What Kind of Year Will 2026 be For America?

What kind of year will 2026 be for America? Here’s what I think. It’ll be the year that America’s poor choices catch up to it, in startling, punishingly brutal, and final ways. It will be an especially bleak year. The crossing of a threshold, in many ways.

Americans have been making jaw-droppingly bad choices for decades now. That string of bad choices culminated, of course, in re-electing Trump. Trump, in the first year of his second term, has proceeded to demolish every facet of America, from its institutions, to its international standing, to its place in the world, to its future.

“Bad choices” not just in my eyes, by the way. In the world’s eyes, and in reality’s. America has been on a downward trajectory for decades now, and yet, Americans keep doubling down on their bad choices, which are bad in the sense that they produce, over and over again, devastatingly poor outcomes, like shorter lives, or unhappier ones, or more violent ones, or less stable ones, and so on. We call this “intergenerational downward mobility.” 

These forms of deconstruction and demolition have lag effects. In 2025, there was a period when—almost comically—the “narrative,” this foolish form of discourse that replaces real thinking, where commentators settle on an agreed upon conclusion, was that “See! The tariffs didn’t have an effect!”

By now—and let’s begin here—the economy is in stagflation. Stagflation is one of the worst places an economy can be, because there are no good answers to it, and it points to severe deficiencies in long-term wealth creation and structural corrosion both. We’re going to discuss both of those. For now, think of stagflation as a sign of a society’s total lack of governance, of chronic, severe, long-term mismanagement.

On the one hand, there’s an “affordability crisis,” which means that life is becoming unaffordable, in ways incomprehensible to people from other, properly, wealthy countries, and prices are skyrocketing to astronomical proportions. As I often ask my American friends, why does the coffee that costs me a couple of euros cost me $7 or $8 in America? Then there’s the more vivid example of American hospital bills, by now infamous around the world.

On the other hand, the economy is now stagnant. That means that apart from the AI bubble, which we’ll discuss in a moment, the growth rate is effectively zero. This isn’t just a “precursor to” recession—in real terms, for most Americans, their lives have been a “recession”, with incomes failing to keep pace with the ever-rising cost of basics, hence, generational downward mobility. Please, please understand this. Learn from me how to think about the economy at a more sophisticated level. I write these essays for you for a reason. Long-term mismanagement—remember? 

These two trends will harden, stagnation and inflation. And they will be pincers around the necks of Americans. Trump will try to dismiss them, and he’ll surely try to cook the books, too. But the obvious fact is that this is precisely what starting a trade war with the rest of the world—when you’re a net importer—was going to do.

What do you think the world sees when it looks at America’s stagflationary economy? It doesn’t see something to inspire confidence or strength. It sees something to run away from, because of course, both ends of stagflation eat away at wealth.

And that is what is going to happen to Americans. In fact, it already is. So let me continue, because we’ve barely just begun. Like I said, Trump’s re-election was the culmination of a series of bad choices, stretching for decades. And now those bad choices are going to catch up with Americans in incredibly severe ways. Their wealth is going to be eviscerated by the pincers of stagflation, rapidly and severely, and that’s before autocracy runs off with what little is left in the end.

Let’s think about the basics. Healthcare, or what passes for it, is now at risk. Americans are already seeing their insurance premiums, and if you’re a citizen of a more civilized country, you probably don’t even know what those are, skyrocket into the stratosphere. Transportation, too, is soaring, with the price of a new car over $50,000. The rest of the basics, from food to education, are fast becoming so unaffordable that McDonald’s, LOL, is a luxury.

Why is this happening? Trump is the instrument, but the reason is Americans’ own bad choices. Americans voted, over and over again, over the course of decades, for this. For this. A society without safety nets and public goods. To put it another way, in a series of choices that startled and baffled the world, Americans chose predatory capitalism, over and over again. And so here it is, preying on them even in their despair and bewilderment. What else was it going to do? Offer them…a helping hand? 

Now they must pay the price. It was one thing for relatively wealthy Baby Boomers not to have made the leap to a functioning social democracy—they had things that don’t exist in America much anymore, like pensions. But for today’s Americans who are growing through this breakdown of a system, life is already becoming unaffordable, and will now approach unlivable. Without safety nets and public goods, there is no competition for prices on the basics of life, and of course, predatory capitalism will demand everything from you for those basics. 

