The Collapse Has Begun – What Comes After America? | Tom Bilyeu Deepdive

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Collapse Has Begun – What Comes After America?

Host: Tom Bilyeu (Impact Theory)
Date: October 17, 2025

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Overview

In this urgent and deeply analytical solo episode, Tom Bilyeu takes listeners through what he describes as the undeniable decline of the American system, breaking down the causes, symptoms, and likely consequences of social, political, and economic crises currently plaguing the U.S. From eroding national myths and fracturing civic institutions to economic decay and looming conflict with rising powers, Tom seeks to uncover the raw truth behind the headlines. The episode is structured into four critical parts, each dissecting a facet of collapse—culminating in an exploration of what might replace American hegemony if the U.S. truly falls. Throughout, Bilyeu issues a call for individual responsibility and radical action, offering practical (if difficult) solutions for renewing American strength.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Part 1: Social Division and the Death of Shared Myths

(Starts at 03:00)

• Loss of Faith & National Identity

  • Polls reveal plummeting belief in the American Dream:
    • A “17 point drop in Americans' belief that hard work guarantees success.”
    • Gallup poll shows only “38% of Americans believe the US is still the greatest country in the world.”
  • Widespread social division: “80% of Americans say the country is more divided now than ever.” (04:30)
  • Americans now “fractured into tribes of narrative…living in our own algorithmically driven bubbles.” (05:00)
  • Collapse of shared reality: Different partisan groups now have “their own feeds, facts, and their own moral framework.” (05:20)

• Breakdown of Institutions & Community

  • “Church membership has fallen below 50% for the first time in U.S. history. Marriage rates are at record lows and 1 in 4 young adults now say they don’t have a single close friend.” (07:00)
  • Without “a deeply cherished, shared myth about who we are,” societal cohesion disappears.

• Four Historical Signals of Collapse

  1. Loss of shared legitimacy: “When half the population sees every outcome as rigged, laws lose their power.” (08:00)
  2. Political extremes escalate: “Moderate voices disappear as polarization rewards purity…” (08:45)
  3. Normalization of violence: “Political murder and mob justice become symbols of loyalty.” (09:15)
  4. Centralization of power: “Citizens trade freedom for order, institutions surrender authority to a strong hand.” (10:00)

• Prescriptions for Renewal

  • “Reward free speech, not conformity.” (10:45)
  • “Rebuild a shared pro-American narrative…centered on innovation, family, entrepreneurship and self reliance.”
  • “Indoctrinate school-age kids with a growth mindset, first principles thinking and a focus on problem solving.”
  • “Build economic literacy…teach everyone how money, saving and investing works.”
  • “Transparent algorithms and algorithmic control, not censorship.” (11:30)
  • “Revive purpose-driven institutions: faith, family, service, innovation.”
  • “Happiness is ‘the profound sense of well-being you get when you work hard to gain a set of skills…’” (12:00)

Quote:
“A society can survive disagreement. It absolutely cannot survive this degree of disconnection.” (07:20)

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Part 2: Political Chaos – An Empire in Freefall

(Resumes at 13:36)

• Plummeting Trust in Governance

  • Polarized perceptions of legal institutions: “More than 80% of Republicans believe all of Trump’s criminal charges were clear cases of a weaponized legal system. More than 80% of Democrats believe Hunter Biden’s cases were the same way.” (13:45)
  • U.S. ranks “43rd globally for public trust and election integrity.”
  • Congressional approval “has hovered in the teens to low 20s for over a decade.”
  • U.S. government “failed to pass a federal budget on time in nearly three decades.”
  • “Credible threats of violence against Congress members have more than doubled” in a decade. (14:45)

• The Populist Theater & Political Dysfunction

  • “Shutdowns, debt ceiling standoffs, and impeachment threats have become seasonal productions of a play I hate.” (15:30)
  • “Policies are designed merely to get the politician elected and placate donors. We, the voters, surrender our will and determination to the government in exchange for free shit.” (15:50)
  • Bipartisan irresponsibility: “It doesn’t matter if the politician is a Democrat or Republican. Everyone is promising more free stuff because that’s what we, the voters, demand of them if they want our vote.” (16:20)

• Bureaucratic Overgrowth, Lawfare, and Existential Elections

  • “The bureaucracy has metastasized and is growing unchecked like a tumor…Each new law or program creates another department, another layer of regulation, another dependency.” (17:00)
  • “Every nation that ever lost its republic began tightening its grip on power with the justification that it was needed to right the ship and survive the chaos…It starts with lawfare, weaponizing our institutions against political opponents.” (18:00)
  • “When trust in the courts dies, the rule of law dies with it, and then the government loses its last ounce of moral authority. From there…it doesn’t matter who’s right. All that matters is who holds power.” (19:20)

• Solutions for Democratic Restoration

  • “Limit the size and scope of the government.”
  • “The people must re-embrace civic duty.”
  • “We have to think for ourselves and avoid taking partisan shortcuts to get easy clarity.”
  • “Rediscover virtue…doing what is morally excellent even when it hurts us.” (20:50)
  • “Opposing views are useful, meant to sharpen and temper us. Free speech is valuable precisely because it forces our ideas to encounter opposition.” (21:40)

Quote:
“Prosperity is not a right or a law of nature. It is something that must be earned every single day.” (21:10)

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Part 3: Economic Decay — The Foundational Problem

(Starts at 22:00)

• Declining Purchasing Power & Asset Inflation

  • “Inflation has eroded 25% of people’s purchasing power in the last five years alone…”
  • Real wages “flat for half a century” even as productivity doubled. (22:30)
  • U.S. government at “122% debt to GDP; every country except one that’s gone over 130% for any meaningful period ends up in revolution or civil war.”

