The Collapse Has Begun – What Comes After America? | Tom Bilyeu Deepdive

What's up, guys? Today I’m diving deep into the heart of the American crisis. There’s no guest on this episode—just me, Tom Bilyeu—and we’re going all in on the topic that’s impacting all of us right now: the collapse of the American system as we know it. From skyrocketing national debt to social division, political chaos, and economic decay, I’m breaking down exactly how we got here, what it means for your future, and most importantly—what you can actually do about it. In this episode, I’m laying out the four critical parts of America’s decline, shedding light on the real drivers behind the chaos, and sharing the practical strategies you need to protect yourself and thrive no matter what comes next. If you’ve ever felt hopeless about the future or wondered if the American Dream is still alive, this episode is for you. You’re going to walk away from this episode with a clear understanding of the problems we’re facing, the historical patterns at play, and the actionable steps you can take to build resilience in your own life—even if the government keeps playing with fire. Trust me, this is one you cannot afford to miss. If you find value in this episode, please leave us a review—it's the best way to help us reach more people like you who are committed to making an impact. I’m Tom Bilyeu, and welcome to Impact Theory. What's up, everybody? It's Tom Bilyeu here: If you want my help... STARTING a business:join me here at ZERO TO FOUNDER https://tombilyeu.com/zero-to-founder?utm_campaign=Podcast%20Offer&utm_source=podca[%E2%80%A6]d%20end%20of%20show&utm_content=podcast%20ad%20end%20of%20show: https://tombilyeu.com/zero-to-founder?utm_campaign=Podcast%20Offer&utm_source=podca[%E2%80%A6]d%20end%20of%20show&utm_content=podcast%20ad%20end%20of%20show https://tombilyeu.com/zero-to-founder?utm_campaign=Podcast%20Offer&utm_source=podca[%E2%80%A6]d%20end%20of%20show&utm_content=podcast%20ad%20end%20of%20show SCALING a business:see if you qualify here. https://tombilyeu.com/call: https://tombilyeu.com/call Get my battle-tested strategies and insights delivered weekly to your inbox:sign up here. https://tombilyeu.com/: https://tombilyeu.com/ ********************************************************************** If you're serious about leveling up your life, I urge you to check out my new podcast,Tom Bilyeu’s Mindset Playbook https://open.spotify.com/show/47VE90Cittmo6TGGFqg2xf —a goldmine of my most impactful episodes on mindset, business, and health. Trust me, your future self will thank you. ********************************************************************** FOLLOW TOM: Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/tombilyeu/ Tik Tok:https://www.tiktok.com/@tombilyeu?lang=en Twitter:https://twitter.com/tombilyeu YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/@TomBilyeu Linkedin: Post your job free at https://linkedin.com/impacttheory Netsuite: Download the new e-book Navigating Global Trade: 3 Insights for Leaders at http://NetSuite.com/Theory http://netsuite.com/Theory Shopify: Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial period at https://shopify.com/impact Connectteam: 14 day free trial at https://connecteam.cc/46GxoTF Tailor Brands: 35% off https://tailorbrands.com/podcast35 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices https://megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tom Bilyeu?

  Let's talk about the moment your side hustle becomes a real business. Now, I see way too many founders stay stuck running their business like it's a hobby, and then they wonder why nothing ever feels real. It doesn't feel real because it's not. I've helped thousands of entrepreneurs build real businesses through Impact Theory University, and the first step in the path to building a legit business is registering it. And Tailor Brands will help you do just that in a few clicks. An LLC, a limited liability company, is an official business structure. It's inexpensive to form and very simple to maintain. It's how you open a business bank account. It's how customers know they're dealing with a real company. And Tailor Brands doesn't stop at the filing.

• 0:45Tom Bilyeu?

  Their dashboard tracks what comes next based on what your business actually needs. So EIN number, registered agent, licenses and permits, bookkeeping, business banking. I tell every founder the same thing. Just make it official. Click the link in the show notes to check out Tailor Brands and get started on your business today. This is a paid advertisement. In the last year, the price of gold has increased by more than 50% and crossed 4,000 for the first time in history. This happens in times of crisis when people have lost faith in the current system. And consider this, the US has shut down 22 times in the past 50 years,

• 1:30Tom Bilyeu?

  but a full half of them have happened in the last 10 years alone. Recent polling shows that the majority of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track. The US national debt has passed $37 trillion, and we add roughly $1 trillion every 100 days. And interest payments will top $1.1 trillion this year. More than defense or Medicare. Soon enough, it will be the single largest expense the government has. Nearly one-third of Young adults now believe violence may be necessary to fix politics.

• 2:16Tom Bilyeu?

