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I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about economic collapse here in the US and I think it is going to look a fair bit different than other collapses that have made the news.
This article details my thoughts on what we might expect. I’d be curious whether you all agree with my conclusions.
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Wow, Daisy I think you are spot on. I live in an area where jobs are plentiful, but they are low paying and rarely come with adequate health insurance. The cost of rent/mortgages exceeds 40% if not more of most folks income. Our water/sewer is over 100.00 month and although our electricity provider says it provides the lowest cost of electricity in the nation, my bill often exceeds 265.00. Our car insurance and homeowners insurance rates are sky high because we are a “high insurance fraud” state. I have asked the family if they would be interested in moving but so far no one wants to. I spend so much time trying to cut costs everywhere. I always feel guilty like I am not doing enough or I am not frugal enough. The truth is, its just too expensive to live. I am going to school to be an RN. This will help safe guard us when the next recession hits. My husband works in the construction and engineering business so it took us years to recover from the last recession. But I believe we will see a gradual decline just as you have described. I saw this first hand with an friend from Venezuela in 2003. She told me then that the government had frozen her families assets and she was unable to return to Venezuela because she was now broke. Look at Venezuela now in 2019. It took awhile to collapse, but it did indeed collapse.
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I am moving because of the cost of living. Insurance rates are ridiculously high here-Florida Its partially due to the system and living in a hurricane prone area. My electric bill is also high.
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That is spot on Daisy. There will be so many that will be blindsided by a collapse of this country as they have no idea what is going on. I don’t watch the news as much, but my husband keeps on top of it. The gov. closings should be a wake up call for many. We don’t use our charge cards unless we can pay them off at one time each month. Right now I am using my Discover card as I get 5% back on groceries and gas through March. I only use it for these times as I can get the money and not points if I wish and can use that money for other things we need or even a bill. We don’t pay interest on it as we pay the full amount off when it is due. Our house and car is paid off. So being retired, I feel we might be in better shape than a lot of retires. We don’t depend on Social security as we have our retirement in a concersitive type of stock and in 08, though it went down a little we really didn’t loose much of it and we gained it back fast. I really have a gut feeling that we are going to go into a depression much like the 1929 depression. It will be worse because back in those days most people had homesteads and farms. Now we just run to the grocery stores to buy a week’s worth of groceries. That won’t cut it in a bad depression. I already see food prices going up and packaging is getting smaller and the price goes up. Whatever happened to 5 lbs of sugar verses 4 lbs now. I feel we might be in a recession now as I have noticed food prices rising the last few months. What will people do when the ATM’s go down and we have a bank holiday. Don’t even want to think about the riots that will happen. I live in an area where it is military, We have naval bases and coast guard all around us. I really want to move from here. But hubby won’t budge. Says he’s to old to move and start over. I have to agree but we really need to get out of this area.
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Wow…..I play scenarios in my head constantly. Keeps brain active and often brings up something more we need to focus on learning, stocking, ducking, and avoiding. But this low slide backwards is creepy. The beginning of an avalanche is always slow…until the bottom drops out from beneath you.
I grew up in an era in rural America….no one was really wealthy. All the wealth had to be dumped back into the farm to finance the next year. But we all were about even….everyone had holes in their at-home winter boots. You just put plastic bread sacks in to keep your socks/feet dry and went out to play. Next season…when your feet had grown, you get a new pair of winter boots. Or inherited from older siblings.
Then things changed. I actually went to college…as did DH. He grew up urban poor…single mom/4 kids style urban poor. Taped glasses frames cuz …boys break things and single moms are not going to replace them AGAIN this year.
Yet, he went to college and beyond. We both worked professional jobs that didn’t pay as much as was expected. This was decades ago. Ours was the generation that first got hit by student loans….followed by lower paying jobs. Siblings that learned plumbing-construction-truck driving had a MUCH higher lifestyle than we did. Um….we began to scratch our heads…while paying those student loans every month.
Time passed and we had a higher living than we’d grown up with, but it wasn’t stable. Seemed like we were one bad event away from slipping backwards. Then….I was diagnosed and fell out of the job market. I’d never made much despite my impressive job titles/responsibilities. Wait…what? We definitely had that creepy feeling that we’d already passed the best economic days of our lives….before we turned 40.
But, as you say, it felt like we were alone. Others had cars and vacations and fine dining and such. But we didn’t know what their credit card balances were. We’d had that era briefly and modestly too. Perhaps it should have been even more brief and more modest’
The past 2 decades have been interesting. DH pulled out of his profession, dumped some debt thru painful means. We’ve rented for decades now – forget owning now, tho we did before. I cook from scratch as much as I’m able…literally able. We have gone back to many things we grew up with…frugal things. And…it’s not bad. We’re okay.
But the situations are still shifting. We’re aging…and that’s a deal-breaker. We’re not able to DO as many things manually that we did before. Hiring the work done is not an option. We’ll need to get near our younger generations soon.
Our younger generation is still in their heyday….enjoying. But they’re in retail and self-employment. Their rental space will be bulldozed for another hotel…and they’ll have to build out a new space…again. So they understand things they didn’t while we were in self-employment. Now they’re seeing their problems and seeing our former issues more clearly. But they don’t know that this black mold is spreading…quickly. It’s not just us…and them.
