PhD economist Faber states: How am I so sure about this final collapse? Of all the questions I have about the future, this is the easiest one to answer. Once a society becomes successful it becomes arrogant, righteous, overconfident, corrupt, and decadent … overspends … costly wars … wealth inequity and social tensions increase; and society enters a secular decline. [Quoting 18th century Scottish historian Alexander Fraser Tytler:] The average life span of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years progressing from “bondage to spiritual faith … to great courage … to liberty … to abundance … to selfishness … to complacency … to apathy … to dependence and … back into bondage.” Where is America in the cycle? It is most unlikely that Western societies, and especially the U.S., will be an exception to this typical “society cycle.” The U.S. is somewhere between the phase where it moves “from complacency to apathy” and “from apathy to dependence… Full article.