As an Australian I wonder how it will go for us. We managed to come through the GFC relatively unscathed (through high social spending), likewise COVID (ditto). China is already a huge trading partner. I do wonder what happens when American hegemony falls. Do we go down with the great satan? (Very much deserved but I personally would rather not live through it tbqh). Do we realign closer to China? Where does that end? We’re fundamentally a liberal democracy, so there is absolutely a clash there - our leadership won’t step aside for socialism and if China is sincere about building socialism (as I believe they likely are) they need that to happen eventually as of course communism is a global system, not a national one. How would that contradiction play out? Will China just let us fall alongside the USA and be there to help pick up the pieces and build socialism with Australian characteristics?

And what would that sound like?

Bogan Mao Zedong <= is this anything

Some people think the residential real estate market will crash too and they can finally buy a house.

Worth remembering that they were bulldozing ‘excess’ housing stock so that supply kept falling with demand

People are so ground down, and don’t believe the current system is capable of improving their lives. So I think it’s kind of logical to see the signs of that system’s collapse, and feel a sort of hope that maybe something better will be possible on the other side.

Collapse is already here, it just isn’t evenly distributed.

it’ll happen, i think. but not soon. not in the timeframe everyone expects it. I also think a lot of folks dont understand what could potentially happen, either.

The USA as a world power (political, economical, militarily) is waning, but it hasnt waned fully. It still has a pretty big spoon and can still stir some shit up. It is on its downhill slope, but it hasnt hit rock bottom yet. Crabs in a bucket or some shit.

This reminds me of a coworker casually mentioning he was planning on a GFC type situation to unfold so he could buy a house. Not in a predatory way, but that he took it for granted that another “once in a lifetime” financial meltdown would happen and that it will be soon enough to be relevant to his life plans, and that it was the only way he saw for himself to attain home ownership. This was a guy in his late 20s with a stable-ass job who lived at home and had high 5 figures saved for a down payment. I just share that profile and that attitude as a data point for how precarious the economy feels.

Everyone who has a real effect on the economy is too greedy/stupid to draw out a long squeeze. If the republicans had more brains, they’d throw the next elections to the dems who would take the fall and not really fix anything.

I have 9k and an alien wife. We spend 2-3k per month. No welfare at all. I helped my boss save millions in some stupid marketing gig. They’re telling me I don’t earn enough to sponsor my wife’s visa. I’m 50k behind in income tax.

I just hope i get another contract gig quick otherwise i’ll end up in an ocean of shit. I’m not looking for the lack of job and i bet they will react with even more austerity. We’ll end up slaves.

I know it’s coming though

I think it’s a stress response. Like everything is so clearly precarious, it’s going to come to an end, and that’s going to be bad and unpredictable and will probably mean our deaths, but the tension of just seeing things get worse and worse while remaining standing just builds up until we want to see it finally give just to stop all of this, for all that what comes next is going to be worse.

My job skills will at least help in the construction of shanty towns. My community will have the best insulated shacks

Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

Oh probably a blood bag for some wealthy ghoul turned local warlord.

America deserves a century of humiliation for how much terror and destruction they’ve done to the rest of the world. If I’m collateral, so be it.

Some people think the residential real estate market will crash too and they can finally buy a house. But that’s hard to do when either you’ve lost your job or your job feels so precarious that you really don’t feel safe emptying your savings and taking out a mortgage. Or if you have a “safe” job, you think you can weather the storm. But in a depression, there are very few “safe” jobs.

I think that’s much more “this shit is never going to work out (for me), might aswell crash the whole thing and try anew” which is a pretty common thread for this type of destabilizing-the-status-quo thread.

Germany has a quite large class of unfireable-civil-servants. Not even talking about high ranking people, just like, every cop and firefighter, 40% of teachers, give or take 30 - 40% of administrators. They make average to above average money and they’re never going to lose their job. They would, personally, benefit so much from crashing the economy every 10 years since they’re suddenly like the last ones getting paid. And I mean this, that status has weathered both world wars and the GFC and god knows what else.

As a class of people they vote overwhelmingly centrist, so SPD and CDU in germany.

This has been a meme for a couple years now.

So I’m in s relatively okay position. Stable job, mortgage is manageable, pension even. But, the only reason I have all that, is I’m union. Wife was for quite a while too. So for me it’s like, I have a modicum of niceness not because of the “free market” but because of the tiniest shred of worker power left in the economy. That more worker power is what will lift people up, not the status quo. And even then, it’s taking a two income household to get even close to the relative level of what our parents had on one income, so the downward trajectory is still obvious.

As far as what will happen: my feeling is that the US economy is one of those, does not bend but will break things. It doesn’t adjust or accommodate for the real economic malaise l, but that also means that when the collapse comes it’s not going to have any way to break the fall.