The entire US economy is currently being propped up by growth in the AI/tech sector. And I am convinced that LLMs are fundamentally incapable of delivering on the promises being made by the AI CEOs. That means there is a massive bubble that will eventually burst, probably taking the whole US economy with it.
Let’s say, for sake of argument, that I am a typical American. I work a job for a wage, but I’m mostly living paycheck to paycheck. I have maybe a little savings, and a retirement account with a little bit in it, but certainly not enough that I can retire anytime in the near future.
To what extent is it possible for someone like me, who doesn’t buy into the AI hype, to insulate themselves from the negative impact of the eventual collapse?
invest into real world assets instead of stocks. think of the infrastructure you’ll need once everything stops working. food pantries, solar panels, ham radio, water purification, community self-defense, etc. basically solarpunk
This is all great stuff to have on hand, but not relevant for OP’s question. They’re wondering how to prepare for the equivalent of the dotcom burst or the 2008 recession, not a grid-down scenario.
why I mention prepping and mutual aid strategies is because you can’t pay for daily living expenses if there are no jobs and food becomes unaffordable. in 2008 millions of people became homeless so we need to learn from them how they survived
I don’t see the AI bubble burst affecting people to the same degree; I think it’ll wipe out a lot of investment portfolios, but non tech-sector jobs should be safe. I think it’s useful to have some essentials on hand, but I wouldn’t go on a buying spree if that means draining my savings; I’d rather have the flexibility of money. If it comes down to survival and you don’t have savings, you could preemptively apply for lines of credit, use those to cover living expenses, and declare bankruptcy once they’re wrung out. Not financial advice, but it’s an effective stopgap.
I would like to point out it’s only recent gdp growth being propped up by ai. It’s not like our entire economy relies on ai.
The seven primary companies that are trading around the same tens of billions of “investment” and “credits” are worth 34% of the S&P 500.
Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Nvidia, Meta, Tesla.
All of them are betting HARD, because CEO types think they can be first to market with the singularity and win. (That may be oversimplifying a bit, but every one of these companies is run by Nazi collaborators. Make stupid calls, win shitty reputation.)
While true, those companies all have solid revenue streams that aren’t directly related to AI. If a bubble pops they’ll all suffer, but all of them were profitable before the AI boom and can survive without it. It’s very different from the dot bubble because that was driven by speculation and many companies weren’t making any profit back then.
I completely agree with most everything you said, but I will note that Apple is an outlier in that they are not investing deeply into ai. They are a shit company, and Tim Cook is most definitely a Nazi collaborator, but they are not a crutch of this current bullshit market.
That’s fair. They’re behind, but definitely playing. “Apple Intelligence” has been around for a year, just badly under-developed.
Apple plans to ‘significantly’ grow AI investments, Cook says | TechCrunch
“We see AI as one of the most profound technologies of our lifetime. We are embedding it across our devices and platforms and across the company. We are also significantly growing our investments,” CEO Tim Cook said on the Q3 2025 earnings call with investors.
It makes me rage that even though I’m in a country thousands of miles away, its economy would be dragged down should economic collapse ever happens again in the US given heavy reliance on remittances from workers who are paid mostly in greenbacks.
The only glimmers of a chance of surviving such a catastrophe equivalent to tulip abuse would be not only investment in tangible goods and technical skills/trades – short of becoming a prepper – but also counting on policymakers’ pragmatism to make my country more cooperative with its neighbors to cushion and weather the shock.
It’s also funny how Lemmy is buying up this narrative.
The entire US economy is currently being propped up by growth in the AI/tech sector.
What’s happening is that Dementia Don is curb-stomping the US economy. AI investments, mainly in data centers, are the only thing that still seems promising. When you are on a trek and someone leads you through Death Valley, while pouring out all the water, you shouldn’t blame the last horse that still keeps going.
Putting the blame in the right place would certainly help, with a view toward the mid-terms.
Financially: Diversify. Make sure that you are not completely dependent on what happens in the US. But mind that Europe comes with its own imponderable risks (ie Putin). Same with China. Maybe some old leader dies and the new crew runs everything into the ground; they go to war with Taiwan, that sort of thing.
