Mark Calendar: "The U.S. has already slipped into third world status."
Bobert: "The US is getting more and more like Haiti with 1% holding all the wealth"
CarolC: "We have become a Third World nation."
Riginsilver: "The crash of the US economy really began with the election of Ronald Reagan... It accelerated greatly after Bush Jr. came to power."
Rapaire "The US economy has been crashing for about twenty-seven years. Recently the slide has become more precipitous."

How are the rest of you doing? We still have plenty of turnips, a few beets, and some sheep we can slaughter. Here in the country, we are less affected by the crash. It must be eerie in the cities, the deserted malls, the freeways nearly empty at 5 p.m., the theatres and nightclubs abandoned for the churches and soup kitchens. I think of the emigrants swimming south across the Rio Grande, hoping for a new life in Mexico. I think of Miami, that once-proud city, depopulated, the now-pensionless elderly having fled Northward to live with their grandchildren, the Cuban-Americans seeking refuge in Havana. How everyone's lifestyle must have changed - people buying only the bare necessities, grocery stores with no expensive convenience foods, lottery tickets and cigarettes sitting dusty on the store shelves while everyone spends hoarded pennies on parsnips and cabbage, Applebee's, Ruby Tuesday, and TGIFriday's going out of business as everyone cooks at home, L.L. Bean and The Gap closing as families sew their own clothing. Who would have believed, in the old days of childhood obesity and type 2 diabetes, that America would now be having epidemics of scurvy and beriberi? I could not do it now, for it would break my heart, but someday I must visit your world.
Kent