Look Ahead And Describe The Average Day
Readers suggested a topic on the economic future. “One topic of interest to me is just exactly how the recession/depression is most likely to effect the average person on a day to day basis. I was talking to a friend in Oregon about this last night and she maintains people will still get their houses cleaned, as the average working stiff doesn’t have time to do this (she cleans houses).”
“I said, nope, no go. Same with lots of other services, and she doesn’t believe gas could go down due to lowered demand. I do. Someone want to look ahead in the future one year and describe the average day for the average American?”
Another asked, “I’d like a weekend topic on what a depression would really be like. Personally, I cannot imagine it. I’ve heard all about the original from lots of my elders, but the reality is that they weren’t too affected because they were all farmers that owned their land and they had food a plenty and didn’t use plumbing/electricity.”
“America is much different now. How would people eat? Would there really be “Hoovervilles”? Would everybody’s electricity and water really get shut off? I’d be interested in ‘real-world’ thought experiments about what it would be like.”
One on employment, “How about a weekend topic on local job losses or job gains? The whole thing depends on jobs holding up.”
One on general prices. “Ok so how can Secular Deflation affect America ? I’ve only know Inflation and growth my whole life. Hard to imagine.”
One asked, “Which do you prefer, Inflation or Recession?”
One saw this, “I think Americans will start to save money. With Deflation saving money makes sense though the Government may call it Hoarding and try and tax it. So different than Inflation where we all saw the buy now or get priced out forever mindset.”
Another predicted, “The big difference in a depression this time, as opposed to last time, is that people would have to get used to living without much if any credit, and with much less energy.”
“One aspect would be a huge shrinkage in square footage per person consumed. People would have to move in with relatives. Even if the purchase price of housing became dirt cheap, there is still the operating costs to consider. IMO much of the shrinkage in spending would occur in housing.”
“Automobiles would be next. Now matter how high energy prices are, gasoline savings alone will not be enough to help. America might shift from two cars back to one, with carpooling, telecommuting, and bicycle commuting.”
“There will be pressure to allow more mixed use in existing use-separated suburbs, so people can walk to the store. With plenty of people looking for work as peddlers, the milkman and other vendors might make a comeback. Eating out would become less common.”
“The MSM would continue to downsize, gradually replaced by semi-pro bloggers and entertainers with less overhead and less costly lifestyles, with new technologies making this feasible. Colleges and universities would have to cut costs, requiring more teaching from profs, to lower tuition or face losing customers to on-line education.”
“There will be less air travel. Camping might make a comeback. The expansion of domestic servants into the middle class will reverse.”
“And, asset values will deflate relative to goods purchased with work today, reducing the difference in wealth between those with savings and those without.”
The Review Journal. “People in the Las Vegas neighborhood saw all the cameras and trucks and buses and police on the streets Thursday, and they began to trickle out of their houses to find out what was going on. Soon…they got their answer, as New York Sen. Hillary Clinton began walking up the street of low-slung houses near Eastern and Washington avenues.”
“‘I think we’re slipping toward a recession,’ she said. ‘A couple of people that I met on the street, they work in construction. They tell me it’s slowed down.’”
“Clinton and her busload of traveling press moved from there to the popular local Mexican restaurant, where a ’roundtable’ that was actually square passed a microphone around to tell her people’s concerns about the mortgage crisis and foreclosures.”
“In broken English, one woman told Clinton how she wasn’t making money as a broker anymore. ‘I have no income at all,’ she said. ‘So how will I survive?’”
“Choking up with emotion, the woman said, ‘In my neighborhood, there are brand-new homes, but the value is nothing. I’m glad you are here so I can tell you, because you’re going to be the president, I know.’”
The Herald Tribune. “Holiday sales came in below most predictions and retail analysts say things are only going to get worse in 2008. The results were so bad, it had some retail analysts uttering that dreaded word: recession.”
“‘The holiday season was a disaster,’ said Howard Davidowitz, chairman of a national retail consultant based in New York City. ‘As far as 2008, the worst is yet to come. The consumer has the highest debt they’ve ever had, negative savings, and there is tremendous inflation on food and energy. The consumer is under water and getting worse.’”
“In addition the jobless rate has climbed to a two-year high of 5 percent.”
The Bradenton Herald. “Local manufacturing employees are feeling the squeeze of companies reducing their operations or closing facilities entirely.”
“‘Typically, during the month of December, our applications rate drops to one or two a week because people aren’t interested to put in applications and interview,’ said Kirsten Regal, head of human resources for manufacturer Sun Hydraulics. ‘This December, we received on average 30 to 50 applications a week. It was extraordinary.’”
The Atlanta Journal Constitution. “For the fourth consecutive day, people waited in long lines Thursday for a shot at a job at a new Wal-Mart in DeKalb County, pushing the total number of applicants beyond 10,000.”
“That’s four times the entire population of Avondale Estates, the community next to the planned Memorial Drive store.”
“Beginning Monday, after virtually no advertising or any signs, the throngs of hopeful applicants continued to pour into a church converted into a job processing center — all vying for only 350 to 400 available jobs, according to Wal-Mart officials.”
“Kamal Oliver, an employment and training analyst with a county organization that helped facilitate Wal-Mart’s job fair this week, said the turnout dwarfed the numbers of job hunters who applied for a job last year at the Wal-Mart in north DeKalb County.”
“‘This says to me that a lot of people are looking for work,’ he said.”
The Desert Sun. “As the controversial Eden Rock project navigates La Quinta’s city approvals process, officials and residents continue to debate what housing best fits the city’s image.”
“Much of the debate focuses on housing density. When complete, Cordoniz will have 142 two-story homes, at 10 units to the acre. La Quinta permits 16 units per acre in some areas.”
“‘They are an eyesore,’ PGA West resident Cristina Deniel said. ‘The homes are very, very close together.’”
“La Quinta Mayor Don Adolph, who lives at PGA West, had even harsher words for Cordoniz: ‘The houses, my God, they’re on top of each other. It looks like a tenement.’”
“Marylyn Moore, Cordoniz’s sales and marketing director, said the prices ranged from $300,000 to $450,000. ‘With the land costs and developer fees, the only way to make it work was with higher densities,’ Moore said. ‘We determined there wasn’t anything new in La Quinta at this price point.’”
“When Cordoniz came up at this week’s Planning Commission discussion on Eden Rock, Commissioner Paul Quill told a room full of PGA West homeowners he was proud to have approved Cordoniz. La Quinta needed more high-density housing complexes like Cordoniz, he said.”
“Homeowners responded with loud jeers and boos. About half of them left the meeting.”
“Afterwards, Quill said the higher-density designs would allow more people to afford homes in La Quinta. ‘We’re not all loaded,’ he said.”
Hey first one here. Appropriate post, what would a depression be like for us. Probably quite scary. We don’t make anything for our selves any more, import tons of food, massive numbers of jobs in the financial and other industries that won’t be needed, skills not necessarily transferable….plus, I think the level of violence in our society has gone up dramatically. Things could happen today that would never happen in the 20s and 30s. As for me, I’ve got some gold and silver, investments all outside the dollar and some guns enough for protection and trading value, I hope 10 years from now I look back and think “wow, was I paranoid”, but, as I keep telling my brother, whatever happens, our family is eating.
Guns for trading value? The only purpose of my guns is to take your gold and silver! The only thing your family is going to be eating is imitation gruel in one of my slave camps while I spend my days deciding whether adding another dozen former hollywood actresses to my harem is worth the trouble/drama. I envision a Mad Max Thunderdome landscape without the crazy hair and woman power. Frankly I’m kind of looking forward to it.
By the way I hope my wife doesn’t read this blog or I’m a dead man.
You’re married????
Holy cow! I figured you were the silent loner that lives next door.
You’re thinking of me.
You’re married????
Holy cow! I figured you were the silent loner that lives next door
I figured him for one of those still living in his parents basement. lol
People like you get shot the first week.
