We sure have seen a lot of really crazy things happen so far this year. But in the minds of most Americans, there is one crisis that far outweighs everything else. As I have been documenting for years, our standard of living has been collapsing as the cost of living has risen must faster than our incomes have.
As a result, 67 percent of U.S. workers are now living paycheck to paycheck. We are in the midst of the worst cost of living crisis in modern history, and Statista has found that Americans consider it to be the biggest challenge that they are facing by a very large margin...
Those results are stunning.
The cost of living won this survey in a blowout, but that shouldn’t be a surprise to any of us.
There are countless videos on social media where ordinary Americans are complaining about how oppressive the cost of living has become. Zac Rios has compiled some of the most poignant videos that have been posted lately, and when you watch them back to back it really is heartbreaking...
This is what life is like in America in 2025.
And as economic conditions continue to deteriorate, it is going to get even worse.
Are you ready for that?
Many Americans are going deep into debt in a desperate attempt to stay afloat, and one recent survey found that nearly half of all Americans now worry about debt every single day...
Debt weighed heavily on daily life for many participants. Just under half (46.5%) said they worry about debt every day. Half admitted to avoiding their bank statements, a behavior that could worsen financial problems by delaying action.
Shame was another theme. More than half of respondents (54.6%) said they felt embarrassed about their debt, even though nearly everyone surveyed (98%) reported owing money.
When asked about specific concerns, the most common answers included falling behind on payments (53.7%), not having enough for retirement (53.7%), discovering higher balances than expected (53.5%), losing homes or belongings (53.3%), and leaving little to children (51.8%).
It is easy to tell people that they should get out of debt.
But for the two-thirds of the country that is living paycheck to paycheck, there is never an opportunity to get ahead of the game.
And a lot of people that are living on the financial edge are now losing their jobs.
During the second quarter of this year, a whopping 17 trucking and logistics companies went bankrupt...
At least 17 trucking and logistics companies filed for bankruptcy in the second quarter of 2025 alone, Equipment Finance News reported.
While dry van truckload contract rates were flat in the first half of 2025 from the same period a year ago, as FreightWaves reported, trucking spot rates, which shippers pay carriers for a one-time shipment, however, finished the first half below year-over-year levels.
Long-haul truckload demand reportedly plummeted by 25% in the first half of 2025, with trucking becoming more of a short-haul delivery method for the final leg of freight movement.
At this moment, we are in a trucking recession.
If the economy was moving in the right direction, that would not be happening.
The retail industry is experiencing a tremendous amount of pain as well.
This may be difficult to believe, but the largest shopping mall in San Francisco is now 93 percent empty...
The largest shopping mall in San Francisco is now reportedly 93% vacant and has seen its value plunge by 25% over the past year, as high rents and retail crime continue to batter the Northern California city.
A new appraisal has slashed the value of San Francisco Centre, located at 865 Market Street, to $195 million, which is a 25% decrease since August 2024 and more than $1 billion below its valuation in 2016, the San Francisco Chronicle reported, citing research from Morningstar.
The 1.4 million-square-foot mall has become largely deserted, with 93% of its property now empty, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
I haven’t written about it for a while, but our rapidly growing commercial real estate crisis is reaching a crescendo.
As large numbers of commercial mortgages go bad, many of our financial institutions suddenly find themselves in very hot water.
Meanwhile, a residential real estate crisis is quickly developing. In some of the markets that were once the hottest, condo prices have begun to crash...
Condo prices in Killeen, TX, a little over an hour north of Austin, have collapsed by 40% since the peak in mid-2022 and have given up the entire 52% spike from mid-2020 to mid-2022, plus some. The spike had been driven by FOMO-madness and the Fed’s Free Money policies. This is one of the fastest-growing cities around; its population has surged by 35% in the past 15 years to 160,000 in 2024.
But Killeen and other cities like this with condo markets in free-fall don’t qualify for our list here because they’re too small.
Several additional cities made it onto this list because the August price drop brought the total price drop from the peak to 12%, including Phoenix, AZ, and Orlando, FL.
Originally posted on PNW
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