I don’t know that the OP or anyone else necessarily disagrees with you here. It’s one of the reasons that I believe we’re fucked when the bubble pops. Every other sector is shrinking otherwise, which is only making the mania more extreme.
Trump has fucked the economy, but I don’t expect the next administration to be able to pull off a miracle and fix the mess we’ve created within the next 10 years. Foreign relations and our status as the reserve currency are shot to hell. The US is going to have to answer for our behavior.
Those last two sentences are very alarming for anyone paying attention. The dollar bond market is currently collapsing, and we were THE defacto world power because of our soft power. Farmers around me are currently paying the price at China is buying up all the cheap land they can, and although I call them my friends,I can’t help but feel a certain schadenfreude as I told them trump was evil 8 years ago and the only comeback they have is “but other countries were scared of us then!”. Like their entire lives are nothing but a zero sum game, and now they can’t sell their soybeans. I may be a terrible person, but at least I can read the tea leaves.
Divest and buy labubu dolls.
There is a good reason why Warren Buffet is holding so much cash right now, he will be bargain shopping soon.
Still don’t get this take.
Buying low only works if you can sell high.
At the rate we are going. Yer gonna have King Ratfuck fighting King Shit over a an empire of dirt.
You don’t think halliburton made bank off of Iraq? I’m talking outside of the government contracts. A failing economy is good business if you’re flush.
This is how Berkshire has invested over the years. They try to time it, and buy the recession basically. When you’re investing long term, you can either hold and ignore or sell early, losing a bit and buy again after the drop
What did you do in 2020, when everything shut for COVID?
What did you do in 2008, when the arse fell out of the housing market?
What did you do in 2000, when the dotcom bubble popped?
Chances are the answer was “just shuffle on as normal, carry on living paycheck to paycheck, possibly get a new job if you work for somebody badly affected”. Odds are your pension pot will recover by the time you need it.
What do rich people do? They gamble. Watch The Big Short. You could try that, but chances are you’ll lose money. “The markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent”, as the old saying goes.
“The markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent”, as the old saying goes.
Some made big money in 2008.
A lot more lost it.
Buy low when everything crashes and wait for it to recover in 3-5 yrs.
I haven’t seen a job with a pension in the last 18 years being in the workforce.
Unions and Government jobs have pensions. But if you have a 401k or any type of IRA, the same people who invest pensions are also doing that investing for you if you aren’t managing it ( IE: mutual fund and etfs) and the investments are pretty much the same for both, so if pensions tank, so will your 401k.
I had a pension at my last job about 11 years ago. Then not long after I left with it fully vested congress passed a law allowing companies to creatively value pensions far lower than they should have been able to and most companies “bought out” the pensions for a fraction of their value. My pension got turned to mush, then a few month later congress passed a law “fixing the glitch” after most large corps had done their dirty work. My pension would have paid out about $800/month on retirement (likely not great depending on inflation), but their reassessment made it more like $150/month which probably won’t cover a phone bill when I am retired.
That’s wild
Yeah, it sucks. I was not relying on that pension as it was never going to be huge, but it was a big part of why I stayed at that company for over a decade.
Gov jobs still have them
Not necessarily. I had a relative who worked for the federal government back in the 70s/80s, and at the time they were trying to get everyone to switch (it was a voluntary choice for people who were in the ‘old’ system) to the new, non-pensioned options. I can’t imagine that the government suddenly decided to return to pensions.
My experience in small, local government was that everyone was on a matched % of paycheck being put into a retirement account. If you worked for a set number of years with the city/county/parish/state your investment would be matched at a specified rate when you retired. Basically just a glorified retelling of a 401(k).
Sort of. I’m a gov worker (non fed) and mine is a joke. 1% of salary per year of service. Not very significant. The old scheme was 2.5, I think, and before that it was 30 years to full salary. I still work with people on that old one, and they’re about at the full 30. In a generation it’s gone from a nice retirement to being more like a supplement. We do pay into SS now though so I guess that’s meant to replace it.
Been to 3 jobs that offer pensions and they all tell the same story you’re giving.
