This article was originally published by Michael Snyder at The Economic Collapse Blog.
Do you remember all of those people over the years who warned us that the cost of living would eventually spiral out of control? It turns out that they were right. Our leaders flooded the system with trillions upon trillions of new dollars, and now we have a real-life nightmare on our hands.
The value of the U.S. dollar has tanked, the price of silver is up more than 100 percent in 2025, and we are in the midst of a horrifying cost-of-living crisis that never seems to end. In particular, food prices have become exceptionally painful, and this is hitting those on the low end of the economic spectrum really hard.
The Century Foundation just conducted a survey that came up with some absolutely stunning results.
According to that survey, 34 percent of U.S. registered voters have skipped a meal in order to save money, and 29 percent of U.S. registered voters have “delayed or skipped medical care over the past year”…
- 29% of registered voters said they delayed or skipped medical care over the past year, including 49% of voters under 30 years old, 37% of Hispanic voters, and 32% of Black voters.
- 24% said they delayed or skipped buying medicine prescribed by their doctor.
- 64% of poll respondents said they switched to cheaper groceries or cut back on groceries, including 79% of voters under 30 years old, 74% of Black voters, 72% of women, and 71% of Hispanic voters.
- 34% of registered voters said they’ve skipped a meal to save money, including 54% of voters younger than 30 years old, 44% of Black voters, 41% of Hispanic voters, and 39% of women.
- 48% of poll respondents said they tapped into savings to meet daily expenses, including 59% of voters younger than 30 years old, 57% of Hispanic voters, 55% of Black voters and 52% of women.
These numbers are crazy.
Large segments of the U.S. population are now going without the essentials because the cost of living has become so oppressive.
Are you starting to understand why I rant about this so much?
Tens of millions of Americans are really hurting right now.
Just look at what is happening to the price of ground beef. It now costs about three times as much as it did just 15 years ago…
When I was growing up, my mother was constantly feeding us ground beef.
Now it is considered to be a “luxury meat”.
Our standard of living is being steadily destroyed all around us.
Earlier today, I was shocked to learn that tickets for a Christmas program at a local Baptist church in Texas are selling for up to 71 dollars per person…
A Christmas show at a church in Plano, Texas, has become a flash point in America – a Rorschach test in today’s hyper-political culture.
The ‘Gift of Christmas’ at Prestonwood Baptist Church, as the nearly two-hour extravaganza is called, has become one of the most well-known holiday shows across the US, mostly thanks to social media.
People seem to either love or loathe the ‘Vegas-style’ production at the mega church- complete with a flying Santa Claus and live camels and sheep- with tickets selling from $20 to $71 per person.
What in the world are they doing?
When I was growing up, going to church was always free.
Just about everything that you can think of has become so expensive these days.
And U.S. consumers just continue to become less confident about what is ahead…
A new Gallup poll shows that U.S. consumer confidence deteriorated sharply in November, falling to its weakest level in 17 months as households contended with a protracted federal government shutdown, volatile financial markets, cooling job prospects, and renewed inflation anxiety.
Americans are being squeezed financially from countless directions, and as a result, debt levels have been exploding.
Unfortunately, many are now reaching a breaking point. In fact, the number of foreclosure filings has risen 21 percent in just one year…
If you need proof that Americans are struggling financially, here it is.
Foreclosures — when a bank or lender takes back a home after missed mortgage payments — are continuing to skyrocket.
New data from ATTOM shows the number of homeowners falling behind is rising every single month.
In November, 35,651 properties had a foreclosure filing — up a staggering 21 percent from just one year earlier.
Of course, there are vast numbers of people who can no longer afford to live in a home at all.
Millions of Americans now permanently live in their vehicles, and that includes a 50-year-old woman in Vermont named Chandra Duba…
Chandra Duba has been living in an RV outside a friend’s house in Jericho for the past few months, after losing her Section 8 subsidized housing in Winooski. Until last week, she didn’t have electricity, but now she’s able to plug into a nearby solar array.
Duba, 50, works as a delivery driver at Domino’s, where her pay with tips is too high for food stamps but too low for rent in the area, she said. The RV was relatively affordable but partially gutted — the stove is gone, and the heating and cooling systems don’t work.
Duba said she is grateful to have a roof over her head but that she doesn’t see the vehicle as a long-term answer to her housing problem.
She is literally living in an RV without any heat, but she still makes too much money to qualify for food stamps.
This is what life is like in 2025 for so many people.
It turns out that business leaders are also very concerned about where things are heading. One recent survey found that only 28 percent of U.S. business executives are “optimistic about the U.S. economy’s outlook over the next 12 months”…
The AICPA and CIMA survey polls chief executive officers, chief financial officers, controllers and other CPAs in U.S. companies who hold executive and senior management accounting roles. The survey is a forward-looking indicator that tracks hiring and business-related expectations for the next 12 months.
Twenty-eight percent of business executives said they were optimistic about the U.S. economy’s outlook over the next 12 months, down from 34% in the past quarter. Domestic economic conditions (No. 1) and inflation (No. 2) were cited as top concerns, swapping places from last quarter.
If only 28 percent are optimistic, that means that 72 percent are either pessimistic or declined to give an answer.
Yes, things really have gotten that bad.
Personally, I am particularly concerned about the plight of our farmers.
As I documented in a previous article, farmers in the United States haven’t faced a crisis of this magnitude in decades.
And even though the Trump administration has just announced a 12 billion dollar aid package, many farmers are still facing financial ruin anyway…
A few years ago, Wisconsin soybean farmer Doug Rebout was getting $14.50 a bushel for his crop. Now, amid a trade dispute with China and rising production costs driven by inflation, that price has plummeted to around $9.30.
Rebout’s farm, which grows about 80,000 bushels of soybeans annually, is looking at a $400,000 economic loss due to the drop in prices, he told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, part of the USA TODAY Network.
Prior to President Donald Trump’s announcement of a $12 billion assistance package for farmers, Rebout said that though financial aid would help farmers “weather the storm,” many fear the economic uncertainty will linger. Some are worried about losing farms that have been in their families for generations.
It is time for all of us to be honest with ourselves.
2023 was a really bad year for the U.S. economy.
2024 was a really bad year for the U.S. economy.
2025 was a really bad year for the U.S. economy.
That isn’t a coincidence.
That is a trend.
And if you don’t want to think about how difficult things are now, you definitely won’t want to think about where the long-term trends are taking us next.
Inflationary policies lead to inflationary results.
For decades, our leaders have been doing highly inflationary things.
Now we are enduring a historic cost of living crisis that has spun out of control, and that should not be a surprise to any of us.
Michael’s new book, entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next,” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.
About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book, entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next,” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com, including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”. When you purchase any of Michael’s books, you help to support the work that he is doing. You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter. Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream, and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites. These are such troubled times, and people need hope. John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.
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