Yeah, he might be if he’s talking about harems, etc. Pretty much exaggeration I bet. But I think there’s some truth to what he’s saying. I recall a lady in 1999 who had a huge (5,000 gallon?) water tank installed in her back yard way up high to gravity feed her house and she got a nice write-up in the newspaper. I thought to myself at the time that it was a recipe for disaster if SHTF. “Come get all the water from me” in neon lights, and you can be sure the thugs and desperate people would. No way could she or a small group of people defend that resource. I don’t see a Mad Max type of situation coming, but if it did, I think it’s better not to have - and certainly not to advertise - resources. I’m well-trained in weapons and have some, but I don’t kid myself. I’m one person. And besides, since I’m a law-abiding citizen, won’t the government come and take away my guns so the criminals can have at me?
Ben, Mike:
I thought it was pretty obvious that I was completely joking… way beyond “exaggeration”. I guess there are enough wingnut gold bugs on this blog where you might be inclined to think that somebody w/ that mindset existed!
Ben’s post was pretty blunt w/o any sense of playfulness - I’m beginning to think he’s not the omniscient demigod I thought he was!
I thought Ben’s quote was the funniest quote of the week.
Don’t get me wrong, I may no longer believe in his omnipotence but his blog did save my bacon from buying a house in April of 2007…so he’s still my hero.
this blog didn’t save me it merely validated me.
TxChick completed me.
his blog did save my bacon from buying a house it didn’t save my brother-in-law from buying a house in Cape Coral. I bet he’s going to know way more than me about Florida real-estate.
gold and silver are very low-calorie. Would they still really have any value?
That’s the ticket. All the people who buy gold for security against a failed society fail to realize that commodities not bullion are the only things with intrinsic value. Water, flour, yeast, coffee, salt, etc. I don’t have a problem with owning gold as a hedge against inflation with a small part of your overall portfolio although I think there are better ways to go about that. If however you want insurance against a failed society then a secret horde of basic commodities is the way to go.
And cigarettes.
And kitty litter.
Don’t forget joshua tree seeds. Entertainment will still be important for psychological reasons.
I’m continually amazed how anyone alive a few decades can ignore thousands of years of history in questioning gold’s “intrinsic value”.
All the gold in the universe can’t fix a burst appendix or quench a thirst for water. Still got to have a counter-party to meet those needs. Gold has only the value someone else puts on it, just like paper money. A burst appendix, on the other hand, does indeed have a value all its own for the sufferer.
So what? *Everything* has only the value someone else puts on it.
There’s always a counterparty, and if they don’t want what you have you’re screwed. Throughout history, gold has been the readily accepted payment that was always taken, because if the person you need something from doesn’t want whatever it is you have (other than gold) then they know they can use the gold to get it from someone that does.
So what kind of a response is that?
Neither my gas station nor my doctors accepts gold as payment.
Have you tried?
We’re debating a scenario where fiat currencies hold no value for anyone. Until that time comes, they have no reason to take anything else. But when that day comes, if you don’t have gold, you don’t have sh!t.
Neither my gas station nor my doctors accepts gold as payment.
Any time I want, i can exchange the gold for something the doctor will take. Today, that’s dollars - more dollars every week, in fact, up over 100% since I bought it.
But I assure you, if I wanted to, I could pay the doctor directly with gold, even today. Just not at full value
Similarly, i could pay him in Mercedes or Rolexes. Again, not at full value. Barter works that way.
http://www.abc.net.au/backyard/shipwrecks/wa/batavia.htm
Like this ? But in the end they were captured and killed. interesting story a real life “survivor”
Canary,
Food. We’re the world’s largest food exporter. That said, we overproduce ‘bad’ food (corn and soy,) due to govt subsidies.
Crime. It’s been going down by most measures over the last 20 years. Violent crime is down in the aggregate, through reported crime and drug convictions are up.
FIRE (finance, insurance, real estate) jobs have been increasing, and are ripe for a big shakeout. Expect on-going outsourcing, deskilling due to technology, increased inequality as most jobs in the field require less skill, and the bulk of the profits going to the few at the top. Add a recession, and demand for these jobs will contract quickly.
Precious metals. No prediction from me.
By 2008 year end, I see:
1. Housing market deteriorates further. But don’t expect to see local gots bulldozing unoccupied tracts quite yet. Expect to see lenders starting to rethink foreclosing — it’s expensive for them, and with too much inventory, and the foreclosure pipeline full, they might start preferring an ‘owner’ housesitter to an unoccupied house.
2. Recession. No GDP growth, job cuts on Wall St and Main St.
3. More consumer debt. We’ve built a highly specialized economy/culture with huge built-in fixed costs. Most people can’t, won’t, or don’t how how to, cut their expenses by 20% or so. Debt has become the new version of a savings cushion, and a lot of people haven’t twigged to the fact that their skills are increasingly irrelevant to the modern US economy.
Soy is not a bad food - it’s a great cheap & healthy source of protein.
Agreed. It’s the use (heavily processed major input to a lot of junk food,) that makes it ‘bad.’
America could have a heathly and cheap basic food package built around soy and, say, rice. Hasn’t happened in most places, though.
Rice is the least nutritious high-calorie carbohydrate. It’s a good source of calories and carbs, but if you had a very restricting diet you would do much better with corn or wheat or yams than rice.
The food of choice for realtors will be rat kabob.
You really think they’ll resort to cannibalism?
hehe
Eh. Rice is really a non-starter. There are too few places it’ll grow. I like wheat as a crop; lots of solid nutrition, it grows everywhere, and it doesn’t deplete teh soil the way corn and, I think, soy do. (Of course, I’m from Oklahoma, so I could also be biased.)
Soy is a legume and thus is good for the soil (adds nitrogen). It was brought to this country from China to repleat the soil’s nitrogen content after the ravages of corn and cotton crops.
Corn and Soybean rotation is a standard in the midwest.
“More consumer debt.”
I envision less and more expensive consumer debt as it becomes questionable as to whether such debt will be paid off.
Cash will be king.
Listening to local politicians brag that, statistically, crime is going down is like believing the real estate paid economists, who spout off biased statistics. Trust me, crime is not down, anywhere. Elected DA’s and hand picked Police commissioners are there to make the bigwig look good. Open your eyes and see the home invasions, bank robberies, car jackings, petty theft and drug related violence. Then tell me if you truly believe the statistics.
Agreed 100%! I have friends that work at the Cook County (Chicago) courthouse - the stories aren’t pretty and getting worse. Home invasions, especially targeting the elderly are increasing.
No surprise, according to gov’t reports inflation is under control - so why not crime too. In the big city the worker drones scurry around in their cars like roaches - but riding the bus, walking the streets - one sees a different picture.
Friends of mine in Denver recently had their car, and several others in their exclusive neighborhood, broken into. The cops didn’t even bother sending anyone to take a report - basically said, take it up with your insurance company. I don’t believe for a minute that “crime is down.” It’s more like corrupt and incompetent police departments are choosing to turn a blind eye to, or under-report, more and more crimes.
No that would not be why the police didn’t do anything about the car robberies. It would be because there is no evidence to collect in order to find the culprits. CSI is TV - not the real world.
Smash and grab from a parked vehicle during the night? Forget it - they could never find the culprits. No sense in wasting the time filling out the forms.
Gold is for optimists, go long canned goods!
The Mad Mikey Depression Gang is already quietly plannning to hijack three monster semi trucks for trading out of Grandpa’s old barn. One with cigarettes, one with Jack Daniels and one with CHOCOLATE bars.
BYOWW …Bring your OWN wild women
Why wait for a depression? Sounds like a party right NOW! And please tell me you live in Washington state.
Cigs, booze, and chocolate - now those are commodities. What do people think they’ll do with gold? Take a Kugerand down to the blackmarket and ask for change?
You have the right idea, just gotta make some secure caches - spread the stuff around - and vacuum pack the cigs and chocolate.
Wow,
I would bring my own wild men
I can share second hand (via my wife and inlaws) what happens when a financial crisis pushes a society to the edge of collapse. I was student in bulgaria in 1995, right at the end of the first bosnian war. Bulgaria had come out from communism in 1989, and after the bloom of the reformist parties wore off, the bulgarians voted a reconstituted communist party (socialists) back into power on a nostalgia vote. They stayed in power from 94 to 97, but toward the end were openly manipulating the economy. I think it was 96 and there was an election, and they managed to hold off economic collapse until just after the election (I wonder if that is the plan in the US?). I don’t know the exact mechanism of the collapse, I think it involved some bad lending, not paying back international debt, and a sharp drop in the GDP of the country.
