In a recent article on the Fox Business website, famed economist Harry Dent predicts that 2024 will bring the 'biggest crash of our lifetime'.

Are we due for a crash?

It might be good to start with the basics:  what is “the economy”?  

The economy is a composite overview of the combined efforts every individual person’s productivity – that is, to support the lives of himself and his family.   

Without making that effort – doing nothing – the result is simple:  starvation and exposure to the weather.

Prosperity is required to make life possible.  The more prosperous you are, the more choices are available to make your life better.

Author Jane Jacobs put it very well:  "Poverty has no causes.  Only prosperity has causes."

Most people understand that to be prosperous requires being productive.

The unparalleled freedom Americans enjoy increases the kinds of choices and the sheer number of choices which makes any given level of prosperity easier to achieve than anywhere else on Earth.

Most Americans take advantage of that opportunity.  Most Americans pursue the best education they can achieve, in preparation for the job and career of their choice, which they believe they will include work that they will most enjoy.  

Those choices include starting a business of their own, or working as employees in an existing company.

Currently, the economy is in pretty good shape.  

Companies are generally operating successfully, which means they must hire employees.  Jobs are available, and people can generally be confident of a regular income for the foreseeable future.  

Companies are generally able to sell their products, whether to consumers or as to other companies for use as components in producing their own products.  

Productivity – that prerequisite to prosperity – is generally occurring.

What can disrupt the  economy?

The answer is simple:  what is powerful enough, on a national scale, to block people and businesses from working – from prospering?  

Only one answer:  the government.  

A war, for example, is so destructive – and deadly – that peoples’ lives are severely disrupted; that mere survival can become a personal daily issue.  During a war, the productivity required for prosperity ceases to be possible.

Government can also destroy prosperity by restricting freedom.  People have fewer choices.  Productivity becomes more difficult.  More people die of starvation and exposure.

In the Fox Business article, Economist Harry Dent points out a third way government can damage prosperity.  

"Since 2009, this has been 100% artificial, unprecedented money printing and deficits; $27 trillion over 15 years, to be exact.  This is off the charts, 100% artificial, which means we're in a dangerous state," Harry Dent told Fox News Digital. "I think 2024 is going to be the biggest single crash year we'll see in our lifetimes."  

Fifteen years is a long time.  The Baby-boomers have, for the most part, retired.  The younger generations – the Millennials and Gen-Zers, etc., are now the main part of America’s employees and business owners.  

"If I'm right, it is going to be the biggest crash of our lifetime, most of it happening in 2024. You're going to see it start and be more obvious by May," Dent says.

Dent, a Baby-boomer, is seeing inflation and says the coming 2024 recession is “going to bring down a lot of consumer price inflation.”

The $27 trillion of over-spending by Presidents Obama, Trump, and Biden over the last 15 years has certainly reduced the value of money.  That is what inflation is.

But to younger Americans, the current prices are what they are used to; such prices are this generation’s “normal”.  The days of five-cent candy bars and gasoline at thirty cents per gallon that Baby-boomers remember are history; to even think of going back makes no sense.

On the other hand, however, over-spending by the government must stop.  More and more of the U.S. budget is used simply to pay the interest on the Federal debt.  The Freedom Caucus in Congress is fighting for a return to balanced budgets, and the freedom to be more productive and prosperous.

That debt is real, and it – plus continued Federal over-spending – is the cause of America’s potential problem.

Harry Dent sees the numbers, and realizes that, one way or another, easy or hard, good or bad, America is perilously close to reaching the end of continued Federal self-destructiveness.

Two thousand years ago, it was said, all roads led to Rome.  Today, all financial roads lead to the U.S.

Unchecked, it will not only severely distress the American economy and the personal living standards of many Americans, but will severely impact the economies of many other countries in the world, as well.

Such disruption is when dictatorships, like China and Russia, thrive unchecked.

Solving the Federal financial problem will not be easy.  Simply raising taxes would not only be unpopular, but higher taxation quickly reaches a level of diminishing returns, quickly reducing the amount of taxes which are collected.  

Higher taxes destroy productivity.  Americans cannot afford a loss of productivity.

America has let its politicians paint itself into a financial corner.  

It is necessary for Americans to stop voting for bread and circuses.

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