It’s right in the handbook. Hired before X date and you get 25 years to full salary retirement. Before Y date and 30. Hired after 2008 and it’s all the same. 33 Years gets you 33% of your salary. Which ain’t gonna be worth much thanks to inflation.
I worked next to people who at 60 had a full pension coming in, and then collected a full second salary because they’re allowed to DROP - which means work and collect the pension. One mfer was working on retiring twice to collect 3 paychecks. That is no longer an option for my generation either.
alot of people are also working after retiring otherwise. pension aint enough anyways,.
Do you not have a pension saving scheme that gives a tax break when employers pay into it direct from your wages?
In the UK it’s pretty standard. I think it’s even a legal requirement for employers to offer it, even if the amount they put in is paltry.
In the US those’ve been almost universally replaced by 401k plans, which I assume is what they’re referring to.
I’m in the US, so nothing guaranteed. I have a 401 and a bunch of other pots around.
Buy other stocks, not American ones. They will also be affected but not as much.
If you are living paycheck to paycheck, you cant do anything.
Don’t have money invested in the stock market to prevent it from losing value during downturns
If you are already invested, you can be reasonably separated from the stocks that are inflating, when the bubble bursts, as long as you are diversified the overall dip will serve you.
The directly impacted industries, those AI companies, data centers, blackrock real estate which is currently heavily investing in local power generation, hardware. That kind of stuff will impact the market, but your money is in relation to units owned. That value will come back and you as a long term investor will make a multiplier on any money you lost, because you ownership, your shares continued to go up at the reduced cost.
If you need the money you have invested for living expenses, you are fucked, but long term investors come out of these recessions stronger every time.
That’s managed investment, retail investors who are highly leveraged in the affected industries will be fucked.
Also look at gold, precious metals are a ridiculously solid investment, just don’t buy them at the market highs put of panic.
The stocks that are inflating are a significant portion of the stock market.
When they crash everything will.
When that happens the only way to not lose is to not have money invested.
Right, they lose value, but you still retain ownership. As a part of the regular flow of things the money you make from those stocks gets reinvested into more ownership, something that keeps happening even when the value of those stocks fall.
As long as your ownership stays, the market will rebound and you will make a premium because the number of stocks you owned actually went up during the period of value loss.
When people talk about how much money rich people made during covid, they are largely talking about stock value, not just carpet bagging.
I’m sorry but I can only describe this mentality as cope.
The market rebounding requires diversified investors propping it up, which no longer exist.
If AI goes kaput the stock market is getting set back at least half a decade, it will rebound, over the course of a decade or so.
That’s not good for people who need a retirement, like the vast majority of people invested in the stock market
See 2008. Now, multiply it by 7. Jacked to the tits.
Yeah, no the market has plenty of diversification, there have been times in history where our investments as a country have been much less diverse. When the AI bubble pops, and it will, it’s gonna be just like all the other bubble pops we’ve experienced. People who didn’t sell made back those funds after every crash. The people who needed the money right then, the elderly especially, we’re totally fucked. They couldn’t wait out the dips.
I’ll grant you it’s possible this is end of the American expirement because of mixing this with Trump, but i would have to ignore every other historical example. In which case the money won’t matter at all because there will be no guaranter of American fiat currency, which means you’ll see Argentina levels of inflation, we aren’t even close to that yet.
No it’ll pop, the rich who are heavily invested will make a ton of money when investors move their funds to another bubble, we’re also in a real estate bubble! And the whole machine will keep moving.
If you’re planning for a catastrophic failure you should really be buying that gold tho, precious metals, bullets, guns, fresh water, seeds.
And I am convinced that LLMs are fundamentally incapable of delivering on the promises being made by the AI CEOs.
As a, uh, atypical American, and someone into the ML scene and previously employed in an LLM dev job… I agree.
I don’t think ML is going away, as what’s been made so far are niche tools in the same way a hammer is, but the level of hype and conning is literally criminal.
If you can shift stocks around, take them out of indexes and put the cash in crash-resilient stocks like Berkshire Hathaway (which somewhat famously/infamously saves cash to buy dips during crashes), or Walmart. I’m thinking on such a “Noah’s Ark” basket for myself.
