America’s ‘prosperity’ is built on broken families and debt



Ever since the COVID “Great Reset,” the American economy has functioned like a silent depression for two-thirds of households and most businesses. Washington pumped out biblical levels of spending and easy money, and a cycle of debt, high prices, and stagnation has crushed consumers.

Meanwhile, a handful of well-connected corporations — propped up by cheap credit, regulatory favors, and asset bubbles — keep the stock market afloat, creating the illusion of growth. The result is an economy that looks healthy on paper but feels like collapse on Main Street.

Enough. A nation cannot live on financial tricks and asset bubbles forever. Let the recession come.

The time has come to let it crash. No more bailouts. No more “too big to fail.” If we want a free-market recovery built on broad opportunity and wage-based wealth, we must let the bubbles burst.

The silent depression

Americans live under record-high prices for food, fuel, rent, and electricity. College graduates face the worst job market in decades. Payroll data shows just 1,494 new jobs were added in August — the weakest since the 2008 crash. Layoffs are up 38.5% this year.

For graduates, the outlook is even worse. Fortune reports that 58% of recent grads still can’t land a job or internship. Forty percent of the unemployed last year never even got an interview. One in five job seekers remained unemployed for 10 months or more.

Those already employed are struggling to make ends meet. Thirty-seven percent of workers have tapped retirement accounts for hardship withdrawals or loans. Personal spending, adjusted for inflation, fell 0.15% in the first half of 2025 — the sharpest decline since the financial crisis.

Families are drowning in debt. Household debt sits at $18.39 trillion, up $600 billion in one year. Student loans total $1.64 trillion, with more than 10% delinquent. Credit card debt has hit $1.21 trillion, with average APRs over 22%. Auto loans stretch to seven years for one in five new vehicles. Nearly half of renters now spend more than 30% of their income on housing.

A stock market built on sand

You’d expect Wall Street to slump alongside Main Street. Instead, the S&P 500 posts records. Why? Because 10 mega-cap tech stocks make up 40% of its total market cap. Strip them out, and the picture darkens.

More than 450 large companies filed for bankruptcy in the first half of 2025, the most since the Great Recession. Manufacturing has lost 78,000 jobs. Construction spending has fallen in seven of the past 11 months. Small caps fare even worse: 43% of Russell 2000 firms are unprofitable.

AI hype fuels the illusion. Nvidia’s data center revenue — half of it from just three shaky firms — drives much of the market. The S&P’s price-to-book ratio now tops the dot-com bubble. This is not sustainable growth; it’s speculation on steroids.

The housing bubble must pop

Housing has become the last pillar propping up the economy. Thanks to years of near-zero rates, federal subsidies, and trillions in mortgage-backed securities, the housing market ballooned to $55 trillion — $20 trillion more than in 2020.

But affordability is gone. The frozen market now shows cracks as prices fall in half the country. This is the moment to let it reset. Instead of lowering lending standards or declaring housing “emergencies,” the Trump administration should allow prices to match real wages.

Americans can’t keep using housing as a savings account or demanding 25% annual stock returns while complaining about inequality. You can’t have both free markets and endless asset bubbles.

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Photo by sdlgzps via Getty Images

Stop feeding the beast

Wall Street already salivates over another round of stimulus to keep the AI bubble inflated. Evercore ISI predicts the S&P could hit 9,000 by 2026, even while warning this could become the “biggest bubble ever.” By then, the economy would be addicted to corporate welfare, and taxpayers would foot the bill for the richest companies in history.

Enough. A nation cannot live on financial tricks and asset bubbles forever. Let the recession come. Let the bubbles burst. Only then can America rebuild a market economy rooted in work, savings, and production — not in debt and fantasy.

Won’t somebody finally stand up and shout stop?

Trump’s tariffs haven’t sparked predicted trade war



For months, Americans were warned by the media about a global economic trade war that would begin in the wake of President Trump’s tariffs — but it hasn’t happened.

“All the fearmongering was totally wrong,” the Heartland Institute’s Justin T. Haskins tells BlazeTV host Liz Wheeler on “The Liz Wheeler Show.” “It was just totally and completely wrong.”

“As of right now, the data that we have clearly shows that the tariffs that have gone into effect have not dramatically increased prices for consumers. We obviously are not in the midst of an economic catastrophe or something like that,” he continues.

Haskins also points out that “revenues are up” and “tax revenues are up.”


“That’s a good thing because we have a gigantic deficit problem in this country and a gigantic government debt problem long-term, and this could be a potential solution to that,” he explains, though he notes that the mainstream media is not reporting any of the good.