  Debt has driven inequality to truly unsustainable proportions. Something is going very wrong in America. The signs are everywhere. Economic decay, social division, political chaos. The load-bearing walls of the American system are cracking. The American dream is dead. And most people are too angry and hopeless to try and fix it. The question now isn't if America is failing. The question is, how did we get here? Can we turn things around? And if not, what comes after the American empire? That's what I'm covering today in four critical parts.

• 2:56Tom Bilyeu?

  Do not skip part three, because that's what's actually driving the collapse. Though many are going to continue to try and deny it. And in part four, we're going to zoom out and look back at what comes next if America falls. Along the way, I'll make sure you know what to do to protect yourself, even if your government continues to insist on committing suicide. Buckle up, this one is rough. But it contains the info you need to thrive, no matter what happens. But we first have to look at the raw, naked truth of what's going on. Welcome to part one. Social division and the death of our shared myths.

• 3:40Tom Bilyeu?

  A recent Harvard poll showed a 17-point drop in Americans' belief that hard work guarantees success. A 2025 Gallup poll showed that only 38% of Americans believe the US is still the greatest country in the world. A drop of more than 30% in just six years. Psychologically, America is in freefall. I don't want that to be true, any more than you do. But the reality is, if we do not face where we're at, we're never going to be able to dig our way out. We have lost faith in ourselves. We no longer have a shared sense of what it means to be an American. 80%, 80%. Percent of Americans say the country is more divided now than ever.

• 4:24Tom Bilyeu?

  As the recent political assassinations attest to, we are increasingly willing to murder our political opponents. America is fractured into tribes of narrative. We are all living in our own algorithmically driven bubbles that are increasingly partisan. Sixty-five percent of Republicans trust Fox News. Sixty-seven percent of Democrats trust CNN. And yet, overall media trust is at just twenty-eight percent. We listen to our tribes, but rarely to reason. We have become revolutionaries, in the worst sense of the word, prepared to watch our enemies beheaded in the streets. Virtually everyone is part of a group,

• 5:07Tom Bilyeu?

  and those groups live inside of their own reality. They have their own feeds, facts, and, most distressingly of all, their own moral framework. The result is a country that can no longer even agree on what is true. Think about how foundational that problem is. We can look at the same events and fail to agree on what just happened. We can't even agree on our history. Are we the most powerful and prosperous nation the world has ever seen? Or are we a morally bankrupt country built on the backs of slaves and colonialism? For most of American history, the glue that held the system together wasn't the government.

• 5:48Tom Bilyeu?

  It was our culture, our beliefs, values, and institutions, family, faith. Churches, neighborhoods, and local communities gave people a shared identity, a sense of belonging, and purpose. But our culture has shattered and our institutions have eroded. Our institutions have been a part of the problem. Church membership has fallen below fifty percent for the first time in US history. Marriage rates are at record lows. And one in four young adults now say they don't have a single close friend. A society can survive disagreement. It absolutely cannot survive this degree of disconnection. Without a deeply cherished, shared myth about who we are.

• 6:33Tom Bilyeu?

  We lack the necessary center of gravity needed to hold us all together. When Americans used to talk about the melting pot, we meant it literally. A shared identity forged from diversity. Today, we're not melting. We're bumper cars slamming into one another. The point of facing this very uncomfortable truth is not to get angry, and it's certainly not to get scared. It is to understand the problem so we can unwind it. But before we get to that, let's follow how everything is playing out now forward. Because plenty of people are going to get this far and say that I'm just being an alarmist. But what I'm saying is no more alarmist than a doctor who tells you you have diabetes.

• 7:15Tom Bilyeu?

  You can live a long and healthy life with diabetes, but not if you don't change your lifestyle. If we don't change our collective lifestyle and mend our social fractures, here's what's gonna happen. One, there will be a loss of shared legitimacy. When factions stop accepting the same authority or election outcomes, the government's legitimacy itself dissolves. In Rome, citizens stopped trusting the Senate. In Weimar, Germany, they stopped trusting elections. When half the population sees every outcome as rigged, laws lose their power. The government still exists on paper, but only as a brand. The social contract that actually gives the government authority is broken.

• 7:58Tom Bilyeu?

  Two, the accelerated escalation of political extremes. I hope that sounds familiar. Moderate voices disappear as polarization rewards purity and ruthlessly punishes dissent. Each side justifies extraordinary measures to save the republic. Violence moves from fringe to mainstream politics. First in rhetoric, then in action. We've experienced both. Remember, if civil war broke out, it wouldn't be for the first time. People act like this couldn't happen when it's already happened. Three, the normalization of violence and retaliation.

• 8:40Tom Bilyeu?

