07:48 – The city of Stockton, California is declaring bankruptcy, driven under by the costs of government services, primarily pension and retiree health-care costs. It’s not the first, and won’t be the last, city or state government to find itself in that position. What we’re watching is just the early manifestations of a phenomenon that’s going to come back to bite us. Unions, particularly public-employee unions, have extracted promises to pay that are unsustainable. They would be unsustainable even in a good economy. In the bad-and-getting-worse economy we’re in now and likely to remain in for at least the next several decades, believing that these commitments will be met is delusional.
Here’s what I think is going to happen. Ultimately, all of these government pension and health-care promises will be broken, and all of them will be transferred to the existing Social Security and Medicare programs. Retirement and health-care programs for all federal, state, and local government employees–including military and congressional retirees, post office employees, and so on–will be folded into Social Security and Medicare, along with all resources that have been set aside to fund these separate programs. Nor will government programs be the only ones affected. Most or all private retirement programs will also be folded into the big tent of Social Security and Medicare. Ultimately, it’s not going to matter what you were promised. What you’re going to get is what everyone else gets: Social Security for a pension and Medicare for retiree health care. And that’s all.
14:05 – In breaking news, CBC has renewed Heartland for a seventh season.
I’ve always hated manual labor, and I despise getting sweaty. When I was a kid, my mother used to tell people that after he’d had a bath and a change of clothes my brother could walk out the back door, stand on the porch for 30 seconds, turn around, and come back in filthy. I, on the other hand, could play all day in a mud puddle and come back in cleaner than when I’d started.
So what I’ve been doing this morning, assembling chemical bags for the chemistry and biology kits, is not one of my favorite jobs. But at least I now have most of what I need to take our finished goods inventory on both kits to between 40 and 50 each. Except, of course, beakers. I was expecting those to arrive right around now, but when I talked to our supplier last week she told me they’d not gotten them in as expected and that she hoped they’d arrive this week. Oh, well. We have a dozen or so of each kit in stock, which’ll hold us for some time. If the delay gets much longer, I can always cancel the beaker order and get them from one of our other suppliers that does have them in stock.
And I’ve changed plans for the antibiotic test papers that we are including in the life science kits. Originally, I planned to run 8.5×11″ sheets of chromatography paper through one of our laser printers to cover the paper with edge-to-edge labeling in a small font: “SUL” for sulfadimethoxine, “NEO” for neomycin, and so on. The problem is, running that paper through the printer changes its absorption characteristics, and what’s worse it changes them unpredictably. I’d done some testing on an unprinted sheet (which absorbed about 8 mL of solution) and made calculations accordingly. Each sheet is about 600 square centimeters, and I wanted a concentration of 100 micrograms per square centimeter. It was easy enough to figure out how much solution I needed and of what concentration. Until I found out that apparently the fuser of the laser printer messes up the absorption characteristics of the paper. Crap.
So I went to Plan B. Costco sells 12×18″ sheets of construction paper. It’s acid-free and heavy weight. It’s also about a tenth the price of chromatography paper. At first, I ordered white construction paper, intending to trim it to 8.5X11″ and try running it through the laser printer to see if the fuser affected it. Then I realized that there was a potentially much easier solution. Instead of using the laser printer to label the different kinds of antibiotic test papers, I’ll simply use different colors of paper for different antibiotics. So I ordered three different colors. The minimum order from Costco was three 50-packs of each, which should be a lifetime supply of construction paper. I’ll have to test the paper to make sure that the dyes have no effect on bacterial growth, which I’m guessing they won’t.
Sometimes I wonder how Costco does it. The construction paper colors I bought cost $1.39 per 50-sheet pack, with a minimum order of three packs. So each of the three colors was $4.17, for a total of $12.51. That included free shipping. This paper isn’t light. IIRC, it’s 76-pound basis weight, so nine 50-papers of 12×18″ paper has some heft to it. I know UPS would charge me more than $12.51 just to ship that much weight. I’m sure Costco gets a better deal from UPS than I do, but that much better? And, to top it off, Costco didn’t combine the order. I ordered the nine packs yesterday. UPS just showed up with one of the three-packs a few minutes ago. The other two three-packs are supposed to arrive tomorrow. I can’t help thinking that Costco must have lost money on this transaction.
Those of us who are younger are going to be lucky if we get Social Security and Medicare.
