We have other things to worry about right now...
This is an updated post.
Peak Oil, Climate change and the Greater Depression will pose many challenges to our way of life but let’s get real, for a moment: Golden Hordes aren’t one of them. At least not now. Economic depression brings with it a host of serious problems, and I think you can say quite confidently, without being a chicken little, that most of the world is in a Greater Depression. But still, we’ve got a few years to go before we can say that the USA is no longer a viable culture, when no one wants to live in Paris or London, when potatoes no longer grow in Poland, and before donkey’s begin pulling our rusted-out cars. Bikers with shotguns; weaving socks from milk thistle; crashing waves drowning our cities; evacuating your house on a moments notice to house troops; the government coming to confiscate your precious metals; a mass exodus of cities as the violence and mayhem escalates to untolerable levels—all of these things should not be on the top of the list of what to prepared for.
So what should be?
1. Job loss is up there.
2. We’ve already seen retirement accounts deteriorate, leaving us less money to live on in our aging years.
3. Our elderly today, like that 93 year-old who froze to death in his kitchen, will face real challenges in keeping themselves medicated, warm and fed. It may be time to get concerned about the old folks who live on your street, and start having tea with them on alternating days.
4. The rising price of everything from food to fuel is likely to be a serious problem for a lot of us.
5. Food pantries won’t be able to feed all of the people who need resources from them, and people who used to give generously to those same pantries, might now be lining up for help.
6. Managing depression–emotional depression, that is, should be up there.
7. We’ll also have to deal with the harmful side-affects of worry and fear, not brought on by the FBI tapping our telephones, but because we have no clue where the money’s going to come from to pay off our credit cards.
8. Domestic violence will be on the rise. So will alcoholism, drug abuse and out-of-control gambling.
9. Our towns, cities, regions, and states will continue to face serious problems. They will increasingly have trouble funding basic services like police, fire, education, sanitation collection and health services.
10. The evaporation of the housing bubble will mean fewer property taxes really soon. They will need more tax dollars, and yes, those who live within their jurisdiction will be the ones they’ll tap. You’ll also be asked to contribute more money toward things that used to be paid for by your governments. They may not confiscate your fire arms, but they will tax you for each and every one of them, as yet another source of income.
11. Rising taxes will mean less household money for food, fuel, etc.
12. Higher taxes will mean fewer dollars in your pocket and less support for local businesses.
13. More failing businesses will mean less tax revenues for basic services. Repeat bullets 10, 11 and 12 above.
14. What we really have to fear is desperate towns and cities selling off basic services, like fire protection services and water rights, to multinationals, in an effort to raise short term cash. That’s something to be afraid of. When that happens, you’ll see escalating prices for basic utilities more frightening than UFO’s hovering over your town hall.
15. More sick people doesn’t mean a sudden massive die-off, but it does mean more of those killer colds and flu’s that wipe out a great number of little kids and grandmothers.
16. Given how many people work for some branch, or are funded by the US Government, fewer tax dollars means more governmental workers losing their jobs.
17. Yes, there will be protests and some riots. Yes, some city residents, already suffering from years of unemployment and poverty, will rage at being unable to make ends meet on the social programs that use to be barely adequate.
18. I’m not saying don’t worry about global warming causing a new ice age that will leave one mile-thick ice throughout North America and much of Europe. I’m just saying it should be lower on your priority list than the greater chance that your basement is going to flood more often and that your insurance company is no longer going to cover it or tell you so until it happens and you need it.
19. Yes, keep several 50-gallon rain buckets, but not so you can live another week when Yellow Stone’s volcano erupts, wiping out life as we know it in the US, but so you can water your garden as you get less rainfall each year.
20. Crime will increase. But you won’t have 40 inner-city youth with oozies ransacking your living room. The kid who lives down the street, the one that couldn’t get a summer job, he’ll be the one stealing your stuff. Keep teens busy. We’ll need them even more as time goes on.
21. Grocery stores will get “tough on crime” as our “voleurs par faim” (thieves by reason of hunger), who might have been generally tolerated in the past, will now grow to intolerable numbers.
22. Dreams will die: the dream of an exotic vacation, a college or private school education, career advancement, or a comfortable retirement.
23. Marriages and relationships will end, because they’ve never known hard times, and when one or both turn away from the other, in response to the troubles, instead of growing closer because of them.
24. Small businesses will close, taking all the owner’s sweat equity and all the better-paid, long-time employees with them.