• Broken Economic Feedback Loops & Hopelessness

  • Home prices have far outpaced incomes: “In 1985 the median home cost roughly 3.5 times the median household income…now that ratio has shot up to 5.3 times and interest rates are higher than for nearly 30 years.” (23:40)
  • “Unemployment is skyrocketing, people are just pulling out of the game…young people are looking to scrap the current system entirely.” (24:30)
  • Proposed quick fixes (like socialism) will “only push assets further out of reach, accelerating the economic death spiral.” (25:00)

• Debt Spiral and the Precipice of Collapse

  • Reference to Ray Dalio’s “Big Debt Cycle” — the U.S. is in “stage five…internal disorder before necessary deleveraging.” (25:30)
  • “If we’re in phase five, phase six is total collapse. This is the last stop on the train.”
  • Middle class risks being “hollowed out,” while those who own assets will become wealthier and others sink into poverty.

• Pathways to Recovery (“Beautiful Deleveraging”)

  1. Austerity: “Spend less than we earn…push too far, you end up with violence in the streets.” (27:45)
  2. Debt restructuring: “Extend maturities, lower rates or write down bad debt…but when you write off bad debt, you are destroying someone’s hard-earned money.”
  3. Careful Money Printing: “Use liquidity as a bridge, not a lifestyle.”
  4. Redistribution towards productivity: “Shift relief towards productive activity—work, investment, building—rather than pure consumption.”

• Additional Recommendations for Economic Health

  • “Must increase real wages” via negotiation power and bringing back outsourcing jobs.
  • “Deregulate housing to stimulate building…make housing affordable again.” (28:40)
  • “Ensure people have access to hard money,” including bitcoin or other assets.
  • “Reindustrialize America”—focus on energy, AI, semiconductors, manufacturing, and defense.
  • “Teach financial literacy…Keeping people financially illiterate is how you keep them poor.”
  • Universal AI-driven education.
  • “Dramatically reduce the welfare state.”

Quote:
“Debt is exactly how empires fall. Debt, money printing. It really is that simple.” (29:45)

“Success cannot be owned. It’s leased—and rent is due every day.” (31:30)

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Part 4: America’s Decline in the Numbers and What Comes Next

(Starts at 33:05)

• Relative Global Decline

  • China’s rapid ascent: “In 1995, US GDP on a nominal basis was 10x China’s. By 2025, on a purchasing power parity basis, China had surpassed the US by 34%.” (33:15)
  • China’s share of global manufacturing up from 3% (1995) to 29% (2023), while US share fell to 16%.
  • Infrastructure: US dropped from top 3 to 13th.
  • Patent innovation: China now at 47% of global filings (2023), US fell to 20%. (33:50)
  • “BRICS Plus nations now represent 45% of the world’s population and over 30% of global GDP.”
  • Saudi and Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds now larger than U.S. VC market.

• Thucydides Trap: Looming US-China Conflict

  • “When a rising power threatens to displace a ruling one, war becomes almost inevitable.” (34:30)
  • China’s explicit preparation for “all necessary measures” including force—Taiwan as flashpoint.

• Consequences of US Collapse

  • New global hegemon “becomes the new America,” dictating values and rules.
  • “The dollar’s exorbitant privilege disappears…Interest rates would jump. Debt service is going to crowd out everything.” (36:00)
  • Imports, especially energy and tech, become much more expensive; living standards drop.
  • “Capital is going to fly out of the country and so will talent.”
  • International sanctions lose effectiveness.
  • Domestic austerity and shrinking services becomes mandatory; “institutions take the blame…politicians can no longer promise things for free…tensions skyrocket.”
  • In the worst case, “the map holds, the borders are the same, but the state itself devolves…authority bound to shift to more local systems.” (37:00)

• How to Avert This Outcome

  • “Balance the budget and deleverage the debt. Get honest about what we can afford.”
  • “Shrink the government. Cut the red tape…Bring real jobs home. Re-onshore the critical sectors.”
  • “If we stop money printing, the middle class will stop dissolving.”
  • “For the love of God, ensure that people have access to sound money and a home they can afford.”
  • “Rebuild the story of what America is…a shared narrative, a shared belief in what this country is and what we stand for.” (38:10)
  • “Pick up the tools. Build, create, compete. If we do that, we can still write the next glorious chapter of this country ourselves.”