Oh, I have zero doubt that you’ll get Social Security and Medicare just like everyone else. Of course, by the time today’s young people retire, their monthly Social Security check may buy them a coffee and Medicare may be limited to two aspirins per month. And the eligibility age may be 85 by then.
Well, everyone except retired politicians and other important people.
I don’t think so. We’re quickly getting to the point when politicians won’t dare to exempt themselves.
“We’re quickly getting to the point when politicians won’t dare to exempt themselves.”
Now who’s delusional?
The buggers will hang onto their bennies until the mobs with pitchforks are outside their doors.
Frankly, I’m not counting on any SS or Medicare or veterans’ benefits ever, at least not in any shape, manner or form that *would* actually benefit me. We’re on our own from here on out, pretty much, is my reckoning; again, except for the One Percent and their pet serfs.
What always gets me are when people are like “If Congress took a paycut or didn’t get a raise they’d get ______________ fixed pretty darn quick!” and “If Congress had to use the same [insert benefit here] we did then they’d fix it!” and in reality, most Congressman are independently wealthy and would enjoy lifestyles above ours even if they got no paycheck and no benefits from being in Congress. So, those things are hardly motivators for them.
I mentioned before that I’m trying to get into the 1%, purely in self-defense.
If I manage to do that, I suppose I’ll have to check the want-ads for pet serfs.
I don’t want to be one of the one percent. I just want to be The Millionaire Next Door. Which at the rate our economy is going, will mean that in retirement, I may be able to afford to spread peanut butter on the bread and some kind of flavoring for the water.
And those of us who are not millionaires will be relegated to looking at pictures of bread in old magazines and no flavoring for the water we collect in (illegal) rain barrels.
I think you guys are much too pessimistic. Long-term, what we’re looking at is only the elimination of the middle-class and the bifurcation of society into a small percentage of rich people and a very large percentage of poor ones.
But keep in mind that “poor” in the US is a relative term. We don’t have any poverty here, as that word was historically understood. The “poor” in this country have heated and cooled living quarters, three square meals a day, automobiles, flat-screen TVs, and cell phones. That’s the kind of poor I’m talking about. No one is going to miss any meals. It’s just that the wealthy will have a lot more relative to the poor, and the poor and former middle-class will be leveled into one huge underclass.
“I don’t think so. We’re quickly getting to the point when politicians won’t dare to exempt themselves.”
I have a very nice bridge I can sell you, cheap.
Seriously, I’ve seen to many counterexamples to what you’ve said.
“That’s the kind of poor I’m talking about. No one is going to miss any meals. ”
There are plenty of folks missing meals right now, even here in the wealthy Northeast; some choose each winter between heating oil and groceries week to week. I see a massive expansion of this class, in particular, and along with that, another massive increase in the truly criminal underclass.
If the three-day just-in-time goods distro system goes belly-up and/or the Grid goes down for longer and longer periods, a lot more people will be in those groups really fast.
But I hope you’re right, of course, and we’ll all just be able to muddle through as liberty-less dumbkopf serfs and peasants like our medieval forebears. All that rubbish in Philadelphia in 1787 turned out not to be so worthwhile after all, I guess.
I blame religion.
Gotta be, just gotta be….
“Even now, the government is still spending huge amounts of money on wasteful programs and luxuries for the political class, even as steps are taken to ensure that every tiny spending cut is agonizingly painful for American citizens. Barack Obama will spend a million dollars flying to Denver to give a gun-control speech today. His family has already taken three luxurious taxpayer-funded vacations this year, costing millions of dollars apiece. How about giving that money to Catholic Charities instead, and letting them do some good for the needy? They have a vastly better track record of efficiency and effectiveness than our bloated federal welfare state does.”
http://www.humanevents.com/2013/04/03/poverty-soars-to-post-1960s-high/
How about giving it to atheist charities instead?
I blame the weakness in 99% of human brains which allows religion: uncritical belief in unproven claims, the need to belong to something larger and more important than oneself, the preference for false certainty over doubt, the unwillingness of many people to make their own decisions and the consequent willingness to follow any leader, and all their putrid ilk.
Note that customary religion is not the only bad result of these mental defects. There’s also communism, radical environmentalism, and a thousand more.
Including Obama.
“How about giving it to atheist charities instead?”
Fine by me. Name one. And are there any that have the reach and numbers that Catholic Charities has put up for many decades now?
“…the weakness in 99% of human brains which allows religion…”
So there is a 1% out there that doesn’t have this awful weakness, all the bad shit conflated, of course and none of the good mentioned. Perhaps we need to study these valuable brains forthwith. Any volunteers?