25. Closing local business means we’ll have to travel longer distances to shop, or pay the shipping costs for things that we used to be able to get in our neighborhoods. Gasoline will become, for many items, more expensive than the stuff we are buying. Shipping costs will also make online shopping more expensive .
26. We will suffer the greatest pains over lost dreams where we’ve imagined that we’ve failed our children or grandchildren. As H.S. Sullivan (who started his professional life during the Great Depression) has written:
“Marked economic disturbances usually have either general or specific reasons, and have very marked effects on the course of personality development. Parents almost always aim their children at something, which the children either seek or avoid at all costs, but big economic change may lead to tragic revision of the parental ambitions with corresponding effects on the childrens’ goals and so on, and may leave permanent marks.”
27. The age of your children will impact the effect the change will have on them. If they are under age 8, the parental utterances they hear around your home, will be most impactful. The family establishes the worldview, and sets the tone. Like a light mist surrounding the child, they either uplift or cover your child with despair.
28. Unlike during the Great Depression, however, when employers were willing to hire children at slave wages, and children were therefore able to help out financially in real tangible ways, our children–even our teenagers–won’t have jobs. No, this will not be your grandmother’s Great Depression.
29. Instead of trying to explain why your children have to become cobblers, practice saying things like: “No, Tommy/Jane, I won’t be buying you that this year, because we are all needing to cut back on our spending. I know you are disappointed or angry. I can understand that. I wish it were different, but it isn’t. You’ll always have what you need, but that item isn’t a necessity, and we can’t afford to buy it for you.”
30. If your children or grandchildren are near college-aged, these plans for higher educational may be dashed. Many of us will have already tapped out our home equity line of credit, or if we haven’t, the banks won’t lend to us anyway. Even IF we have great credit scores.
31. If our children or grandchildren are active in a profession, and manage to keep their jobs, they may find themselves having to financially support a larger social network. They’ll take in their parents and grandparents, cousins, friends. We’ll have to learn the value of NOT expressing ourselves–our frustrations, our dislikes, our annoyances and fight with our spouses in private–as we all live in cramped quarters.
32. And things will start to look older and shabbier: Cars that we drive, clothes that we wear, homes that we live in. We’ll understand the word “decaying” in a whole new way, when we can’t afford to replace our roofs, or repair our driveways.
33. We’ll stay home a heck of a lot more, especially when the car breaks down, and we don’t have the cash to fix it.
34. Most of us will continue to find the cash to watch cable television, while we eat crappier food, and we’ll hear a repetitive message that while some people are suffering, everything is still dandy. They’ll imply our suffering is our own fault.
35. Our military budget will continue to increase, while our domestic budget will continue to decrease.
There are more immediate concerns...
36. Wars will increase, no matter who is President. We will fear for our young people, more of whom will find the military the only option for a “secure” job. They’ll fight over oil. They’ll fight over land. They’ll be deployed in states that they don’t call home, where they will be charged with “crowd control”. These crowds will be composed of somebody else’s family and friends.
37. More of us will wait in absurd traffic lines to be “checked,” without knowing or caring what we are being “checked” for.
38. Fancier electronic ways will be developed by governments to separate us from our money–automatically.
39. We’ll find ourselves with less time and more work hours to pay for a lifestyle that’s barely equivalent.
40. We’ll spend more of our week-ends or vacation time doing chores and repair work we used to pay someone else to do.
41. Our children will see more of us, as we will cut corners to cut daycare costs, but there’ll be less of us to see.
42. Despite our best intentions, our emotional and physical fatigue will leave us with little spare energy for the kinds of religious, social, or charitable work we’d assumed we’d continue to do. Our grandparents– a significantly more religious and social group than we are– dropped out of their community involvements in huge numbers during the Great Depression. So will we. We’ll learn how valuable our “free time” was, when we stop having very much of it.
43. We’ll learn the lesson so many African nations have learned, that mal-nutrition impacts our ability to process information cognitively, produce healthy children, and fight injustice. We should be fearful that people who need food stamps and school breakfasts and lunches will stop getting them. If we’re smart, we’ll target our priorities with a laser focus, stick to the basics, and keep our priorities straight. Full bellies make better neighbors.
44. We will find ourselves with a lot less energy to pretend we’re someone we aren’t, and a lot less money to keep up that illusion.
45. Those times we told other people that we ‘just couldn’t live without X,Y, or Z’– we’ll learn that we can. Some of us will be surprised to find out that we don’t miss the things we were so sure we couldn’t live without.
