Wages are stagnant and cost of living is ridiculous. Are we headed for a crash?

We're already there. The only reason we aren't calling this a depression is that the stock market hasn't been affected much.

But when 25% of Americans are functionally unemployed, it's hard to argue we aren't already largely 'crashed'.

The biggest issue is the need for families to have two incomes to support a houshold. Unemployment would plummet if single incomes for the working class were feasible again,since unemployment is based on looking for employment.
Basically if jobs had living wages and we had universal healthcare we wouldn't be in this mess.
- That ship sailed under Reagan, and it's never getting back to port, sadly. Thanks to him, families now needed two incomes.
  Then, Bush and Clinton came along, and you needed not only two incomes, but two college degrees. Now, with Dubya, Obama, and Trump, not even that's enough, and they're capping student loans instead of regulating student loan interest, so your only real shot at being a doctor now is being born in the right zip code.
  America, baby. Dig it.
- if jobs had living wages
  But but billionaires would be slightly less obscenely rich then, oh no!
- This is part of my problem. My wife has medical issues and can't work which is exaserbated by our higher than typical medical costs. It sucked before but we managed and now it seems like the end.
Yeah, I don’t know if OP is in the USA, but having someone like Donald Trump elected to high office is 100% part of a crash already in progress. Inequality got so bad that democracy is not functioning. In a healthy society, Trump would be an unelectable laughing stock.
- Yeah. I consider Trump the "blow everything up" candidate, he got a lot of support from people who were just so generically desperate that they wanted to vote for whoever seemed like they were going to majorly change something, somehow. It almost didn't matter what Trump did as long as he smashed the existing order while doing it.
- 24/7 propaganda, plus MSM helping all along the well, plus adding a little culture war(racisms, sexism, anti-immigration,evangelicalism) helped alot.
Also, not so fun fact, but this got me curious so I looked up the unemployment rate during The Great Depression: apparently then it was around 20% to 25% as well, so I feel like that reinforces the point I'm making a bit.
- apparently then it was around 20% to 25% as well
  No, the unemployment rate was around 20-25% under the traditional definition. It's currently 4.2% under that definition.
  If you want to use this LISEP definition, fine, but recognize that it's been above 30% for most of its existence, and has only been under 25% since COVID. Basically, if you go by the LISEP definition then you're saying that the job market after COVID has been better than it has ever been before.
The 1% own even more stock than they own outright money. You could replace "the economy" in every article with "rich people's yacht money". The stock market is 100% dissociated from reality and shouldn't be used as a measure of general wealth by any means.
- most of billionaires money is in investment schemes, not actual cash as people think.
I stopped working a year ago. Burnt out, broken down, and various physical ailments just broke and depressed me. Moved back in with family to help support my useless ass. Shit sucks and it ain't going to get any better. But I'll turn up to every local protest I can cuz this GOP shit is bullshit.
From your own source on "true" unemployment, it's the lowest it has been since they started calculating it. It peaked in 09 at 35% and again in COVID, but all through the early 00s it was between 28% and 30%.
You can't use that number as evidence we "already crashed", because as we've seen in other actual crashes it spikes up to 35%.
- When the definition of unemployed is changed to exclude the majority of working age people without jobs then it is no longer a helpful statistic.
  That's why we see people calculating real unemployment with other variables.
- Hello friend.
  This point has been discussed elsewhere in the thread. I hope you have a nice afternoon.
And the stock market is just another way for the top percent to continue to siphon wealth.
Meh, please don't quote unusual statistics without giving any context for how to interpet them.
For this value, it is calculated by:
Using data compiled by the federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, the True Rate of Unemployment tracks the percentage of the U.S. labor force that does not have a full-time job (35+ hours a week) but wants one, has no job, or does not earn a living wage, conservatively pegged at $25,000 annually before taxes.
24.3% is not that out of the ordinary - you can see historical data back to like, 1995 here.
Not saying this stat is useless, but the way you've chosen to use it is intentionally and inaccurately inflammatory.
- I dunno, H.
  I may be wrong in saying it's indicative of a crash, and I'm okay with being corrected.
  As to inaccurate or inflammatory, maybe it feels that way if you're on the winning side of the equation.
  I think we should be inflamed about this. I don't think it's unreasonable to say that thirty years of high functional unemployment being ordinary is an objectively bad thing, but when you couple it with the increasingly supercharged price gouging and inflation the US has experienced over the last several decades, things that seemed improbable before suddenly become feasible. (Like making fascists electable.)
- The fact that it's pegged to 25k means that the number is much much higher. It's not 24.3%. its 24.3% plus everyone who can't afford to live at today's prices.
  That's terrifying.
- Maybe in 1995 you could actually afford things while functionally unemployed? I mean, while the relative number is stable, the absolute numbers keep growing, and their situation keeps worsening. Here lies the inflammatory part.
If the economy doesn't need 25% of the populace to keep functioning...what happens?
Im at 42 weeks. My life plane is heading straight down and the rudder is not responding.
- Best way to recover from a spin is push the yoke to straight down and rudder opposite the spin.
The stock market is not the same thing as it was at the start, different players, different motives, and lots of failsafes. That time it was a signal that things were bad, this time we could continue to get worse and you'd never know it looking at the DOW.
Can you ELI5 why the stock market isn't affected much?
- If we look at historic crashes, they had major catalysts causing mass sell orders. Right now markets have had time to adjust because the speed of decline has been very slow.
  Markets are also largely speculative, many stocks are traded way above their fundamental value (think Microsoft, tesla, or coca-cola). These will probably be hit the hard, algorithms will default to what a stock should be and drop hard. But these companies might have the strongest chance to bounce back as well.
  Companies with the strongest books will be safer, but many more risk taking companies won't be as lucky. This is part of what due diligence of a stock will tell you, but also probably one of the hardest parts of investing.
  As long as decline is slow, stability can be found. But when uncertainty rises fast, so does the unstability of the stock market. Catalysts such as the public losing confidence in banks causing a bank run, companies downsizing at unseen scales to cut costs, or global political instability are possible.
  TLDR: it needs to get way worse, very quickly for the market to crash
So many jobs 🫲🍊🫱
Really weird reading an article that interviews someone you’ve worked for (who is a billionaire themselves).

