No Stupid Questions

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Don't have money invested in the stock market to prevent it from losing value during downturns

I will be the contrarian in the room and say that you shouldn't really do anything different -- unless you know that you are going to need that money in the next year or two.

Let's take the S&P 500. Yes, we know there is an AI bubble, and the same 7 tech companies are knee deep in it. But it turns out that bubbles make money, until they don't. In fact, a good chunk of the growth in the S&P over the past two years has been in those 7 companies.. If you had made this bet 2 years ago, you would be a big loser now.

So what do you do? Don't panic sell. You can't time the market. Sell when you need the money for something else. Sell when you have a purpose. But don't be too upset when the bubble finally bursts, and it all dives 25% (or more!) . That was never real money anyway.

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.

Lots of reasonable personal advice here. I want to suggest some community driven ideas, though they're less fleshed out than I'd like.

Look into community and common gardens (and if they don't exist, start pushing for a local org to make such space). If you are renting, look into tenants unions (or consider organizing your own).

Invest some in food kitchens + homeless shelters now, while you've got something to share. Consider volunteering and becoming more familiar with the resources (you may not need it, but others could).

Consider broader political organizing. The people in power (even in local positions!) when the crisis hits will definitely matter. America gave big buy-outs to businesses during previous crashes; but it could payout to citizens just as easily. Lookup and start discussing policy solutions that could help insulate you and your community. Bring this up at a city council meeting. Write a county representative.

I do wonder...

With most economic crashes, the rich get even richer. This time it's different, though.

Right now, the top 8 richest men in the world have as much wealth as the bottom 50%. Homelessness world wide is at an all time high, and a huge swath of people can't afford all the basic necessities anymore.

If an economic crash happens now, will the 99% of the people finally wake up and just TAKE the resources from that 1%, like it or not?

What do billionaires think will happen to them once shit really hits the fan?