46. The longer we keep trying to convince ourselves that everything is the same, that nothing has changed, the more battered our souls will feel. After a period of loud protestation, beating of the chest, cries proclaiming how unfair it all is, and how this can’t be happening to us, we’ll quiet down.
47. We’ll have to swallow the news that most people who don’t live in the “developed” world already got: “we aren’t automatically entitled to be wealthy, have an easy life, be constantly amused,” and for some, that fact will make life absolutely miserable. For others, it will be a great liberation.
Take a quote from Studs Terkel’s book on the Great Depression:
“I never liked the idea of living on scallions in the left bank garret. I liked writing in comfort. So I went into business, a classmate and I. I thought I’d retire in a year or two. And a thing called Collapse, bango! socked everything out. 1929. All I had left was a pencil…There was nothing else to do. I was doing light verse at the time, writing a poem here and there for ten bucks a crack. It was an era when kids at college were interested in light verse and ballads and sonnets. This is the early Thirties. I was relieved when the Crash came. I was released. Being in business was something I detested. When I found that I could sell a song or a poem, I became me, I became alive. Other people didn’t see it that way. They were throwing themselves out of windows.Someone who lost money found that his life was gone. When I lost my possessions, I found my creativity. I felt I was being born for the first time. So for me, the world became beautiful.With the Crash, I realized that the greatest fantasy of all was business. The only realistic way of making a life was versifying. Living off your imagination.”
48. We’ll start doing what we want, (as long as it’s free) because we won’t have the opportunity to do much else.
49. Some of us will be forced to move to poorer neighborhoods and will be surprised to find out them filled with decent people. We’ll find ourselves delighted to have working-class neighors who can actually fix the plumbing, repair the toilet, or get your truck running–and won’t charge us a dime. Some will keep our neighborhoods intact, while others will watch them be bulldozed.
50. We’ll learn to eat ‘Soul Food’–all the parts of the animal Black folks learned to cook with, because White folks wouldn’t touch that type of meat. And it will taste good, and we’ll be grateful to have it.
51. And no, of course not, it won’t be this way for all of us: Some of us will have to hide our excessive purchases in our closets or in plain paper bags.
52. Some of us will put on less elaborate cocktail parties.
53. Some of us will trade our newly-bankrupted husband for a wealthier one.
54. Some of us will watch the worst of this Greater Depression from the comfort of our “still working lives,” and will retain much of what we need to get by, in a comfort that we now appreciate a great deal more.
55. Some of us will learn the comfort of prayer or group worship. We will “get it” that there exists something greater than ourselves-whether it be G-d, community or family. The concept of who makes up our family, will grow for some of us and shrink for others.
But if there is anything at all we need to be afraid of, it is our sense of hubris that won’t admit to ourselves that this “everyday dreariness” is the worst of it or the best of it. It will be our desire to cling to a group or a leader who promises to restore our former glory. What will give us inspiration will be our capacity to see the great gifts delivered to us in these “every-day tragedies,” the blessing inside every misfortune, the spirit inside every hardship that will pull us through. The gift will be in our capacity to recognize that the “hard times” we are living with, right now, ARE real, and that our struggles are shared by millions of other people world-wide. And, while most of us are unlikely to end up in some governmental concentration camp, any time soon, we might easily end up in a hell of our own making, if we don’t accept how ordinary and ‘just like today only worse’ it will all be tomorrow, making today ‘just like tomorrow, only better.’
About Kathy McMahon
My concern is that this is, invisibly, happening NOW – but considered “normal”. Why?
Ordinary people fall on hard times and end up as economic refugees in their own land. They may even become a majority, a mass of people walked past and ignored by the “wealthy” with jobs. Sound familiar?
It’s normal to have the poor in our society, and it’s normal to look right though them. After all, their situation must be a “punishment” for doing something wrong. And who wants to know them?
But the time may be coming when it’s likely to be us who are shivering in rags with no money for food.
And the guys in work will walk on past, just like they always did.
Moral: don’t expect compassion to change for the better.
If this wasn’t no ridiculous, I’d shoot myself and end it quickly. Maybe I will anyway so that I don’t have to see this kind of nonsense. For those of us to see a problem and are trying to work constructively to cope with it, this kind of posting is destructive in the extreme. I suggest that you google transition town and get with it instead of writing this kind of sensationalist porn.