“Including Obama.”
Is that guy still in there? I’ve been outta touch. Yeah, like him and all his predecessors, going back quite a ways; I believe I mentioned Grover Cleveland? One of the country’s forgotten conservatives, the last Jeffersonian president, as Sam Ervin was the last such Democrat.
Are you saying Obama is a mental defect, a mental defective, or the result of mental defects? I’m not disagreeing with any of those propositions, I’m just curious.
I’d say the latter; I don’t think he’s a mental defect or defective himself, but the result of mental defects; the long and largely successful march of the Left through our institutions over the past century. To the point that, as you alluded, few even question the reality they’ve come to believe in totally. So many previously horrific ideas are now accepted as a matter of course; so much is simply just assumed to be true.
Barry Soetero’s parents were likewise the result of mental defects and they passed on all that shit to their son who went on to graduate study in it under people like Saul Alinsky and Reverend Wright and a host of other fellow travelers.
He’s just a more glaring example of just how ugly the reality in this country truly is right now.
relegated to looking at pictures of bread in old magazines
Well at least you will have something to wipe with.
Actually, I’d estimate that at least 25% to 40% of people are naturally atheist, with a higher percentage among men and lower among women. The percentage may even be significantly higher than that. To know for sure, you have to look at a population that can choose freely, without any significant penalties.
In muslim countries, for example, atheists are an endangered species for obvious reasons. That doesn’t mean the percentage in those countries is any lower; just that coming out of the closet tends to get one killed. Conversely, in Scandanavian countries and the UK, religious people are in a minority even if you count atheists who sometimes attend church services as being religious. In those countries, few attend church with any regularity and many consider religious services to be purely social occasions.
I have always thought that forcing religion on children constitutes child abuse. Getting them young and teaching them to believe this crap permanently damages their ability to think.
“Well at least you will have something to wipe with.”
And when those run out, we have leaves, pinecones and corncobs up here.
“I have always thought that forcing religion on children constitutes child abuse. Getting them young and teaching them to believe this crap permanently damages their ability to think.”
There ya go again, zooming from zero to ninety; lots of kids were “got to” young and have somehow managed to become very good thinkers. Galileo, Copernicus, Newton, Chaucer, Edward de Vere….
But that’s just the point. With the possible exception of Newton, it’s extremely likely that *none* of those you mention were “gotten to”. They were probably natural atheists who were unlucky enough to live at times when declared atheists had a very hard time getting along, to put it mildly. And you’ll note that most of them had serious run-ins with the church.
and corncobs up here
We had lots of corncobs on our farm. I can tell you from experience that hemorrhoids are trivial compared to a corn cob. The secret I think is to not let the corn cob dry out.
As for leaves, well poison oak and stinging nettles are a force to be reckoned with. And the big maple leaves are just too darn slick to do any good and if any force is used they puncture too easily. Wads of dry grass is fairly effective provided you have cleared the grass of stinging insects.
I knew I could count on Brother Ray for the grisly details, although I have also had some experience along those lines. Please don’t squeeze the Charmin, Ray.
“But that’s just the point.”
Still, I bet we can all come up with lists of people who were initially brutally brainwashed by the dreaded religionists of whatever religion and who somehow managed to grow up thinking on their own quite nicely. And I suspect there are just as many, if not more, secret believers among alleged atheists as you claim there are secret atheists among alleged believers.
Someday we’ll all know who is truly whom. Or is that whom is who? I could never get that straight. English major, too. Easier to say which is which.
Oh my, my little temperature thingie here sez 43; heat wave. Chill factor of nine above last night with howling wind off the Lake.
We could save bulk-rate mail for emergency toilet paper. Just don’t use political literature: it’s simultaneously greasy and irritating.
The city of Stockton, California is declaring bankruptcy, driven under by the costs of government services, primarily pension and retiree health-care costs. It’s not the first, and won’t be the last, city or state government to find itself in that position. What we’re watching is just the early manifestations of a phenomenon that’s going to come back to bite us. Unions, particularly public-employee unions, have extracted promises to pay that are unsustainable.
Oh, it is much, much, much worse than that. The people who negotiated the pension agreements for the cities are eligible for the city pensions. To me, that means that the pension agreements are fraudulent.
