Rebecca
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To answer your question, people accept it because progress is really the ruling religion of the land today, and religions don’t have to make sense or be logical.
As for Ukraine, Russia forced the PM to take the deal by threatening to cut off the entire country’s supply of gas. The same protestors would be out in the street for a different reason if he hadn’t. I think the man was caught in a catch-22.
At this point in time, the best thing we Americans can do is concentrate on taking care of ourselves and our families and making both they and our communities more resilient. Activism as we once knew it is dead.
I’m working to try and pay down the note on the land and get my small farm up and running as much as possible while I still have a job. The goals for this year are to get the garden/orchard fenced, get the rest of the orchard in the ground, and build the chicken coop and get chickens. Of course, all of that stuff is expensive and only getting more so, so we’ll see how it goes.
Plus, having chickens or more than three days worth of food on hand now marks you as a terrorism suspect too, right? :eyeroll:
Here’s the wild card with China: they are not as far along the Imperial expansion curve as the U.S., and its leaders have NO compunctions about doing whatever they think is necessary to keep their country “on track.” China has been quietly allowing its citizens to colonize Siberia for nearly a decade (and Russia has allowed this, well, because its Siberia) and China has already turned several small African nations into de facto Chinese colonies. When the SHTF in China, I see it as very likely they will just move full steam ahead into Imperial expansion. Taking over smaller countries would be a great way to refill the national coffers a la Rome and every other empire in history. A shooting war would also give them a use for all those young men with no prospects and no hope of marriage. Not that they would go directly up against the U.S. or even Japan (at least not yet), but there’s plenty of small African and far Eastern nations with resources that a country like China could easily take over and exploit.
When I was a child, my father used to tell me not to pay any attention to the stock market. He would often say that the people who run it could rig matters so that it was hitting new highs every day while the majority of people in the country were living in tents.
That simple observation made by a lifelong roughneck is starting to look prescient.
Dave,
I understand basic economics and how inflation and deflation work. I’m not arguing that deflation is not happening in most parts of the economy; you can walk into any big box country in the store today and get a 32″ for as much as $50 less than two or three years ago. Everything is decreasing in price except for necessities.Food prices are one of the things that’s rising, and that goes against the deflationary trend. It’s not just “the price of lettuce in Cleveland,” it’s what people require to stay alive. Remember that any society is only three meals away from anarchy. People all over the U.S. who pay attention have been complaining about how much food prices have gone up, and I’ve seen it myself. I watch my family’s food budget quite closely, and the only thing that has gone down this year overall is coffee. Eggs are up 20 cents this year, agave is up 50 cents (wholesale), cocoa powder just jumped 30 cents (though that will probably come back down somewhat due to holiday sales), etc.