Oh yes, Steve, it certainly is. And I agree that there is a sort of “stigma” about falling economically. I used to intentionally talk about my own economic crash, as embarrassing as it was to me, because I wanted to try to normalize it. People aren’t quite sure how to react. They don’t know whether to say “Oh, I’m sorry!” or “Don’t worry, it will be alright.” Most don’t say anything, or very little before they change the subject.
I think it is time to put a new twist on an old saying:
“The rich will always be with us.”
That’s quite a comprehensive list, a good one to bring up to the front of one’s mind. I didn’t wait to suffer a fall, but voluntarily got out at age 53. I knew I’d be pinching pennies. After the crash it hit me that if I’d worked and saved for another four years, I’d be saying, “I just worked four years for zero gain!” So, here I am living well in the bush eating cheap, healthy & green and making noise about it on the internet. Keep up the thoughtful site! Doing this is a big part of our mental/emotional strategy, isn’t it?
Lynn
Ciao Kathy,
Thanks a million for this blog. It’s a relief to see someone a) have the courage to imagine a future that may not actually be lit with photovoltaics and fed happily by permaculture rooftop gardens, and b) that is not all bad without those things.
So much of what I read on peak oil blogs is focused on the left side of Hubbert’s Peak: discussing the statistics of Cantarell’s decline, the cubic meters of coal remaining, the decline in rig availability. Thanks for looking out towards the right side of the peak, and for giving us some concrte things to fear but in a productive way. It’s easy to extrapolate fifty-five things to do right now to get ready for a low-energy future.
Your imagining, though, also shows us (without the damn wishcasting that so often makes scenario-casting sappy) that this low-energy future will give us the opportunity to cut out much of the BS (I can’t wait until Facebook goes offline, personally) and reconnect personally. Yes, it’ll perhaps be while hoeing, or scrounging, but it may be satisfying. I think I could write some decent “hard-times standup” routines if I had to.
In sum, thanks for an honest appraisal of what our post-peak world could be like!
A presto,
Zach Nowak
I do wish it were more of a future vision, Zach, but unfortunately, it’s happening right now. At the start of the Great Depression, unemployment was at 8.9%, reaching a height of almost 25% in 1933 before dropping back down. If we include in our measurements the same statistical yardstick they used back then, we’ve got to add 11.5% to the current US unemployment figure, according to Shadow Statistics. In October, 2009 it was 10.2% + 11.5 = 21.7%. But some states are really getting hammered: Michigan’s, 26.6%, Nevada’s at 24.5%, South Carolina 24.1%, California 24%, and Rhode Island (23.6). Even the popular “Doomer Dream” Oregon is at 22.8%. Hardly a working man’s paradise.
As I recounted in an earlier post, the signs are there. I’m not just running my mouth off. There are similarities between now and the 1930′s in unemployment, evictions and homelessness, suicide rates, homicide rates and increases in domestic violence, alcoholism, and a host of other issues. We’re even seeing similarities with the 1930′s in whether people decide to marry or divorce. Communities today, just like the 1930′s, are more open to allowing gambling as a new stream of tax revenues. We see increases in the rates of domestic violence, and infant mortality, back then and now, and even bank robberies. Geepers, New York state’s deficit will soon reach over 4 BILLION dollars. New York isn’t alone. 26 states and the District of Columbia had not achieved balance for the fiscal year, with nearly half reporting shortfalls greater than 5 percent of their state budgets. California has the largest projected deficit for the current year, $8.2 billion, and Texas ($1.7 billion), Illinois ($1.5 billion), New Jersey ($1.1 billion) and Oregon ($1 billion) are up there too. Most have taken dramatic cuts in all areas, particularly painfully in social services.
In order to work constructively on a problem, you first have to identify it, MrVert. If you like Transition Towns, great, perhaps yours is already working in these areas. But don’t kill the messenger. People have to wake up and realize that if they are still looking for the green shoots, we pulled them up and ate them a while ago. We have to start worrying about keeping people in our neighborhoods warm and fed. Healthy would be a plus, as would education. But the party’s over here in the USA, like it or not. And before we all create “sustainable” communities that grow all of our own food in permaculture gardens, and develop our own economies to provide us all great jobs, there’s going to be a lot of lean years in-between where we still have to eat, pay for housing, heat, and other basic necessities. I’m describing those years. If that’s depressing to you, so be it. That’s what’s happening here and in a lot of places around the world. And if you read my blog, you’d have come across three separate articles where I critique Transition Towns, here, here and here. This isn’t a time for Panglossia and happy thoughts. We have to toughen up enough to stare unflinchingly into the dark night, and start lighting matches.
