Nonprofit government healthcare wouldn't work anyway.

Hell nonprofit non-goverment healthcare doesn't really work.

There are tons of nonprofit healthcare companies and they don't cost less then private plans.

Largely becasue well, there is almost no profit margin in healthcare.  It's a really low profit margin buisness.

Hence why any insurance focused healthcare plan amounts to nothing but a hill of beans when it comes to controlling costs.

I don't believe the fall of former big nations was one single event. Yes, in the case of losing a war. But not economically. It was a slow decline. Other countries are replacing the US in the moment as customers - first of all a developing chinese middle-class. But also other countries like more east-asian countries, south american countries and good old europe can take the place as customers, that the US has at the moment mostly.

By the meaning of the word, the Soviet Union (that was the country back then) had no colonies. But it had much control over eastern europe. But the last half of the 20th century the US had much control over many of the south-american countries. They are losing that control at the moment. So, in a way, yes they are losing their colonies. But anyways, the Soviet Union may be splitted up, but the single countries exist on and Russia is again on the way to a better economical position. The UK lost the colonies, but are until today a strong country. Same with germany.

You're right, Fiat money isn't the problem. The problem arises from the fact, how the money is created. Most countries have no control over it. Central banks have only little control over it. The money is created by private banks. Also, for creating money (writing in a book that amount X of money exists), there will always be created a debt. That's the system, the financial system of the world works: someone wants a credit, the bank writes in the books (computer today) that he has amount X and that he owes amount X to the bank. If everyone pays the debts, than no money at all exists. As we want the economy and wealth to grow, and measure both in money, we need more and more money, so that this growth is possible. That automatically means, that someone has to have more and more debts.

Fiat money is not the problem, debt-based money is a problem.

exactly, even if they are no longer number one the States will still remain a super power no matter what,

16 trillion Dollars!!! Fuck me thats a lot of money. Time to seriously tighten the purse srrings.

Good luck trying to get the public to vote for a platform of getting less money from the government, and also have their taxes raised.  You are seeing in American politics a fracture between the budget cuts and tax increases going on.  

I hate to break it to you, but empires fall all the time, including ones larger than the States.

Also, the Romans were NOT the largest empire ever. They're actually quite far down. That title goes to the British, in both land area and GDP. They were a monstrous sized group that controlled around a quarter of the planet's surface in their hey day. Quite unrivalled in power during their high times. 20% of the world's population at the time was theirs to control. Now Britain is an island in northern Europe with a few places here and there dotted around the world. I bet you money that they didn't think they'd fall in the future either.

The 20th Century has been absolutely riddled with the corpses of fallen empires. We go through them fast lately.

The British one fell apart right between the World Wars, right when the German and Japanese Empires were growing (yes, Nazi Germany was an empire), only to have the crap kicked out of them by numerous other groups, but, admittedly, mostly the Americans and the Soviets (kind of an empire in itself as well). Soviets fell on their own and this just leaves the Americans. (I know, people might complain at me for calling the States an empire, but it's less conquering and more financial and military presence than anything else. Think about how wide they range.)

One also doesn't realize that between around 1500 and 1900, a lot of the European countries all had colonies they had dominion over. Not anymore.

TLDR:

Bigger boys have fallen apart than the States has, so never say never. Just because you've never seen the massive collapse of a world power doesn't mean it hasn't happened a LOT even in surprisingly recent times.

I agree that Budget cuts and Tax rises are not vote winners. But there will be a time when the cost of borrowing is going to rise. Even the largest economy can run out of credit. When that will be remains to be seen

What happened is what will likely continue.  You ended up with the cross the board budget cuts, and also letting the Bush tax cuts expire.  As of now, the GOP side can't cut taxes on the lower end any more (nearly half of people pay no income taxes), so they won't get tax cuts through for the upper end.  That is done.  And the budget cuts will end up coming, but not likely much more.  Thing is that pork is what gets congressmen elected.  Pretty much it is force things to happen, and then have congressmen end up protesting powerlessly against things.

Pretty much, the economy needs to start to grow, but no one figured out how to do things, coming off the stimulus buzz they had been running for decades.