The Mayor of the City of Houston personally negotiated the agreement for any Houston city employee to be able to retire after 25 years of service at 90% of their last three years average pay (including any overtime) plus there is a COLA. He then promptly retired under the new pension system since he was mayor for six years and a police officer / chief for the prior 20 years. Very self serving if you ask me.
So, because some people are smart enough and strong enough to overcome the brainwashing, you think brainwashing is just fine? There’s an old saying: most people can’t think; most people who can think, don’t think. Religion is responsible for the majorities in both instances.
I’ve never known an atheist who was faking it. There’s simply no incentive to do so. On the other hand, there has historically been great reason for faking religiosity, up to and including preserving one’s life. Even today, it’s difficult to get along socially in many places if one identifies publicly as an atheist.
My impression, even living in the bible belt, is that most people who self-identify as religious don’t really believe the crap that religion spouts. I suspect that even most of the frequent commenters here who self-identify as religious aren’t really. You pretend to believe, but deep down you know it’s all a crock of shit.
A couple places I consulted I was pestered by coworkers to make sure I confessed my deep and abiding love for their god and all that. The owner of the one and the director of the other at least tacitly supported this, though the first claimed it wasn’t the company’s business because it happened only in the lunch room and the second said that laws concerning religious harassment and discrimination didn’t apply because they were a not-for-profit. Both were in the wrong, but I didn’t worry about it. My stubbornness and ability to become unpleasant exceeded anyone else’s.
Similarly, many of my wife’s friends are around-the-bend religious whack-jobs (like her, sometimes) who simply cannot comprehend that it’s not that I haven’t “heard the good news”, it’s that I consciously, deliberately, and logically reject their beliefs. For the first year or two after marriage I tried to be pleasant and non-confrontational, but now it’s all like, fuck that non-confrontational shit. If someone starts in and doesn’t listen to the first gentle warning, I open with both barrels.
My impression, even living in the bible belt, is that most people who self-identify as religious don’t really believe the crap that religion spouts. I suspect that even most of the frequent commenters here who self-identify as religious aren’t really. You pretend to believe, but deep down you know it’s all a crock of ****.
Nope. I am a serious down deep believer. And yes, I do have my days when I make doubting Thomas look like a piker with my own doubts. But, I have faith in God and am renewed constantly.
I go to church usually twice per week. Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights. That is an incredible time and money investment for something that I “pretend to believe”. Why would I do that? I donated five figures to my church last year. I would still have donated that same amount of cash to my church even if I could not deduct it from my income taxes.
Am I a sinner? You bet, I seem to excel in it. Am I a hypocrite? You bet, I excel there also. But I keep on trying, some days better than other days. But I always fail short of the mark, quoting Paul. That is why I have faith in God’s Grace.
Hey OFD, here is a prognostication for your Great Default (sm) in 2015:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/op-ed-blast-future-crash-142200138.html
“CAYMAN ISLANDS, January 2016 – Today’s paper says we should have seen it coming.”
“The facts were all there. Were we really that stupid?
“For three years, the Federal Reserve was the largest buyer of Treasury securities, scooping up two-thirds of all U.S.securities sold at auction, driving interest rates down to practically nothing. In the process, the Fed built up a $4 trillion dollar balance sheet and no one asked where that money was going to go.”
“How did the Fed pay for these securities?”
“They “printed money.” And look what they got out of thin air: Interest-paying U.S.government bonds that produced an annual profit of more than $80 billion! “
Well, Lynn, I think it’s safe to say that when we die, neither of us is going to be disappointed.
I do wish people would stop using “decimated” when what they mean is “annihilated”. They’re about as annoying as people who use the phrase “the exception that proves the rule”, not understanding that “proves” in this case means “tests” instead of “confirms”.
OK, “The Mouse That Roared” analogy here is no longer funny:
http://houston.cbslocal.com/2013/04/03/officials-to-take-whatever-precautions-needed-after-north-korea-threat/
Now I am wondering if I am too close (at 150 miles) to Austin. I have actually wondered this many times in all the weirdness that seems to come out of Austin but this is a first that I am worried about a near miss. And, I have relatives in Austin that I would be torqued to see vaporized. Or blind and stumbling around dying of radioactive burns.
Haven’t we bombed people back to the stone age for less?
Sometimes I wonder how Costco does it.
Costco sells goods at cost and make 100% of their profit from membership fees.
Now I am wondering if I am too close (at 150 miles) to Austin.