Thanks for this assessment, Kathy. I consider it to be very pessimistic … but in the opposite direction from MrVert. If we do not terminate the industrial economy very soon and very completely, we’ll be extinct by mid-century and we’ll take most of the species on the planet with us into the void.
Can we bring it all down, the sooner the better? Yes, we can. Starting with the collapse of Lehman Brothers in mid-September 2008, it’s nearly happened five times within the last 15 months (that I know about, and I don’t know much).
Those five times give a lesson, too: The world industrial economy can collapse any day. Civilization has always been three days removed from anarchy (or, if you’re a pessimist, from chaos). Why do you think we have so much time left?
Kathy, this is a good list. I think too many people are looking for a sudden catastrophic descent into these things, but it won’t happen that way. It will be in small increments over weeks, months, or several years. I would suggest that folks put this list to the test if you don’t think Kathy has got it right. Print it off and if you wish to be fancy, make a spreadsheet of the 55 items with 60 columns. Then every week, go down the list and put a plus mark if there has been news that appears to support the forecast, a minus if there is news that tends to refute the forecast, or leave blank if there is no news. Then look at it in 6 months and at the end of next year and see whether the plus marks out weigh the minus. You may be surprised.
As Kathy pointed out, there is a transition time, maybe 2-5 years from each plateau to the next one down. During that time you will have to have additional resources above and beyond the normal to “pay” for the orderly transition. Transition towns are a great idea, but it takes resources to get there, and right now resources are in short supply—-everywhere. Talking to a laid off worker with a wife and two kids at home about the need to get to the level where we can function with less energy will be pointless. They aren’t worried about how we need to get our food locally in 5 years, they are worried about food on the table tonight, and they don’t care how it gets there.
The benefit of a list like this, as depressing as it is, gives you a starting place to start refining your roles and your mental preparations to deal with any of these that could arise in your own life.
Three years ago, I took my oldest grandson on a family history journey back to where I spent my early years up to age 14. I hadn’t been to my hometown in 11 years, and was really surprised at the amount of change that had occurred in that period of time, but when I talked to the old timers I knew around town, they weren’t too aware of much change, it looked to them like it always seemed to be. The street map was the same, and some of the older homes were still there, but nothing else was the same. It had changed in increments, and they really didn’t notice too much change, because they travelled the same streets all the time and didn’t really see much else happening. Many of us have travelled the same streets of life day after day, and we really haven’t noticed the incremental changes happening one life block over. Chuck
there is something very very wrong with western civilisation. I’ve seen it here in London – lots of poverty, people living without any savings, buying whatever crap is on sale right now. It’s like all of them realized that they cannot compete with GROWTH-based civilisation model.
I am personally looking forward to see this model fall, wondering what will be next
Siegfried
I read this to my family yesterday, and they found it excellent.
While it may seem pessimistic to some, my 19 year old daughter found Kathy’s ideas liberating.
She is a math major, and has always been pensive, anti-materialist, and deeply caring. The future that faces us will be more to her liking than the superficial, hyper-consumerism of our immediate past.
I too see so much good in the lasting hardship we are to face.
More than anything else, though, I see the mandate to develop a resilient spirit.
One of the ways I’m trying to do that is immersing myself in the world’s great literature by reading it aloud together with my small family and talking about it each evening.
Ciao Kathy,
Just to chime in again: you are right on as far as this being a present problem. You could even look back to the early seventies when wages in the OECD, adjusted for inflation, plateaued out…ohh, and crude oil discovery peaked.
It is indeed very much a present problem, and each of needs to dedicate a little more time/money/energy each day to preparing for what the future may hold — or rather what today already does.
Excellent post, very realistic.
Grazie tante,
Zach
Well, with the world you paint, you should get a lot of business coming your way. Too bad, no one will be able to pay you.