It depends on who "we" are.

If you're in the US, then bad news buttercup - you're already under the thumb of a ruthless insane dictator, and the economy is the last of your worries.

We are heading into a feudal system of a sort. The wealth gap is absolutly massive and the only way to end up in the upper class is to inherit. As per usual the population feels that the system is unfair, but is unable to see the real problem. Media is really pushing far right talking points, as the upper class realizes that the system is broken and a real revolution is a problem. Thats how the US ended up with a de facto monarchy. The UK is moving towards that pretty quickly too.

The good news is that Labour might make some really usefull changes. Mainly end first past the post to prevent Reform from taking over. That might very well allow left wing parties like the LibDems and Greens to win more seats and change the narrative.

What makes you think Labour are looking to change that?
- Labour had a bit more then a third of the votes, which is pretty close to were Reform is polling today. However Labour won a massive majority with those votes. If Labour wants to prevent a Reform victory they need to change the election system. It is even worse for the Tories. So long term Tory supporters will cheer them on.

We are always headed for a crash. That’s the cycle of capitalism without strong regulatory mechanisms to mitigate it. I believe it is every 4-7 years that a crash has happened in the last 300 years.

Don't worry. Trump is making sure you can get a job picking crops. You'll be living in a tent. No rent, not utilities. You're welcome!

Brave of you to assume he won’t make people who live/work there pay rent and utilities, and that “the haves” won’t say he’s a great guy for providing this.
- Sarcastic humor aside, migratory agricultural work is a thing in the US. Some of my friends did it back in the 80's. Live in a tent on site, earn by how much you pick, save money because no rent and no place to spend. No federal taxes. Blueberries here, apples there, travel to where the crops need picking. Clean fish in Alaska or work on the boats.