  And mob justice becomes symbols of loyalty. Each act of violence invites retribution, driving a cycle that leaders cannot control. Public fear then creates space for authoritarian consolidation. Late in the Roman Empire, Rome suffered from many political assassinations. The French Revolution was made even more horrible by its purges. And then, there was open violence in the streets of Germany as the Weimar Republic fell apart. With Antifa, which I'll call today's brown shirts, and the recent spree of political assassinations, we're already seeing foreshadowing of just how bad this could get.

• 9:21Tom Bilyeu?

  Four, there's a centralization of power and the erosion of liberty. Citizens trade freedom for order, and institutions surrender authority to a strong hand. The bureaucracy grows while accountability shrinks. Temporary emergency powers become permanent governance. Looking back, you saw this with Napoleon's coup, Lenin's emergency powers, and Hitler's Enabling Act. Alright, that's where history tells us we're going to end up if we don't repair our social fractures now. So, how do we do it? Here's the recipe. One, reward free speech, not conformity. Truth does not come from decree, it comes from debate.

• 10:05Tom Bilyeu?

  When people are free to argue openly, bad ideas die fast and good ones evolve getting better over time. Censorship does not protect society, it freezes it in ignorance, and, this is important, it requires violence to maintain. If you do not allow free speech, it will require violence to stop. Two, rebuild a shared pro-American narrative. One centered on innovation, family, entrepreneurship, and self-reliance. The very things that made us such an extraordinary country on the global stage. Three, indoctrinate, yes indoctrinate.

• 10:50Tom Bilyeu?

  School-age kids with a growth mindset, first principles thinking, and a focus on problem solving. Eliminate the victim mentality and teach people to dream again. Four, build economic literacy. Teach everyone how money, saving, and investing works. Stop turning kids into easy marks for debt and credit. They are so easy to manipulate because they do not understand how money works. Five, focus media reform on transparent algorithms and give people algorithmic control, not censorship. People should be able to have whatever algorithm they want, but they shouldn't be blindly manipulated

• 11:35Tom Bilyeu?

  by a tech company. Six, revive purpose-driven institutions. Faith, family, service, and innovation. We need those purpose-driven institutions to be robust. And maybe most importantly, Americans need to be unified around the inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And we need to remember that happiness itself isn't a right, merely the pursuit. And given the architecture of the human mind, if you want to achieve happiness, you'll need to understand it is not the transient feeling you get when eating a bowl of ice cream. It's the profound sense of well-being you get when you work hard to gain a set of skills

• 12:19Tom Bilyeu?

  that allow you to make progress towards an honorable goal. If we did all of that, we could, honestly, begin stepping back from the precipice and begin healing the division in society. But that's only one of three areas that we need to heal. We're hitting pause for a moment, but there's plenty more ahead, so don't go anywhere.

• 12:41Tom Bilyeu?

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• 13:26Tom Bilyeu?

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• 14:09Tom Bilyeu?

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• 14:51Tom Bilyeu?

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• 15:04Tom Bilyeu?

  Thanks for staying tuned. Now, let's get back to it. So, welcome to part two. Political chaos: An empire in freefall. More than 80% of Republicans believe all of Trump's criminal charges were clear cases of a weaponized legal system. More than 80% of Democrats believe Hunter Biden's cases were the same way. Startlingly, the US ranks 43rd globally for public trust in election integrity. That is wild! And for the last decade and a half, congressional approval ratings have hovered in the teens to low 20s due to polarization, gridlock, and shutdowns.

• 15:49Tom Bilyeu?

  And that's not to mention that the US government has failed to pass a federal budget on time in nearly three decades. Distrust in the American government is skyrocketing, and it's starting to manifest in dangerous ways. In less than a decade, credible threats of violence against members of Congress have more than doubled, with another 50% increase projected in just the next 12 months. Policies matter, and when the government lacks real leaders with a clear and economically sound vision for prosperity, politics devolves into populist theater. Shutdowns, debt ceiling standoffs,

• 16:32Tom Bilyeu?

  and impeachment threats have become seasonal productions of a play I hate. They are predictable spectacles that serve no purpose beyond assigning blame and creating drama and political leverage. That's where we are. Politicians are all trying to play the strong man by promising their constituents that they're finally gonna get everything they want. The other party is demonized and blamed for all of our woes. Spoiler alert! Everyone is to blame. There is so much money in politics and so much anger in the populace that the policies are designed merely to get the politician elected and then placate the donors and we, the voters,

• 17:16Tom Bilyeu?

  surrender our will and determination to the government in exchange for free shit. It doesn't matter if the politician is a Democrat or Republican. Everyone is promising more free stuff because that's what we, the voters, demand of them if they want our vote. The big, beautiful bill was passed, which was already fiscally irresponsible. And then the Democrats shut the government down because they wanted to make it even more irresponsible. The bureaucracy has metastasized and is growing unchecked like a tumor. Each new law or emergency program creates another department, another layer of regulation, another dependency,