Anyway the collapse was pretty ugly. The dollar went from 1 to 78 to, at one point, 1 to 2000+. Looking at the inflation chart for bulgaria in 1996, it was 123%, in 1997 it was 1061%. The impact on the everyday people was profound:
- Food scarcity. My sister and mother in law had to queue in hours long lines to get food. I’m sure you have heard of this before (from WWII type of stories) but often as they stood in line the price of food would increase several times. Many people were “hungry” (at or below subsistence calorie level) during this time. I’m not sure if there was starvation or not. My in-laws were lucky because the grandmothers on both sides were peasants, and peasants stockpile large quantities of food in their cellars. They were also lucky because we were able to send infusions of dollars at critical points.
- Widespread electrical problems. There were daily rolling blackouts as the country couldn’t afford energy to keep the lights on. For the first time, people’s power was shut off for non payment.
- Rise of the dollar as the defacto currency of the country. Even before this, the dollar was often used to quote the price of large consumer items because of high inflation. Payment was in leva, but the underlying price was dollar denominated.
- Consumer product scarcity. Anything that could not be produced in Bulgaria was either extremely expensive or not available. I’ve heard for stories of tampons disappearing from the store shelves for months, for example. Also shopkeepers hoarding available merchandise.
-Eventually civil unrest, culminating in a mini-revolution (bloodless) in 1997 which overthrew the socialists.
The situation in bulgaria was eventually stablized with help from I think the world bank, which helped them set up a currency board and recommended austerity measures. Things were quite grim for several years, but by 2001 you could tell that things had turned the corner and were really getting better. Now, in 2008, bulgaria is doing quite well, although it is still one of the poorest countries in Europe.
A very sobering story.
Thank you for telling.
Thanks for sharing MattR. Funny how 2 years ago people here were merely talking about slow downs and slight price declines. Now openly talking about economic depression is OK and even a real possibility.
Yeah, I hope I look back too and say “Boy, was I paranoid!” But I’m very concerned that that won’t happen. It seems that so many people are oblivious to what is happening right around them. I bring up the subject of the bad economy and they look at me like I have 2 heads. These people will be totally unprepared! I’m trying to purchase silver and I’m stocking up on various survival supplies. In the meantime, my co-workers are talking about fashions, the lastest movie stars, etc, etc. I can’t believe it!!
“In broken English, one woman told Clinton how she wasn’t making money as a broker anymore. ‘I have no income at all,’ she said. ‘So how will I survive?’”
So she can’t find work anywhere. Is this because former mortgage brokers are unemployable?
Plenty of jobs in Atlanta at the Wal Mart.
Plenty of jobs for people that actually want to work. Go to McDonald’s, work hard, and you will climb the ladder. Oh, that hard work part is against your beliefs? You might get dirty? Then go f-ck yourself.
I still say that everybody should have to have a job that is dirty and nasty at some point in their life. I’ve seen a lot of people that have never had such a job and they are pretty worthless to humanity, regardless of their income level.
Having worked in the fields as a kid picking berries, garlic, moving pipe, etc., I can only say: You’re absolutely right.
For one summer job, I was cleaning a warehouse to prepare for a wholesaler to move in, and then working the dock, checking off truck and receiving pallets of stuff. I was there maybe 8 weeks total, and it wasn’t all that nasty, but I remember it more than any other job. Felt like honest work.
I agree. My grandfather made all of his grandkids work construction so we wouldn’t ever be ‘too good’ to get dirty. Its helped me quite a few times in my career; but I’ll never forget working concrete. Yuck! Yes, I’ve ruined clothes getting dirty, but *everyone* notices you’re willing to ‘get the job done’ and the ’special bonuses’ always compensated for the clothing.
Anyone who won’t get dirty… generally cannot manage a large team.
Got popcorn?
Neil
My first job above the level of paper boy was cleaning dog runs in a kennel for over bred show dogs. Disgusting creatures, disgusting job, but good motivation to better myself. So I moved up to a job at Jack in the Box at age 14. More motivation. I think all kids should have part-time jobs as soon as they’re old enough to handle it.
Absolutely- I’ve unloaded boxcars of furniture onto 18-wlrz and delivered them to stores, cleaned the public toilets at the local stadium (women are THE worst), a housekeeper for a motel, “flipped” gut bombs @ BurgerKing by the time I was 16. I know the value of a dollar. To bad the FED does not.
Concerning the bullion bashing. Gold and silver are a store of value beyond something to look at. The medicinal qualities of silver alone made me a believer. A sliver coin in milk makes it last a long time without refrigeration. Do you not think that all these drug dealers have scales? Scales will be at a premium I’d suspect. Guns and ammo- listen to me HA!
This mindset should not be an end all to scare yourself into becoming a mole for the next few years, type of post, but luck favors the prepared, dah-ling (
I think everyone should do good physical work, but it doesn’t have to be a job. Real gardening or working on improving home can do wonders. In fact, the more I desk jockey, the more I look forward to physical labor on the weekends and summer evenings.
I absolutely agree.
There should be more women out washing their cars. In wet t-shirts.
No. They should be washing MY car in wet t-shirts.
Just leave off the t-shirts.
I’m forever amazed at our cultural bias against physical labor, as if it’s beneath our dignity to expend calories to move objects, unless of course, it’s a piece of gym equipment we’ve paid the privilege of sweating over. I like getting my hands dirty– cleaning my house, fixing stuff– it gives me a sense of control over my environment since so much is out of our control. I look around and I’m the only one in my neighborhood that washes and waxes my own car. FYI, I’m somewhat of a girly girl with a graduate degree, so I seem to be breaking all the cultural rules about physical work.
I’m a tiny girl and have never liked washing car so it’s a trade off. I pay to have it washed, but I clean the house, I did all the paint, flooring, faucets and and light fixtures in the last house. Love to garden, too - love hauling around the wheelbarrow, mixing soil, digging up beds and replanting. You are so right about controlling environment - I’ve been saying the same forever - you have no control over the outside world, but you can at least control your home so that it can be a sanctuary (not in the newage spa veracular) from the outside craziness.
SaladSD…Do you have a boat ?
No, why?
SaldSD
I think I have you beat. My husband and I each have 3 college and post-grad degrees. I weigh all of 100 lbs. When we were building a very large outbuilding (like 40 x 80 with 12 foot walls) on our property, I hopped on the equipment and ran the largest backhoe made by Case at that time. Having grown up in a family that owned construction equipment and steel trucks, it was a peice of cake. Our crew found it very funny. When I ask if they had a problem with a woman running backhoe, they responded “no -it wasn’t that I was a woman, it was that I was a lawyer running backhoe and doing it better than any guy they had ever seen.”
I also scrape and paint the house myself (or at least before I ruined my shoulder with sports.) We would always buy the bouse with a greaat structure in a good neighborhood but that needed work. We did all of it - ripping out walls, building walls, laying subfloor, doing the roof, wiring, plumbing, custom building all the cabinets (hubby learned from his dad who had done woodworking for years), pouring concrete including steps,…..
I always figured that if someone without a high school diploma could learn to do that stuff, so could I. (And I hate being helpless and having to have someone else do something for me.)
Rock on, Ann! I admire anyone with your can-do spirit.
Can-do??? Hmmm…I always figured it came from being cheap, stubborn and independent about managing on my own….. I like your expression better.
Hey Ann. GOOD for You. I’m the same way. I could be a MUTI-Zillionaire and I would still want to do my own, grunge work.
I know I can do the job 2 times better than anyone else could or would want to and it gives Me pride to do it myself.
You don’t have to be cheap to want to do everything yourself.
‘ Oh, that hard work part is against your beliefs? ‘
- The young ‘Chad’ and ‘Montana,’ are not going to work at slinging burgers etc.
The whole ‘text message’ - cell phone - internet instantaneous thinking trained them for ‘instant’ gratification.
“I still say that everybody should have to have a job that is dirty and nasty at some point in their life. ”
I made big bucks ($2/hour) on a slaughterhouse cleaning crew when I was ten. I don’t know that it made me a better person though.
