Sounds like scary click-bait? Yeah, i wish. America has been on a path to financial ruin and societal collapse ever since we kicked the gold standard under the rug.
What is a dollar worth? It's just paper. It used to be backed by gold and silver. That's where it's value came from, a scarce commodity that people invested in as a medium of exchange, flour and grains could have done the same thing, and flour was used as money and storage of wealth a long time ago, but people decided gold was a better money for it's properties of scarcity and usability.
What happened to just using grains and storage of wealth, which was something you could actually eat and physically use? Simple, everyone started to produce it, which majorly decreased it's value, and people saw that this was a problem because flour lacked consistent scarcity and people were incentivized to quit their other jobs to produce it, which hurt the economy.
Money is a mathematical evolution of the barter system. If you grew tomatoes, this being your contribution to society, and you wanted someone's shoes or sandals, but the other person didn't want tomatoes, how would you get the shoes? You must first figure out what the shoemaker wants, and either produce it or trade your tomatoes with the person that produces what the shoemaker wants. But what if this other person didn't want tomatoes either? By the time you made all the trades necessary to purchase your shoes, you're tomatoes would have probably expired, and the shoemaker may desire something else already. Money is obviously useful since it's universally desirable by anyone who desires services from vendors who accept money as payment, this being because it transcends the obvious problems of a barter economy.
For hundreds of years, a gold standard worked. In order for evil, greedy, imperialist nations like colonial France and England to get rich, they needed to rob gold. Nowadays it's much easier for government to be a thief. All they have to do is print more money and society suffers the economic consequences.
The value of the US dollar is nothing like it used to be. If a man worked his entire life and saved up a thousand dollars (100 years ago that was a wealthy man's retirement), it would now be an insignificant lump of money someone would blow through in a few short months. How are we supposed to save for retirement when the value of our money is continually spiraling downwards?
Government implemented the joke of social security to try to make us feel better about retirement. Social security is literally a pyramid scheme, each generation pays for the last. And we're all forced into it. No Ponzi scheme has lasted longer than a generation or two, at least that I'm aware of.
Inflation and social security isn't our biggest problems, however. I'm more concerned about The Mother of All Bubbles, the national debt bubble.
We are currently sitting at fifteen trillion dollars in debt, and it's climbing, fast. The government must pay about two percent of it's outstanding debt off every year. Right now, that's more than three hundred billion dollars, every year, in interest. The federal revenue of the U.S. government sits at around three trillion dollars.
I'm going to say this, and it's very important that you listen:
The federal revenue of the U.S. government is only TEN TIMES what it must pay off in outstanding national debt every year for interest.
What happens when the interest that needs to be payed off in outstanding debt exceeds the revenue of the United States government?
I'll tell you, it will be utter chaos. If you think anarchy is bad, watch what statism is about to do. If you keep listening to me you might survive the collapse. The Mother of All Bubbles is about to pop.
The dollar is going to collapse. Its inevitable. It's mathematically impossible for it to not collapse. But the question is, when? Jeff Berwick hypothesized that it will pop, or begin to pop, by the year 2020. If you're reading this in 2018, that's two years from now. Shortly after he made that comment, he moved to Mexico. Makes you wonder why.
What's going to happen when everything collapses? There's three to five main steps to it, according to my understanding of human and economic dynamics.
Step 1: Hyper-inflation.
Ever heard of the tragedy of Venezuela? They couldn't stop printing money. Their debts and excessive expenses drove them into the ground, so much so that a piece of toilet paper costs more than a Venezuelan Bolivar (Dollar). A million Venezulan Bolivars actually only equals about $0.26 in U.S. money. Their currency became unusuable. Everyone's starving over there right now.
Hyper-inflation will be the first step of societal collapse. If the dollar losing 98% of it's value over a hundred years is normal inflation, then what is hyper-inflation going to look like? It's not going to be pretty, this much i can say.
Step 2: Accelerated Taxation
Hyper-inflation is going to ruin the economy. And it's going to run the stock market into the ground. In order to save the Stock Market and the hard earned capital of many businesses, the government is going to raise taxes. But not just by a little. Imagine taxes growing to two or three times it's size over the course of two months. Low-income families will starve to death. Nobody is going to have any money to pay the bills. Everyone's going to suffer, even the wealthy will panic.
After increased taxes, businesses nationally are going to lose business, as people can't afford to shop anymore. Everyone's going to be starving while trying to garden in their back yards. Sanitary conditions are going to massively decrease.