• 18:02Tom Bilyeu?

  and the odds are that they're never going to be undone. Politicians promise to reduce the size of government, and they may even eliminate some departments, but then they keep deficit spending in record numbers. And the bigger the system grows, the less anyone is accountable to how it actually performs and the faster we hasten our own economic decline. It's as if we have lost all sense of cause and effect. We've become so fearful that our voting patterns are purely short-term thinking. What's best for me right now, today? Tomorrow, that is somebody else's problem. And that mentality condemns us to ensuring that the problem only gets worse. And while this all starts as mere theater,

• 18:44Tom Bilyeu?

  history proves that it quickly escalates into something far more serious. Every nation that ever lost its republic began tightening its grip on power with the justification that it was needed to right the ship and survive the chaos. It starts with lawfare, weaponizing our institutions against political opponents. That turns every indictment, every congressional hearing, every impeachment into war. Instead of justice, and everyone is forced to choose a side. If that doesn't sound like an accurate description of what we are going through right now, I don't know what does. And when trust in the courts dies, the rule of law dies with it. And then the government loses its last ounce of moral authority.

• 19:29Tom Bilyeu?

  From there, it doesn't matter who's right. All that matters is who holds power. And whoever does hold power will expand executive control. And that makes each election existential. You can already feel this happening. Each election brings fresh prosecutions of the outgoing administration. If a declining country isn't careful, emergency powers become the norm. And once a government learns it can bypass consent, good luck getting it back. Julius Caesar didn't start out as a dictator. He became one. Napoleon didn't start out as emperor. He became one. Every democracy calls a change like that temporary.

• 20:12Tom Bilyeu?

  Then the bureaucracy consolidates, policy gets made by decree, and democracy officially dies. So how do we stop all of that from happening? Very simple. We have to limit the size and scope of the government. The people must re-embrace civic duty. We need to engage with the issues and make our voices heard. I know I never thought I'd be recording a video like this, but the reality is that we have to remember that prosperity is not a right or a law of nature. It is something that must be earned every single day. We have to think for ourselves and avoid taking partisan shortcuts to get easy clarity.

• 20:55Tom Bilyeu?

  Being clear on how to vote based on what your team says is not the same as actually understanding the issues. We have to think from first principles, AKA, we have to map real world cause and effect. And we rediscover virtue, the act of doing what is morally excellent even when it hurts us. Now, I know how cheesy that sounds, and I know how Often I fall short, but we need a guiding light. We need something that we at least are aiming at. We need something that makes us think about the long-term well-being of the country as a whole. We have to rediscover boundaries and limitations. We have to rediscover fiscal responsibility

• 21:41Tom Bilyeu?

  and personal responsibility, not to mention compromise. We have to understand that opposing views are useful. They're meant to sharpen and temper us. Free speech is valuable precisely because it forces our ideas to encounter opposition. Now that we've covered all of the symptoms of the disease, the things that people can already see and feel, let's talk about the underlying cause of the disease. Welcome to part three, economic decay, the foundational problem. Inflation has eroded 25% of people's purchasing power in the last five years alone.

• 22:21Tom Bilyeu?

  Because of globalism and unchecked immigration, real wages have been flat for half a century, 50 years, while productivity has more than doubled. All political parties dramatically overspend, leaving the government at 122% debt to GDP. And every country except one that has ever gone over 130% debt to GDP for any meaningful period of time has ended up in revolution or civil war. To avoid going over 130%, the government will have to print more money, which will drive more inflation, which will make the economic life of young people that much more impossible.

• 23:06Tom Bilyeu?

  The only way to escape the state-sponsored theft of your money via inflation is to own assets. Unfortunately, the only asset that people intuitively understand is a home. And housing prices grew by approximately 408% from 1985 to 2023, while incomes only Rose by roughly 240%. Said another way, in 1985, the median home cost roughly 3.5 times the median household income. But now that ratio has shot up to 5.3 times.

• 23:47Tom Bilyeu?

  And interest rates are higher now than they've been for nearly 30 years. So, young people have literally been priced out of the American dream. And without anywhere to hide from the devastating effects of inflation, they feel hopeless. Economies are gamified. You do a thing and you get a reward, money. And you use that reward to buy a thing you want, let's say a house. And that feedback loop keeps people playing the game. So when that reward feedback loop breaks, people just stop playing the game altogether. And that is where we are today as a country. Unemployment is skyrocketing. People are just pulling out of the game. And increasingly, young people are looking to scrap the current system entirely

• 24:32Tom Bilyeu?

  because they just want to move to something better, whether they know what that is or not. And the problem is, for the most part, it's not. Their proposed solutions, such as socialism, will only push assets further and further out of reach, accelerating the economic death spiral that has led them to want socialism. And that's why legendary hedge fund investor Ray Dalio says that we're in stage five of a six-phase big debt cycle. This is the phase that we're in right now, that he calls internal disorder before necessary deleveraging. For reference, if we're in phase five, phase six is total collapse.