Quote:
“We either rediscover discipline, hunger and purpose or we accept managed decline. No one is coming to save us. Not Washington, not Wall Street, not Silicon Valley. It’s up to us as individuals. So pick up the tools. Build, create, compete. If we do that, we can still write the next glorious chapter of this country ourselves. And if we don’t, history will write it for us.” (39:20)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “We are all living in our own algorithmically driven bubbles that are increasingly partisan.” (05:00)
• “Censorship does not protect society, it freezes it in ignorance. And this is important, it requires violence to maintain.” (10:50)
• “Lawfare turns every indictment…into war instead of justice. And everyone is forced to choose a side.” (18:20)
• “A failure to teach financial literacy is an immoral act.” (29:30)
• “Bureaucracy does not create wealth. It absorbs it.” (37:50)
• “No one is coming to save us. It’s up to us as individuals.” (39:20)

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Important Segment Timestamps

• 03:00 — Social Division & Death of Myths
• 08:00 — Four signals of collapse in society
• 10:45 — Prescriptions for social renewal
• 13:36 — Political chaos and loss of public trust
• 18:00 — Lawfare, existential elections, and centralization of power
• 22:00 — Economic Decay: Erosion of wages, debt spiral
• 25:30 — Ray Dalio’s Big Debt Cycle; stage five (“internal disorder”)
• 27:45 — Four levers of beautiful deleveraging
• 28:40 — Real wages, housing, and hard money
• 33:05 — "America's decline in the numbers" and the global power shift
• 34:30 — Thucydides Trap and looming US-China conflict
• 36:00 — What the collapse would look like if the US loses reserve status
• 38:10 — Roadmap for renewal & individual responsibility
• 39:20 — Call to action: “Be legendary. Take care. Peace.”

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Conclusion

Tom Bilyeu’s episode lays out a raw, urgent, and data-driven argument for why America may be headed for decline—or worse, collapse—if current social, political, and economic trends continue unchecked. With references to history, polling, economics, and the modern information landscape, he makes the case that only radical, disciplined, and collective action—grounded in shared values and personal responsibility—can prevent the United States from becoming yet another fallen empire. His call for individuals to “pick up the tools. Build, create, compete” encapsulates the episode’s primary message: The future is unwritten, but only if Americans themselves are willing to do the hard things necessary to rebuild.

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For those who haven’t listened: this episode is a wake-up call, a historical analysis, and a practical challenge for Americans to recognize where we stand and what must be done if we hope to thrive in the decades to come.

Transcript

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[C]

