution of the free trade order, the global demographic inversion, the collapse of Europe and China—is all just a fleeting transition. The period of 2015 through 2030 will be about the final washing away of the old Cold War order. It isn’t the end of history. It is simply clearing the decks for what is next. Which will be something extraordinary.
The Hobbesian period of 2015–30 will be the least Amerocentric portion of the twenty-first century, because by 2030 three things will have happened that will solidify the world as America’s oyster.
First, everyone else in the world will have had fifteen years to rip one another apart going after the scraps of the previous system. Resource wars. Market wars. A return of naval competition. New technologies that allow countries beset by problems—especially demographic problems—to still lash out. Does anyone actually think that drones—a technology that hits hard with a minimum of manpower—will remain purely an American tool?
It’ll be new, exciting, terrifying. And a not insignificant portion of the world is likely to get wrecked or simply waste away. All of the powers that the Americans think of as competitors—with Russia, China, and the European Union at the top of the list—will be exposed to have feet of clay and spines of glass.
Second, most if not all of that chaos and destruction will pass the Americans by. Instead of fifteen years of struggles and pain and want, the Americans will experience fifteen years of moderate growth with stable markets and reliable energy supplies. As of 2014, the Americans are already far and away the dominant power. By 2030, they will be inordinately stronger in both absolute and relative terms while most of the rest will be struggling just to stay where they are… and most of the rest will fail.
The Americans will suffer no invasions (although they might launch a couple), they will watch the shipping wars with casual disinterest (although they might capture bits of it), they’ll puzzle over why everyone suddenly wants their currency again (but won’t hesitate to make it available). The Americans will be able to pick and choose their fights, or not even deign to participate in the wider world.
Third, America’s demographics will invert a second time. By 2030, the oldest of the Boomers will be eighty-four, but by 2040, the youngest will be seventy-six. The sack of bricks that started descending upon the federal government back in 2007 will be almost completely lifted. Settling daintily into the roomy space the Boomers will be vacating will be the new retiree class, Gen X—aged sixty-one to seventy-five at that point. The Boomers’ children, Gen Y, will be forty to sixty. As a group the Ys’ incomes will make the American system flush with cash once again.
America’s long Boomer nightmare will be over and government finances will step back into the light to find a world that is a broken wasteland. By 2040, many of the world’s developing states will have aged into the sort of damaged demography that the Europeans had experienced only a generation before and will be starting their own crippling slide into pain and decrepitude.
One notable exception to this will be China, because China will already be there. By 2040, the average Chinese will be forty-seven, versus the average American who will only be forty. By that point Americans will think of China as just as much of a has-been as they think of Japan today—assuming that China still exists as a recognizable entity. Bereft of challenges, the Americans will be able to do a lot of navel gazing.
What do the Americans have to do to make sure this comes to pass? Not a damn thing. Geography has given the Americans almost everything they could ever need. China and Europe will fall and fade without prompting. Russia will crumble on its own. Iran will scramble the Middle East like a bad omelet for its own reasons. Demographics in the United States will rebound on their own, and even determined efforts to repair the damage in other nations won’t generate their first glimpses of positive results until 2035. Shale takes care of the rest. America’s strengths may be accidental, but they are strengths—and durable ones at that—nonetheless.
Simply put, the world is indeed going to hell, but the Americans are going to sit this one out."