• 25:16Tom Bilyeu?

  So this is the last stop on the train if we're going to make a non-traumatic change. We'll make a change, that is guaranteed. But it may come after a whole lot of bloodshed, pain, suffering, and things that we do not want to go through. Because things will get worse, much worse, if we don't do something to interrupt the current trends. The way we are headed, the middle class will get almost Entirely hollowed out. The half that understands assets and own a meaningful percentage of them will get pulled into the upper class. And the people who don't own or don't understand assets will get yanked down into the lower classes because of inflation. And when a government deficit spends, it is forced to borrow just to cover

• 26:02Tom Bilyeu?

  the ever increasing amount of debt that they're racking up just to cover the interest on the debt. It's already racked up. This is known as a debt death spiral. And it leaves the government in an increasingly weakened position where debt is constantly stacking up endlessly. Until the debt burden becomes so extreme that the country tears itself apart from the inside out of frustration. Or some politician finally shows up that has the balls to balance the budget and alleviate the debt burden by making brutal unpopular decisions that are ultimately necessary to save the economy. And I don't see anybody like that on the horizon.

• 26:45Tom Bilyeu?

  It is absolutely critical that we stop this runaway process before it ends in default, which would be catastrophic and would certainly spell the end of the dollar as the world's reserve currency. Now, how do we actually do that? The way is pretty straightforward, but is anything but simple. We'd have to enforce fiscal discipline, increase taxes, but not so much companies slow down. We'd have to print money and restructure debt, but in a balanced way that doesn't crash the economy or birth runaway inflation. Ray Dalio calls this very delicate and tricky path out of a debt crisis, a beautiful deleveraging. Most countries execute an ugly deleveraging.

• 27:28Tom Bilyeu?

  But if we were going to do it right, it would look something like this. We balance the following four levers so the system deflates the debt burden without blowing up growth or igniting runaway inflation. The four levers are as follows. One, austerity. We have to spend less than we earn. We're gonna have to slow government outlays so debt stops. This is the one that people really do hate the most. And if you push this one too far, you end up with violence in the streets just because people are mad. Two, debt restructuring. We're gonna have to extend maturities, lower rates, or write down bad debt so that the load becomes finally serviceable. In fact, you're gonna have to do all of those things.

• 28:13Tom Bilyeu?

  You have to be careful, though, as one man's debt is another man's asset. So when you write off bad debt, you are destroying someone's hard-earned money. And if you do that to enough people, you will put the country into a crippling depression. Three, money printing, done very carefully. Use liquidity as a bridge, not a lifestyle like we do now. Offset deflationary shocks without debasing the currency. Now, this is a little bit like telling a heroin addict that if withdrawal ever gets too tough, go ahead and just take a little heroin. To do that, you have to have very strict rules around the use of money printing. Or you're just gonna end up right back where you started, strung out on money printing.

• 28:56Tom Bilyeu?

  We're also gonna have to do redistribution. You're gonna have to shift relief towards productive activity, work, investment, building, rather than pure consumption. So demand survives and capacity expands. Now, if we can pull all of these levers in an extremely balanced way, balance the budget, and use deregulation to stimulate growth, we have a shot at driving debt down as a share of the economy and stopping the debt spiral that underlies all of our biggest structural problems. In addition to a beautiful deleveraging, balancing of the budget and growth, we need to fix the following practices to ensure that moving forward,

• 29:39Tom Bilyeu?

  we don't just redig all of the same holes and jump right back in. One, we must increase real wages. Let me say that again, we must increase real wages. And to do that, we've got to make it possible for workers to negotiate well. Now, that doesn't mean unions. Unions don't track closely to wage increases. But what Does is to bring back the millions of manufacturing jobs that were sent overseas. We also have to stop exporting jobs to the cheapest countries and we need to stop importing the cheapest labor. Two, make housing affordable again. Start by deregulating housing to stimulate building and increase the available supply.

• 30:24Tom Bilyeu?