it done in the last year, the price of gold has increased by more than 50% and crossed 4,000 for the first time in history. This happens in times of crisis when people have lost faith in the current system. And consider this, the US has shut down 22 times in the past 50 years, but a full half of them have happened in the last 10 years alone. Recent polling shows that the majority of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track. The US national debt has passed $37 trillion and we add roughly 1 trillion every 100 days and interest payments will top 1.1 trillion this year, more than defense or Medicare. Soon enough it will be the single largest expense the government has. Nearly one third of young adults now believe violence may be necessary to fix politics. Debt has driven inequality to truly unsustainable proportions. Something is going very wrong in America. The signs are everywhere. Economic decay, social division, political chaos. The load bearing walls of the American system are cracking. The American dream is dead and most people are too angry and hopeless to try and fix it. The question now isn't if America is failing. The question is how did we get here? Can we turn things around and and if not, what comes after The American Empire? That's what I'm covering today in four critical parts. Do not skip part three because that's what's actually driving the collapse, though many are going to continue to try and deny it. And in part four we're going to zoom out and look back at what comes next if America falls. Along the way, I'll make sure you know what to do to protect yourself, even if your government continues to insist on on committing suicide. Buckle up. This one is rough, but it contains the info you need to thrive no matter what happens. But we first have to look at the raw naked truth of what's going on. Welcome to Part 1, Social Division and the death of our shared myths. A recent Harvard poll showed a 17 point drop in Americans belief that hard work can guarantees success. A 2025 Gallup poll showed that only 38% of Americans believe the US is still the greatest country in the world. A drop of more than 30% in just six years. Psychologically, America is in free fall. I don't want that to be true any more than you do. But the reality is if we do not face where we're at, we're never going to be able to dig our way out. We have lost faith in ourselves. We no longer have a shared sense of what it means to be an American. 80%. 80% of Americans say the country is more divided now than ever. As the recent political assassinations attest to, we are increasingly willing to murder our political opponents. America is fractured into tribes of narrative. We are all living in our own algorithmically driven bubbles that are increasingly partisan. 65% of Republicans trust Fox News. 67% of Democrats trust CNN. And yet overall media trust is at just 28%. We listen to our tribes, but rarely to reason. We have become revolutionaries in the worst sense of the word, prepared to watch our enemies beheaded in the streets. Virtually everyone is part of a group and those groups live inside of their own reality. They have their own feeds, facts, and most distressingly of all, their own moral framework. The result is a country that can no longer even agree on what is true. Think about how foundational that problem is. We can look at the same events and fail to agree on what just happened. We can't even agree on our history. Are we the most powerful and prosperous nation the world has ever seen? Or are. Are we a morally bankrupt country built on the backs of slaves and colonialism? For most of American history, the glue that held the system together wasn't the government. It was our culture, our beliefs, values and institutions. Family, faith. Churches, neighborhoods and local communities gave people a shared identity, a sense of belonging and purpose. But our culture has shattered and and our institutions have eroded. Our institutions have been a part of the problem. Church membership has fallen below 50% for the first time in U.S. history. Marriage rates are at record lows and 1 in 4 young adults now say they don't have a single close friend. A society can survive disagreement. It absolutely cannot survive this degree of disconnection without a deeply cheap, cherished, shared myth about who we are. We lack the necessary center of gravity needed to hold us all together. When Americans used to talk about the melting pot, we meant it literally. A shared identity forged from diversity. Today, we're not melting. We're bumper cars slamming into one another. The point of facing this very uncomfortable truth is not to get angry, and it's certainly not to get scared. It is to understand the problem so we can unwind it. But before we get to that, let's follow how everything is playing out now forward, because plenty of people are going to get this far and say that I'm just being an alarmist. But what I'm saying is no more alarmist than a doctor who tells you you have diabetes. You can live a long and healthy life with diabetes, but not if you don't change your lifestyle. If we don't change our collective lifestyle and mend our social fractures, here's what's going to happen. 1. There will be a loss of shared legitimacy. When factions stop accepting the same authority or election outcomes. The government's legitimacy itself dissolves. In Rome, citizens stop trusting the Senate. In Weimar Germany, they stop trusting elections. When half the population sees every outcome is rigged, laws lose their power. The government still exists on paper, but only as a brand. The social contract that actually gives the government authority is broken. 2. The accelerated escalation of political extremes. I hope that sounds familiar. Moderate voices disappear as polarization rewards purity and ruthlessly punishes dissent. Each side justifies extraordinary measures to save the Republic. Violence moves from fringe to mainstream politics, first in rhetoric, then in action. We've experienced both. Remember, if civil war broke out, it wouldn't be for the first time people act like this couldn't happen when it's already happened. 3. The normalization of violence and retaliation. Political murder and mob justice become symbols of loyalty. Each act of violence invites retribution, driving a cycle that leaders cannot control. Public fear then creates space for authoritarian consolidation. Late in the Roman Empire, Rome suffered from many political assassinations. The French Revolution was made even more horrible by its purges. And then there was open violence in the streets of Germany as the Weimar Republic fell apart with antifa, which I'll call today's brown shirts, and. And the recent spree of political assassinations. We're already seeing foreshadowing of just how bad this could get. 4. There's a centralization of power and the erosion of liberty. Citizens trade freedom for order, and institutions surrender authority to a strong hand. The bureaucracy grows while accountability shrinks. Temporary emergency powers become permanent governance. Looking back, you saw this with Napoleon's coup, Lenin's emergency powers and Hitler's Enabling Act. Alright, that's where history tells us we're going to end up if we don't repair our social fractures now. So how do we do it? Here's the recipe. 1. Reward free speech, not conformity. Truth does not come from decree, it comes from debate. When people are free to argue, open openly, bad ideas die fast and good ones evolve, getting better over time. Censorship does not protect society, it freezes it in ignorance. And this is important, it requires violence to maintain. If you do not allow free speech it will require violence to stop. 2. Rebuild a shared pro unit American narrative. One centered on innovation, family, entrepreneurship and self reliance. The very things that made us such an extraordinary country on the global stage. 3. Indoctrinate. Yes, indoctrinate school age kids with a growth mindset, first principles, thinking and a focus on problem solving. Eliminate the victim mentality and teach people to dream again. 4. Build economic literacy. Teach everyone how money saving and investing works. Stop turning kids into easy marks for debt and credit. They are so easy to manipulate because they do not understand how money works. 5. Focus Media reform on transparent algorithms and give people algorithmic control, not censorship. People should be able to have whatever algorithm they want, but they shouldn't be blindly manipulated by a tech company. 6. Revive purpose driven institutions. Faith, family, service and innovation. We need those purpose driven institutions to be robust. And maybe most importantly, Americans need to be unified around the inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And we need to remember that happiness itself isn't a right, merely the pursuit. And given the architecture of the human mind, if you want to achieve happiness, you'll need to understand it is not the transient feeling you get when eating a bowl of ice cream. It's the profound sense of well being you get when you work hard to gain a set of skills that allow you to make progress to towards an honorable goal. If we did all of that, we could honestly begin stepping back from the precipice and begin healing the division in society. But that's only one of three areas that we need to heal. We're hitting pause for a moment, but there's plenty more ahead, so don't go anywhere.

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[C]