Well, perhaps you are at risk of catching Liberalism from there, or a pollen cloud drifting over and causing worse allergies. But as far as the NorKor missile threat, no. There is no indication that they have the ability to hit anything East of the Rockies. And they can barely kit Alaska and parts of the West Coast, but maybe not with nukes.
I’m not convinced they can hit anything farther away from them than Japan, and maybe not even that.
But I do agree with Lynn. Obama should tell China to take care of NK or he’ll do it for them, with whatever it takes.
Retirement and health-care programs for all federal, state, and local government employees–including military and congressional retirees, post office employees, and so on–will be folded into Social Security and Medicare, along with all resources that have been set aside to fund these separate programs.
Upon a reread, I was struck by a fact. All of these public pension and health care systems are Cadillac plans. The public employees may pay something to be in the plan but their plan benefits are freaking awesome. Few of the public health care plans have copays. Just about all of the public pensions have COLAs. Try to find a COLA in a private pension plan, if you can find a private pension plan (OK, Exxon and Chevron do not count).
The biggest pension plan in the USA (not counting social security) is CALPERS. It has a current net worth of $250B ??? and is slightly underfunded. I know that CALPERS owns property all over the USA and several office buildings in Houston, Texas specifically. I highly doubt that Kalifornia will turn this over to the Feddies without an enormous battle. Remember, Social Security was never intended to be a retirement plan but to be a supplemental plan. To merge all public pensions into SS will be the end of the road to socialism and drop us there on the doorstep. We would be finished turning into Greece…
“Getting them young and teaching them to believe this crap permanently damages their ability to think.”
Oh bull!
“I’m not convinced they can hit anything farther away from them than Japan, and maybe not even that.”
I figure they’ll blow up on their own pads or land all over hell, including into the drink. South Korea should have a green light to blow Pyongyang away; they certainly have the capability all by their lonesome. Maybe some air support from Japan (and us, secretly) with a (secret) OK from Red Chiner and Russia. Or this could all be utter bullshit.
Looks like some people in NC want to establish a state religion:
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2013/04/03/north-carolina-legislators-want-to-abolish-freedom-of-religion/
Yes, someone got them young and taught them to believe that crap.
Incidentally, the real problem is that they’re right. The First Amendment was intended to prevent the federal government from interfering with state governments. It was a compromise measure, required to get the states to sign on to the federal constitution. At that time, some states had established (official) religions and others did not. The intent of the First Amendment was to guarantee the states that they were and would remain free to establish an official state religion, or to disestablish an existing state religion, or to have no established religion at all.
Bob, I think another “perpetually clean” person is Jamie Hyneman, of Mythbusters. I’ve met a few of you folks and it’s spooky weird. Eldtrich weird. (cue Twilght Zone music)
Oh hey, that reminds me of _The Man in the White Suit_. Haven’t seen THAT in while! I think I’ll have me an Ealing Studios revue this weekend.
re states’ rights, the US Constitution, and incorporation, RBT’s comment brings up something that’s been bugging me for a couple years. (I mention it from time to time, but maybe not here. Stop me if you’ve heard this before.) When a contract has any ambiguity at all, the choice of arbiter for any disputes is all-important. The result is almost pre-determined if one of the parties to the contract is given the power to interpret the contract.
The US Constitution — the contract between the people, the several states, and the federal government — does not give the Supreme Court the power to judge the constitutionality of laws. It does not give them the power to interpret the US Constitution, nor the authority to judge whether state constitutions will be allowed to stand. The Supreme Court simply started doing these things about 15 years after the Constitution was ratified and no one stopped them. With members of the federal government doing the judging, should it surprise anyone that the power of the federal government has continued to grow at the expense of the states and the people?
Think how different the balance of power would have worked out if questions of constitutionality were judged by panels appointed by the states.
Better yet, think how things would work if Senators were still chosen by the state legislatures and not the people of the state.
“The Supreme Court simply started doing these things about 15 years after the Constitution was ratified and no one stopped them.”
Justice Marshall, the Federalist. Who took the ball and ran it past the end zone, out under the stands and out to the parking lots. So since then we’ve had the CW that the SCOTUS is the equal third leg of the Leviathan State to the Executive and the Legislative, the latter of which has steadfastly refused to exercise their legitimate responsibilities for many a long year.
I still say we need to power down the system, format the drive and reinstall the o.s.
I still say we need to power down the system, format the drive and
reinstall the o.s.
I can’t disagree with that, but…where’s the off switch?