“If you just were to Google this story and look around the internet, you’ll see people say that the tariffs are causing lots of inflation. You’ll see it in headlines all over the place, and I just want to give real data from the government that proves that that’s not the case,” Haskins says.

Haskins points to the CPI inflation rate, which is the standard used for measuring inflation.

“In July, the 12-month inflation rate from July 2024-2025, 2.7%, is basically the same as in June. That’s less than what it was in December and in January before Trump was even president. So at that point it was around 3%,” Haskins explains.

“So the inflation has actually gone down over the past eight months, if you’re just comparing it in that way. If you start looking at individual numbers, parts of the economy prices, CPI prices in specific parts of the economy where you would expect to see tariffs causing inflation, if tariffs do cause inflation, you’re not seeing it,” he says.

One example Haskins uses is with clothing, of which, he explains 97% is not made in the United States.

“We are seeing prices actually go down … so if tariffs are causing inflation, then you would think that would be one area where you’d expect to see prices soaring, and we’re not seeing that.”

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Read it and weep: Tariffs work, and the numbers prove it



Just about every influencer, economist, and politician predicted President Trump’s tariffs would unleash an inflation tsunami. Prices would spike and consumers would drown in a rising tide of costs.

Yet here we are, deep into summer, enjoying beach days and backyard barbecues. The price of lawn chairs and beach balls remains well within reach. So where’s the inflation?

Is it worth surrendering political and economic independence just to shave a few cents off the price of some Chinese-made junk?

According to the latest government data, inflation hasn’t surged. In fact, it’s lower than it was this time last year. The experts missed again. Why?

The short answer: Tariffs don’t necessarily drive inflation.

The Walmart effect writ large

Think about how Walmart keeps its prices low. It’s the biggest store in town, so it sets the terms. Producers either cut their costs or lose shelf space. Everyone wants access to Walmart customers, so they play along — and prices fall.

Now scale that logic up. America is the biggest consumer market in the world. In 2024, Americans spent more than $19 trillion on consumer goods, including over $4 trillion on imports.

This gives us leverage. When America slaps tariffs on foreign goods, those producers face a choice: Eat the cost or risk losing access to our market. And they know they’ll get outcompeted if they try to pass the full cost on to American buyers.

That’s exactly what’s happening. Recent surveys show about two-thirds of manufacturers expect their foreign suppliers to eat the tariff costs instead of raising prices on U.S. consumers.

Dodge the tax: Buy American

Here’s the other thing the panic-peddlers don’t say: Tariffs are avoidable. They’re a tax on imports. Buy American, and you don’t pay.

And while $4 trillion in imports sounds massive, it only accounts for about 13% of the U.S. economy. That’s not nothing, of course, but it hardly amounts to the kind of widespread pressure needed to trigger across-the-board inflation.

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Photo by Andrej Ivanov / Contributor via Getty Images

Instead, tariffs apply pressure in the right places. They force foreign competitors to compete with American producers or lose market share. That creates new opportunities for domestic manufacturers — and when they scale up, costs per unit drop. It’s basic economics — and it just happens to be a win for sovereignty.

Want lower prices? Close the trade gap

The media talk about consumer prices like they’re the only prices that matter. But they ignore the other kind of inflation — the kind tariffs can help tame.

Every year, we import more than we export. That trade deficit doesn’t just disappear. We pay for it by selling off our assets and racking up debt. Foreigners now hold trillions in American real estate, farmland, and commercial property.

In 2024 alone, foreigners bought $42 billion in residential real estate, $8 billion in farmland, and $12 billion in commercial properties. That drives up housing costs and shuts American families out of the market.

Then there’s the debt. Foreign entities hold more than $8.6 trillion in U.S. Treasury securities. We owe them interest. Every year, we ship more than $150 billion abroad just to service that debt. We’re borrowing money from our rivals to buy their products. That’s suicidally stupid.

Cheap isn’t the goal

Even if tariffs raised prices slightly — which the data says they haven’t — so what? Cheap isn’t the mission. National survival is.

That’s the argument I make in my book, “Reshore: How Tariffs Will Bring Our Jobs Home and Revive the American Dream.” America isn’t just an economy. It’s a nation — a people, a language, a culture, a way of life.

We can’t offshore everything and expect to remain free. Tariffs are essential to keep our economy self-sufficient. They secure our borders, protect our workers, and defend our future.

Ask yourself: Is it worth surrendering political and economic independence just to shave a few cents off the price of some Chinese-made junk?

I didn’t think so.

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