Americans are now entrapped by the very greed that they championed and lionized, or were told to celebrate, anyways. It’s a sad thing to see, but it’s also a lesson in how economics and finance really works. Greed is not good for economies. It chokes them in the end. Too little is left over for anything real, enduring, meaningful, or of true worth.

Americans have begun to pay the price over the course of this decade, but now things will get far, far more real. They will go from bad to much worse, fast. The period over the last year where things seemed quiescent is now coming to an end. Make no mistake that politics wishes Americans to have less than nothing, and make no mistake, too, that Americans have long wished for nothing for each other, too. (Of course I generalize, because we are speaking about society, if you’re different, I applaud you, but the fact is that America made the choices it made. We can debate why, but this isn’t a college seminar.)

When we wish for nothing for each other, what are we left with, in the end? Nothing, of course. Trace the path to a place called nothing with me.

In a system as brutal and exploitative as predatory capitalism, there is no vision. It has no eyes. Only jaws and teeth. And so America only has one bet for the future. AI. See that clearly. The mania over AI is because there is nothing else toinvest in, since predatory capitalism isn’t interested in things which are constructive, positive, human. That is all it offers now. It is all the American economy is to be made of. AI in everything. Will it work?

Further, because it is the only thing left, the size of that bet is now immense. So immense that it cannot possibly deliver. AI is valued at a level of another entire US economy over the next decade. It’s a bubble, and it will burst, unless you imagine that America’s currently flatlining GDP is going to double over the ten years, which would be something akin to an economic miracle without precedent in human history.

As it bursts, because the scale of this bet is so large, it’s likely that America will suffer a severe financial crisis. Banks will fail. Highly leveraged speculators will go bust, and take down parts of the system with them. Pensions funds will have to offer meaningless apologies. And of course, people will lose large portions of their savings, because, foolishly, their financial advisors are still not warning to stay away from the most obvious bubble since Tulipmania gripped Amsterdam. 

What happens after crashes, when the economy’s already stagnant? Parallels to 1929 and the Great Depression emerge. I’m not saying there “will be another Great Depression,” by the way, I’m just remarking on history. I’m saying that what I’ve said above, but let me shade it in now.

America’s staked its future on a technology that the rest of the world isn’t that interested in, AI. Americans are a little obsessed with it, because America’s a lonely, isolated, alienated place, but the rest of the world isn’t. It’s alive, and it doesn’t need chatbots nearly as much. 

The point of AI, which is the only faint, feeble attempt at the future of America’s economy left, and we’ll discuss this in future essays, is basically to make Americans better shoppers. And maybe workers. But mostly shoppers. But that is self-defeating. Because of course if the first effect is to suck away jobs, income, not to mention progress, then people have less money to spend. And believe me, if you’re wealthy, you don’t want or need a chatbot to shop with—you get VIP service everywhere you go.

So this bet is a foolish one, for a very, very long list of reasons. But most of all because AI is not anything at all. It is a nothing. America needs somethings, not nothings. It needs safety nets and public goods. Places and spaces that value life again. Things to do and things to make and people respecting one another again. AI is none of this. It is an existential black hole, in which people stop existing as soon as they enter the event horizon.

That’s not an anti-AI rant. It’s just a brief description of economic reality. Please understand the numbers and concepts in it. 

You see, above, we’re talking about wealth. Wealth takes generations to create, and we create it together, through joint endeavor, ideas, creativity, insights, art, science, literature, truth, reason, justice, progress. Now if the future is just to be chatbot farms that make people better shoppers, then what wealth is being created? This is why Americans feel poor, by the way: because the wealth in their society is disintegrating. We’ll talk more about that another time.

A vision for an economy’s future is about what kinds of wealth it wants to create. In America, this idea is so completely deficient that the only thing left is how to take what remains of wealth from as many people as fast and as ruthlessly as possible, which is why, like I said, above, even earning a very healthy amount leaves Americans with the feeling of poverty.