Euthanasia, it may be a slippery slope, but the current situation is also really extreme. Human life is utterly sacrosant (unless you’re bombing peasants with drones).
As an example: I just saw a news special that showed (in a very sympathetic light) the life of a family with a severely disabled child. Severe cerebral palsy: the child cannot do anything beyond grunt and make limited facial expressions. Really, what kind of life is that? This has destroyed the lives of the entire family, because the child requires 24/7 care. This is possible only because the child is still only 9 years old and the parents are still relatively young. In 10 or 20 years the situation will start getting ugly. Euthanasia would have been a far kinder and more rational solution, but one dare not even suggest it. I expect I’ll find vehement disagreement from y’all in a few minures…
I expect I’ll find vehement disagreement from y’all in a few minures…
Not from me. I have long said that keeping people are basically non-functioning shells, a biological blob, alive is not being kind to them or the family. The last two years of my aunt’s existence where in such a state. Fortunately I was not caring for her.
However, at what level do you determine if continued existence is warranted?
As I said, you leave it up to the person in question or, if that person is not competent and/or capable of communicating, you leave it up to a close relative.
We have extended human rights to cover both the very young and the very old. We’ve been able to do that because we’re a very rich society. But not all costs are economic, as Brad and Ray point out. This sanctity of life regardless of age is a new concept.
Historically, very old and ill people were either killed outright or allowed to die naturally with only pain relief. The thing about Eskimos putting their elderly out on ice floes to die has a basis in reality, and even well into the 20th century it was pretty common for doctors to prescribe or even administer “accidental” overdoses of morphine or whatever to end someone’s suffering. Just as it was common for a doctor to “forget” to slap the butt of a newborn and record the baby as stillborn.
If I were a practicing physician, I’d do the same thing for terminal patients. Write them a prescription for a month’s supply of whatever and tell them, “Whatever you do, don’t take more than two of these every eight hours. Four might kill you, and ten certainly would.”
We’ve been able to do that because we’re a very rich society.
I believe that we are a very rich society, the USA, in our own minds. The availability of credit cards to the masses in the early 1980s caused many of us to think that we are rich. We are not. The vast majority of us can go from rich to poor just by losing our current jobs, having a serious car crash or having a serious illness where we cannot function. Very, very, very few people are rich:
http://assetbuilder.com/scott_burns/the_four_question_wealth_test
When the USA credit card gets shutoff (OFD has named this “The Great Default”), we will become a poor society that day. The longer that we put it off, the more seismic the event will be. We may see 50% job loss in a period of three months here in the USA. We will probably see 100% bank failure except Wells Fargo and a couple of regional banks.
I am trying to figure out how to survive The Great Default financially. It will be tricky if you have any mortgages as income goes to zero for a period while expenses continue. Of course, any cash that you have in banks, Fidelity or other government licensed institutions will be seized XXXXXX borrowed to help the federal cash crunch.
If I were a practicing physician, I’d do the same thing for terminal patients. Write them a prescription for a month’s supply of whatever and tell them, “Whatever you do, don’t take more than two of these every eight hours. Four might kill you, and ten certainly would.”
This would get you charged for murder in most of the communities in the USA by the DEA. They are watching this stuff very closely. I do not know when we started this big brother crap but the doctors and pharmacists are all very scared of the DEA. Many of the pharmacists and doctors are being shutdown and some have been put in jail here in the Houston area for being “pill mills”. If you run a “pain center”, oh my.
Well, I posted something but it disappeared instantly.
I was basically agreeing with Lynn; not gonna rush anyone with my traditionalist Roman Catholic beliefs on euthanasia but am willing to listen to common sense on how we might simultaneously reduce unnecessary suffering and also institute safeguards against abuse.
I stole the term “The Great Default” from Gary North and/or someone from the Austrian School. It’s when Congress finally repudiates our national debt once and for all, totally.
I’m Austrian School, obviously, but I have to ask: why would they do that? They can just continue to inflate away indefinitely. The debts are dollar-denominated, and they can print all the dollars they need to.
Or were you referring to inflation as default? That’s certainly a valid way to look at it.
As North has written, the three possibilities are outright default, selective default or inflation:
“Ultimately, it is either the great depression or the Zimbabwe option. Ludwig von Mises called this the crack-up boom. It means the destruction of money and the collapse of the division of labor. It would mean devastation.”
http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north778.html
any cash that you have in banks, Fidelity or other government licensed institutions will be seized XXXXXX borrowed to help the federal cash crunch
As has just been demonstrated in Cyprus. It’s probably not a coincidence that the US is cracking down on foreign bank accounts: they don’t want ordinary people to be able to hide their assets. Of course, there are always ways and means for the truly wealthy, so the 1% will be untouched, just as they were in Cyprus.