Thanks for staying tuned. Now let's get back to it. So welcome to Part 2 Political chaos, an empire in freefall More than 80% of Republicans believe all of Trump's criminal charges were clear cases of a weaponized legal system. More than 80% of Democrats believe Hunter Biden's cases were the same way. Startlingly, the US ranks 43rd globally for public trust and in election integrity. That is wild. And for the last decade and a half, congressional approval ratings have hovered in the teens to low 20s due to polarization, gridlock and shutdowns. And that's not to mention that the US Government has failed to pass a federal budget on time in nearly three decades. Distrust in the American government is skyrocketing, and it's starting to manifest in dangerous ways. In less than a decade, credible threats of violence against members of Congress have more than doubled, with another 50% increase projected in just the next 12 months. Policies matter. And when the government lacks real leaders with a clear and economically sound vision for prosperity, politics devolves into populist theater. Shutdowns, debt ceiling standoffs, and impeachment threats have become seasonal productions of a play I hate. They are predictable spectacles that serve no purpose beyond assigning blame and creating drama and political leverage. That's where we are. Politicians are all trying to play the strongman by promising their constituents that they're finally going to get everything they want. The other party is demonized and blamed for all of our woes. Spoiler alert. Everyone is to blame. There is so much money in politics and so much anger in the populace that the policies are designed merely to get the politician elected and then placate the donors. And we, the voters, surrender our will and determination to the government in exchange for free shit. It doesn't matter if the politician is a Democrat or Republican. Everyone is promising more free stuff because that's what we, the voters demand of them if they want our vote the big beautiful bill was passed, which was already fiscally irresponsible. And then the Democrats shut the government down because they wanted to make it even more irresponsible. The bureaucracy has metastasized and is growing unchecked like a tumor. Each new law or emergency program creates another department, another layer of regulation, another dependency, and the odds are that they're never going to be undone. Politicians promise to reduce the size of government, and they may even eliminate some departments, but then they keep deficit spending in record numbers. And the bigger the system grows, the less anyone is accountable to how it actually performs, and the faster we hasten our own economic decline. It's as if we have lost all sense of cause and effect. We become so fearful that our voting patterns are purely short term. Thinking what's best for me right now, today, tomorrow, that is somebody else's problem. And that mentality condemns us to ensuring that the problem only gets worse. And while this all starts as mere theater, history proves that it quickly escalates into something far more serious. Every nation that ever lost its republic began tightening its grip on power with the justification that it was needed to right the ship and survive the chaos. It starts with lawfare, weaponizing our institutions against political opponents. That turns every indictment, every congressional hearing, every impeachment into war instead of justice. And everyone is forced to choose a side. If that doesn't sound like an accurate description of what we are going through right now, I don't know what does. And. And when trust in the courts dies, the rule of law dies with it, and then the government loses its last ounce of moral authority. From there, it doesn't matter who's right. All that matters is who holds power. And whoever does hold power will expand executive control. And that makes each election existential. You can already feel this happening. Each election brings fresh prosecutions of the outgoing administration. If a declining country isn't careful, emergency powers become the norm. And once a government learns it can bypass consent, good luck getting it back. Julius Caesar didn't start out as a dictator. He became one. Napoleon didn't start out as emperor, he became one. Every democracy calls a change like that. Temporary. Then the bureaucracy consolidates, policy gets made by decree, and democracy officially dies. So how do we stop all of that from happening? Very simple. We have to limit the size and scope of the government. The people must re embrace civic duty. We need to engage with the issues and make our voices heard. I know. I never thought I'd be recording a video like this, but the reality is that that we have to remember that prosperity is not a right or a law of nature. It is something that must be earned every single day. We have to think for ourselves and avoid taking partisan shortcuts to get easy clarity. Being clear on how to vote based on what your team says is not the same as actually understanding the issues. We have to think from first principles and aka we have to map real world cause and effect. And we rediscover virtue, the act of doing what is morally excellent even when it hurts us. Now I know how cheesy that sounds and I know how often I fall short. But we need a guiding light. We need something that we at least are aiming at. We need something that makes us think about the long term well being of the country as a whole. We have to rediscover boundaries and limitations. We have to rediscover fiscal responsibility and personal responsibility, not to mention compromise. We have to understand that opposing views are useful, they're meant to sharpen and temper us. Free speech is valuable precisely because it forces our ideas to encounter opposition. Now that we've covered all of the symptoms of the disease, the things that people can already see and feel, let's talk about the underlying cause of the disease. Welcome to Part 3 Economic decay the foundational problem Inflation has eroded 25% of people's purchasing power in the last five years alone because of globalism and unchecked immigration. Real wages have been flat for for half a century 50 years, while productivity has more than doubled. All political parties dramatically overspend, leaving the government at 122% debt to GDP and every country except one that has ever gone over 130% debt to GDP for any meaningful period of time has ended up in revolution or civil war. To avoid going over 130%, the government will have to print more money which will drive more inflation, which will make the economic life of young people that much more impossible. The only way to escape the state sponsored theft of your money via inflation is to own assets. Unfortunately, the only asset that people intuitively understand is a home and housing prices grew by approximately 408% from 1985 to 2023, while incomes only rose by roughly 240%. Said another way, in 1985 the median home cost roughly 3.5 times the median household income. But now that ratio has shot up to 5.3 times and interest rates are higher now than they've been for nearly 30 years. So young people have literally been priced out of the American dream and without anywhere to hide from the devastating effects of inflation, they feel hopeless. Economies are gamified. You do a thing and you get a reward money and you use that reward to buy a thing you want, let's say a house. And that feedback loop keeps people playing the game. So when that reward feedback loop breaks, people just stop playing the game altogether. And that is where we are today as a country. Unemployment is skyrocketing, people are just pulling out of the game. And increasingly young people are looking to scrap the current system entirely because they just want to move to