In High School I worked at a resort doing “convention set-up” - slinging tables and chairs for banquets, conventions, etc. We worked our asses off for not much pay. Also had a short stint as a busboy (as a 16-year-old) before we got fired for brawling with a group of guests. They rehired us after some dining room patrons (who had seen who started the fight) spoke up for us and threatened to boycott the place if they didn’t bring us back.
Bailing hay by day, busing tables by night. Farmer would pick me up just before sun up, every lunch was like a picnic prepared and served by the farmers wife and his sons wife’s. The work was HOT, hard & dirty the pay was well earned what there was of it. That beer at the end of the day was the best-damned tasting thing I ever had! Dad picked me up in the afternoon, when he figured I had sweat all a boy could take; he would drink a brew BS with the men, then off we went. I showered ate dinner then a few hours tossing food and plates around, made even less. The farm job was the best ever! Simple times and life long memories. Agree with all of you hard work is necessary to make a person whole.
Couldnt agree more. I worked in a warehouse humping 50lb boxes and screenprinting all through high school and college. It was hard work and paid squat. However, 10 years later it makes me appreciate my current salary and job that much more.
Same here… Summers on a farm when I was in jr high, then various factory gigs, also a short career as a janitor. Also did theatrical staging and a lot of grip work in the film industry. Loading/unloading semis full of gear… 12 hr days… Fun! But now I do totally appreciate my current salary/gig…
And same here. Like AnnScott, I have an alphabet soup of academic letters after my name, but the best job I ever had was as a union stagehand. Our local covered a couple of arenas and one large legit house, and it was very satisfying work, because at the end of the day something was accomplished. I later taught college for 12 years, which in its way was gratifying, but I got tired of endless committees spinning their wheels (a group of college faculty couldn’t organize a pissing contest in a brewery), and the college where I was employed was busy eliminating tenure and cutting faculty. So now I work in corporate IT, which I mostly enjoy, but often, when sitting through some endless meeting where everyone is talking past each other and nothing is really getting accomplished, I think about unloading those semis and putting on a show. Great exercise, and you don’t have to take the job home with you.
I grew up working construction since I was 8 years old!! Yes that is right 8 years old. My dad was the boss and every time a new inspector would come by and ask my name and who my father was. He taught me the value of a good education!! It was much easier to get smart than it was to work hard in the long run. I had a broken collarbone in Kindergarten and he still made me work. I remember him saying “Well You still have one good arm-USE IT!!” I was pissed at my dad for days on this one. Truth is, it now makes me laugh and I think him for instilling a solid work ethic and adaptability in me. He was hard corps due to be raised by his grandmother on a farm and she survived the great depression and told him about how hard things were.
Construction was my true education as well. It was there that I found that I had to pass on those late night parties because if I didn’t show for work in the morning there were 12 guys waiting on the street for my job. I worked sick, I worked hurt, in the bitter cold and brutal heat. Carried more weight than I could have ever imagined, climbed more stairs, shoveled more crete, gravel and dirt than I knew existed for one man to move. And at the end of each day, as I walked away from the job, I knew I had done something and the soreness in my body was a reminder that accomplishment takes effort. I lost my academic elitism when it became clear to me that Bruno Cuda, uneducated 50 year old Italian immigrant, could handle a wheel barrow better than me, out shovel me, and knew from experience how to handle not only the tools, but also the people.
It was there that I began to understand the difference between those who do and those who talk about doing.
Yes, each of us should have such experiences early and perhaps throughout our lives.
“I still say that everybody should have to have a job that is dirty and nasty at some point in their life.”
The only reason to take such jobs is to eat and keep the snow off your bed. Our society has too many safety nets for our citizenry to need such jobs, which is why I do not see soup kitchen lines a la 1930’s this time around.
I hear You NY. My wife works for a Restaurant. Started at KFC. NO EXPERIENCE. NO COLLEGE.
Was a Manager in 6 MONTHS. How did she do it? She worked her @ss off , had a positive attitude and always treated her job like it was ‘Her Business’ and her life depended it being a huge success.
You can still get somewhere today with honesty, hard work and a desire to be the best , for yourself and for others.
Very few people today, just don’t get it.
I used to work in a record album factory on Western in LA. I sat at this machine and put the cardboard backing on the glued liner. It was noisy and dirty and smelled like glue and the foreman yelled at me all the time. And it paid minimum. I got a call to try out for a union music job in Las Vegas and boy I was out of there fast.
Speaking the language might be a start to finding another job.
I have heard a lot of former mortgage types are gravitating toward retirement planning. Frightening stuff. Avoid at all costs!
Bankruptcy accounting,consulting, etc. should be a growth industry.
Yep - more folks trying to hustle elders w/ reverse mortgages, inappropriate annuities and other high-fee dubious financial vehicles. It’s just a matter of simple physics - financial predators seek the largest pockets of opportunity with the lowest barriers/defenses. It’s like water seeking the lowest level.
It’s gonna be ugly out there for unsophisticated seniors. Think of the wife who wants to live independently, recently-deceased hubby handed all the finances, kids live several states away — and the nice fellow who cold calls her looking to help with her financial future. Ugh - I know this secanario is being repeated somewhere every 15 seconds (or maybe every two minutes - I don’t know) in this country - and it bugs the hell out of me. It’s hard enough to keep my parents from making some dumb financial moves - and I live near ‘em. Stock brokers are trying to push hot garbage at them (REITs, Fannie Mae) all the time of late.
You’re right on the mark. I talk about this with my mom all the time - the worst potential offenders, however, are not just strangers - but companies she already does business with! They are merciless, every trip to the bank is an adventure as sleazeball “personal bankers” hawk everything imaginable.
” … the worst potential offenders, however, are not just strangers …”
Be careful of churches as well. Scammers love to tap congregations.
I’ve got friends who keep their money at full service brokers like ML, and sheesh you can tell they’re churning their accounts all the time. Yet it would be nice to someone “handle” investments as I effed up on my return last year, overlooked a couple securities sales (which were losses, too) because my mind just kinda went walkabout while I was cruising through TaxCut. I mean even if I had a CPA I might not have thought to tell them of it.
I saw this happen in the early ’90s recession - absolutely frightening. The least financially literate person I knew was pitching investments and annuities in an attempt to start a new career after he got laid off. I let him test his pitch on me in an effort to give him a chance to practice, and ended up advising him to keep looking for a real job.
Financial services hucksters prey on people like that during recessions with MLM-style commission sales scams like that one.
‘Foreman says these jobs are goin’ boys,
And they ain’t comin’ back’
http://tinyurl.com/2wj5dq
“In broken English, one woman told Clinton how she wasn’t making money as a broker anymore. ‘I have no income at all,’ she said. ‘So how will I survive?’”
Maybe she can get survival tips from all the FBs she put into mortgages and houses they couldn’t possibly afford, who are now out on the street.
She could always move back to her country of origin.
We live 40 miles from Washington D.C., in Virginia where it’s countrified. I just came to know of a lady here who’s been living with her three children with an outdoor toilet for two years. She can’t afford a trash service, so it gets piled up in a shed outdoors. (For two years now, mind you). They have a woodstove for heat and a bathtub in the kitchen. The rent is $300 a month.
That’s what it’s like with no income. At least the outdoor toilet is provided by a service, but at $100 a month she’s behind on that.
I called Habitat for Humanity to see if they could help her but the man said “we don’t just give homes away”. I thought I’d heard that somewhere before.
Ah yes, Habitat for Humanity. The old Eric Hoffer quote comes to mind.
“Every great cause starts out as a movement, degenerates into a business, and ends up a racket.”
Habitat will be put out of business by the new owners of all the foreclosed homes. As another poster pointed out, they will let people like her rent their houses for peanuts just to keep them occupied.
Isn’t is obvious that the US has more housing than it needs right now?
I don’t think Habitat for Humanity is degenerated into a racket just yet. Habitat requires the new owners’ sweat equity into the house as a sort of downpayment. So, they don’t just give away houses like a charity. They make people work for them as everyone on this blog would like to see done.
