Many respondents believe the US economy is already in dire straits, the poll found
More than four in 10 Americans believe the country is heading toward a complete economic meltdown within the next decade, according to a new poll.
The survey, released by YouGov on Wednesday, shows Americans are more worried about the economy than potential threats to the democratic system or the prospect of civil war.
42% of respondents said it is very or somewhat likely that there will be “a total economic collapse” in the next 10 years, while a smaller share, 38%, described this outcome as unlikely.
Financial anxiety ran much higher among Democrats, 53% of whom feared an economic breakdown, compared with just 28% of Republicans.
Good thing most of us are idiots and always assume something terrible is just around the corner… right? oh god please just let it be us being idiots.
I mean im not so sure its idiotic way to think. I mean. This millenium. oof. we seem to be able to build the house of cards higher every time.
Hence the last bit of my post.
I’d say that’s optimistic.
Well good news is i have atrocious amounts of student loans so im well hedged against economic collapsed!
Yes but their reasoning differs based on political preferences.
Today’s empires are tomorrow’s ashes. This too shall pass. A better world is possible.
sure. eventually. The times between empires are not always great.
Today’s empires are tomorrow’s ashes.
The US goes through recessions roughly every ten years, thanks to credit expansion and contraction. If anything, the next recession has been postponed far longer than expected.
The idea that we’re going to be “ashes” in another ten years… the fucking doomer juice has blasted basic American history out of everyone’s brains. Go back and live through the Great Recession, then talk to me about End Of Empire. Live through 9/11. Countries don’t just stop existing because of a stock market sell-off, ffs.
Upvoted and agreed. But I think the US financial collapse has more to do with:
∙ Short-term incentives — businesses chasing next quarter while ignoring the long game. CEO tenure averages around 7 years, but comp structures reward short-term predictability over long-term health. Make the number go up, cash out, someone else’s problem. ∙ Crushing debt — not “insolvency” in the household sense, since the US prints its own currency, but debt-to-GDP at ~120% and interest payments consuming an increasing share of federal revenue creates real risks: inflation, dollar credibility erosion, and crowding out actual investment. ∙ No savings cushion — ~57% of Americans can’t cover a $1,000 emergency. That’s not a recession risk, that’s a detonator.Empires don’t fall suddenly — they transform. The Roman Empire never really “ended”; the eastern half ran unbroken from Constantinople for nearly a thousand years after Rome’s western collapse. The threat isn’t a single dramatic crash. It’s a long, slow institutional rot that’s already underway.m
This isn’t your fault, but I’m on mobile in the default web interface and fuck this side-scrolling code block thing.
The threat isn’t a single dramatic crash. It’s a long, slow institutional rot that’s already underway.
You could have made the same critiques under Bush in 2007 or Reagan in 1987 or Nixon in 1971.
These aren’t new problems or new forms of rot. I think you’re underestimating the forces keeping the gears turning. This isn’t our first rodeo with a shit President. Go back and read about Bush 41, LBJ, or Truman. Go read about Cleveland and McKinley and Wilson and Hoover. These people were shit. But they weren’t the end of the nation. They certainly weren’t the end of the system.
At least trans people can’t use a public john, and dangerous books are being kept out of libraries. That’s the important thing. /s
10 years? I’m pretty sure 10 months is 50/50 odds at this point…
I have insight to a company that does automotive loans, and the number of people getting offers for 30% APR 84 month 0-down loans (and accepting them) is way too fucking high.
People can’t really afford cars. The US government considers domestic car production so important, that we are practically banned from buying “better” cheaper cars made in China. The auto manufacturers know this and are absolutely chowing down in the captive market. The working class is going to lose reliable transportation, at the same time companies (and the government) are pushing to end Work-from-home options, and there is basically 0 public transportation in the US.
So a lot of people aren’t going to be able to afford the systemically artificially inflated cars to get to their arbitrarily in-office jobs and they can’t reasonably take the systemically hobbled/non-existent bus or train.
Oh, did I mention that we’ve pissed off and mistreated and deported all of the migrant labor that made fresh food widely available and cheap in the US? Oh, and we also emptied critical agricultural water reserves in a smooth-brain attempt to fight a fire 200 miles away. Don’t forget, global shipping and fuel prices are fucked because of a war we decided to start to distract from the fact that the president is practically in the Epstein files more than Epstein himself? So come summer, we’re going to have no food because we have no water and no labor, and importing food is going to be even more expensive? And that’s before the capricious 100%+ tarrifs the president is slapping on everything via a fucking tweet.
Come on… I don’t think I could fuck up running a county this bad if I was actively trying.
You have to be joking, 84 month 30%??
They sell them on the amount someone would pay per payment, tell people for just $400 every other week they too can drive away in their
dreamfunctional car/truck.Its the same idea of the 15 easy payments of $19.99 shit from long ago. Issue is people need a way to work so they justify the cost the same as rent and food (that are also squeezing people).
And just like the subprime crisis in 2007 all it takes is one life event and it all goes off the rails.
Not joking.
I hate how right you are. And half the country is going to cheer it on without even understanding. And when things do go to shit they’ll find some minority group to blame it on and their base will eat it up.
They are doing these types of loans with houses too. This is after the bubble popped due to the relaxation of variable rate mortgages. Stop the fucking world, I want to get off.
wutabout asteroids 🎇 same half fears everything.
In 2015, I used to say “A vote for trump is a vote for total system collapse.”
Glad to see I was right.
In 2024, in this very group, I told people voting for Trump is voting for more genocide over there AND genocide over here…
Quit thretening me with a good time
Are you, though?