something better, whether they know what that is or not. And the problem is, for the most part, it's not Their proposed solutions solid, such as socialism will only push assets further and further out of reach, accelerating the economic death spiral that has led them to want socialism. And that's why legendary hedge fund investor Ray Dalio says that we're in stage five of a six phase big debt cycle. This is the phase that we're in right now. That he calls it internal disorder before necessary deleveraging. For reference, if we're in phase five, phase six is total collapse. So this is the last stop on the train. If we're going to make a non traumatic change, we'll make a change that is guaranteed, but it may come after a whole lot of bloodshed, pain, suffering and things that we do not want to go through. Because things will get worse, much worse if we don't do something to interrupt the current trends. The way we are headed, the middle class will get almost entirely hollowed out. The half that understands assets and own a meaningful percentage of them will get pulled into the upper class. And the people who don't own or don't understand assets will get yanked down into the lower classes because of inflation. And when a government deficit spends, it is forced into to borrow just to cover the ever increasing amount of debt that they're racking up just to cover the interest on the debt it's already racked up. This is known as a debt death spiral. And it leaves the government in an increasingly weakened position where debt is constantly stacking up endlessly until the debt burden becomes so extreme that the country tears itself apart from the inside out of frustration or some politician finally shows up that has the balls to balance the budget and alleviate the debt burden by making brutal unpopular decisions that are ultimately necessary to save the economy. And I don't see anybody like that on the horizon. It is absolutely critical that we stop this runaway process before it ends in default, which would be catastrophic and would certainly spell the end of the dollar as the World's reserve currency. Now how do we actually do that? The way is pretty straightforward, but is anything but simple. We'd have to enforce fiscal discipline, increase taxes, but not so much companies slow down. We'd have to print money and restructure debt, but in a balanced way that doesn't crash the economy or birth runaway inflation. Ray Dalio calls this very delicate and tricky path out of a debt crisis a beautiful deleveraging. Most countries execute an ugly deleveraging, but if we were going to do it right, it would look something like this. We balance the following four levers so the system deflates the debt burden without blowing up growth or igniting runaway inflation. The four levers are as follows. 1. Austerity. We have to spend less than we earn. We're going to have to slow government outlays so debt stops compounding. This is the one that people really do hate the most. And if you push this one too far, you end up with violence in the streets just because people are mad. 2. Debt restructuring. We're going to have to extend maturities, lower rates or write down bad debt so that the load becomes finally serviceable. In fact, you're going to have to do all of those things. You have to be careful though, as one man's debt is another man's asset. So when you write off bad debt, you are destroying someone's hard earned money. And if you do that to enough people, you will put the country into a crippling depression. 3. Money printing. Done very carefully. Use liquidity as a bridge, not a lifestyle like we do now. Offset deflationary shocks without debasing the currency. Now this is a little bit like telling a heroin addict that if withdrawal ever gets too tough, go ahead and just take a little heroin. To do that, you have to have very strict rules around the use of money printing or you're just going to end up right back where you started, strung out on money printing. We're also going to have to do redistribution. You're going to have to shift relief towards productive activity. Work investment building rather than pure consumption so demand survives and capacity expands. Now, if we can pull all of these levers in an extremely balanced way, balance the budget and use deregulation to stimulate growth. We have a shot at driving debt down as a share of the economy and stopping the debt spiral that un underlies all of our biggest structural problems. In addition to a beautiful deleveraging balancing of the budget and growth, we need to fix the following practices to ensure that moving forward, we don't just re Dig all of the same holes and jump right back in. 1. We must increase real wages. Let me say that again. We must increase real wages. And to do that we've got to make it possible for workers to negotiate. Well now that doesn't mean unions. Unions don't track closely to wage increases. But what does is to bring back the millions of manufacturing jobs that were sent overseas. We also have to stop exporting jobs to the cheapest countries and we need to stop importing the cheapest labor to make housing affordable again. Start by deregulating housing to stimulate building and increase the available supply. In areas like Houston, Texas where it's easy to get a permit to build housing prices have remained reasonably stable as other areas of the country have gotten completely out of control. 3. Ensure people have access to hard money. Unless we abolish the Federal Reserve and do away with fiat currency, that's what allows for money printing. There's no way the government is going to stop money printing as long as money printing exists. The government has a moral obligation to allow people the refuge from inflation that a hard money provides. Given how hostile the previous administration was to crypto a form of hard money, it doesn't take a genius to figure out how quickly we could return to being hostile to hard money under a new admin. We cannot let that happen if we want to avoid another debt trap. Debt is exactly how empires fall. Debt, money printing, it really is that simple. People who try to hide that fact actively want you confused. 4. We've got to re industrialize America in critical areas. Energy, AI, semiconductors, advanced manufacturing and defense are the spine of sovereignty. Build refineries, reactors, fabs, shipyards and drone supply chains. Every strategic job you return to America is two risks. You remove foreign dependence and domestic despair. Because finally people have jobs again. 5. Teach financial literacy. Keeping people financially illiterate is how you keep them poor. Now that AI exists, there is absolutely no excuse for for not teaching young people financial literacy aggressively and on a loop. A failure to do so is an immoral act. I can't say it any more clearly than that. 6. Educate kids. Educate kids. All kids. Ensure that one zip code has little to no bearing on their future success. Again, with the power of AI, there's no excuse for for education not to be universal. The greatest teacher in the world is AI. Nobody needs to suffer from poor teaching. 6. Dramatically reduce the welfare state. Teach hunger and self reliance. America will only win if we are truly willing to compete on the international stage and not just ride on the momentum of past glories. And if you don't do that, you're never going to be able to balance the budget. None of what we've just talked about is going to be easy, but all of it is possible. But it's going to require America to wake up, get focused, and understand that as the saying goes, success cannot be owned. It's leased and rent is due every day. America will not win in the future unless it goes harder than everyone else. Don't believe me? Taking a short break, but there's more impact theory after Stay tuned.

