Nobody can predict the future, but 2020 is a reasonable guess. That's pretty much what I estimate. Still, our world need not come to an abrupt or catastrophic end. The Roman Empire fell, but it struggled along for a long time, and then it continued in the East even longer. When Athens lost the Peloponnesian war she quickly recovered and became a major power, although she never regained her former glory. When the Romans conquered the Hellenistic Empire the latter continued to be a major force in world affairs for centuries after. Even if America is no longer the world's only superpower, that does not mean we can't be a force to reckoned with for a long time to come.

I started seeing signs of the decline when I was in my 20s. I could see we were becoming lazy, corrupt, extravagant, greedy, that we were squandering our human and natural resources, failing to invest in the future, and going into debt (consumer, financial, corporate AND government). I also could see that the US of that time wasn't without its flaws either, but that much social progress was being made for the better as well. But I figured the time would come when we would have to pay the bills, and we wouldn't be able to. I thought it would come sooner than it did, and I have to admit, it ain't here yet.

I foresaw the crisis to manifest itself as an economic and perhaps military one, but I knew the primary fundamental cause of it was that we had squandered our natural assets too quickly, and that we had failed to invest for the future. When I saw us fighting a hot war, arming for a cold one, prosecuting a war on poverty, while simultaneously exploring the solar system and building a society of consumer extravagance, I knew it was unsustainable. Our present debt and budget issues are not the cause of our decline, they are just a symptom of it.

But I did not see the villains as being one group or one ideology. I saw the whole society collaborating in its mutual destruction, and then I realized it was just part of a natural process. It was just our turn, that's all.