As part of my ongoing efforts to dissect the process of decline in our culture, I've started looking at western economies and examining the changes in that landscape to see what, if any, sense can be made of the future there.  Currently, in the United States, service exports (not goods) have become a cornerstone of our export business.  This has been paired (over the course of many decades) by a dramatic shift in economic policies to favor classism and the wealthy elite (who generally aren't among many underserved ethnic groups). This piece explains this pheonomeon quite nicely, and gives a nebulous historic view on how and when this happened.   I don't want to rehearse all the points on this from a historic point of view, because there are other resources that you can review that will do that much better than I can.  It has mostly to do with our exploitation of our planet's resources, though.   If you need a starting point, start with John Michael Greer's work he