Yes. We are heading towards a crash. We are very much already in one, and have absolutley no way out.

Trump killed all US international commerce with his TACO tariffs and is currently propping up a failing stock market by converting medicaid dollars into ICE / TECH BRO MILITARY funding. The stock market keeps doing great because our tax dollars are propping up companies like Google, Plantir, and Amazon through government grants instead of providing us a safety net. That money will run out eventually, but likely not before more CEOs are killed over it.

Literally we are living through the gilded 1920's again but with an American Hitler.

We now have years of uncontrolled inflation well above target rates, a corrupt government, wealth inequality worse than the French revolution, and rampant unintelligent Tariffs hurting all international trade at the cost of every small business in America. These are the same factors that caused the great depression, and if you think it's not going to happen again, you are wrong.

We are a country being lead into disaster by the least competent people imaginable.

We are heading towards a crash. We are very much already in one, and have absolutley no way out.
I think this is what folks lose track of when they talk about "the crash". We're all waiting with baited breath for the financial system to topple over. But the financial system is increasingly just a dozen private equity firms bidding up one another's baseball cards. They can't "crash" in the traditional sense until a sufficient number of them refuse to contribute more to the pot, and so long as everyone has easy credit there's no real reason to do that.
Incidentally, JPow and Trump (and every Fed Chair/President going back to Bernenke/Obama) have both been militant in keeping Fed Interest Rates at historic lows going on nearly two decades.
Literally we are living through the gilded 1920’s again but with an American Hitler.
I mean, the parallels between Trump and Coolidge Eras are in abundance. War on Immigration. A finance/tech sector that's eating the industrial economy. Massive spike in white nationalism paired with a full blown Red Scare. Deficit hawkery that never touches the national security state. Global ecological crises compounding into massive famines and agricultural failures.
We are a country being lead into disaster by the least competent people imaginable.
Part of the problem is that we've lost track of a consensus on what "competent" looks like. I see plenty of people (rightly) insist guys like Trump and Speaker Johnson and governors like DeSantis and Abbott are criminally incompetent. But then these same people get fully behind Gavin Newsom and Pete Buttigieg and Kamala Harris, seemingly without recognizing that they're pushing the backside of the same privatization / national security state coin.
What do you do when blue state bastions like California and New Mexico are turning out Crypto Shills as quickly as any captured conservative enclave like Wyoming or South Carolina? What does competency look like in the wake of Biden's squandered four years or Obama's or Clinton's corporately compromised time in office, for that matter?
How do you talk about climate change or even scratch the surface of our US-backed genocides in Gaza and Yemen and Afghanistan or talk about housing policy or college debts or union organization when half the elected liberal contingent is just a commodity that's traded on the stock market?
We're all waiting for the dream to end in a sudden shocking economic turn. I don't know if that's necessarily what will happen. What if we've just pivoted our economy towards a monetization of human suffering? What if this system is stable and enduring? There is no crash because there's nothing left to be broken into and fleeced.
- Competency implies having some qualification other than loyalty, listening to subject matter experts, considering consequences. The result of competency could easily be just a matter of degree and awareness.
  For example, tariffs can be a powerful tool for addressing specific trade inequities or supporting local production, especially in conjunction with other tools. Many US administrations have successfully used them. Only an incompetent buffoon would just throw them down everywhere all at once as the only tool, or as a bullying tactic.
wealth inequality worse than the French revolution
When the creator of the Revolutions podcast was asked about the one theme that follows every revolution, he said that it was wealth inequality.
If I remember correctly, the French revolution had three major elements that kicked it off the way it did: huge wealth inequality, a major event that hits the lower classes (in this case a drought that destroyed lots of crops and therefore caused a wheat shortage), and incompetent leadership that is unable to deal with said event. Looks like the US is getting there, step by step.

We're headed for a revolution, of the French variety.

Bonjour

ye best start believin in economic depression, yer in one!