  In areas like Houston, Texas, where it's easy to get a permit to build, housing prices have remained reasonably stable as other areas of the country have gotten completely out of control. Three, ensure people have access to hard money. Unless we abolish the Federal Reserve and do away with fiat currency, that's what allows for money printing, there's no way the government is going to stop money printing. As long as money printing exists, the government has a moral obligation to allow people the refuge from inflation that a hard money provides. Given how hostile the previous administration was to crypto, a form of hard money, it doesn't take a genius to figure out how quickly we could return to being hostile to hard money

• 31:09Tom Bilyeu?

  under a new admin. We cannot let that happen if we want to avoid another debt trap. Debt is exactly how empires fall. Debt, money printing, it really is that simple. People who try to hide that fact actively want you confused. Four, we've got to re-industrialize America in critical areas. Energy, AI, semiconductors, advanced manufacturing, and defense are the spine of sovereignty. Build refineries, reactors, fabs, shipyards, and drone supply chains. Every strategic job you return to America is two risks you remove: foreign dependence

• 31:53Tom Bilyeu?

  and domestic despair, because finally, people have jobs again. Five, teach financial literacy. Keeping people financially illiterate is how you keep them poor. Now that AI exists, there is absolutely no excuse for not teaching young people financial literacy. Aggressively and on a loop. A failure to do so is an immoral act. I can't say it any more clearly than that. Six. Educate kids. Educate kids. All kids. Ensure that one's zip code has little to no bearing on their future success. Again, with the power of AI, there's no excuse for education not to be universal.

• 32:37Tom Bilyeu?

  The greatest teacher in the world is AI. Nobody needs to suffer from poor teaching. Six. Dramatically reduce the welfare state. Teach hunger and self-reliance. America will only win if we are truly willing to compete on the international stage and not just ride on the momentum of past glories. And if you don't do that, you're never going to be able to balance the budget. None of what we've just talked about is going to be easy, but all of it is possible. But it's going to require America to wake up, get focused, and understand that as the saying goes, success cannot be owned. It's leased and rent is due every day.

• 33:18Tom Bilyeu?

  America will not win in the future unless it goes harder than everyone else. Don't believe me? Taking a short break, but there's more Impact Theory after. Stay tuned. You're probably paying two salespeople to do one salesperson's job. That's where today's sponsor, Pipe Drive, comes in. An intelligent, AI-powered sales CRM loved by growing sales teams. Pipe Drive just launched meeting intelligence built right into the CRM. Before every call, it pulls deal history and past conversations into one brief. During the call, it records and takes notes. After it, it drafts your CRM updates to review and approve.

• 34:02Tom Bilyeu?

  So there's less admin and more selling. Switch to a CRM built by salespeople for salespeople and join the over 100,000 companies already using Pipe Drive. My link gets you an exclusive 30 days free instead of the usual 14-day trial. There's no credit card payment needed. Just head to pipedrive.com/impact to get started. Again, that's pipedrive.com/impact and you can be up and running in minutes.

• 34:35Tom Bilyeu?

  Thanks for sticking around. Let's get right back into the action.

• 34:39Tom Bilyeu?

  Part four: America's decline is in the numbers. In 1995, US GDP on a nominal basis was 10x China's. By 2025, on a purchasing-power parity basis, China had grown so much, it is estimated to have surpassed the US by roughly 34%. In the mid-'90s, China's global manufacturing share was roughly 3% and jumped to about 29% in 2023. During that same period, the US share declined to roughly 16%. In the '90s, the US ranked anywhere from first to third in infrastructure quality,

• 35:22Tom Bilyeu?

  but today, it has plummeted to 13th. China's share of global patents filed in '95 was less than 1%, but as of 2023, it skyrocketed to 47%. Over the same time period, the US fell from 25% to 20%. 70% of global rare earth output is controlled by China. The BRICS-plus nations, you know, the guys trying to move away from the US dollar? Together, they now represent 45% of the world's population and over 30% of global GDP. Middle Eastern funds currently sit at roughly $5.6 trillion

• 36:07Tom Bilyeu?

  of assets under management, and that number is expected to grow to approximately $8.8 trillion by 2030. That's less than five years from now. In 2024 alone, they deployed $136 billion globally, which is more than the entire US VC market combined. Additionally, Asia and Middle East created over half of the world's new billionaires in 2023. If you want to know how America's economic, social, and political woes could get worse from here, here's the biggest looming threat: a rising China and a divided United States get sucked into Thucydides' trap and collide with each other in a kinetic war.

• 36:52Tom Bilyeu?

  The idea is unfortunately not at all farfetched. The ancient Greek historian Thucydides wrote that when a rising power threatens to displace a ruling one, war becomes almost inevitable. That is the Thucydides' trap, and it's one of the most reliable patterns in history. Athens rose, Sparta reacted, the Peloponnesian War followed. Napoleonic France challenged Britain's dominance in the early 19th century, and Europe was engulfed in decades of war. Imperial Germany rose against the British Empire, and the world plunged into World War I. The United States and the Soviet Union, they emerged from World War II as rival powers, and the Cold War nearly ended in nuclear annihilation.