Indeed about the working. Now, the payments would work for her as H for H houses average $350 a month. But it requires an income of $27,000. I can’t see how a one-person family could come up with that kind of income in a low-skilled job around here. $10 an hour times 40 times 52 is only $20,800 a year.
It’s so ironic that Habitat requires an income and Countrywide didn’t.
I worked with someone who got a HH house and complained she couldn’t pay for it. Her wages in 1995 were like 12000. Really, she would have been better in Section 8, which is not bad in this town because there’s no real ghettoes here.
I read somewhere that H for H has a steep foreclosure rate. Can anyone confirm this, or have a different take?
“Afterwards, Quill said the higher-density designs would allow more people to afford homes in La Quinta. ‘We’re not all loaded,’ he said.”
Ugh, faced with renting or buying into a human storage facility I think I”d prefer to rent. Tenement is the right word for these cramped beehives.
Effects of a recession - Not to get into any generation wars, but I think it would be good for (some people in) generation X, Y, and Z to have to live within their means and work hard, at least for a little while…and stop being so enamored of having “stuff”, or being labeled “consumers” instead of “citizens”.
As a matter of fact, I think that the retiring boomers can learn a lot from an occasional bought of belt tightening every once in a while as well.
Arroyogrande, I was going to make the same observation.
I think early Boomers (1946-1959) will probably be OK, thier parents went through the War and the Depression, so some of the lessons of the older generation will have stuck. That being said, those old lessons are rusty, so there will be some that remember and do ok, and some others who have become too used to the affluence to adapt.
Younger folks - the late Gen Y’s and Milleniums are young enough to be adaptable, plus aren’t as far up the career ladder, hence don’t have as much disposable income.
I know when I was in my late teens/early 20’s that it was pretty easy to live on practically nothing, and I was young enough to be happy living in sub-par rentals (and squats) that I’d have difficulty accepting these days, with my old a creaky bones. It was an adventure then, now it would just be an ordeal.
I think the Gen-Xers and late, late Baby Boomers will have the worst time of it. Too young to remember the economic hardships of the early part of the 20th C, too old to be able to treat it as lark and make do. People born between, say, 1965 - 1985 have never known an America not swilling with money and material wealth. It going to be a real shock to them to have to do without, because they’ve never had to.
Yes, its a sweeping generalisation - but I really do think that the very old and very young will find the fortitude to adapt, while the -in-betweenies’ will find it much harder to do without all the trappings of materialism.
I’m a Boomer. My 19-year-old asked me what Dad and I did in our 20s as a treat. I said, “We each bought a Snickers bar.” It’s the truth.
Popsicles were a treat to us as kids. Now a kid is pi$$ed off if they don’t get an iPod and a cell phone.
NYCityBoy–
Yep. And my parents, Depression kids, wouldn’t even buy commercial popsicles. They had the Tupperware or whatever to make homemade popsicles out of Kool Aid or grape juice.
It’s kind of comical and heartbreaking at the same time. When my dad comes to visit me at work, any employee who is new will send out an alarm that there’s an old homeless nutjob in the parking lot. The way he dresses…he DOES look homeless. Wealthy as hell, however, and just can’t get over the stresses of his impoverished youth.
We still make popsicles with the plastic contraptions - that way, we can make them out of fresh real juices and the only kid in this house is my 15 yr old grandson. All my kids grew up on home made popsicles and they all make their own still.
Ha! My parents were the kids of Depression kids, and used to make those Tupperware popsicles.
Except my mom was kind of a health freak, which meant orange juice popsicles, not Koolaid. Pretty good, though.
They still make those Tupperware popsicle makers, or at least they did a dozen years ago when I bought my set. They’re terrific with homemade lemonade. Teenagers, though, think I’m a total lunatic when I offer them one, like I’m trying to poison them with uncoolness. They only like foodstuff that is industrially packaged. Where did we go wrong?
My grandmother used to can her own fig jam from the trees in the back yard. Never had better. Does anyone remember canning jars?
I have about 100, full of food, in my pantry. I make my own jam from my own blueberries and rhubarb. Also pasta sauce from my tomatoes. I have a dehydrator, too. As you can tell, I’m prepared for the worst!
Does anyone remember canning jars?
I can only think of few occasions when I got a treat in my early childhood.
I still remember that day when I was very young when my uncle offered to buy me and my sister a soda pop from a dispensing machine at JFK airport. There was another time when my mother took us over to battery park, and then to the WTC to see the big whole in the ground (prolly in ‘67). On that particular day my sister and I got an ice cream.
When I lived in Alaska in the summers we would go out and pick salmon berries and then I’d make tons of jam. Also have done apple butter and have even jarred salsa. It’s great fun. Used to give out bunches for gifts, but people (except family) seem leery of homemade types of jarred goods.
yeah, fig jam - my whole family went in for that when I grew up in SoCal. My brother sent me some he had canned but it sat in my cupboards so long it actually went bad. Only thing we ate it with was johnny cakes.
I think early Boomers (1946-1959) will probably be OK, thier parents went through the War and the Depression, so some of the lessons of the older generation will have stuck. That being said, those old lessons are rusty
You are right about that. My parents were only around 9 -10 years old when WWII started BUT I had 4 grandparents who were young adults when the Depression started, and I had my great-grandfather who was a young man during the Depression of ‘93 (1893) - and I was 19 when he died. They all told me a lot about it. (In fact they told me so much that I specialized in the economic, social and political history of the 1930’s.) I spent an enormous amount of time with them and picked up their habits - and never got rusty.
(1) Never borrow money - unless it is a house and the mortgage is no more than 25% of gross
(2) No credit cards
(3) No buying things because you ‘want’ them - only if you need them (and then hunt for the best price even if it means waiting.)
(4) Don’t pay anyone to do something that you can do yourself.
(5) Only buy the very best quality - it lasts longer and ends up costing less. (My closet full of Brooks Brothers - including things that are 25 years old but undateable - proves that.)
5 years ago I insisted that we get rid of the then-vehicles and replace them with ones that got a minimum 30 mpg and could haul stuff. I was certain that gas would hit $3 in the near future. The 2 little Escort wagons are still in mint condition and still puttering around getting 32 mpg city/36 mpg highway.
I have had and shown performance dogs all my life and I have never paid a groomer. You just tell the damn dog to get in the tub and stand still - and if he doesn’t do it, you make him do it. I couldn’t conceive of paying someone to bathe the dog.
I did have to break down and hire a lawn service. Hubby has asthma and allergies, and an orthopedic injury left me unable to run a mower (shoulder/neck.) I hated spending the money. I think I have solved that problem though. My Service Dog is huge and does cart/drag work. He is going to pull an old-fashioned non-electric reel mower this coming summer. He and I can just walk around the yard.
And since we are both better cooks than 90% of restaurants, I have never been enamoured with eating out. I’m off to the store in a bit to pick up the ingredients for Broccoli Riso and will start the dough for a Potato Bread — maybe a Raspberry Trifle too.
The biggest generation difference I see is that we boomers expected and actually liked the whole staving students phase. Today, most kids expect to live at the level they were living at home from the get go. They don’t realize or care that it took the old folks many years to get to that level of life. The crazy luxury dorm movement is part of why college costs are soaring - they treat students as “customers” and are trying to provide the amenities that will appeal to them. Most of you will remember what dorm rooms used to be like. Now, there’s whole sections of stores that deal with all the junk that should be bought for kids that are in old style dorms.
I graduated from undergrad in May 2000. My dorm room was 10′x20′, with cinder block walls, and a roommate to boot! (One benefit was the walls were excellent at dampening noises. There could be a party next door or someone being murdered, and you would sleep right through it.
There were bars on the windows and balconies, on every story.
Before the university bought the dormitory, it was a home for the elderly.
I astounded my frosh roommate by walking into our room (10′ by 15′, according to the website) and saying how large it seemed. I had just spent the summer sharing a room under the eaves (about 14′ square, but with half of it insufficient headroom) with two other girls as a summer camp counselor, so I wasn’t kidding.
That was in the mid-90s, so most of my desk was taken up by my computer. I did get some concrete blocks to raise my bed, though, and the next summer my dad made me a loft (which may still be kicking around the campus; he started with 4″x4″ posts so the thing was sturdy.)