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Thanks for sticking around. Let's get right back into the action. Part 4America's decline is in the numbers In 1995, US GDP on a nominal basis was 1010 x Chinas. By 2025, on a purchasing power parity basis, China had grown so much it is estimated to have surpassed the US by roughly 34%. In the mid-90s, China's global manufacturing share was roughly 3% and jumped to about 29% in 2023. During that same period, the US share declined to roughly 16%. In the 90s, the US ranked anywhere from first to third in infrastructure quality, but today it has plummeted to 13th. China's share of global patents filed in 95 was less than 1%, but as of 2023 it skyrocketed to 47%. Over the same time period, the US fell from 25% to to 20%. 70% of global rare earth output is controlled by China, the brics plus nations. You know the guys trying to move away from the US dollar. Together, they now represent 45% of the world's population and over 30% of global GDP. Middle Eastern funds currently sit at roughly $5.6 trillion of assets under management, and that number is expected to grow to approximately 8.8 trillion by 2030. That's less than five years from now. In 2024 alone, they deployed $136 billion globally, which is more than the entire US VC market combined. Additionally, Asia and Middle east created over half of of the world's new billionaires in 2023. If you want to know how America's economic, social and political woes could get worse from here, here's the biggest looming threat. A rising China and a divided United States get sucked into Thucydides trap and collide with each other in a kinetic war. The idea is unfortunately not at all far fetched. The ancient Greek historian Thucydides wrote that when a rising power threatens to displace a ruling one, war becomes almost inevitable. That is the Thucydides trap and it's one of the most reliable patterns in history. Athens rose, Sparta reacted, the Peloponnesian War followed. Napoleonic France challenged Britain's dominance in the early 19th century and Europe was engulfed in decades of war. Imperial Germany rose against the British Empire and the world plunged into World War I. The United States and the Soviet Union, they emerged from World War II as rival powers and the Cold War nearly ended in nuclear annihilation. In total, 12 of the last 16 times a rising power challenged an established hegemon. The confrontation ended in open conflict. That is the trap we're in danger of falling into right now and it would be catastrophic. Take Taiwan. China's leader Xi Jinping has expressly stated that that China does not renounce the use of force and reserves the option of taking all necessary measures. Additionally, Xi has told his country directly to and I quote, prepare for war. Speaking directly to the US When Trump first threatened China with tariffs, a Chinese official said, if war is what the US wants, be it a tariff war, a trade war or any other type of war, we're ready to fight till the end. The jockeying for power between the US and China has been going on for quite some time. At the start of this century, 85% of global trade was conducted in USD. Today that number has dropped to under 60% and it's declining every year. And as Kevin Rudd points out in his book on Xi Jinping, China's leader has fundamentally changed the nation's posture. Since taking power in 2012, Xi has abandoned the cautious Hide your strength and bide your time diplomacy of Deng Xiaoping. And he's replaced it with a doctrine of assertive rejuvenation, reclaiming China's historical place as the central power in Asia and ultimately a co equal or superior to the United States. China is not the quiet rising power it once was. Xi has centralized control, purged rivals and written his own ideology, Xi Jinping thought into the Chinese constitution. He's fused the Communist Party, the private sector and the military under one strategic mission, national rejuvenation by 2049. And that means openly challenging the US. That shift from humble participant to to aggressive competitor explains much of what's unfolding right now. And even if Xi is losing power in China, we don't know that he's going to be replaced by anybody that would feel any differently. A multipolar order is emerging. China is consolidating regional influence through trade, infrastructure and security networks, filling the void that's been created by America's internal chaos. Capital will eternally migrate towards regions with growth, hunger and discipline. And the west has grown very comfortable. And many factions inside the US body politic are openly hostile towards capitalism and prosperity itself. We no longer celebrate success, we demonize it. Our people debate fairness while other competitors chase fair greatness. Make no mistake, countries like China and the UAE are playing to win. And if America doesn't reignite its own passion for innovation and global dominance, we will fall back in the pack. The UAE is rapidly becoming one of the most business friendly jurisdictions on earth, a title formally held by the us. They know oil's future is limited, so they are using today's profits to establish tomorrow's industries. Finance, technology, tourism, logistics, sports and entertainment. They are attracting capital, founders and talent from every corner of the world and they're not apologizing for it. And not to be outdone, China has mastered a kind of state backed capitalism the west still underestimates. But the truth is they studied our playbook, they copied our best ideas and scaled them with the precision of a command economy. And they've proven that ambition, discipline and hunger can and will beat complacency. So what would happen if that all came to pass? If we collided with China in Thucydides strap? What would happen if America doesn't fix its economics, doesn't heal its divides and and doesn't get back to the business of playing to win on the international stage? What would there be, quite precisely after America if she actually falls? The honest answer is the country most able to amass economic and Political power becomes the new America. And just as America has gotten their way internationally since the end of World War II, whatever country seizes a crown will get their way. They will be able to forcibly promote their values and their agenda. Now don't get me wrong, it's not like America would cease to exist. That's not what's going to happen. But like all falling empires before them, once the empire disintegrates, the country becomes a shell of its former self. Here's something to remember. Italy as we know it today is younger than the United States. It's not like Rome fell and modern Italy took its place. Italy was fractured for a very long time. As for England, they went rapidly from the most powerful nation on earth to getting swallowed by debt and being reduced to an also ran nation that for decades had to group up with the EU to have any significance on the world stage. When the collapse comes and a country like the US loses their status as the world's reserve currency, here's exactly how it plays out. 1. The dollar's exorbitant privilege disappears when your currency is no longer the world's default. You can't borrow cheaply, you can't run deficits or export your inflation. All of the things that we are doing right now to have the American way of life, that would go away. Interest rates would jump. Debt service is going to crowd out everything. And the silent tax of inflation will not be silent anymore. 