• 37:38Tom Bilyeu?

  In total, 12 of the last 16 times a rising power challenged an established hegemon, the confrontation ended in open conflict. That is the trap we're in danger of falling into right now, and it would be catastrophic. Take Taiwan. China's leader Xi Jinping has expressly stated that China does not renounce the use of force and reserves the option of taking all necessary measures. Additionally, Xi has told his country directly to, and I quote, "prepare for war." Speaking directly to the US, when Trump first threatened China with tariffs, a Chinese official said, "If war is what the US wants,

• 38:18Tom Bilyeu?

  be it a tariff war, a trade war, or any other type of war, we're ready to fight till the end." The jockeying for power between the US and China has been going on for quite some time. At the start of this century, 85% of global trade was conducted in USD. Today, that number has dropped to under 60%, and it's declining every year. And as Kevin Rudd points out in his book on Xi Jinping, China's leader has fundamentally changed the nation's posture since taking power in 2012.

• 38:54Tom Bilyeu?

  Has abandoned the cautious hide your strength and bide your time diplomacy of Deng Xiaoping, and he's replaced it with a doctrine of assertive rejuvenation, reclaiming China's historical place as the central power in Asia, and ultimately a co-equal or superior to the United States. China is not the quiet, rising power it once was. Xi has centralized control, purged rivals, and written his own ideology, Xi Jinping thought, into the Chinese constitution. He's fused the Communist Party, the private sector, and the military under one strategic mission: national rejuvenation by 2049.

• 39:36Tom Bilyeu?

  And that means openly challenging the US. That shift from humble participant to aggressive competitor explains much of what's unfolding right now. And even if Xi is losing power in China, we don't know that he's going to be replaced by anybody that would feel any differently. A multipolar order is emerging. China is consolidating regional influence through trade, infrastructure, and security networks, filling the void that's been created by America's internal chaos. Capital will eternally migrate towards regions with growth, hunger, and discipline. And the West has grown very comfortable.

• 40:18Tom Bilyeu?

  And many factions inside the US body politic are openly hostile towards capitalism and prosperity itself. We no longer celebrate success, we demonize it. Our people debate fairness, while other competitors chase greatness. Make no mistake, countries like China and the UAE are playing to win. And if America doesn't reignite its own passion for innovation and global dominance, we will fall back in the pack. The UAE is rapidly becoming one of the most business-friendly jurisdictions on Earth, a title formally held by the US. They know oil's future is limited. So they are using today's profits to establish-

• 41:04Tom Bilyeu?

  Tomorrow's industries, finance, technology, tourism, logistics, sports, and entertainment. They are attracting capital, founders, and talent from every corner of the world. And they're not apologizing for it. And not to be outdone, China has mastered a kind of state-backed capitalism the West still underestimates. But the truth is, they studied our playbook. They copied our best ideas and scaled them with the precision of a command economy. And they've proven that ambition, discipline, and hunger can and will beat complacency. So what would happen if that all came to pass? If we collided with China in Thucydides' trap?

• 41:47Tom Bilyeu?

  What would happen if America doesn't fix its economics? Doesn't heal its divides? And doesn't get back to the business of playing to win on the international stage? What would there be, quite precisely, after America if she actually falls? The honest answer is, the country most able to amass economic and political power becomes the new America. And just as America has gotten their way internationally since the end of World War II, whatever country seizes a crown will get their way. They will be able to forcibly promote their values and their agenda. Now, don't get me wrong, it's not like America would cease to exist. That's not what's going to happen.

• 42:29Tom Bilyeu?

  But like all falling empires before them, once the empire disintegrates, the country becomes a shell of its former self. Here's something to remember. Italy, as we know it today, is younger than the United States. It's not like Rome fell and modern Italy took its place. Italy was fractured for a very long time. As for England, they went rapidly from the most powerful nation on earth to getting swallowed by debt and being reduced to an also-ran nation that for decades had to group up with the EU to have any significance on the world stage. When the collapse comes and a country like the US loses their status as the world's reserve currency.

• 43:14Tom Bilyeu?

  Here's exactly how it plays out. One, the dollar's exorbitant privilege disappears. When your currency is no longer the world's default, you can't borrow cheaply. You can't run deficits or export your inflation. All of the things that we are doing right now to have the American way of life, that would go away. Interest rates would jump. Debt service is going to crowd out everything. And the silent tax of inflation will not be silent anymore. Two, imports will get expensive very fast. A weaker currency means higher prices for energy, food, medicine, technology, basically everything.

• 43:59Tom Bilyeu?