All you need to do is go camping as a kid. Better yet, go backpacking. You figure out pretty quickly how little you really need.
“People born between, say, 1965 - 1985 have never known an America not swilling with money and material wealth. It going to be a real shock to them to have to do without, because they’ve never had to.”
Not all of us. I was ejected from the family homestead at 17 (for pretty valid reasons), and subsisted for a few years on Regan cheese and ramen, living in a crappy, heat-less trailer out in the middle of the frozen prairie. I went hungry fairly often, and experienced the rapture of hypothermia more than once.
The funny thing was, I didn’t see anybody else as being a lot better off than me.
Bite me. I’m smack dab in the middle of Gen X and graduated with 2 engineering degrees right into the 1992 recession. I worked at minimum wage or below it for *years*.
Really, Gen X struggled for forever. Remember Slackers? Clerks? Reality Bites? Those movies resonated because we all knew what it was like to be overqualified and underemployed with no prospects for that changing.
People born between, say, 1965 - 1985 have never known an America not swilling with money and material wealth.
True, but most Gen Xers, are at also at the peak of their productivity right now. Many have young children and will take pay cuts, unpaid overtime, whatever it takes to put food on the table. I think they will mostly keep their jobs unless it is finance or real estate related. Late boomers will be in trouble. Hard to find a job at their age if they lose the one they have. The young just entering the work force are in for some difficult times too, but they are young and the lesson will be invaluable…
I agree with this. But I think it’s good for all Americans. I frankly think a strong recession is the best thing that can happen to this country. If it gets its ass kicked economically, it might start to re-think what is really important.
All of my best lessons in life have been accompanied with serious pain and suffering. That’s just the way it is.
Season 3 of “The Real Housewives of Orange County” certainly leads me to agree with your above statement, Justin. Wow - a pool with a Volcano in the bottom ? Wow.
When I used to sell houses believe me there were a lot more 20 and 30 somethings in the Mcmansions with 2 SUVs in the driveway than there were boomers. Go through the big developments and every other house has swing sets in the backyard and toys in the driveway. I could never figure out how at that age they could afford it, until we toured some and there is nothing inside. Beds in the bedrooms, a sofa, maybe a chair, makeshift kitchen table and that’s it. 4000 sq ft of almost empty space. They were leveraged to their eyeballs and had little kids that they needed to raise and put thru college yet, but I don’t think they thought much beyond next week.
I also saw boomers too that were 55 years old or more and owed more on their house than it was worth, because they’d traded up so many times.
There’s plenty of idiots from every age group and some of them are in for the shock of their greedy little lives.
My husband and I used to exercise walk around our very nice neighborhood and see what I’d qualify as real mansions with toddler slides and toys in the driveways and wondered where the money was coming from that such young people could afford such a luxurious lifestyle. We’re boomers and live comfortably in the same neighborhood in a slightly smaller home, but we never would have considered a home over 3000 sq. ft. in our Hamburger Helper days.
When we applied for the loan for our present home, we were told we could qualify for a much bigger loan (house) because of our “no-debt except the mortgage” lifestyle. We didn’t bite.
This all reminds me of some former friends of ours; the husband did the wife’s manicures, pedicures and hair color. We all thought he was a wonderful catch… our guys didn’t take that interest in us… until we found out that he was more interested in being a girl than a guy, and abandoned his wife and children suddenly in pursuit of that goal.
i was invited to a baby shower recently for a co-worker — two young (somewhere between 25 and 30) phd engineers living in a mcmansion.
their first floor had a large living-room wall full of every kind of electronic supertoy available (half of which i couldn’t recognize), a couple of beanbag chairs in front of it, and a card table in the kitchen for eating — and nothing else. second floor had a mattress on the bedroom floor, and lots of clothes in closets — and nothing else.
the 3′-wide back yard had a humongous oudoor grill though, and the garage had a brand new suv and a brand new giant ford truck, plus assorted obviously-never-used power-tool toys (i say toys, because i doubt either knew how to use them, they’re software types).
they were counting on the baby shower for all baby furnishings, baby clothes, baby supplies, etc. while they got an ok haul of presents, they were obviously disappointed.
Baby showers used to be for baby layette items; i.e., diapers, cute little outfits, baby blankets, etc. It was pretty much assumed that the parents/grandparents were providing the crib, dresser, mattress, etc. Now it’s all carseats and special $500 strollers. No offense, but if I’m going to spend that kind of money, it will either be on my grandchild, if I ever get one, or our mortgage.
I’m actually scared of baby showers, because as the youngest child in my family and the only one still going to have kids, I have more stuff coming than I have storage for. Seriously, one of my sisters has given me a bunch of nursery decor; we’re still renting (apartment, alas, since house rental prices are still in the “cover our mortgage” phase) and the crib is going in OUR bedroom.
I’m definitely in the “do we really need all this?” phase. Thank goodness my parents have offered us storage space or we’d be going bonkers.
We live in the Northeast and bought a house in 2001 with 20% down + refinanced each time the 30 year rate dropped another .75% for a total of 3 refies. We never pulled any money out. Our neighbors, who don’t have any kids, are in their late 50s and have been in their house 25+ years. They refinanced every couple of years to buy new cars, yard dug up and landscaped, plasma TV, new kitchen, new furniture, trips to the casino every weekend, pay off credit cards, etc. Their house payments are now considerably higher than ours and they have a smaller house. I asked them if they had plans to retire down south. They said they bought some books on how to win at blackjack and would retire when they hit it big at the casino. I can’t really see how these folks would survive a depression.
We got a plasma tv and the installation package without having to get a new mortgage at all. We didn’t pull any money out of the bank, either. Best Buy gave us 3 years at no interest. So, we took that deal. It’ll be paid for within the year ( 12 mos ). I don’t get why people have to remortgage and make their equity ( what is left of it by now ) disappear. If they’ve been in the house for 25 years, it should damn well be paid off.
I don’t feel like getting into the “I’m cheaper than you are,” pissing contest, but I DO have a simple rule: “Don’t borrow money for stuff that you don’t need.” I borrowed to buy my house (back in pre-bubble ‘99) because it made sense to do it. I’ve borrowed money to buy cars when I was younger and poorer. And that’s pretty much it. I didn’t get a credit cart until I was in my 30s and I do use it frequently as a method of payment I don’t carry a balance.
My parents were children during the depression and in West Virginia where my mom is from, the depression was pretty bad.
as the son of the baby boomer generation i resent this notion. growing up in the southeast my parents didn’t have to tighten their belt. they didn’t even have a belt.
i asked my father what it was like for his mother during the depression. he said “mike, my mother’s whole life was a depression”.
he also told a vegetarian girlfriend of mine that he was a vegetarian as a kid but it wasn’t by choice. my parents know how to grow their on food. they had to learn or they would have starved.
allot of people on this board refer to the spoiled baby boomer generation. maybe that’s the way they are in the northeast but not in the deep south.
“wall street fell and we couldn’t tell” is more than just a song lyric.
my wife’s parents age are the same as mine. she comes from a one income family (her dad was a cop in NY state). the things she had growing up compared to what my parents could afford on 2 incomes in the deep south astounds me at times.
I really enjoyed this portion of the thread. Thanks everyone for sharing.
I enjoyed Mike’s read. The baby boomer generation is really split.
I also saw boomers too that were 55 years old or more and owed more on their house than it was worth, because they’d traded up so many times.
I’ve seen this too often. I also see quite a few boomers who are stuck mid-upgrade. They now unintentionally own two homes. Ok, in many cases they were planning to own two (home plus a ski or beach condo) but now own three (New McMansion, condo, and old home).
There is no generation immune to this. I’ve seen Generation X, Generation Y, boomers, and even older jump onto the real estate gold rush. The issue for the boomers is that they should be retiring; half cannot. Far too many are planning to ’screw the next generation’ by selling their palace at an inflated price and retiring in a lower cost of living area. Don’t believe me? Then explain the Mexico, Panama, Costa Rica and other booms driven by US money.
I’ll grab a Hawaiian or Costa Rican place when the dust settles. Don’t worry, I won’t buy in Costa Rica without more research.
Got popcorn?
Neil
The baby boomer generation is really split.