2. Imports will get expensive very fast. A weaker currency means higher prices for energy, food, medicine, technology, basically everything. This causes living standards to fall first at the bottom. It will hit the poorest, the hardest than in the middle. Also, the political center will not survive sustained price shocks. More extremism will therefore rise. 3. Capital is going to fly out of the country and so will talent. Money moves to jurisdictions with stability and a high yield. Founders, scientists and top earners are going to go where their work can compound. What's left behind is lower productivity and higher resentment. And then a real downward spiral begins to set in as the country can't borrow or generate the capital that it needs to grow. 4. The Sanction weapon Doles. If the world doesn't need your currency or your banks, it doesn't fear your economic penalties. Right now, America gets its way on the world stage largely through economic might. We leverage money with countries to get what we want from them. And that soft power would disappear very rapidly once we're not the reserve currency. Swift pressure, secondary sanctions, export controls, everything loses its bite. Nobody's going to care Anymore. Rivals are just going to trade around us. Allies would hedge against us. 5. Alliances become purely transactional. Security guarantees look less guaranteed. Regional powers are just going to rearm. The rules based order that we have now becomes a deals based scramble. And your hand in controlling how international rules and laws are even written is just going to go away. 6. Domestic austerity becomes mandatory. When no one wants to buy your debt anymore, markets stop funding your deficits at friendly rates, forcing you to cut even into entitlements. And in defense spending, you just don't have the money to sustain it. Services shrink, but your obligations remain. 7. Institutions are going to take the blame as growth stalls. With no investment, trust is going to collapse even further. Courts, agencies, universities and the media become targets. Politicians can no longer promise things for free, at least not without risking hyperinflation and and internal tensions skyrocket as people understand they are legitimately now fighting over a shrinking pie. 8. In the worst case, the map holds. The borders are the same, but the state itself devolves. If it all goes to hell in a handbasket, we don't necessarily split as a nation. The flag can stay, but authority is bound to shift to something more. Local. States and cities will improvise parallel systems for energy, security and finance. The empire basically becomes an archipelago of semi autonomous islands. If America falls from its hegemony, it doesn't mean that we become irrelevant. But it does mean we become a shadow of what we once were. And we struggle financially, we struggle to wield power. We are no longer going to be able to call the shots or have the incredible advantage that we have had for so long now will have less money, less opportunity, less power, less prosperity, and far less control. Now, if you're one of the people who has lost faith in America or has grown cynical about success itself, then maybe all of that sounds perfectly fine to you. But if you've grown accustomed to your quality of life, time is legitimately running out. What happens next depends entirely on whether we choose to rebuild or or keep stacking debt and ignoring the fact that we have enslaved our own children. If you want to stop the collapse, the formula isn't complicated. It's just hard. Balance the budget and deleverage the debt. Get honest about what we can afford and stop spending more than we collect. It will be politically brutal. I get it. But pain now beats ruin later. Shrink the government. Cut the red tape that strangles economically valuable production. Bureaucracy does not create wealth. It absorbs it. Cut the fat, simplify the rules and make it possible to build without begging for permission. Bring real jobs home. Re onshore the critical sectors. Things like energy, chips, defense, advanced manufacturing and drones to name a few. Once we're making things again, workers will follow. Finally have more leverage which will help them drive real wages up. And if we stop money printing, the middle class will stop dissolving. And for the love of God, ensure that people have access to sound money and a home they can afford. Stop punishing savers and forcing people to gamble in the stock market. If the Fed won't protect the dollar. Our government has a moral obligation to give people access to to systems that can bitcoin hard assets, etc. And above all, rebuild the story of what America is. We have to have a shared narrative, a shared belief in what this country is and what we stand for. We have to reunite around innovation, ambition and global leadership. Remember who we are. An experiment in freedom. A government that believed the people know best, not some dictator or king. We are the nation that courted the world's most adventurous, freedom seeking people. We didn't promise that everyone would win, only that everyone would have a shot. And from that we built the most successful country the world has ever seen. Every generation hits a crossroads. This is ours. We either rediscover discipline, hunger and purpose or. Or we accept managed decline. No one is coming to save us. Not Washington, not Wall street, not Silicon Valley. It's up to us as individuals. So pick up the tools. Build, create, compete. If we do that, we can still write the next glorious chapter of this country ourselves. And if we don't, history will write it for us as yet another cautionary tale of. Of an empire that let debt and decadence tear it apart. Until next time, my friends. Be legendary. Take care. Peace.