Wages are stagnant and cost of living is ridiculous. Are we headed for a crash?

Depends what you mean by crash. Before, we have crashed through small bushes and banana stands. Big showy and doing minor damage. We are about to run into that tiny little tree that the devs never made animations for.

We are not prepared for the devastation that tree will cause.

And I just found out I need a new job as we are being ordered into the office after they moved it 50 miles away.

Things are not looking good. I think they will hit us with another round of redundancies after some people leave too.

More of a slow collapse than a crash. Ever seen a dilapidated house on a country road, parts of the roof caving in, paint chipped, vines covering the yard? We’re working on being that house by slowly letting social and physical infrastructure in the US collapse over time.

What you're describing is basically stagflation. It doesn't necessarily mean a crash. It's possible for the majority of people to keep on earning less and less real income for a long time without a crash.

I do wonder what the effect of all the layoffs from tech and the public sector and all the cuts in federal funding will do though. Dunno if that's enough to flood the housing market and crash it or not. I think I've read that banks are in a good position to absorb housing market losses, so it won't be like 2008.

AFAIK, most current economic indicators are OK. Not necessarily great, but not dire either.

The stock market makes no sense to me. It doesn't appear most stocks move on the fundamentals of the companies or anything like that. It all appears to be driven by hype/gambling, and propped up from sustained lows by 401ks on auto-pilot and people trained to "buy the dip" by the quick Covid recovery.

The USD appears to be rapidly losing a lot of value compared to other currencies like the EUR. But, that fits well into the plan to reduce imports and boost US exports. Inflation with stagnant wages makes US exports more attractive/cheaper.

Republicans are really determined to make life as awful as possible, and the democrats in power are fine with it.

You just need a union job. I just started mine and my first day I find out we're getting a new contract with $1/hr raises yearly for the next five years, a new boot benefit of $250 a year, better per diem on travel, and better compensation while traveling.

Yes. We are heading towards a crash. We are very much already in one, and have absolutley no way out.

Trump killed all US international commerce with his TACO tariffs and is currently propping up a failing stock market by converting medicaid dollars into ICE / TECH BRO MILITARY funding. The stock market keeps doing great because our tax dollars are propping up companies like Google, Plantir, and Amazon through government grants instead of providing us a safety net. That money will run out eventually, but likely not before more CEOs are killed over it.

Literally we are living through the gilded 1920's again but with an American Hitler.

We now have years of uncontrolled inflation well above target rates, a corrupt government, wealth inequality worse than the French revolution, and rampant unintelligent Tariffs hurting all international trade at the cost of every small business in America. These are the same factors that caused the great depression, and if you think it's not going to happen again, you are wrong.

We are a country being lead into disaster by the least competent people imaginable.

The crab said: You just haven't seen your steamer yet. The crab is a low-level animal, and its nervous system is so simple that when it is slowly steamed in the steamer, it will keep stuffing the ginger slices next to it into its mouth. It just feels uncomfortable, and it thinks that eating something will make it better. I don't know if you can understand the meaning of this paragraph. To sum up, we are already in the steamer. We thought that if we find a good job and work hard, everything will be fine, but the fact is that wages are not rising, prices are rising rapidly, and the world is rotten.

In decades past, employees would get both a cost of living raise and performance raise, but the cost of living raise has all but gone away. One way to fix this is to tie the minimum wage to inflation. It'll have tje side benefit of making companies try to reduce inflation rather profiteering.

Neoliberalism is reaching its natural conclusion, coupled with the gradual fall of colonialism, is going to lead to a permanent crash for the working class.

While Trump is being loud, the project to divide the US working class by ethnicity has been ongoing always, and began ramping up this century.

It will be required as all production is centralised within a handful of families. And the global south can no longer be relied on for cheap resources and manufacturing for middle class treats.

The US doesn't have a union presence, nor does it have understanding of left politics. Conditions will get worse and worse every decade.

ye best start believin in economic depression, yer in one!

We're already there. The only reason we aren't calling this a depression is that the stock market hasn't been affected much.

But when 25% of Americans are functionally unemployed, it's hard to argue we aren't already largely 'crashed'.

Why, this is a crash, nor are we out of it.

Yes, it's gonna get bad. Jobs in both the private sector, and public sector, universities, etc, we are all feeling the heat right now.

It’s already been going on for 30+ years so whatever you call this is pretty much it.

Define what you mean by 'crash'. What's been happening will continue to happen, but if you're expecting any kind of singular dramatic moment, what would that be?

Wait until AI/AGI take over. Which is the most silent part of it all. It’s all “nice and great”, supposedly “making our lives easier”, when in fact it will decimate most of the population’s lives. It’s the part that no one ever talks about. You think it’s bad now? Wait until AI takes over everything, and I mean everything to where millions are left without a job. Yes this tech might be “innovating” and make our “lives easier” at the expense of what? The question is what are people going to do when AI takes over? How are we going to even afford to live. What happens to the our basic provision for sustainability to live life. That’s the quiet part that everyone wants to ignore and never ever has an answer for it. It’s absolutely vile and disgusting, cuz no one is looking at the dire ramifications of such deadly technology that threatens the very fabric of our lives and future generations to come.

A guy put it very well. His wife wanted kids, and the guy did some in depth into researching AI… he told his wife he didn’t want any kids because he knew that his kids wouldn’t even have a job. And he is correct in that statement. The kids that are born now, will they even have jobs? What will their future look like?

You're in a situation where you have to cut spending and raise taxes while the left promises to not cut spending and the right promises to not raise taxes. It's an issue the last handful of administrations have not been able to deal with..

It's going to be painful. Hopefully not a drawn out depression like the 1930s.