How do you see it going down? | Emergency Preparedness | Forums

My personal feeling is a long slow slide into socio-economic collapse.

I think the frog in the boiling water analogy is probably the best representation of what is happening to the citizens of this country. From cost of food increases, fossil fuel increases, rising medical costs, etc. The middle class financial base is slowly being eroded away. It cracks me up that the consumer price index does not include fuel and food so the govt can sit there and say with a straight face that inflation is low.

According to the US debt clock we are in debt of over 1,000,000 dollars for every single taxpayer in this country and growing. That is fricking insane! How is that sustainable? How is that going to be paid off?

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

Social security will be drying up, federal and state pensions are drying up. I know of teachers who had to delay their retirement by 3 years due to cuts in state pension funds here in Maine.

People are scared right now, there is to much unknowns and uncertainty in their world. People are struggling to put food on the table. When people have to decide between heating oil and groceries, that is a huge burden to bare. I hear from teachers and police alike how much of a impact this is having on our community. Teachers can see the strain on the students faces due to the financial stress at home. Our local school district is actually starting a food cupboard and clothes donation center in the school, I was shocked when I heard that the other day. My LEO friends are reporting huge spikes in break ins and violent assaults. One of the local trucking companies had almost 2500 gallons of diesel stolen over the winter.

Outside of a major natural disaster such as yellowstone, asteroid strike etc. There won't be some world wide shtf moment. The boogie man that is being shoved down our throat will change every decade or two so that the government can keep the average citizen in fear and keep pushing the expansion of the war machine that we are as a country. We have been in constant conflict for our entire history, there isn't one year where we have had peace

http://en.wikipedia......operations

We will continue flexing our military muscles around the world putting us further and further into debt, and straddling our future generations with a burden of debt they will not be able to carry.

I posted last week about the proposed missile defense system they want to build on the east coast because of concerns about Iran and North Korea and concerns about them launching nukes at us. The pentagon even said that it was not required but the sub-committee ignored their recommendations and still pushed it through. Even the pentagon recognizes that Iran and North Korea are nothing but paper tigers with their sabre rattling of missile testing. I imagine there are some serious military contractors lobbyist lining the pockets of the politicians while we continue going into debt. The real people to be afraid of IMO is the Russians and Chinese govt's. Anyone who thinks the cold war had ended is way off base IMO.

The value of the dollar is weakening, what happens when China finally decides to really flex it's economic muscle? It was announced last month that petro-china is now the largest oil producer in the world.

http://www.forbes.co.....-producer/

What happens if they decide to decouple the price of oil from the weakening dollar to the yuan. You would see Countries flock from the dollar as the reserve currency into the yuan. Which would decimate the green back even worse. Do we go in and liberate china? There are some that say this is the real reason we went into in Iraq and Libya, because they threatened to do just that.

In Sept 2008 there was a electronic run on the treasury, no one ever really explained where that money went to,

feature=related

Throw in the fact Europe is starting to unravel

http://www.reuters.c.....GC20120517

http://www.stuff.co......ault-fears

http://www.telegraph.....erity.html

http://www.theage.co.....z1vAHYbFXb

http://www.aljazeera.....32391.html

this could get ugly

I have a friend who's mother lives down on the Maine coast by herself, his father had passed away years ago. He stopped in to visit her one day several years ago and when he walked in the house was 45 degrees. She couldn't afford oil and only turned it up when she knew visitors were coming. I don't want that to be my story or my wives.

I think you'll see a reverting back to multi-generational families living under the same roof again as people try and conserve money and take care of their own.

The US consumer is not innocent in this either. The idea of living within your means and saving for when you want to buy something went out of fashion years ago. In 2008 when the financial crisis happened I had a 22 year old kid working for me and he asked me one day why I think the financial crisis started.

I looked at him and said do you want to know the truth?

He replied Yes.

I told him the crisis was because of him.

He looked at me with confusion and asked what do you mean?

Paul, I said, you are a young guy in your early 20's, I pay you 13.50 a hour. You have a brand new 25,000 truck sitting in my parking lot. You bought you and your girlfriend brand new matching snowmobiles and four-wheelers last year. You have financed your next five years of employment to acquire toys. The issue is that you want to have what your parents have but you don't want to put in the 20 years of hard work to acquire them. You have more personal debt then I have, but the issue isn't just you, that's the way everybody lives today. When I was your age I had to go down to the local finance company to get a car loan. My grandmother had to come down and co-sign because she knew the company president and she signed for a 1000 dollar loan which I paid back in 12 months at a 100 dollars a month. You, you went and looked at new trucks and the finance manager faxed your application to 4 different banks around the country and you ended up getting financed through M&T bank in buffalo and the kicker is no one even called me to verify your employment.

So each year we make our garden bigger. Each year we try and replace something that consumes energy and money with something that doesn't. People ask me what my goal is, when I tell them my goal is to be dirt poor they look at me with confusion. My goal is to have zero debt and zero bills.

If you can produce your own food, produce your own heat, produce your own energy etc. How much do you really need to live on?

My goal is to escape the middle class and to be able to live comfortably at just above poverty level and to totally escape the consumerist lifestyle that this country has become. If that makes me a nut job than I will carry that mantle with pride.