One of the steps in a societal collapse is a loss of faith in financial tools. The stock market has seemed like a casino for a long time to me, yet it is still cranking out money for the upper crust. It is the primary driver for business decisions that produce short term gain, but reduce long-term viability for the companies and for the environment.
Currently, there are no other real vehicles for the average US citizen to invest in for their retirements. In my parents’ generation, there were more. Heck, they had a lot of money in CDs and even those earned a decent rate of interest. Yet everything now is such a low return, or boom/bust like housing, so little guys like me are pushed into getting retirement accounts that are stocks. I’m not keen on that.
What’s even worse is that many jobs will employer match if you put into one of the stock market based retirement funds. But if you want to just put your money into a savings account, you miss out on the employer matching. So there’s strong incentive to keep putting your money into the stock market.
So I keep trying to read the tea leaves to figure out when the casino is going to collapse. …or even if it will. I think there are some folks that just assume that it will keep making money for the wealthy and the rest of humanity will just get left behind.
Good point. I am from the UK so my knowledge is best based around the UK (though I am no expert). But I think if governments can feel a crash coming then they can make short term policies and decisions that can push the inevitable off a bit more. In the case of the UK you see the government make questionable decisions on policies that may help in the short term but make things worse in the slightly longer term. Since the Conservative party are likely confident that they won’t be in power come next year, they are trying to delay a crash until then to save face. But in the process they make decisions which are very short term and will likely lead to economic decline. However, I want to doubly reiterate that I am no expert, barely an amateur. And if I am glaringly wrong anywhere please correct me and explain how I am so I can know better for next time. Thank you :)