This is related as reason for living on the land. My position is the economy is moving nowhere but down over the next few years and then getting worse, and there are no possible political or technological solutions. I've watched a great deal of back and forth predictions and background on this, and here's my reasons. I have dozens of resources and links to back this up several times over but this list isn't the place for that.
Middle class jobs are largely outsourced overseas and can't come back. Consumer debt is at an all time high. Unemployment and underemployment are highest since the first depression. Real estate is still going down and the commercial part is about to tank. Foreign military actions around the world are at an all time high to control scarce energy and mineral resources we need, at a cost of close to a trillion dollars a year. Banks can't lend because most of their capital is going to purchase our own Treasury notes to finance the deficit.
In my view these are all hard facts, and each one reinforces the others in a vicious circle. Consumer spending was driving the economy, but people can't buy when they can't get jobs and can't borrow. Government can't stimulate it's way out of this when one third of our tax revenue is military spending and not helping our own economy. And with the lower recession tax base the deficit can only grow as cities, states, and the feds face crunch time. If that's not enough, we can combine it with the perfect storm we can't afford: peak oil, climate change, and growing global population. The British and our own DOE have admitted the 15% supply-demand energy gap we're facing this decade, and the Pentagon acknowledges the national security dangers in climate change. I don't like it but that doesn't make it go away.
If I lived in California I'd fill the gas tank and go.
paul
tradingpost@lobo.net~~~~~~~~~~~
„All of the debts for society‚s century-long industrial fiesta are coming due at the same time. We have no choice but to transition to a world no longer dependent on fossil fuels, a world made up of communities and economies that function within ecological bounds. How we manage this transition is the most important question of our time.‰
-- Richard Heinberg
~~~~~~~~~~~
Many types of jobs will cease to exist: public relations executive,
marketing directors, et cetera. I think work will be very hands-on,
and a lot of it will revolve around food production.
-- James Howard Kunstler, 2003
~~~~~~~~~~~
How do you move from a system which has built in destruction of the planet and built in devastation for local communities and local economies and transition back to systems which formerly worked and new environmentally sustainable systems? That‚s the project of our time.
- Jerry Mander
*********** REPLY SEPARATOR ***********
On 3/31/2010 at 12:54 PM Patricia Ruggiero wrote:
I asked her one more
time if we could have a decent life style and she assured me we would
provided neither of us live past Sunday. HHHHMMMM
I hear ya! Depending on how the economy moves in the next few years,
husband and I will EITHER be able to stay here OR be moving in with my
widowed mother.
Pat
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