Slapping on tariffs at a time with inflation, high consumer anxiety, and wage stagnation is going to be looked on as one of the worst moves a president has made.

He is, without a doubt, the worst and second worst president in the country's entire history.
Trump: "Ah, but you have heard of me!"
- FAKE NEWS TDS, TRUMP IS OUR LAWD N SAVIOR, HE HAS RISEN AND REPLACED JESUS CHRIST. /s
We can only hope! (That this is considered one of the worst ones…)

And I just found out I need a new job as we are being ordered into the office after they moved it 50 miles away.

Things are not looking good. I think they will hit us with another round of redundancies after some people leave too.

That's scary. How are you holding up?
- Scrolling through indeed right now, its not great. Maybe just give up trying to find anything I have skills for and find something unskilled?
  But I think my contract states once a month in the office so if I can argue that its probably worth staying and just going through a shit commute once a month. Still not great but probably slightly better than taking a local retail job.
I've been WFH since Covid forced it, but then a year ago the promised us WFH full time was here to stay and only those that needed or wanted to be in the office could. They downsized buildings and everything. Nice!
They just told us we all had to be back in the office in a month. There isn't enough offices, not enough parking, we've blown away all the productivity metrics at home, half the company is out of state. But, uh, REASONS! We must have butts in THIS specific chair or work doesn't count.
There is literally no valid reason to force it. I think it's all about control and power. They really don't care about productivity or employee satisfaction at all, they just want to force everyone to comply. If they wanted either of those other things we've proved what works.
I hate it. It feels like the dumb "open office" fad all over again. Let's cram 200 people into a single giant open noisy room. Employees HATED it. Managers all gloated how innovative they were. Then it faded away again as they all slowly accepted that no one gets anything done in that chaotic environment.
So too with office vs home. We live in a digital age. The computer age. The internet age. Long gone is the age of work being done by shaking hands and looking at a binder of papers. It's an email, zoom call and a pdf now. Accept it.
In a weird way I'm actually looking forward to my company all going back with 0 coherent plan and not enough parking or desks and then I'll giggle as productivity and morale absolutely tanks.
It's also very likely they know a certain % will quit over it and do it on purpose to lay off without having to. The only problem is that all the most experienced and qualified people leave first.
Companies have had 5 years to accept reality, sell off the MASSIVELY expensive offices and stay fully remote where possible, but no, I think they want control over profits. They want to FEEL like they are managing instead of actually managing.
- constructive dismissial, create a situation where it becomes untenable to stay at your job, eg far away location limit office space, so people resign. seems like it has been ogoing since '23. one of my bros was in tech, they just got impatient and straight up laid people off at the mid size tech company, gotta gid rid of people who are earning 200-400k/year to record profits. he hasnt found another job yet, and i detect a distinct hint of a late 30s life crisis too.
- Oh I absolutely expect morale to tank. We barely have parking at all, the office is large enough for about 25% of the company, the parking is enough for 5% of the seats in the office.
  I am hoping I can get it down to once a month, at that point its no worse than commuting into town for retail every day as far as total commuting time each month. The pay I get is barely over minimum wage so that is hardly a benefit compared to retail. Full WFH is pretty much the only benefit that is worth anything.
  Then at once a month hopefully avoid coming in for a few of them. Plan holiday for the days we were going to be in, that kind of thing.
its called constructive dismissal learn that when they were doing the very first round of layoffs in '23, from reddit.

You will own nothing, live in the company town, owe your soul to the company store, and be grateful.

And that's different from now, how exactly?
- What I am saying is that IS now. Next up, rats and maggots on the menu.

More of a slow collapse than a crash. Ever seen a dilapidated house on a country road, parts of the roof caving in, paint chipped, vines covering the yard? We’re working on being that house by slowly letting social and physical infrastructure in the US collapse over time.

my parents house is like that, lol dad getten older and is too lazy to do anything, he keeps hoping something will magically happen.
Florida is already the rusty old car on blocks in the front yard.
- with hurricanes washing away homes that are built on flood prone areas too.