As for TT’s, they have huge reality check problems in large part because they try to “vision” the future. Nonetheless, they are trying to find a way through. They haven’t started looking at peak oil beyond it being the problem. It also holds the key to the problem. As supply decreases, price increases. Demand may even continue increasing in the short run which will accelerate the price increases. Then the price starts to bite. At $4/gallon, what will you do/not do? At $5/ gallon, what will you do/not do? At $n/gallon, what will you do/not do? At some price, the second car goes. At some price, cars don’t get driven or, at least, not as they are today. Bye, bye Ronald and all your buddies. Bye, bye Costco and Home Depot and all your big box buddies because no one will have the money to buy all the unneeded stuff you stock. Hello, local hardware stores that stock only what is needed locally. Bye, bye Club Med and all your resort buddies and airlines. Vacations will be far more local. At some point, you don’t drive your kids to ball practice or day camp. Hello, scrub baseball. This will all happen gradually although not smoothly. As it happens, people will start to adjust. Memories are short and self-adjusting. The iPod’s and Crackberries won’t be missed for long.
At some price, food starts to be a mainstream problem. You garden so you know that green shoots (your analogy, not mine) are funny things. One dies out or is killed here but another pops up over there. There are green shoots here and there. Are they solutions? Maybe, maybe not. Todmorden may be a bit panglossic but Will Allen is already doing it, albeit for different reasons. Can Will Allen be scaled up? Maybe, maybe not.
I don’t disagree that it’s going to be hard, very hard. Maybe it will be the dark night that you see. If it is, where will you get the matches? Things are rarely as bad or as good as they are forecast to be.
Reading aloud with your family, John. How lovely. Thanks for that.
Yes, Chuck, that Illusion of Sameness, or the slowly heated frog. Great story.
Siegfried, is that a polish language site you run? Yak Shamas! What will be next is what we, as a community, work hard to make it.
Nice to hear from you again, Zach. How’s the book selling? (Great book, everyone, if you enjoy reading. He’s got great practical resources to recommend in his annotated bibliography)
MrVert, I think YOU could be writing this post, based on some of your comments. That is the point, isn’t it? To help people figure out the logical consequences of what’s coming so they can plan how they’ll respond to it. The links you offer are good ones. Much of the stuff outlined in the first one are things we’re doing here in my town. I’ve launched several similar initiatives locally, and none of them cost anything, FYI. While I think you missed the point of the post, you’ve offered valuable links, so thank you!
FYI, William Engdahl
What utter rubbish.
It’s not just black people who eat all of the animal. How very racist and superior of you. What do you think Scottish Haggis is ? Tripe ? Chitterlings ? Pigs head in Brawn ? Trotters ? Maybe that is the case in America, but the world is a bit bigger that just America.
Kathy – yep, my personal blog in polish. I think in future it will become more peak oil oriented, we live in very interesting times.
Wow. There is someone more pessimistic than I am.
I hope you wrong – and I think some of your points are wrong, sadly some are right.
Nice article – what is the proposed solution? I am working my ass off to earn just above the average wage in the uk yet others have a few kids at an ireesponsible age and get a house and benefits? The world is warped
F. Stephens: Clearly an American reference to the age of slavery. You are quite right that in other parts of the world, there is a broader taste for meat organs, brains, etc.
Muscles, there isn’t one solution. Each one of us has to take responsibility for finding or making changes that we believe are required in our own neighborhoods, regions, countries. Perhaps first it would be helpful if TPTB actually admitted to the problems, first. …
Mother of All Mothers! Where do you people come from? Kathy’s emotional prep list to me sounds like something coming from the priviledged ranks (no offense to you, Kathy btw).
People, families, I know have not seen the sights of these lucky predicaments for years, even decades now. People living out of their cars, people living out of tents, people who have no cars or tents and live on the streets or occasionally are lucky enough have a stab at a bed for the night in a homeless shelter. Odd is it or puzzling to you? Why? Because you are too unbelieveably ignorant to even notice these people. Because these people do not exist to you. Because you have erased them from your cognitive memory or perhaps it is too harsh to want to acknowledge. Or else the town outlaws panhandlers from interrupting people’s buying orgies and they are shuffled out of sight. Wake up and start recognizing what is really happening here, Learn how to stop being pampered and ignorant.
And please MRVERT you’ll do the world a favor if you follow your chosen path.
If you are interested in seeing how the other half lives, read MY LIST:
1. Consistently poor paying jobs are consistantly lost.
2. Retirement? What’s that?
3. When was the last time I went to the doctor? What are dental benefits besides pulling out bad teeth?
4. Money for anything you need. Say what?
5. Food pantries are consistently low RIGHT NOW !!
6. Emotional depression? A lifetime of deprivation usually cures it.
7. Money for credit cards? Oh, you mean the ones you send in a deposit to and allow you to pull out your own money with interest in an emergency?