  This causes living standards to fall. First, at the bottom, it will hit the poorest the hardest, then in the middle. Also, the political center will not survive sustained price shocks. More extremism will therefore rise. Three, capital is going to fly out of the country, and so will talent. Money moves to jurisdictions with stability and a high yield. Founders, scientists, and top earners are going to go where their work can compound. What's left behind is lower productivity and higher resentment. And then a real downward spiral begins to set in as the country can't borrow or generate the capital that it needs to grow.

• 44:43Tom Bilyeu?

  Four, the sanction weapon dulls. If the world doesn't need your currency or your banks, it doesn't fear your economic penalties. Right now, America gets its way on the world stage largely through economic might. We leverage money with countries to get what we want from them. And that soft power would disappear very rapidly once we're not the reserve currency. Swift pressure, secondary sanctions, export controls, everything loses its bite. Nobody's going to care anymore. Rivals are just going to trade around us. Allies would hedge against us. Five, alliances become purely transactional. Security guarantees look less Guaranteed, regional powers are just going to rearm.

• 45:27Tom Bilyeu?

  The rules based order that we have now becomes a deals based scramble. And your hand in controlling how international rules and laws are even written is just going to go away. Six, domestic austerity becomes mandatory. When no one wants to buy your debt anymore, markets stop funding your deficits at friendly rates. Forcing you to cut even into entitlements and defense spending. You just don't have the money to sustain it. Services shrink, but your obligations remain. Seven, institutions are going to take the blame. As growth stalls with no investment, trust is going to collapse even further. Courts, agencies, universities, and the media become targets.

• 46:12Tom Bilyeu?

  Politicians can no longer promise things for free, at least not without risking hyperinflation. And internal tensions skyrocket as people understand they are legitimately now fighting over a shrinking pie. Eight, in the worst case, the map holds, the borders are the same, but the state itself devolves. If it all goes to hell in a handbasket, we don't necessarily split as a nation. The flag can stay, but authority is bound to shift to something more local. States and cities will improvise parallel systems for energy, security, and finance. The empire basically becomes an archipelago of semi-autonomous islands. If America falls from its hegemony, it doesn't mean that we become irrelevant.

• 46:57Tom Bilyeu?

  But it does mean we become a shadow of what we once were and we struggle financially. We struggle to wield power. We are no longer going to be able to call the shots or have the incredible advantage that we have had for so long now. We'll have less money, less opportunity, less power, less prosperity, and far less control. Now, if you're one of the people who has lost faith in America or has grown cynical about success itself. Then maybe all of that sounds perfectly fine to you. But if you've grown accustomed to your quality of life, time is legitimately running out. What happens next? Depends entirely on whether we choose to rebuild or keep stacking debt and ignoring the fact

• 47:41Tom Bilyeu?

  that we have enslaved our own children. If you want to stop the collapse, the formula isn't complicated. It's just hard. Balance the budget and deleverage the debt. Get honest about what we can afford and stop spending more than we collect. It will be politically brutal. I get it. But pain now beats ruin later. Shrink the government, cut the red tape that strangles economically valuable production. Bureaucracy does not create wealth, it absorbs it. Cut the fat, simplify the rules, and make it possible to build without begging for permission. Bring real jobs home. Re-onshore the critical sectors, things like energy,

• 48:24Tom Bilyeu?

  chips, defense, advanced manufacturing, and drones, to name a few. Once we're making things again, workers will finally have more leverage, which will help them drive real wages up. And if we stop money printing, the middle class will stop dissolving. And for the love of God, ensure that people have access to sound money and a home they can afford. Stop punishing savers and forcing people to gamble in the stock market. If the Fed won't protect the dollar, our government has a moral obligation to give people access to systems that can. Bitcoin, hard assets, et cetera. And above all, rebuild the story of what America is.

• 49:08Tom Bilyeu?

  We have to have a shared narrative, a shared belief in what this country is and what we stand for. We have to reunite around innovation, ambition, and global leadership. Remember who we are: an experiment in freedom, a government that believes the people know best, not some dictator or king. We are the nation that courted the world's most adventurous, freedom-seeking people. We didn't promise that everyone would win, only that everyone would have a shot. And from that, we built the most successful country the world has ever seen. Hits a crossroads. This is ours. We either rediscover discipline, hunger and purpose,

• 49:50Tom Bilyeu?

  or we accept managed decline. No one is coming to save us. Not Washington, not Wall Street, not Silicon Valley. It's up to us as individuals. So pick up the tools, build, create, compete. If we do that, we can still write the next glorious chapter of this country ourselves. And if we don't, history will write it for us as yet another cautionary tale of an empire that let debt and decadence tear it apart. Until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace. Let's talk about a pattern that is guaranteed to be killing your progress. You know what you need to do.

• 50:30Tom Bilyeu?

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• 51:15Tom Bilyeu?

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