It's in the making since 1971

The US could poke along forever, North Korea style because our entire country is full of cowards who will just take oppression without any fight.

...the climate, tho. 😬

What you're describing is basically stagflation. It doesn't necessarily mean a crash. It's possible for the majority of people to keep on earning less and less real income for a long time without a crash.

I do wonder what the effect of all the layoffs from tech and the public sector and all the cuts in federal funding will do though. Dunno if that's enough to flood the housing market and crash it or not. I think I've read that banks are in a good position to absorb housing market losses, so it won't be like 2008.

AFAIK, most current economic indicators are OK. Not necessarily great, but not dire either.

The stock market makes no sense to me. It doesn't appear most stocks move on the fundamentals of the companies or anything like that. It all appears to be driven by hype/gambling, and propped up from sustained lows by 401ks on auto-pilot and people trained to "buy the dip" by the quick Covid recovery.

The USD appears to be rapidly losing a lot of value compared to other currencies like the EUR. But, that fits well into the plan to reduce imports and boost US exports. Inflation with stagnant wages makes US exports more attractive/cheaper.

Could the housing market crash independently? Or would it be always with the other markets?
- Isnt a crash in the housing market a good thing for the average person?
  The crisis happened because everyone got credits to buy a house, even if they shouldnt, and banks made money by betting against them ever paying it back. This caused a huge bubble that had to burst.
  It was more a housing-credit crash than anything else.
  Sure, it's bad for people wanting to sell their house to make profits, but it's good for people that want to buy a house.
The stock market makes no sense to me.
That's because "The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent."

Yes, it's gonna get bad. Jobs in both the private sector, and public sector, universities, etc, we are all feeling the heat right now.

Why are universities suffering?
- Because enrollment is in structural decline due to demographic shift.
  Bad reputation among working people due to cost and dubious results for about half of graduates.
  Student loans reform is gonna hurt them the most though.
- NSF funding cuts, declining enrollment bcz of the ICE crap (people are afraid to come to the U.S.), covid funding issues still being felt, lots of government employees vying for university positions, attacks on science across the board forcing experts to leave the U.S., or go to the private sector. Its bad, and it'll probably get worse.
- I heard universities have been closing entire staff departments because of the DEI cuts. Business schools all over the country do DEI research with government grants. That money is gone now.
- research grants, and funding grants are being cut. so scientists are fleeing the states, some of them. this only works if you have phd or MD in a specialty that europe wants.
- I read they are rising taxes to Universities' donations. In the political side, professors are... receiving too much attention from the government, to put it mildly.

I remember during the big housing bubble in the early 2000s people were telling me "Oh you better buy now" even though down payments were insanely high and I kept thinking "The cost of housing is totally out of whack with incomes. There is no way this can keep going up." Surprise, surprise the whole thing blew up and lots of people were then left with mortgages that cost more than their homes so they were stuck. On top of that the prices were still out of whack with incomes and I still couldn't afford a house unless it was a wreck. I eventually just moved out of the state.

I was just reading how the normal "escape cities", like Miami, for people fleeing high cost areas like San Francisco and Boston/NYC are now almost as expensive. Guess people will have to go to St Louis and Des Moines.

Trump is selling us off to China, he said so today in the cabinet meeting. Everything is expensive because China owns it. Climate change is here, AMOC collapse is ongoing, we're pretty fucked tbh. So they need land and clean water for their people, we all do. Floods absolutely destroy/contaminate clean water sources like lakes. And there's been massive floods globally, especially in China.

You just need a union job. I just started mine and my first day I find out we're getting a new contract with $1/hr raises yearly for the next five years, a new boot benefit of $250 a year, better per diem on travel, and better compensation while traveling.

I wonder if IT workers have unions
- Highly recommend any tech workers interested in unionizing to check out and get involved with the Tech Workers Coalition. Solidarity! ✊
- Nah we just have software killswitches.
Yes this is good, but is this enough?