I’m not knowledgeable enough to comment on bonds, gold, or whatever else your savings may be in. But don’t believe a word anyone says to you about crypto.
Start saving a bit extra too, if possible, as the crash may not come for some time. And you want to avoid selling invested savings when the markets at its lowest.
On the tech side, you can get more into self hosting to not be so dependent on Big Tech. You’re on the perfect site to learn that.
If you ask me, that even includes dabbling in open-weights ML stuff, as that might suddenly become a more marketable skill once all the OpenAI hype implodes, and companies sipping the Koolaid turn more practical/frugal.
Other than that… I dunno. Depends on your work and lifestyle, I suppose. I think this will be a bumpy ride no matter what we do.
As a security engineer, I implore anyone to have an LLM walk you through standing up an SIEM.
Like don’t get me wrong. They’re phenomenal. But they just aren’t capable of complex tasks yet.
The current architectures fundamentally aren’t capable of such complexity, no matter how big they get or what prompt wrappers they have.
There are some interesting, deeper innovations in papers, but the AI hyperscalers seem to have little awareness of them, and I’ve seen so many cool experiments just drift by with no further testing these past few years. Which, again, suggests whatever approach the purse holders are taking is not a “innovate our way to better complexity” one.
I am not an expert per-say on AI, but I have survived economic collapses. Kinda.
Here’s what you can expect.
It will happen a lot faster and more sudden than you expect. It will be a few days of “uncertainty” and you will see reports on the market and spending and fear through investors, and then BAM everything goes deep red for a few days and then you suddenly get sent home from work.
Your job, no matter how skilled or stable or unrelated to finance or the stock market you may think it is- is NOT safe. In fact, service industry jobs are often the first to go, because when the market tanks and investors start pulling out money, one of the first, strongest effects we feel is that people with money immediately stop spending. If you install windows and doors, if you cut grass, if you clean or cook, expect people will suddenly start doing that themselves more and more. You may get laid off suddenly depending on how much reserve your company has.
There will be an immediate and overwhelming strain on state and city services. Unemployment offices, food banks, employment centers, and expect the media to create a LOT of hype around it to a destructive degree, there will be the same kinds of supermarket raiding like we saw with covid for no real good reason other than people feeling afraid.
What you should do now to prepare:
Have backup income plans. Even if modest, have some hustles ready to deploy. Get certified or see what you need to get certified ahead of time to do Uber and/or Lyft, people are going to be using ride sharing more because they won’t be able to afford to drive or make car payments. Think about other services people are going to need if they don’t have jobs - handyman work on the cheap, dog and pet care, unlicensed work you know you can do safely, etc. If you or your family can do art and crafts, set up an etsy market now before you’re strained, open it up to international customers.
SAVE MONEY, have cash savings as well as bank savings, have gold too if you can swing it. Expect any accounts that are tied to investments to be frozen or even wiped out, such as 401k’s and the like.
Whatever you can do to reduce debts and spending - pay down or pay off credit cards or cars if you can. Get your finances in order as much as you can, so figure out exactly what you’re spending and what your margins are.
Stockpile canned goods and basic survival supplies ahead of time like it’s the goddamn apocalypse. Seriously, have at least a month of dry goods and preserved food, you have some time (maybe) so start collecting canned food, sacks of dried beans and rice, toilet paper and soap, other supplies you buy regularly. This will give you a safety net if it gets bad, it’s one less [major] thing to worry about as you shift around your expenses and priorities.
Get information ahead of time about where your local DES/unemployment offices are, and what’s required to apply. Find out ALL the programs you can apply for, from, nutrition assistance to grants to stipends or tax credits for whatever your family situation is. You won’t get through on the website, it will be crashed with traffic, so be ready to go stand in line with your paperwork. You will get some number of months of benefits if you qualify (requirements vary by state) and most likely after some political contention, congress will pass emergency funding for extensions and stimulus checks. But it won’t last forever.
Go visit your nearest food bank now. Bring them some food and socks, get to know who runs things so that when it’s your time to stand in line, they know you already and have good associations.