Best thing I can imagine is to have some portion of your assets in hard goods: gold (obviously), but also less valuable durable good. Tools come to mind, although they might be a bit bulky. For the truly paranoid, having some livestock would be an idea.
The thing is: it’s hard to prepare if you don’t know the timescale. The politicians may be able to kick the can down the road for another generation. Or an unexpected crisis (think North Korea) could trigger the end tomorrow.
On a totally different topic, Borepatch published an excerpt from a blog (Rachel Lucas), and I hunted down the original link. Amusing and worth the read…
Best thing I can imagine is to have some portion of your assets in hard goods: gold (obviously), but also less valuable durable good. Tools come to mind, although they might be a bit bulky. For the truly paranoid, having some livestock would be an idea.
I’m thinking that ammo, silver and land would be better items to store as your assets. Gold is just too valuable to get much of. Silver is a better medium. And ammo will always be tradable, especially after the gun and ammo seizures of 2015 when the new Democrat House is elected for the feddies.
Agreed with Lynn again on what to store; pre-1964 silver coins, maybe small-denomination gold coins from U.S, Canada and the UK at least; the most common ammo in bulk and less-common for trade/barter/sale or your own peculiar firearms, like the S&W .41 Mag I used to have before Champ ate it off the lake bottom recently.
And land is excellent, IF you have complete and full title to it and even better if it’s got farming/gardening potential or in use already as such.
Add to that the other things we need to live, ya know, heat, light, food, meds, Netflix…
Add to that the other things we need to live, ya know, heat, light, food, meds, Netflix…
I hadn’t thought about that, but anyone with power generation capability has a lot to offer. Despite the optimism of Lucifer’s Hammer, it is unlikely that any power plants would be left running.
I wonder about land. In the even of a true collapse, I expect titles will make great toilet paper.
Power plants as they exist today, no, not many would be up and running in a “true collapse.” And property titles would of course be worthless. Hard to say if we will end up really going down the drain totally; that would probably take a confluence of really major disastrous events. Not probably but eminently possible.
I wonder about land. In the even of a true collapse, I expect titles will make great toilet paper.
Guns and ammo. Lots of guns and ammo. Barricades. And a few armed farm hands who accept you as the leader.
Eventually order will be restored. Read “The Postman” by David Brin:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Postman-David-Brin/dp/0553278746/
The movie was OK but not great except where the great leader of the northwestern army was showing Friday night chick flicks to keep the women happy which kept the men happy.
The bit about chick flicks and keeping people happy lit off a memory synapse here with me; years ago I was a plateletpheresis donor, regularly, during the glorious 80’s and the twilight of my police “career.” So you have to lie down for roughly two hours with a needle in each arm the size of the Alaska pipeline and can’t move. They would show movies on the multiple tee-vee monitors around the room, and there would normally be anywhere from half a dozen to a dozen of us at the same time, all ages, almost always Caucasian. If there were more women, they got their chick flicks; if more men, the sex and violence stuff. Though never beyond a mild R-rating. For us men the chick flicks were like being tortured; I used to just zone out and meditate/doze and try to concentrate on other thoughts. I assume our movies had a similar negative effect on the grrls, and the nurses were, of course, all grrls, but to their credit never weighed in with their numbers for the movie votes.
I don’t wanna be any kind of leader for the Road-Warrior-type apocalyptic Collapse scenarios; I will be the eminence-grise behind the scenes, the political/economic theorist, who will occasionally lend a hand in the interrogation of comely female prisoners.
Hey, can I be the wizard?
Mos def U B da Wiz. U got da juice, homes.
Hey, can I be the wizard?
You do know that the Wizard is the master of the still in primitive societies and the maker of the powder that goes BOOM. Both of these jobs go BOOM a lot.
Someday we’ll all know who is truly whom. Or is that whom is who?
Allow me. Many, many years ago, when I was in grade school, we were taught that English followed the German rules in lots of areas. After all, English is first a Germanic language, then all those others somehow got mixed in; French being the last, which really screwed up spelling and phonetics.