Sounds like any other large group of people: they are made up of different individuals and you can’t just put everyone in one big bucket.
Ditto for Gen X, Y, and Z.
Growing up, we were sooooo poor…
[Shouts the HBBsters: "How poor were you?!"]
Well, one night a burglar broke into our house, and we robbed him!
I kill me….
“We lived in paper bag in middle t’road”…
“We et gravel fer our teas…”
…”we’d get up before we’d go to bed….”
Ah, Monty Python, the years have been kind to you
True story: my grandfather was one of the $5 a day workers for Henry Ford in the 1920’s. After the stock market crash, etc., the workers’ pay was cut to $2.50 a day. This is commonly known history. By the time the depression was in full swing, the family was down to eating bean sandwiches twice a day, and the parents were going hungry sometimes after letting the kids eat first ( something different for breakfast ). My grandfather told me as we were boarding my father’s 45-foot cruiser in 1989 that he never thought that he would be doing something like that. He said, ” in the Depression all we could afford were cans of beans that cost 2 cents, and we were really hurting when their price went up to 3 cents a can.” I asked him what did they do then ? He looked at me like I was nuts, and said, ” we ate less beans.” End of story.
cans of beans?? I would have thought they’d soak & cook them raw. Got to be cheaper that way, but hard to keep the leftovers without a fridge though.
Cartoonist Larry Gonick has a series of books called “The Cartoon History of the Universe.” One panel in the first book has always resonated with me. It’s set in ancient Greece, I think, some place where a typical diet consisted mainly of onions. One of the two women in the panel says, “Don’t you ever get tired of onions?” and the other one, confused, asks, “Tired of food?“
Thanks for sharing Mike. My two great aunts lived through the depression in a tiny house on ten acres here in the Northeast. When they were alive the one thing they reiterated time and time again was that everyone had a garden during the depression. My parents inherited the house a few years back and they retired there. Every year I help with setting up the garden in the spring + storing vegetables in the root cellar in the fall. I also lend a hand with the canning, bees hives, grinding wheat (with a hand grinder), baking homemade bread, etc. and my favorite past time which is making beer
We were brain storming what if scenarios for a depression and the one eye opener was the need for guns or rifles to protect the garden from all those slick willy types around us. It started off as a joke. Now we’re looking into signing up at the local gun club, obtaining an FID card, etc. Don’t really know if there will be a depression - better safe and prepared then sorry.
My mother was also in the Deep South during the Depression. She and her two sisters went from being middle-class kids with a nice house in a lovely small town to living in a shack in the woods, with no electricity or indoor plumbing or running water, after my grandfather lost everything and became the town drunk and my grandmother died of shame and grief. The girls picked cotton in the fields, side by side with the black people. One of my aunts got lucky and became a rich woman’s maid, then married up (being beautiful helped in this regard) and was able to help her younger sisters graduate from high school. My mother was the smartest girl in her class and the Methodist church ladies had bake sales to send her off to the U. of Alabama (no scholarships in those days!). I didn’t believe how primitive her house was until she took me back there when I was a spoiled teenager. My brother had to use a machete to chop our way in, through the jungle. What I’d thought were her tall tales about fording a creek with snakes and alligators to get to school turned out to be absolutely true.
I’m from the South too. Some of my relatives still live in the same condition. I remember that whenever I get caught up in the materialism here in Phoenix.
In the Bits Bucket I mentioned a co-worker that paid $700 last month to Con-Ed. I think that was for gas & electric. I don’t thinks she owns a mansion.
Things are getting bad. But one thing that is good is that the illusions of endless consumption and debt will be wiped out of people’s thinking. A shift back to reality will benefit us as a country. Maybe people will focus on the important things in life, not all of the empty materialism. Don’t imagine for a moment that it will be pretty but it sure will be helpful.
$30 billion housing bailout:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0108/7842.html
You know the economy is seriously fucked up when a new Wal-Mart store gets over 10,000 applications in 4 days.
I thought things were bad after the tech bubble in 2001/2002 where jobs paying over $20/hour would get 15-20 applicants. Now Wal-Mart jobs starting under $10/hour getting 25 applicants/job is simply unbelievable. Things have become much much worse than they were even 5 years ago.
Good luck finding 400 out of those 10,000 applicants that actually want to work. The level of service seen in the service sector now is a joke. We were at the Target in Jersey City this morning. Getting one of those cashiers to smile or say “hello” would probably take a baseball bat and a taser gun. Service sucks! Walmart will realize that 10,000 applications probably wasn’t enough to get 400 quality employees.
What do you thing $8-10 buys? Happiness? I have a great deal of sympathy for people working those jobs. On their feet, no or few breaks, customers who are rude demanding and entitled, horrible hours and days of work, no health coverage …….
And you want them to smile at you??? When they are probably worried about paying the electric bill and how are they going to afford their asthma inhaler (at $280 for the most effective meds….)
Boo-fukking-hoo. I had jobs exactly like that and didn’t see myself as a victim. Those jobs are meant to build skill and character. They should be used as a springboard to improve your life. It’s not my fault that there are tons of lazy and stupid people that feel that every job should entitle them to the lifestyle of the rich and famous. This thought that these jobs should be treated as a source for pity and victimhood is a joke.
No there are meant to produce income to survive.
I hardly call essential things like insulin or asthma meds or paying for heat or electric the ‘lifestyle of the rich and famous.’
Good example of corporate greed right here in town. Local convenience store/gas station was owned by one family for nearly 50 years. The last family operators decided to retire and none of their kids had stayed here. This was 8 years ago and they were paying $8-10 an hour. They knew that with the 2nd home buyers, housing was extremely expensive and they had to pay to get staff. They sold to a chain in this part of the state who promptly cut wages by 33% to 15 cents above minimum wage. the former owners were able to get and keep staff. The current owners can’t keep employees longer than 11 weeks on average. Tough to get employees when the next towns aare over 25 miles away and housing here starts at $700 a month. The current owners can certainly afford to pay more - a place 40 x 60 grosses over $5,000,000 a year and nets over $1,000,000 after cost of goods sold.
Greed. Nothing but greed.
Your numbers don’t make sense to me. If this store is netting $1,000,000 per year then another store would surely open up nearby. And if it does net $1,000,000 per year then the former owner paying $8 - $10 per hour doesn’t seem that great, either. Those former employees should get an investor and start their own store with the knowledge they gained.
Nope. It is all the tourist trade during 3 months that shove the profits up that high. It makes enough in the off-season to stay open - just.
Also there are no sites in the Village for another store. It is surrounded US National Park lands and the net closest sites are 11 and 15 miles away - and not in the vilage at the heart of the Park next door to Park headquarters where they get their passes.
Paying 4 year round employees $8-10 and hour, and paying another 6 summer employees the same is certainly not a huge cut into profits.
The 2000 numbers were lower (inflation and rise in gas prices since then) and it supported the owners and they had health insurance and pensions for their employees.
NYCBoy, Leelanau County has what amounts to severe land-use restrictions. It’s almost-an-island (peninsula) geographically & politically.
Agreed AnnScott. I worked a job like that part time to get out of the house when my kids were small and I didn’t want anything w/responsibility to take away from time with them. I was quite aware of how much better I was treated than the poor full time girls who relied on that income. Management knew there was no place else they could go and treated them accordingly. My prior business experience didn’t mean I counted back change any better, yet they wouldn’t have dreamed of pulling the crap on me they did with those women. It was a travesty.
And how many of these victims made one dumb decision after another in their lives? There is nothing that can force a person to act on their best behalf. That is reality. But to treat all of these jobs as awful punishments is ludicrous.
Five years ago I was in the same job as 5 other people. They all felt sorry for themselves and complained constantly. I worked hard, made sacrifices and moved on to one bigger and better thing after another. When it was all said and done they attributed my success to “luck”. I think you are doing the same thing. When handed lemons some make lemonade and some just pi$$ and moan.
It is NOT always the result of ‘dumb decisions’ that people end up in those jobs. That kind of garage is so-o-o-o-o neocon and reeks of hate.