We don’t really know how bad it could get. So get a gun. There may be civil unrest at some point. Our world is about two missed meals away from anarchy, or at the very least crime will increase and homes will get broken into, and police will likely be understaffed and overworked. You will be on your own.
Not a useful answer, but a reinforcement of the problem.
Without data centers, GDP growth was 0.1% in the first half of 2025, Harvard economist says
That’s pretty horrific.
It’s also not completely fair, some of that money would have been spent elsewhere without datacenters. Investors still gonna invest.
But what if the net ROI on those data centers is massively below the working average cost of capital… what is stated above is still massively destructive to capital and economic activity
Oh yeah it’s definitely bad in the long run. I’m just saying that it isn’t fair to say that the economy wouldn’t be growing without these new datacenters.
Follow the classic financial advice of setting aside enough emergency savings for a period of unemployment and diversifying the asset classes in your investment accounts (eg, retirement, health, education savings) to align with your risk tolerance & goals.
I keep 6 months of emergency savings in a high-yield savings account & let a robo-adviser passively invest my other savings on autopilot. While that means losses with market downturns, all the advice I’ve read & studies they refer to that run simulations over historic data (including shocks, downturns, bubbles) say that impassively holding that strategy has historically come out gaining & beating inflation.
If you’re worried about any economic downturn, you can very well diversify into even larger economic areas if you’d so please. How you do so is of course up to your own discression, given you can look towards different sectors, vectors of investment, and even geographic areas.
Non-US countries are buying gold, this seems to be a good way to go.
Hard assets make a lot of sense when paper assets do not.
Real estate and precious metals are the traditional hard assets. The stock market can implode, but a home will remain a home, an acre will remain an acre, an ounce will remain an ounce.
There are difficulties and risks and efforts required with hard assets, theres a reason why soft assets developed, but when things go wrong people trust what they can hold and walk on - and thus seek real estate and precious metals as they are certain and tangible.
With a little more trust in the system, there are softer assets available such as bonds, specifically treasury bonds, and there are etfs that attempt to exclude the ai bubble such as XMAG, or the sp500 but equally distributed instead of by market cap which increases diversity like RSP to reduce the fallout of the ai bubble pop
Theres a million ways to navigate a bubble, do the research and find confidence in your plan, and think about how you’ll react in various scenarios, especially when the numbers go down or arent going as high as expected
Real estate
I saw that you put a caveat in there about it, but I’m going to make it a little more clear.
If anyone here has lived through the dot.com bubble in Seattle (and probably the bay area), they’ll have seen that real estate is great if it’s paid for. If you go underwater on your loan and kicked out, which is how the banks got so much real estate in 08, you’re fucked. There *are no general rules, but guides.
In general, investing borrowed money is risky… People just don’t realize they’re doing that when they take on a mortgage.
This reminds me that I wish there was a basic course on money and the systems around it, that explains everything like you just did. It’s not magic, but it’s obfuscated behind so many terms and people trying to sell content, that it’s not a simple thing to figure out on one’s own.
Real estate is a trouble prone investment normally, much less in this crazy market; I specifically wouldn’t want to touch that right now.
Can’t speak for metals, but also be careful there…
Thing about a bubble like this is you don’t know when it’s going to pop. I like the saying “the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.”
What I’m saying is to be careful about going all in on more pure hedges. If this lasts another 4 years and one’s into stuff like XMAG and metals, and they drop in a crash anyway, you may end up in a worse position than if you had held the S&P 500. I think a better perspective is to avoid “buying a hedge” and instead invest in companies (or other assets) one thinks will be productive and grow with the bubble or not. They’ll grow however long the bubble goes, and keep growing after.
an ounce will remain an ounce
Buy cocaine futures, got it.
cocaine prices actually went down due to trump/noem pulling CBP off the borders to support ICE.
I don’t know about you but an ounce never remains and ounce you cut that shit make two ounces then someone else does the same and sells it as grams
An ounce just isn’t the same anymore with all this inflation
Shrinkflation is ridiculous, you’re lucky if you even get 25 grams now. /j
