Our nation’s recover from the “Great Recession” was lackluster at best.
Then, just when it looked like the economy was going to start purring along nicely, the COVID-19 pandemic hit and we were faced with nationwide lockdowns, hurting the economy once more.
Now that we’re through with the lockdowns, the combination of ongoing shortages and the burden of several trillion-dollar bills passing through Congress has given us the highest inflation we’ve seen in four decades. It seems we can’t get a break.
Part of the problem is that there are two basic ways that Congress deals with problems. The first is to create laws which result in putting limitations on people and businesses, essentially increasing the regulatory power of the alphabet agencies.
From the point of view of recovering from a financial crisis, about all that can do is slow the process down. The second, and this is the more important one, when it comes to a financial crisis, is to throw money at it.
That’s a problem, because it is Congress throwing money at the problems caused by COVID that have led us down this road to a potential economic collapse.
Worse than that, it appears that we’re heading for more economic trouble on the horizon.
Financial gurus have been predicting a major economic crash for years now.
Each hiccup along the financial road brings more prophecy of disaster.
The only real questions seem to be when it is actually going to come and what’s going to be the trigger that pushes us over the financial cliff.
I don’t want to be preaching doom and gloom here; but I do want to be ready for whatever comes. That not only means being ready for the upcoming economic crisis, when it comes, but also being ready for the things that follow.
As we’ve seen in other countries around the world, recovery from such an event is a long and arduous journey, with many people struggling just to survive, let alone regain what they lost through the crisis.
Part of the problem in preparing for these economic events is in not really knowing what to prepare for. There’s the economic part of it, which is what most people focus on.
But that’s not the whole story. The loss of so much of the economy will change the face of our country, just like the Great Depression did a century ago.
Here are some of those changes we can expect to see.
Explosive Governmental Growth
As we saw in the COVID-19 pandemic, there are those in government who have taken to heart the adage of “never let a good disaster go to waste.”
Some governors took advantage of the pandemic to keep their states locked down, controlling the population and hurting business. Thousands of small businesses were destroyed by government mandates. Not only did we see tight control on society through that time period, we also saw an increase in government power.
While it wasn’t included in any of the “COVID relief” bills, Congress managed to increase the size and power of the IRS exponentially, adding tens of thousands of new IRS agents.
They’ve also put millions of dollars into “pet projects,” many of which add to government power, under the guise of protecting us from “climate change.”
Crime Bosses Asserting Themselves
The government isn’t the only one who takes advantage of times of hardship, criminals do too. Organized Crime in this country really got its start during the Prohibition; but that was closely tied to the Great Depression.
One of the results of the Argentinean collapse of 1999 was a huge increase in crime of all sorts. Kidnapping the children of wealthy people became the cottage industry of choice for those who needed money and hand a leaning towards crime.
Those who showed an aptitude for crime were approached and recruited by bigger criminals, turning what started out as a rise in crime, to a rise in organized crime.
Organized crime is already alive and well in the United States, especially in New England and along the Pacific Coast.
Additionally, we have thousands of criminal gangs in the country, many of whom are involved in the drug trade. Drug addicts won’t give up their drugs for something like a financial collapse and others who are recreational users will increase their consumption.
This gives more power to those gangs and the organized crime organizations that they work with. If you want to make sure you and your family are safe, here’s how you can make your house invisible to looters and criminals.
Attacks On The Wealthy
We have had decades of progressives bashing the wealthy, specifically wealthy industrialists. Somehow, they never seem to go after the wealthy in the tech sector or wealthy bankers. That’s not actually all that surprising, considering that progressives are closely related to Marxists.
They don’t attack those in the tech sector because many of them are on their side. The same can be said for bankers. But those “evil industrialists” are mostly conservatives, so they must be bad.
We can be sure that the economic woes of the country will be laid on the backs of these people and their “greed.”
While ignoring the greed of actors, athletes, tech giants and others who support their cause, progressives will attack industrialists, possibly tearing their corporations out of their grasp.
The risk here is that of socialism, leading to communism. Every socialist/ communist country has started out by taking over industry and business, “in the name of the people.”
Since government of any type is uniformly poor at managing anything, especially finances, this will impoverish the nation, allowing government bureaucrats to enrich themselves, while increasing the number of people dependent on the country.
Many Businesses Shuttering Their Doors for Good
One of the startling results of the Argentinean collapse was the permanent closing of many businesses. While the wealthy were still wealthy, they stopped spending their money. This hurt the bottom line of many luxury product manufacturers, importers and retailers.
Adding to that, the not quite wealthy who follow the purchasing practices of those who are wealthy could no longer afford those products, eliminating a large chunk of their income. Thousands of businesses went bankrupt, never to surface again.
While there is more wealth in the United States, there’s also a greater tendency of the not quite wealthy to try and keep up with the wealthy in their purchases and their lifestyle.
If anything, the successful in the younger generation are even worse about this than their parents.
They may not buy the same products; but they spend plenty and hardly save at all.
As we’ve seen with COVID, shutting the doors of a business temporarily usually means that it will end up closed forever. Few mom and pop shops can survive even a month with their doors closed, leading to those people losing their life’s savings and the business they had poured their lives into.
The “small business assistance” that Congress approved as part of COVID relief, went to larger businesses who had hundreds of employees, but still fit the legal description of “small business.”
War
Our country’s political history is filled with wars. While it has been a long time since we’ve fought a war on our shores, we have so many treaties with so many countries, that we end up dragged into their wars.
But it’s not actually that simple. Politicians can find ways out of getting involved in foreign wars, just as they can find ways to get involved in them.
If we look back at our nation’s economic history, we find that many of the wars we’ve gotten involved in happened just at the time when our country was least able to afford fighting a war.
Nevertheless, we got into the war, which ended up helping out our economy, bailing us out of a time of recession. That has many to believe that those in power at the time intentionally got involved in those wars, as a means of forcing a recovery of our economy.
There’s More Than That
It’s impossible to predict with any certainty what the future holds. The items I’ve mentioned here are merely things that can be deduced by what has happened in the past.
There are always unexpected things that come along, which we can’t see until they come. Some are even hard to see once they get here.
That’s why we prepare; because we need to be ready, when those unforeseen things come knocking on our doors.
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