It’s already been going on for 30+ years so whatever you call this is pretty much it.

Correct... This set up was made a generation ago. Normie just finally woke up after a decade of jerking Indentity politics and wars a decade prior. Now they ate shocked by country is gutted from within

Republicans are really determined to make life as awful as possible, and the democrats in power are fine with it.

Republicans will buy stock in airlines then sink the Titanic, but first make sure their donors' rooms are located right next to the life boats. Democrats will make arrangements so that the band plays your favorite song while it sinks.
- They play your favorite song, but the tuba is right in your face and the band is off key.
- while the rich dems also flee, possibly to another country.

A crash? I'd say we're in a plane from which the pilot decided to press the "eject wings" button.

Why do we even have that lever?

Depends what you mean by crash. Before, we have crashed through small bushes and banana stands. Big showy and doing minor damage. We are about to run into that tiny little tree that the devs never made animations for.

We are not prepared for the devastation that tree will cause.

you are outside the bounds of the map
And some turnip brain has thrown down a random slalom course of giant boulders of tariffs, terrorizing immigrant labor, and a full clown car of national “leadership” whose only qualification is personal loyalty

The crab said: You just haven't seen your steamer yet. The crab is a low-level animal, and its nervous system is so simple that when it is slowly steamed in the steamer, it will keep stuffing the ginger slices next to it into its mouth. It just feels uncomfortable, and it thinks that eating something will make it better. I don't know if you can understand the meaning of this paragraph. To sum up, we are already in the steamer. We thought that if we find a good job and work hard, everything will be fine, but the fact is that wages are not rising, prices are rising rapidly, and the world is rotten.

the world is rotten
The chef is rotten. The world is beautiful. You just can't see it from inside the steamer.

In decades past, employees would get both a cost of living raise and performance raise, but the cost of living raise has all but gone away. One way to fix this is to tie the minimum wage to inflation. It'll have tje side benefit of making companies try to reduce inflation rather profiteering.

This is so absolutely adorable.

I live in country that has plateaued financially for the last 2 decades.

You'll be fine. Really. In opposite to what you might have heard, free market capitalism in no way requires constant growth. It can adapt to plateaus or degrowth just fine.

America doesn't do free market capitalism it does late stage capitalism, where profits do in fact need to be record high every quarter, even if that means people are gonna die (like 10m people becoming uninsured, plus us borrowing a bunch of money from China, so we can give more to the billionaires that own us and don't need it).
Which country would this be?

Worse, you will get used to it.

Neoliberalism is reaching its natural conclusion, coupled with the gradual fall of colonialism, is going to lead to a permanent crash for the working class.

While Trump is being loud, the project to divide the US working class by ethnicity has been ongoing always, and began ramping up this century.

It will be required as all production is centralised within a handful of families. And the global south can no longer be relied on for cheap resources and manufacturing for middle class treats.

The US doesn't have a union presence, nor does it have understanding of left politics. Conditions will get worse and worse every decade.

culture war is a pure distraction, cant keep distracitng the rubes/republicans for ever, so they have to come up with some new shtick every election cycle, the current flavor is transphobia, and anti-woke.

Headed? I would say that we are a looney toon several meters in the air beyond the cliff border after traverse a mountaing through a tunnel painted in the wall with an ACME parachute... and I think that I fell short in the hyperbole

More of a sticky slide into a chaos. From it our pain and suffering will fuel new metrics for new economic models with new crash indicators. Indicators that when applied to today would appear as an ominous array of flashing red lights.

brought on by the dismal job prospects of many degree/fields too, even before trump 2nd term.

Yes degrees are ridiculous nowadays. Graduates are ten a penny and debts are awful
- before covid hit i was visiting indeed forums and glassdoors quite alot. and found out so many people are like struggling with thier employment. Indeed and glassdoor shut them down, because the employers/companies were threatening the site owners with lawsuits because it made them look bad, because people were reporting how terrible the employers were, unethical business practices,,etc.
  i was looking at CLS program(which requires graduate schooling) in cali, and found out everyone wants to come to cali for the program(apparently very few schools actually have these programs , so naturali california was a state they would go to for a better chance in the field.)

