Is a [similar] scenario likely to happen in the US in the next 5 years? Likely? Oh heavens, no. But, 35 years ago, we started major cuts to funds for college grants -- the limits were jacked up by multiples, but it was all debt. (And, "debt" to be backed by the U.S. government, to make it palatable to the initial banks -- who were no more than salesmen at that point.) That seemed a disaster -- we all knew -- and "Nothing good will come of this!" Here it is Lo! those many years later, and we still have starving students, faculty on welfare, but now we have college administrations bloated beyond belief. Same thing in medicine -- where HMOs went from being MEMBER organizations to being bought out by doctors [concerned about (truly-skyrocketing) medical malpractice costs from 'treble-damages' on "pain & suffering"] to then being taken over by the insurance companies -- the ones intended to be fought/bargained-with in the first place. We still have health underfunded, we still have doctors and nurses quitting the profession, but now we have *massively* bloated insurance leeches bleeding the American populace. The cures for these things (like, uniform treatment of customers, freely-available prices/information, etc) were plain to us freshly minted economists/policy wonks. It was easy-peasy textbook stuff. When Milton Friedman wrote a populist piece in 1987, I thought, "Finally! Uncle Milty'll set 'em straight!" (This sez 2001, but I remember it well before my kids were born, in 1994. https://www.hoover.org/research/how-cure-health-care-0 ) Smart, MARKET economies can do stupid things. Even things that make you scratch your head and think, "This will not go well!" But it can take years for the horror to show up. When the horror shows up, all bets are off. We had our National Debt horror and our College Debt horror and our National Health Finance horror put off for 10 years by our Credit Crisis horror. As we're pretty much out of that one, eh?? These others are coming to the 'fore. Is a [similar] below likely to happen in the US in the next 5 years? Likely? No. But is it on the horizon? It most certainly is. And we'd all better be paying better attention than we have. Our little "experiment" with democracy remains only an experiment, after all.....
When an economy stays in distress for a long period of time, say from some years to decades, it may lead to the collapse of the economy. It may happen due to various economic, regional and political emergencies. There is a lot of social unrest, political imbalance, bankruptcies, etc. when the company is in distress. The causes of economic collapse can be many. Some of them are listed as follows:- Many a times, a lot of inflation may set in the economy due to excessive money supply by the government. To check the rise in prices, the government further increases the interest rates to slowdown the pace of price rise. This leads to economic collapse in the long run Investors in the economy may loose confidence in stocks and trading due to some reasons, which brings down the stock prices to a very low level. This situation is known as the ‘stock market crash’. This again is responsible for taking the economy towards a collapse. Sometimes, high rates of inflation are accompanied by low growth rate in an economy. Such a phase is known as ‘stagflation’. It effects the economy till a very long span of time and is a major reason for any economy to collapse.
The thing that precedes all these others is a loss of property rights -- whether from government fiat or civil unrest. When your ability to reliably harvest the fruits of your efforts *invested*, then investment ends, and all else is consumption -- consumptive of resources -- until all runs out.
"a loss of property rights " In the US it is called abuse of eminent domain. https://ij.org/action/join-the-fight-to-stop-eminent-domain-abuse/
Property rights in the US have been eroded substantially in the last 100 years due to political corruption ETC. ETC. "The most common uses of property taken by eminent domain have been for roads, government buildings and public utilities. However, in the mid-20th century, a new application of eminent domain was pioneered, in which the government could take the property and transfer it to a PRIVATE third party."
Well, since the thesis of the thread is economic collapse - name one country with stronger institutionalized property rights than the US codified in National, State, and Local Law. Please include intellectual property.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_collapse https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/economic-collapse.asp https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/knowledge/economics/economic-collapse/ http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/allwarsarebankerwars.php https://www.darrinqualman.com/fractal-collapse/
Every seriously religious country goes belly up repeteadly -Catholic countries are a mess usually and the middle east is a basket case anyway relint on oil and a few bits and bobs.