The collapse phase lasts 2 generations or so.
A closer look shows that its way worse than it appears on the surface...
The current situation is a moral outrage.... and unsustainable, govt pay and benefits are on average twice the private sector for the same job, and the retirements in the range of 5 to 10x the private sector ! and with the private sector middle class approaching poverty level take home pay, largely because of the over taxation required to insure the fat ass burocrats live and retire in luxury.... some school administrators and city managers recently discoverd to be getting 500,000 and 800,000 dollars a year respectively....
... with police for example in calif cities retiring at 137k not includiing unlimited lifetime health care for a total of 185,000 dollars a year or so... few are retiring under 100k... (chiefs retire at 250k and are vested after 2 years, then they move to take another chiefs job and vest there for another 250k or so... a year).
The counter arguement is that their pay is spent back into the economy so the disparity is not relevant... but thats not how life actually works.
***As we move to nearly 40% govt dole jobs, and less than that actually producing goods etc... goods production and export income falls off, providing insufficient net income to support the big fat lard asses 'working' for govt.... something like a 15 lb leach on a 10 lb cat fish...
Such corruption and rot is seen in all nations as they reach the end of their national life cycles.. (along with wars in attempt to fund themselves as viable production falls off).... the counter attack sinks them.
*** and... naturally the leach class defends is 'contribution', and need for more and more funds right to the end... we see this in the US school system, now ranking dead last in stutend literacy amonng all other developed nations, and behind many third world nations....that is entirely fatal.,, such nations fail to compete, and bleed to death. Production must exceed consumption... the civil 'servants' produce no goods, no food, but a lot of red tape, like a cancer.. they feed on the host, in the end until the host dies.
***Yet our NEA school teachers uniion demands half of most state budgets, as its results went from first in the world, 3 decades ago, to dead last, behind Shri Lankan hut dwellers.... thats what happens when a burocracy becomes morbidly obese.. its tumors turning cancerous in the end.
Then, at that point, mother natures stunningly perfect cure occurs... its a 260 year cycle with little variation, the chinese dynasties went 200 years or so,, the roman state went 300, the empire another
300 years. between collapses... Rome still stands, so does china and England, but all these have sustained collapses, not just depressions, there are 6 major depressions in the life of a nation on average... for each collapse.....those collapses last 1.5 to 2 generations as a rule... thats a nasty 75 to 150 years or so . What rises from those ashes is another iteration of the nation, not the same entity that collapsed.*** Its a natural cycle... an individuals choice is to become a 400 pounder himself, at the govt feed troogh, ruining his own epi genetics and producing similarly degraded offspring. (recent discoveries in epigenetics are worth searching on google).
or.... staying on the ball in the private sector, calling his own shots... coping with an onerous and corrupt govt.. and staying strong, lean and mean because of these trials.... that is its own reward. .
one dies sharrp, with his boots on in that case, having spawned viability across a broad spectrum...and with some of us still flat tracking into our late 60's.
There is no comparison,
Phil scott