Step 3: Defaulting And World War
What's China going to do when we say "Sorry, we just don't have your money." China's going to say "Okay, but you do have my collateral." China is going to destroy all our forests and exploit us. A lot of countries are going to be demanding their money back, from each other too. What are all the nationalist Americans going to do? They're gonna want a war with the Chinese. It will be the bloodiest and most gruesome war to come in human history. We'll be lucky if people don't pull the nuclear bombs out. I don't think we're lucky enough to get a forgiveness of our debt or a de-escalation of the situation. But only time will tell.
Step 4: Revolution, Civil War, and Riots.
How many people are going to stand for the failure of government? If it we're me, I'd want to see government officials pay for the societal ruin and destruction they brought upon society. And there's no telling who's going to be waving a flag of rebellion. There may be Patriots who want to blame the collapse on the failures of socialists, and there may be an army of socialists and communists that want to pin this as a failure of capitalism. Either way, there's no telling what violence is going to precede society getting back on its feet.
Step 5: The final step: Humanity dies, There's a New World Order Under a Totalitarian-Socialist Regime, Government Starts All Over Again, or Humanity Embraces Statelessness and Anarchy.
This is the part of the story where we, as humanity, has an important choice to make. Do we learn from the mistakes we've made? Or do we continue the cycle of statism and economic ruin?
If we implement a new world order, that may be walking into the final abyss where we tell our rights and freedoms goodbye forever. Who can stop a government with the power of every government in the world? If a voluntary society or at least a limited government seems impossible now, it will for sure not be any easier then.
Hope for Anarchy
We as humanity, we have a choice. And we don't have to repeat the mistakes of our ancestors. We can live in a truly free society, free from government theft and mafias, where society is wealthy, and the markets are free and healthy. It's really simple, if all products and services wasn't taxed to death, everything would be significantly cheaper and you would have a lot more money. Especially since government likes to create, curate, and defend monopolies like itself. It's literally a monopoly on courts, roads, and defense services. Economists like David Friedman and Rothbard have already proved that government doesn't need to exist for us to have healthy markets, a peaceful society, or even a justice system. And if such an idea truly tickled your curiosity, you might consider reading Friedman's greatest work, "The Machinery of Freedom."
What You Need To Do To Prepare For the Coming Economic Collapse
When all hell breaks loose and money becomes worthless, you're going to need some assets. The best financial asset in history is gold and silver. Even a few coins might save your life. If you have an investment portfolio at all, about half of it should be in precious metals.
What else can you invest into? Bitcoin and Cryptocurenncies. The entire point of Bitcoin is to be a decentralized currency, that can't be touched by Government, can't be printed, and allows for direct peer-to-peer money transactions.
If you invested in Bitcoin ten years ago and held it up to this point, congratulations, you might be a multi-millionaire. Imagine it's price in dollars as it increases against the grain of the dollar collapsing. Bitcoin is going to be worth a lot more than just a few thousand dollars.
I believe that the other half of your investment portfolio should be in cryptocurenncies. But not just Bitcoin. In fact, although the Bitcoin development team is trying some experimental things out, they're still outcompeted by some of their competitors. Right now, Ethereum and Bitcoin Cash are processing transactions faster and cheaper than Bitcoin, and then you've got really ambitious projects like EOS which is trying to make coin that can process millions of transactions a second, for no miner fee at all. If and when government or corporations come out with quantum computers to try to crack Bitcoin, another ambitious project, called Nexus, may be a coin to turn to. With a 3D quantum resistant blockchain, and the goal of putting satellites in space to reconstruct a better internet, time will only tell what amazing things they do for the crypto ecosystem. And if you are scared that the government is tracking your cryptocurenncy, you may invest in or run your portfolio through a privacy coin like Monero. The key is to diversify.
In the case of societal collapse and utter economic ruin, you might need something else that doesn't scream "hey I'm running down the street and I own gold or Bitcoin." There's a few basic commodities people are going to be willing to trade for. This may include bullets, cigarretes, batteries, toilet paper, medicine, anything with practical value. You may want to invest in some of these household commodities, and get a safe or lockbox for them.
Aside from investments, you're going to need to make sure you're investing in your own health and safety, too. What if there's a famine? A draught? A war? Is your house going to be void of food, weapons, and commodities? Or will you be prepared against the worst?
I'd be stockpiling seeds, grains, and have at least six months of food storage at the ready. It may make the difference between life and starving to death. If you need to hunker down and wait out a civil war, will you be able to? What if nuclear bombs go off, can you ensure your family doesn't die of radiation poisoning? A lot can happen, and i don't personally believe we have any longer than five to ten years to be prepared for it.
A lot is going to be tested in the coming years. Your survival skills, your ability to prepare, your faith, and humanity itself may have to pass it's final exam. If everything goes to hell tomorrow, would you be ready for it? Are you prepared for the imminent financial ruin that faces America?
The time to prepare is now. Thank you, and have a nice day.