I miss germany here. A collapse is a steep decline or a accelerating decline over time. It will never go to zero, they will start adding zeros to the currency and create a depression or give the people "fake" jobs in regulation or government that create no benefit. Sometimes they even subsidize production while there is no demand. New cars getting scrapped but all produced weapons will be used.

Watching Doctor Zhivago classical movie right now, actually. Shows pretty well what happens.

Venezuela's economy has been collapsing for quite some time. And if we say it hasn't been seen or openly verified, it's because the dictatorship that plagues that country completely eliminated freedom of thought and expression. Hyperinflation put an end to life and dreams in that small country in northern South America...

One of my pet peeves is the hyperbole surrounding economic downturns. Words like "collapse" make people expect a 90% fall, rather than the typical 3%.

There certainly have been economic collapses throughout history. The most dramatic occurred in the Americas after contact with Europeans. That was mostly driven by new diseases killing almost everyone.

More often, a "collapse" is confined to a political system, as with the Soviet Union. It doesn't necessarily mean the economy collapses, but there will usually be some degree of recession while the economy corrects the politically misallocated resource distribution.