All of that brings me to politics. As things go from bad to very much worse, of course Trump will try to deflect from reality. He will use the usual autocrat’s playbook. Don’t look at the failing economy, look over here, I just started a war. Never mind the fact that you can’t afford to eat like you used to, here’s a new scapegoat, a new outrage, a fresh scandal. It’ll go on and on. The abuses of power will escalate, and spiral.

In other words, a very classical pattern will take hold. As economies sour, people turn to autocracy, just as the Weimar German cheered for the Nazis. But as autocrats take power, because they are never interested in anything positive, constructive, or humane, economies spiral downward, fast and hard. And then autocracy must harden its grip. It must use violence, abroad and at home—abroad, to try and seize resources, and spark growth, and at home, to quell unrest. In the end, after patterns like this, little is left for a democracy to return to. What would the point of one be? How would it function?

Along the way, there’ll be bread and circuses, as there usually are. Stop and think about this now, because most people won’t, later. Who pays for them? When dictators throw crumbs at the masses, they are just giving them a fraction of what they have taken, so that the rage dissipates into a flimsy gratitude for a moment. In real terms, this means that debt, inflation, and prices will go on rising and accelerating. There is no way out of this trap now.

Will the midterm elections save things? Don’t kid yourself. The Democrats also don’t want Americans to have anything, which is the central problem in all this. They’re not autocrats, that’s true, but they have zero vision for what a modern economy is, how prosperity comes to be, and that is how autocracy takes hold. So while they might slow the rate of collapse, they have never really offered America a functioning social contract, because they too believe in the nihilism philosophy that money is the only purpose of human existence, without it, everyone deserves to die, and there is to be nothing inherent to a society.

Again, how can any wealth be created that way? If we are all just scrabbling for existence, to the point that we are enslaved to a thing called money, are we going to be capable of creating a future together in any enduring, positive, or constructive way?

Americans might feel shocked when I say that, because they ‘re not really allowed to think this way, so please if you do, do us all a favor and just take a sober look at your goddamned society. Isn’t is it proof enough?

2026 will be a bad year for America, but not just any bad year. It will be the beginning of a period which was marked in stone the moment Trump was re-elected, and set in motion long before that. An age where wealth goes up in smoke, life becomes a bone-shattering Darwinian contest, institutions are devastated, autocracy hardens, and only cruelty is left, as everyone fights over the scraps.

In this way, it will be the year that Americans truly begin to pay the price for their short-sighted choices, if I’m to speak of them the way the rest of the world thinks of them. 

I don’t say that in the way of judgment, just in the way of illumination. The price to be paid will be much, much steeper than Americans think even now. How much will groceries cost this time next year? How many less jobs will be left? How much less of a social contract will exist? How much will be left in the retirement account once the bubble bursts? So how will Americans survive? This period will last perhaps a decade, if history is any guide, and it will likely be ruinous, financially, economically, politically, and socially.

After the crashes, after the stagnation, after the crushing inflation, after the crises, what little be left of Americans’ wealth will then be at the mercy of autocracy. What does autocracy do as society’s wealth disintegrates? Usually, it grabs as much as it can for itself, before everything turns to dust. That part of collapse won’t happen in 2026, probably, but afterwards. 2026 will be the part where Americans face financial hardship, deprivation, and ruin, at scales they never expected, and not just “poor” ones, but everyone who can’t afford a penthouse in the sky overlooking Central Park.

Be warned and be aware. Please don’t imagine that exceptionalism will not save anything. AI making Americans better shoppers is not a vision for the future, it’s just a lurid capitalist fantasy that won’t pay anyone’s bills. There is no institution left in America which cares about anything now but money and power, because that is what predatory capitalism is, and that is what fascism and autocracy are. To imagine that anything, institutions, leaders, norms, values, is going to prevent what will unfold is the height of naivete now. America has none of those left. 

The next five years will be some of America’s most difficult. The country that emerges at the end will not be stronger or better or tougher for having suffered. It will just be impoverished and bewildered. Why did we choose this? Allow this? What happened to us? The spell will break. But the damage will be done.

The world will go on. Perhaps it will learn a thing or two. When people make choices this poor, for so long, choices that are ugly and bewildering, that negate existence itself, the price in the end is existential, too. If that lesson is carved into history, so much the better. At least the tragedy that is to unfold in America now will have some small semblance of a meaning.

Love,

Umair (and Snowy!)

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