By "reset" I mean, the standard of living for Americans at large will shift downward. We can do another round of quantitative easing (print more money) along with borrowing "a little lesss more than last time" and then rinse, repeat, for about 50 years, and that would slowly put us back on the right track. The problem is that the politicians have a hard-on for buying votes for their next few years in office, so they can't come to grips with doing things that oppose that goal (of buying votes).
The other thing that could happen is a catastrophic failure, where we really do default, a bunch of countries get all pissed off and dump our debt or demand repayment in something other than Federal Reserve Notes, and the government begins confiscating land and crops from American farms to pay the debt back to avoid war or the loss of real estate. Along with that, there would be HUGE reductions in the market manipulation that takes place with oil and other commodities, AND a huge reduction in all the BS services that the government provides AND a huge reduction in taking from this state to give to that state. Very few people could deal with that kind of scenario, and cities would be burned to the ground.
That would really suck.