I could feel this creeping but your article, more than any other I’ve read, snapped it into focus. This is what I’ve been seeing all along. We know we’re not even in the middle class anymore. Can’t say when we crossed over but it certainly has happened. We’re still ok. And we’ll be ok for longer than most because we define “okay” by lower standards than most.
OldMtWoman …yeah, I do go on and on…. :shrug:
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This reply was modified 1 year, 5 months ago by
OldMt Woman.
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This reply was modified 1 year, 5 months ago by
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Good read Daisy.
Healthcare has always been a mess, but it would go up maybe $20 in monthly premeiums, and the deductible was reasonable.
Then the Un-Affordable Care Act came along.
Now, we cannot afford to use our health care. Twice I had an accident, probably should of gone to the ER for stitches. Cannot afford it. So, used my EMT skills and took care of it myself. I dunno if single payer is the answer or not. Lot of people like to point to other countries that have it. But they are not America or have our form of government.
Otherwise, getting out of debt should be a top priority for everyone. I know, easier said than done. But a lot of people live beyond their means.
As much as we can, we try to be as self-reliant as possible. Can we ever be fully independent of our JIT/BAU society? Nope. But we do the best we can.
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A couple of observations. First, we are already in an economic collapse. Economic collapses don’t happen overnight, but I do believe this one will speed up as time passes. Its not only here. Its a global issue. The world went from a currency backed by silver and gold and moved into a debt-based economy using fiat (unbacked) currency. Every fiat currency has failed…. every one! When Nixon took us off the gold standard in ’71 it was sold as being temporary. Instead its been used by central banks to steal wealth hand over fist by indebting most of the world, turning citizens of whichever country you can think of into debt slaves with no hope of ever getting out. Now we are seeing that even the ones orchestrating this theft have about run out their string and all hell is about to break loose. The Yellow Vests in France might well be the first shot.
Second, Americans have become addicted to spending money they do not have, and do. The system has encouraged it! Consume, consume, consume…
Finally, although I know it was the furtherest thing from your mind, Daisy, much of what you ‘said’ is exactly what socialists are saying as to why we need socialism. Their contention is that only the government can save us, and it will be a disaster. Government CAUSED the problem in league with central bankers, over-regulation, government intrusion, and the ‘string-pullers’ like Soros, Rothchilds, Bilderbergers, Rockafellas, and many others.
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I think it will turn violent as soon as the ebt crowd can’t get what they think is thier right to have, they will riot and just take it. Look at past events to verify this. Black friday anyone.</p>
I think here because of sense of entitlement along with no recent memory of hardship, along with lack of coping skills will,make here worse. More like African level of devastation, they know the path to success but just can’t walk it.-
This reply was modified 1 year, 5 months ago by
namelus.
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This reply was modified 1 year, 5 months ago by
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Your article made me pause and think. The American prosperity has been getting worse very gradually. The average American has tried to keep up by amassing tons of debt and living paycheck to paycheck. The average American lives well beyond their means beacuse they feel entitled. At some point, the situation becomes unstainable.
As you described the situation will be unstainable bat different points for different people. We are just seeing the tip of the iceberg with the current furloughed government employees.
I have a friend that recently moved to the US from South Africa. The stories she tells are quite frightening, involving that country’s slide into collapse where the country is unable to feed itself and the poor have taken to violence. It all happened very gradually. She said she woke up one day and realized how dire the situation truly was for her family.
I could see this situation happening in sectors of the US and spreading. In fact, I would suggest that it has already started to happen in some of our urban centers. Like my South African friend, I recognized a situation occurring in cities, such as Philadelphia. The murder rate has risen in Philadelphia. The schools continue to get more dangerous and unsafe. The poverty level in Philadelphia is unreal. This gradual economic collapse has made cities, like Philly, a tempest of turmoil. Philly is a powderkeg. We are just waiting for the right variables to make it explode.
Unfortunately, I agree with your article that the rest of the US is in this gradual downward spiral.
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Well we have already started the slide some time ago. This stuff with the government is just helping it along.
Not everybody on food stamps is a slacker or “entitled” crowd (although I have met plenty who have been life long system users!) There are people who genuinely need them due to some of life’s knock down punches. So try not to lump everyone together, please.
Some of my kids work in the retail world and they are already seeing more “runners” people who grab food or other products and litteraly run out of the store. They have been told to expect more as the crisis continues and not to stop them as desperate people do dumb things, like stab or shoot you.
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I to have seen what people buy with those food stamps and it makes me wonder how some of them are getting them. I see some of them buy nothing but junk food or they will buy the most expensive items such as crab legs which around here are about 12 to 15 dollars a lb. So those are the ones I question. As for others I see them buying real food and sticking to generics and not all name brand things. This is sort of my way of separating the ones really in need and those that are not. My husband’s cousin owns a farmers market and it is unreal what some of these folks on food stamps buy. We don’t eat that good. We can’t even afford a good steak anymore. They are way up in price per lb. now. I really don’t want to think of what is coming when things go south. Lots of robbing and murder going on all the time. It is sad when you turn on the local news and the first 15 minutes is about someone robbing someone or a murder has happened. I fear this is going to get a whole lot worse. And yes we really need to get away from this area. But moving right now is not an option as hubby can’t phy. do much. He does what he can but moving to the country would be way to hard on him now.
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