Watch your wallets -- the next crash is coming

[Hortensis]

31. :) If it can only become worse, though, what happens when

we the people have 0% of the nation's wealth?

And will then it only continue to become worse from there? What would our having -20% of the nation's wealth look like?

Civic problems build until they force change. The Progressive and progressive New Deal eras were forced changes that, mercifully, were both steered by alliances of (overall) mainstream liberal and moderate conservative leaders. That lead to a wonderful, long era of general wellbeing and prosperity.

Unfortunately, we the people didn't take care of it and let it be taken away. And now the type of change the consequent decline is inevitably leading to is once again uncertain.

Our biggest problem now is that the new hideously wealthy classes read history and have been successfully dividing and conquering (so far) the electorate who defeated their forerunners. Otherwise, it'd be pffft! 200 million voters, 30 thousand of them? The big national question would be the best plan for eliminating centimillionaire and billionaire classes we should never have allowed to rise.

Will we do as well as our grandparents and, courtesy of democracy allied with new productivity levels, usher in the greatest period of prosperity in the history of the world, or will our foes succeed in imposing some form of right-wing, socially conservative authoritarian rule?

Whichever, there's going to be change.