Why I believe we're in the beginning of a great depression, not a "quick" recession

This video was made in March 2020, when the stock market was hitting its first big bottom, and before most of the $3 TRILLION+ in bailouts really began.  But this video gives a great view of how big and widespread this economic crisis is.  This depth and breadth of this crisis is one major reason this will be a long downturn.

From my point of view, having followed and watched several long term social trends for many years, I see a long, rough, economic downturn for several other reasons.  There is a convergence right now of several long term trends and major social changes, it's not just an "normal" economic recession that lasts 12-18 months.

Here is one of the big social upheavals I've been watching evolve for years, which almost no one even knows is going on.  This is The Third Wave concept explained by the late futurist Alvin Toffler in his 1980 book, The Third Wave.  The basic idea is very simple, the Industrial Age dominated by factories in every town is ending, and the Information Age is being built.  At one level, we all know that.  It's like, "Duh, of course!"  To most people, this transition happened a long time ago.  The factories shut down, a lot of small cities and towns struggled, and now we're in the Information Age.

But we're only PARTLY in the Information Age.  Yes, nearly every person has a smart phone now, we don't share a phone with a cord attached to the kitchen phone like when I was a kid.  We have streaming music, not CD's or vinyl records played on a record player.  But our education system,  K-12, is still an Industrial Age model.  Our legal system, our criminal justice system, our political parties and system, they are all systems created in the Industrial Age.  A lot of our old, major, industrial, "blue chip" businesses, are still largely working on underlying Industrial Age models.  Our entire college/university system is still a model from the Industrial Age.  Our local, state, and federal government bodies and agencies are still working on Industrial Age models.  Yes, these all use new technologies, but the underlying systems and models they are based on, are still Industrial Age models.

Each of these businesses, governments, industries, or systems, will break down, and be disrupted, the same way Napster completely disrupted the music industry in 1999.  This can either happen by people of the old model, intentionally re-inventing the old system, or completely new people inventing a new, Information Age system.  Most of the time, it will be the second option.  Thinking of the retail industry, Sears, the longtime major department store didn't see the potential of online shopping, and Jeff Bezos, who started Amazon, did.  Bezos started a new model, and now, about 25 years later, Amazon is gigantic, and Sears is bankrupt.  This basic scenario WILL happen to every part of society that it hasn't happened to yet.  It's simply happening because new technologies making an entirely new business model or system possible.

This transition of everything, from the Industrial Age model, to the Information Age model, started slowly in about 1956, according to Alvin Toffler.  The speed of this change has gradually increased, and now change is happening very rapidly.  When it comes to 2020, this economic downturn is accelerating the level of this change.  So we not only have a major economic recession, which started last September (Repo crisis), AND we have a major, 100 year pandemic, which has killed over 142,000 Americans, as of this morning.  In addition to THAT craziness, those things are dramatically escalating the pace of change in the remaining Industrial Age businesses, governments at the local, state, and federal level, and systems  of other kinds.  In every system, business, or industry, these are HUGE, massive changes, and many of the old businesses wind up closing down, like chain stores in the Retail Apocalypse.  This level of change, happening in so many different places at once, cannot possible happen in 12-18 months.  Most... MOST of those major Industrial Age businesses were practically insolvent in March 2020.  These major businesses, an Wall Street, have been propped up by somewhere around $3 trillion, just to keep them afloat, so they can try to recover.  But this completely unprecedented level of bailouts WILL ALSO dramatically lengthen this recession/depression (it is officially a recession, for now). 

So this is just one of several major social trends and cycles happening, and CONVERGING, at this point in time.  The Third Wave aspect alone would turn a serious recession (6-18 months) into a depression (3 years or 10% GDP drop) or a great depression (5 year economic downturn). 

So that is PART of the reason I'm calling this economic collapse The Phoenix Great Depression.  It will be VERY deep.  It will last several years, with different economic indices going up and down at times, and it includes a level of societal change, and speed of change, unheard of in human history.  The "phoenix" part is the rebuilding of a new, viable society as we work through these many changes, at many levels, happening all at once.