In the past, the subject and predicate of a sentence using “to be” were identical. Still are in German, so they continue to say “it is I”, just as Clyde Battin and Gary Paxton—better known as Skip and Flip—did in 1959 with their super-popular song, “It Was I”; the only rock song my fifth grade teacher liked, because it used correct English.
Then comes Oxford University, self-appointed keepers of the English language, who proclaim that anything to the left of the verb is subject, and anything to the right is object.
So, technically, use either. Sounds better to me as “who is who”, but Oxford now insists it be “who is whom”.
Practically, there is not going to be a collapse unless there is a complete financial one. Now that the Euro is no challenge to the US dollar as the international reserve currency—no other currency could possibly ascend to that prominence in the short span of our lifetimes, now that the Euro is out of the picture,—RBT is right: there is nothing standing in the way of inflating the currency in perpetuity until it is essentially near worthless, dragging all other ‘independent’ currencies with it.
Heck, it took 2 years after the housing bubble burst and the subsequent bank bailouts before things rolled slowly to the bottom, and some companies are still laying off to adjust, so highly unlikely that anything will happen overnight.
IMO, there is a great fallacy in thinking that people are going to turn to gold or silver as a barter currency. This was also my ultimate conclusion back in the ’70’s when people like Howard Ruff, Harry Browne, Mark Skousen, and Mark Faber insisted people would turn from the dollar to gold and silver as a medium of exchange. Come on! People are too stupid about economics and finance to stay out of debt, but yet are all going to become gold and silver experts, know the Krugerrand is more valuable than the Canadian Mapleleaf and accept nothing but the right one? Please. Even copper thieves turn it in for dollars, they don’t store it for the dollar’s eventual collapse.
I did a ton of reading about the Great Depression in the late ’80’s. Contrary to most people’s impression, it did not happen overnight with the ’29 stock market crash. It took years before it was eventually identified as more than a temporary economic downturn. Yeah, just like events from 2007 to 2009, massive numbers of people lost their job overnight, but the overwhelming majority of the nation remained at work.
Right now, in Tiny Town—the second worse-off city in Indiana,—most people on my block have new cars less than 2 years old. I am the only one with an 18 year old car (’95 model, but manufactured in ’94); no one has anything close to that old. (It’s a last year of manufacture Buick Roadmaster—a whale of a car, both figuratively and literally.) Although businesses are continuing to leave the city, new chain restaurants are opening almost semi-monthly. Just got a new Hardee’s last month and a new Japanese restaurant this month. When I moved back from Germany in 2010, strip malls in Indy had tons of vacancies. Now, they are fully rented, and even if a business moves out, another one replaces it in a matter of weeks.
In fact, I have never before in my life seen the kind of bustling commerce that is going on around me now. I do not get around as much as I used to, so it may be limited to Indiana, but I seriously doubt it. People I communicate with, in other parts of the country, are seeing the same things—including in southern California, which we are told daily is going to collapse totally in the next few seconds; next 24 hours for sure.
OFD wrote:
“For us men the chick flicks were like being tortured…”
In the early Eighties I went to a dual screen drive in to watch a SF flick, Tron. I hated it so I switched to the other field and started watching the ultimate chick flick, The French Lieutenant’s Woman. That was even worse so I ended up going home quite early.
RBT wrote:
“Hey, can I be the wizard?”
You can be the Lord Humungous. Perfect fit.
I’ll be Max and OFD can be the Gyro Captain.
The Gyro Captain gets the girl!
“…but Oxford now insists it be “who is whom”.”
Dat’s wot I thought; I am a long-time Oxford Dictionary fanboy and was apparently taught that way early. Thanks for the refresher.
And I really truly hope that the signs of economic life you’re seeing around Tiny Town are an indicator of good things to come; OFD doesn’t really wanna see the shit hit the fan in this country and all the suffering that would entail. But we all know the omelet metaphor, don’t we….
“The Gyro Captain gets the girl!”
Naturally, but I’m not tall enough for that role; Spence is 6’7″. I also have him by about a hundred pounds, looks like. I had been nominated for the Humongous role back in my cop days but I am now holding out for one as a Confederate raider in the St. Albans Raid re-enactment coming up here next year.
Max and the Gyro Captain: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6k55DfHm48
The speech of the Lord Humungous: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfL4xKQeSfo
The pursuit. An absolute classic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bmf-HCCZYOg
This movie never gets old.
“Just walk away…and there will be an end to the horror.”
Sure, buddy.
A former squarehead Olympic weight-lifter, working since as a manager at a software company in Oz.
He walked away.