Signs point to no, but it depends what the outcome is in 5-10 years. Each time it swings one way too far, the result is the other way going even further. If this swings super hard left we could see an end to the GOP functionally… which I can’t imagine happening but anything is possible if the left resurgence is strong enough.
The fallout for this to happen though really requires the administration to fall even further, which everything points to.
I expect a massive economic collapse every 5-10 years.
Which is about how often conservatives get full government power. I wonder if the two are related…
Next 10 years?
Motherfucker, it is currently ongoing.
Fucking goddamn, Americans are propogandized as fuck.
I think we’re in the process of collapsing, not collapsed yet. Bad timing for me, I just landed the best job I’ve ever had by a wide margin. I’ve been approaching fight-or-flight mode for a while. Fortunately I’m in California and I haven’t been personally affected that much, yet, other than the psychological damage from reading/watching the news.
Yeah, but it’s collapsed when it’s over, the next couple years of collapsing is the worst part
Don’t feel guilty about carving out a nice slice of life for yourself amid the chaos. Congrats on the job.
Thanks :)
Hope you have a plan for increasing wildfires, inusrance costs going to the moon, being able to get around town and get to work with $150+ a barrel oil, and when Lake Mead and Lake Powell’s water levels get lower, and lower, and lower.
They get low enough, Hoover Dam stops generating power.
That happens, the US SouthWest powergrid starts to look worse than Texas’, real fast.
I think I’m somewhat ready for everything you listed except a water shortage. Not too worried about that at this point, we periodically get large amounts of rain and my drinking water comes from the Hetch Hetchy reservoir. If/when I can get my hands on an Aptera that’ll be reassuring as well.
“It’s collapsing now” is included in “will collapse in the next ten years”
Duh
We don’t know what all these assholes in the halls of power and finance are up to, but we know it ain’t good.
Almost half of all Americans fear a total economic collapse. The other half are looking forward to it.
10 years is optimistic
Still votes for trump…
I’m still 90% sure the fucker cheated - hell he even admitted as much right after he ran
Of course he did.
The evidence of Musk knowing the results way before the actual people in charge did clearly is foul play. They even found Musk manipulating votes and the South African immigrant is STILL not behind bars.
They’re dismantling voting systems. Not just the machines, but the actual “systems”. The people counting, how its counted, what’s valid or not, where you can vote, when you can vote, who can vote.
They’re sowing doubt at a rapid pace. Every election that they lose is fraud. Every election that they win is not.
They threatened everybody who was honest. They threatened the counters. They threatened judges. They did Jan 6 and killed two cops and harmed many others.
Let’s not beat around the bush. Trump cheated. Period.
The entire Republican Party cheated with gerrymandered districts, suppressing voter turnout, voting barriers, etc.
No, that’s not how they did it. They only had to change one race in only seven swing states, and he won all of them, a statistical impossibility. In those states, there were MILLIONS of straight Democratic ballots, with Trump at the top. Who does that? Have you EVER met anyone who votes that way? Have you ever seen anyone claim to vote that way on TV? If those people really existed, wouldn’t EVERY news org want to put together a panel of those voters and question them? Where are those people?
I’ll tell you where they aren’t - in non-swing states. Those states had none of those ballots, they were all concentrated in the Swing States.
At the very least, it should have been investigated, but the minute Election Day was over, the Manchurian MAGA comedy act of Schmuck & Jeffries declared Trump’s win “fair & square.” That would make it the first time in his life that he didn’t cheat, and it stretches all plausibility that the ONE time he didn’t cheat, and played it “fair & square,” is the one race he needed to win to keep from going to prison for the rest of his life. THAT’S the one he decided NOT to cheat on?
C’mon, wake up your Critical Thinking Skills, and ask yourself if ANY of this makes sense.
Tbh the Arabs in Dearborn actually voted that way and let everyone know they did
I wouldn’t have been surprised if he won a few swing states, especially in states like this, with a big Muslim population who was angry at Biden for not condemning Israel Gaza Genocide. But all of them? Impossible.
So Trump lied to them, and the believed him, so they got Trump, and he proceeded to help Israel finish destroying Gaza, and has now unleashed WW3 in the Middle East. And whether they voted for him or not, he’ll eventually send them all the Camps.
The problem is nobody actually cares. A small handful of community leaders so an opportunity to make some money, (maybe even money that could be used to help the people of the community), so they make a deal with trump to help him win.
Yes, he also had musk and ellison and thiel hacking election computers as well.
But every single time someone shakes hands with trump, they sre shaking hands with the most famous child rapist in the world and they dont care because theyre hoping to make some money.
Every world leader needs to call him out, Japanese PM should have said obviously we can’t work with this racist child abuser, as should have Mark Carney and Keir Starmer and Merz and Macron et al et al et al
Like idk what we’re doing as homo sapiens
The conservatives have always hated democracy, see things like Democracy in Chains.
Now they have monsters like Peter Thiel on their side, who knows full well his ideas are not something democratically supported.
Devils advocate here, but we can thank the great great grandfather of the democrats the democratic-republicans for starting gerrymandering. Slimy bastards.
There’s the door, citizen.
That’s a very nice door, is it made of mahogany?
If he didn’t actually cheat he absolutely openly tried. Fake electors, calling State governors looking for “a few more votes,” the insurrection at the Capitol, etc.
They straight up told us the revolution would be bloodless if the left let it be
Trump supporters used 2020 election lawsuits to gain access to vote counting machines and leaked software online.
The Mueller investigation absolutely proved that Trump’s 2016 campaign gave private polling data to Russian agents, discussed them dropping dirt on Hillary, and proved than Kushner had convos about setting up a private line between the Trump admin and the Kremlin by routing communications through the Russian embassy