8. Domestic violence, drug use? Ongoing fact of life for most of the poor.
9. Town funding, police force? Oh so they can use our taxes against us repeatedly.
10. Higher property taxes. Disproportion amongst different income groups has sucked the life blood out of many families.
11. Less money for food: When was there ever enough money for food?
12. Less support for local business: CDC (low-income business loan originators) loans usually have a 12 percent interest rate. Poverty masquerading as incentive made in a shade for decades now.
13. Less basic services. When was the last time you could pay to have garbage removed?
14. Selling basic services to keep costs low. Anyone check out Holyoke MA and their water service situation?
15. Killer colds: Check out your local food pantry for the newest strain available.
16. Gov workers lose jobs: Guess the jokes on me.
17. Social program reduction: Check out how long they’ll admit an uninsured patient or how about a drive-through child birth?
18. Insurance companies not covering floods,etc: What insurance?
19. Water garden, save water in barrels: It was illegal in certain pockets of Central America before the citizens revolted.
20. Crime increase? Ain’t no real crime in little ol’ suburbia.
21. Grocery store theft crackdown: The poor are profiled the minute they walk in the door.
22. Dreams die: Dreams??
23. Marriage, relationships end: Actually an immunity factor built in after decades of the poor living together.
24. Small businesses close: Inner city business recidivism rates are off the charts. Now you worry about businesses?
25. Travel long distances to stores? Anywhere is far if you don’t have a car.
26. Lost dreams for children and grandchildren: Main dream is that they are lucky enough to grow up.
27. Cover child with dispair: Dispair works in strange ways. Either makes you or breaks you.
28. Teenagers get no jobs: It’s called prostitution.
29. Kids get no gifts: What do you call clothes and food?
30. Higher ed dashed: You mean trade school isn’t enough?
31. Financially supporting a larger network: It’s called extended family with an occasional worker at McDonald’s.
32. Things look shabby: Get used to it!
33. Stay home more: Duh!
34. Military grows: Our kids, who else?
35. Wars increase: More oil to support the lifestyle.
36. Cable TV but crappier food: Crappy food yes, but whose got electric this week?
37. Police state out of control: Frisking and DWB a fact of life.
38. New ways to take our money: How about the current “War on the Poor” via Motor vehicle violations including incarcerations.
39. Vacations at home and doing more chores: “What’s a vacation , Mommy?”
40. Less time and more work hours: It’s called minimum wage in the service industries, including wiping people’s bums and unclogging toilets.
41. No money for daycare: It’s called latch key kids, taking your child indefinately to work and juvie lockup.
42. Drop out of community involvement: Working two min. wage jobs back to back leaves you time to eat and sleep, somewhat.
43. Malnutrition: Ditto fact of life.
44. Less energy to pretend your someone your not: Never entered our minds.
45. Battered souls: Ditto, fact of life.
46. Not entitled to get everything we wish: Wow, a no-brainer!
47. Doing what we want: If you are not too hungry, cold or tired.
48. Soul Food: It’s called the weekly dinner with meat in it.
49. Hide excess purchases: In the neighborhood you can’t hide a thing!
50. Less elaborate cocktail parties: It’s called “Liftin’ a Kegger from the Packy”.
51. Trade up spouse: With or without a Tent?
52. Watching the greater depression from the comfort of our lives: Your curb or mine?
53. Prayer: God helps those who help themselves. . .
I know there are 55 on the list. Guess I mussed up. Greetings and adios from the street.
Thanks Kathy.
One thing I’m doing to relieve my fears: I am reverting to paper for any important data. I just got burned (again) when the internet is not available, the lap top gets a new operating system, or just don’t have access.
When someone says simplify, I now look at my electronic life and see where I can simplify that.
Hi Cassandra,
Excellent points. Thanks for adding the class perspective. You are right, as usual.
Yes, Laura, thanks. Many of us see the internet as “essential, we can’t do without it” but as I said, we’ll find out we can. Will the library still be able to afford there’s? We’ll see.
I really appreciated Cassandra of the Remnant’s post.
So much of what I’ve written over the years for my website has been directed towards suburban corporate teamplayers; as if they are the only class that counts.
Cassandra reminds me that it’s time to be aware of true poverty, not just the poverty of character so common among the teamplayers.
It’s time to get back to the elemental level of life; to focus on family, friends, simple tasks.