No. Things will just get worse.

Your statement has probably been true since 2008. Maybe longer.

Define what you mean by 'crash'. What's been happening will continue to happen, but if you're expecting any kind of singular dramatic moment, what would that be?

Grocery value didn't go up. Real wages went down. We should measure inflation based on cost-of-living.

Groceries don't really get more expensive, because the methods for producing food don't really get less efficient over time; if anything, it's more efficient. So there's no real reason for them to become more expensive.

Instead, wages declined. I've already commented many times that the labor market is a free market, that means it's regulated by Supply and Demand. I.e., if prices for labor go down, as we can observe, then that can be interpreted such that supply of labor went up (women go to work too, offshoring labor to other countries, immigrants, ...) or that demand for labor went down (automation, end of growth, ...).

I honestly think that both cases are difficult, where the supply of labor could be a bit reduced by kicking out immigrants and home-shoring labor (and also, to a lesser extent, making it more difficult for women to work), which btw some advisers to trump are seemingly trying to do, but my honest opinion is that it won't bring wages up to how they were in the 1960s. Demand for labor is shrinking too, due to the end of growth and now AI and other automation techniques. I guess we'll have to face that.

edit: just to offer an optimistic outlook, i think that consumerism and therefore demand for consumer products could be stimulated by simply giving handouts to people. most people will spend most of the handouts immediately, and that stimulates consumerism. and that in turn stimulates the economy.

Groceries don't really get more expensive, because the methods for producing food don't really get less efficient over time; if anything, it's more efficient. So there's no real reason for them to become more expensive.
There is reason though. Making them more expensive increases money in flow. Prices aren't just based on supply
- that depends on whether there's still competence in the grocery market

Yes

["Create one's own money as a IOU/ Promissory note, put your thumb print on it's value and signature to it and get others to do the same. Trust it as you would have done so if it were debt based fiat currency. Get your villages and towns to start using it and bingo a new private lawful currency has come to life. :-) ."]

Why, this is a crash, nor are we out of it.

I already know that you are from the US because of the implicit defaultism of your question. Yes, it doesn't look good at all.

I'm in the UK
- Sure.

ITT: Slaves use bunk stats to feel indignant about maintaining the status quo.

Over-population: Sole reason for everything

we've already crashed

Wait until AI/AGI take over. Which is the most silent part of it all. It’s all “nice and great”, supposedly “making our lives easier”, when in fact it will decimate most of the population’s lives. It’s the part that no one ever talks about. You think it’s bad now? Wait until AI takes over everything, and I mean everything to where millions are left without a job. Yes this tech might be “innovating” and make our “lives easier” at the expense of what? The question is what are people going to do when AI takes over? How are we going to even afford to live. What happens to the our basic provision for sustainability to live life. That’s the quiet part that everyone wants to ignore and never ever has an answer for it. It’s absolutely vile and disgusting, cuz no one is looking at the dire ramifications of such deadly technology that threatens the very fabric of our lives and future generations to come.

A guy put it very well. His wife wanted kids, and the guy did some in depth into researching AI… he told his wife he didn’t want any kids because he knew that his kids wouldn’t even have a job. And he is correct in that statement. The kids that are born now, will they even have jobs? What will their future look like?

gen z is pretty much suffering from that, cant say the same for gen alpha when they come of age, what they going to do join the military? milleneals are bearing the brunt of it now.

You're in a situation where you have to cut spending and raise taxes while the left promises to not cut spending and the right promises to not raise taxes. It's an issue the last handful of administrations have not been able to deal with..

It's going to be painful. Hopefully not a drawn out depression like the 1930s.

Austerity doesn’t work
- Except when it does (1)
Hopefully not a drawn out depression like the 1930s.
Much worse. This time it's going to be permanent.
- Virtually nothing in politics or economics is ever permanent.