Its not a matter of if the system will collapse but when...

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I think I'll give it 5 years at most don't see it lasting much longer than that.....how long do all of you think it will be?

Which system do you mean?

Well probably most societies in the world, but I guess more specifically the U.S government/economic system/society....I think a lot of people underestimate how quickly things are going downhill. But I don't think it's unique to the U.S so also curious about how people in other regions of the world feel about how long their current system will last or if it seems viable to collapse.

Well, when the system collapses, another one will take it's place.

Here our system is going to break down as well in a few years but for other reasons.

Well, we'll be doing just fine growing our own vege...

Off to wiki I go........

.......here's what wiki tells me about economic collapse:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_collapse

It is a description of economic collapse with a list of historical ones. Some examples are USSR, Weimar Germany and the Great Depression of the 1930's (which it says doesn't meet the strict definition of economic collapse but close enough). Economic collapses are horrid to live through but tend not to destroy a country. Will the U.S. have one as severe as in the 1930's 5 years from now? I found many, many websites saying we are. But some of the websites also contained predictions that the collapse would happen "in March 2014" or earlier (because the internet is forever so bad predictions stay too). Although I could find many websites that predicted a Great Depression level of collapse, all too many of them were religious (Pope Francis predicted an economic collapse) and there was an unseemly amount of glee in these predictions. Not reliable. I would believe a recession, but not a Great Depression looming.

Governmental collapse: wiki helpfully provides a list of countries that are "fragile" and may collapse- become failed states.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failed_States_Index

Somalia tops the list (no surprise there). The rest of the list is a mish-mash of African countries with some others in the mix such as Afghanistan (fragile thanks to us, I suppose) and Pakistan. The U.S. doesn't make the list because, howevber bad things may seem (especially in Detroit, which is failing spectacularly) the country as a whole is far more robust than the countries that fail. There is a list of indicators.

Here's an interesting article about governmental collapse:

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2 ... fall_apart

All things considered, economic collapse is more likely than governmental collapse. Economic collapse already has happened in the U.S. in the form of the Great Depression. If the U.S. were going to have governmental collapse, that would have happened during the Civil War. The Civil War was arguably the closest the U.S. came to breaking apart (into 2 pieces) but it did not so it must be pretty robust.

Social collapse: according to many religious websites and grumpy elderly people it has already happened. But the things that they are calling social collapse- specifically the legalization of gay marriage- to me are signs of social growth. So one person's collapse is another person's growth.

Possibly never. People disillusioned with the world have been "predicting" the end since there was anything to predict an end to. We're all still here, and all the disasters have been survived.

I don't think there will be any sudden "collapse". The standard of living will just steadily decline.

-there is room to raise taxes
-printing money does not have to end, so the debt can be slowly inflated away
-many countries stack Treasury paper in their vaults with the understanding that holding Treasury paper is playing "musical chairs", but may not
care, because it is not the leader(s) themselves that will personally suffer the loss
- the US dollar is the world's trading currency and counties deciding to not use dollars may face the wrath of the US
-and the biggest reason is the US military

America almost had an economic collapse in 2008-09. At one point, so much money was being withdrawn, electronically, from America's markets, in addition to banks refusing all short term lending, that we may have only been 24 hours or less away from a system collapse. Have the issues behind this almost-collapse been fixed? There's no real answer, since the elites are keeping their cards hidden. I personally don't think so. America is fine right now, since we have the social media boom in Silicon Valley and the oil shale extraction boom in North Dakota and Texas, but when those bubbles pop, will we see a collapse? Nobody knows the future, but I'd say it's possible. And the the question becomes, how soon will the bubbles pop? Again, nobody knows. Watch for the mainstream media saying stuff like "there appears to be no end in sight to The Booms" and urging people to get involved before prices go up again. Right now the bears are out, so maybe we have a little longer. A lot of Americans believe in the looming End Times, and put much stock in various interpretations of the Book of Revelation, much more so than Catholicism or Eastern Orthodox versions of Christianity. Americans see the end of the world in practically everything.

china and Russia are moving away from the dollar and moving others to too. china is suppose to replace as as the economic power in 15-30 years. I can't remember the estimate. as they do that it is likely everyone will start using their currency as the trading currency.

I imagine there will be a long crunch of declining living standards too rather than a sudden collapse but there will tipping point eventually. The surveillance/police state is growing day by day, people aren't going to take it forever. Our entire economic and political system is untenable in the long run. In the next 20 years something will crack I am guessing. Europe doesn't seem to be much better off.

The upshot is capitalism may be replaced by something more humane.

20 million dead Soviet citizens might have something to say about the humaneness of socialism.

People have been preaching this for a long time. One of the characters in the early 1970s movie/book Deliverance was convinced society was about to fail. He was a prepper / survivalist. Any minute now...

Then you can wait for a very long time. People have predicted the end of the US since the 1870s, and the end of capitalism since WWI. Far more people have been killed in the name of socialism than in the name of capitalism.

The only thing saving the USA from a full-blown economic collapse is that most every other industrialized nation is in the same boat as we are. So, it's not like past events where a strong nation take the #1 slot because their economy is strong.

Power will shift. Standards of living will change, but a radical "crash" might not actually happen because everything is equally bad on a global level.

I think there is another (and larger than 2008) pending economic crash, but it will not be the end of the US. When is only a matter of how long the most powerful can keep the current illusions going.

The ever widening gap in the upper and lower class is the most reliable metric of economic down-turn. The bigger the gap and the faster the rate of that increase have historically been excellent indicators.

It will likely be a combination of things that does it, though. Debt burdens are still massive. Credit card debt is down slightly, but student loan debt has caused total indebtedness to continue to skyrocket. Around 1/4 of all US adults are currently deliquent in the payment of at least one debt (>90 late). The housing market is headed for another bubble burst, thanks to the resumption of the same rate of new construction and the re-emergence of house-flipping hobbyists. The DOW is at record levels, despite every other economic indicator saying that it has absolutely no reason to be. Stagnant and declining wages on all except for the top tier incomes. Further concentration of assets among a smaller number of people. Climbing poverty rates. A massive drop in labor participation (the biggest factor in the "decrease" in unemployment). Inflation rates entirely too low for a healthy economy. China shifting their monetary reserves out of US dollars and beginning to use their own currency (which is turning out to be quite effective). China's GDP passing the US (although the per capita still has a ways to go). Nation-wide crumbling infrastructure. A continuing decline in science, math, medicine, and technology education.

Unfortunately, the US is going to bring down a huge chunk of the rest of the world with it. And a huge military isn't going to save the US.