Rich people across the world are few in number but consume loads. The poor are huge in number and consume less per person. Who trashes the planet more? Let’s call that even and get to the real point. Are poor people morally superior to rich people? Are the poor trying to save the planet while the rich trash it? Do the poor raise their voices against the destruction but are drowned out by the rich? Of course not. The difference between the rich and poor is that one has it and the other wants it. Is someone who doesn’t have and doesn’t want, poor? Seems like it takes wanting and failing to get what one wants that makes one perceive impoverishment. In the real world, when the poor gets rich, it becomes the thing that was despised just moments before. The dream of wealth drives almost everyone and the global economy. The rich do not prey on the poor without consent. It is a partnership that starts with a willingness to accept the paradigm of the rich that we will be happy and successful if we have more. This disease transcends all social lines.
Regarding the absolute necessities of life, I concede that they are necessities. Humans are made of food and must eat. However, there is an incredible amount of excess that must be trimmed before anyone in the US gets to talk about going hungry. My brother, who has $50,000 worth of truck and a hefty payment, said when his business started failing that he had to put food on his credit card in order to get enough to eat. Priorities, anyone? People trapped in lifestyles they now cannot afford mostly chose those lifestyles with no thoughts of the debt, the future, the health of themselves, their communities, Earth.
The list of things to truly fear is a good one, Peak Shrink, although I am glad the comments of your readers reflect a recognition that much that is on it is about losing what we didn’t need and never should have wanted in the first place. Getting back to the class issue, I am impatient with the notion that I am supposed to feel sorry for people who aren’t going to get their chance to rape and pillage across the planet.
hmm… maybe those student loans are not as bad? finally, only the strongest will survive :> and everybody who had to deal with them and survived will be very cautions about any credit cards, loans etc.
what do you think?
I think the class warfare thing is a trap that people are falling into as things progress. I also think the endless moralizing about frugality is a hard sell. Let’s face it. People generally grab as much as they can for themselves and they don’t think doing so has a measurable impact on others. Or if they do, it won’t stop them from continuing. Frugality becomes a temporary virtue during bad times, as it was during the depression, but is just as quickly forgotten when times get better.
I know there are a lot of doomers who are frustrated idealists who envision some kind of powerdown utopia where the rich will be cut down to size. But I think no matter how bad things get, some people will have it better than others. That was true in ancient times as much as it is today and in the future.
Anyone who is posting comments on this blog is a hell of a lot better off than the average 3rd worlder. So everything is relative.
Yes. Thank you, Kathy.
I am so glad you wrote this because there is a lot of irrational fear swirling about and less focus on what’s truly important.
Do you remember “Sleepless in NY” quite awhile ago? That was me. I am still in NYC, and I have just started a blog site to help reach out. Please check it out when you have a moment.
http://freedomguerrilla.com/
Thanks again.
@Ed
of course there will always be people who have better then the others – this is how natural selection works: smarter,better adapted ones win.
about 3rd worlders: this is interesting, I think they may winners, because not much will change in their lifes while 99% of us will be in deep shock,with many unable to survive.
regards
53. Some of us will trade our newly-bankrupted husband for a wealthier one.
I think not dear Kathy. I will have already put away some “spare” cash, knowing of course how men are abused by the family court system, and dump her aging, overspending butt out before she knows what happened. Times have changed, and men are much smarter, and your sexist comment well noted.
Ah, how time changes the meaning of comment 53. When it was written, swanky women from all over Manhattan were divorcing their once high-rolling CEO’s and millionaires for those with greater cash rolls.
I was more of an unflattering comment on the women, Livingwell, than the men, although both should be targetted. The men I speak of already have plenty of “spare cash.” What they no longer have are the means to bankroll their trophy wives, 30 years their senior, in the manner that the wives demand. It was a deal, a “trade” marriage…”you provide the cash, I’ll provide the looks.” When the cash got tight, the “looks” went looking. In one article, the husband said, “I hope you didn’t just marry me for my money.” He remembered his wife after his layoff and after he received his divorce papers: “Why of course I did, Darling.”
He thought she was kidding, according to the article.
If you are that sort of CEO, it was an arrangement you were well aware of when you married.
(Weirdly, this comment never got posted when it was written, and instead was spammed.)
Thanks for your comment.
This post honestly made me want to kill myself. What I gathered from this, is that there is 0 point in doing anything, because any way you look at it we’re all screwed and the world is going to end in horrifying despair anyway. We might as well just take suicide pills now and save everyone the trouble. Thanks, older generations, for ruining everyone’s life.