Not everyone has the intellectual ability to get a degree in mathematics or computer science or engineering. And with so many cow colleges handing out degrees in those field, the people did what they were supposed to do and went to school but their degree is not competitive. An MBA from Central Michigan University is not exactly the same as Wharton. Not everyone came from a home where they could afford college even with student loans (still have that family contribution calculated by FICA.) Not every school system is equal. So many students who say they want to go to college are in fact terribly unprepared - never got past Algebra I.
All I pointed out was that these are awful jobs performed under awful conditions for low pay and no benefits. And you still think people should be ‘happy’? If you have the same attitude in a store as you are exhibiting here, I wouldn’t be surprised if the clerk told you to get out. (And that would happen around here - happens all the time to rude, entitled, ‘I-so-special and the clerks/wait staff are such losers to be working here’ tourists. )
“And how many of these victims made one dumb decision after another in their lives?”
I wouldn’t classify the women I worked with that way. The opportunities they had to make their lives better were few and far in between. I put myself through college without one red cent from anyone except scholarships so there aren’t a lot of people that are more of a hardass on laziness or stupidity than me. I just can’t paint everyone in a tough situation with the same brush just the same way as not everyone in a McMansion is a successful, intelligent entrepreneur.
“I was quite aware of how much better I was treated than the poor full time girls who relied on that income.”
It seemed like you were painting them all with the same brush.
My nose is not the one in the air here. I was pretty upset about the way they were treated.
Wow, you’re out for blood today, huh? Hope you wake up in a better mood tomorrow. (mreeoooohh, cat sound)
No. I’m just tired of the “everybody’s a victim” mentality.
Life isn’t fair and if you let the ‘bastards’ wear you down then that is what you will get. Life has kicked me in the balls several times and it has taken great internal strength to get up and keep fighting. Motivation is the number 1 factor in human performance. Doing without motivates me to keep fighting. Others let the ‘hard knocks’ beat them down to where they believe they are not capable. If you believe you can’t do something then you never will!! Too many Americans have had it too easy for too long and thus the first time they are ‘knocked out’ they quit. Misery loves company but you won’t find me in their houses co-miserating!!!
Including you… weren’t you just complaining about being the victim of bad service at Target this morning? Life is hard. I suggest that you take action, and spend your hard earned dollars at a retailer where the well-compensated and appreciative employees greet you with a smile.
All this is unsurprising, though. With increased income stratification, and the cultural tendency to flaunt wealth, it’s a natural consequence that the working poor will come to resent their position. When conspicuous consumption is a primary cultural trait, there is nothing but envy and unhappiness at the bottom. The “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” argument seems to fall flat given our horrendous class mobility here (worse than UK, France, Canada, and other comparable industrialized countries). Are people here just lazy? Or is possible that it’s actually possible to become trapped in poverty?
All that sound nice in the abstract, but when I think of all the poor people I know it’s pretty plain how they screwed themselves up. #1 is not paying attention in middle school, usually, and falling way behind after that. High schools will pass ‘em but they don’t know enough to go further. Some get menial jobs to get by but usually they’re physical and can’t do the work anymore when they get old. And the girls who get knocked up in high school, and the guys who can’t stay away from the gambling machines, and the ones who are so fat they’ve become disabled..their lives are soap operas. I’m with NYCBoy, tired of seeing them sentimentalized.
Actually, you’re wrong about working at Wal-Mart. It does offer health coverage, for one thing, and all employees get breaks; that’s federal labor law. The graveyard shift may suck (like it does anywhere), but when I was in college, it was a very popular place for people to work because it paid much better than other part-time jobs and the management was wonderful about giving students flexible hours. They also make it a point to hire mentally challenged people for positions like greeters and stockers, simple jobs they can handle, and the elderly, two groups that are shafted by a lot of other employers.
And what’s the big deal about being on their feet all day or dealing with people? I’m not in retail now, but I’m an independent contractor (tech writing), and I deal with my clients every day in every mood. And didn’t you read the rest of the thread about physical labor? Stocking shelves is not a big deal at all. Wear comfortable shoes. Pretty much any job requires 1) standing, 2) sitting, and 3) seeing other people. If you are mentally incapable of handling that without whining, you have emotional problems.
(1) Walmarts health insurance truly sucks. The employees can not afford the deductibles and copays.
(2) No one was speaking of just Walmart.
(3) It is the culture environment of such work places. The employees are fungible things which have to e at the employer’s beck and call; are constantly told they can be replaced in a second; and demeaned and dimissed as to their ideas and thoughts about the operation. That is not conducive to workforce moral or much of an interest in the job.
And since you hadn’t noticed, not many places want people over a certain age and specficially say they have to lift at least 50 lbs - tough for the older population. (Walmart was stupid enough to put in writing that they didn’t want the elderly or anyone with health problems - read : disabled - and that will haunt them for a very long time when their hiring practices come under scrutiny.)
Not everyone who ends up working a crap job is there because they made bad decisions or are losers.
That story about the new Walmart getting 10,000 applications in 4 days really surprised me. Does anyone know what the makeup of those submitting applications were? Were they people who are in or near retirement? Former realtors/mortgage brokers?
While I agree that employees should do the job they are hired for. It’s also true that when companies treat their people like disposable widgets, it’s hard to expect commitment and hard work.
Fish do stink from the head. Look at Circuit City as an example.
“So we have a short, consumer led recession. So what? It happens.”
That’s what someone told me. But I think it will be more than that. A ratchet in one direction, for a long time.
Good news — people learning to live within their means, and eventually becoming happy with that, as in Brittain after WWII. Bad news — a hellish and psychologically damaging transition, followed by living in a second class economy.
IMO, we have already seen the first big change in psychology. I have a dozen bookmarks with economist trying to out-do each other in how bad things will get. This time last year, I bet most of these folk were calling for a spring bounce/bottom, etc.
BTW, those were good insights you added in the original post. Does WT stand for west Texas?
No psychology change for our soothsayer in Washington D.C. (lol)
There’s a backlash to the new recognition. I’m seeing more and more bashing of blogs and media for all their recession promoting. It’s the same tinfoil hat stuff that was being said about those of us that thought there was going to be a housing bubble not too long ago.
“I’m seeing more and more bashing of blogs and media for all their recession promoting.”
Yeah, “are they crazy”. Locally there appears to be a large backlash against the “tin foil hatters” although in reality there isn’t that much discussion at all like its a taboo.
OTOH, I’ve seen more resignation of a worldwide slowdown on the MSM. This may have been discussed as I’ve been offlline for a few days but one morning I heard them talking about downgrading U.S. Treasuries which have been AAA rated since 1917. It seems I’ve been hearing scarier and scarier comments on regular mass audience television broadcasts. It’s just no one seems to react to those statements. (I guess I’m too much of an outsider to understand why)
the republicians might have a chance to win with this economy. it is like 1991-1992 only 10 times worse like 1929!
Interesting. It will certainly shift politics. More have versus have not debates/posturing? And look at the vilification of Wall Street and ‘greed’ lately.
‘Republican frontrunner John McCain took his plain-talking line on US economic troubles to the hard-hit blue collar state of Michigan on Saturday, as rising unemployment and a feared recession took center stage in the presidential race.’
‘I would be ashamed to tell the people of Michigan these jobs are coming back. They’re not,’ the senator said Friday, ahead of campaign events scheduled in the state Saturday.’
‘White House hopefuls turned their focus to the economy amid growing concern not only in Michigan, home to a troubled car industry and 7.4 percent unemployment, but the rest of the country, hit by a snowballing housing crisis and rising gasoline prices.’
‘The upper midwest state, home to major US automakers, holds its primaries on January 15. ‘
My county ALWAYS goes Republican. It is an area that is representative of the ‘middle’ middle in incomes and jobs. Here are the comments I have heard about the Republicans:
(1) Tax cuts - “just more for their rich friends and to hell with the rest of us. Screw them.” (Person has a Bush sticker on their vehicle.)
(2) Iraq - “damn war for oil. A sand moneypit that needs to end.” Republican election observor.
(3) Health care and let the free market solve the problem with a few tax credits that won’t pay the coverage for an individual, let alone a family - “We need to take away the Congress’s health care coverage and see how they like doing with out. They only do what the drug companies want. To hell with them. This can’t go on anymore. (More Bush stickers on car.)
BTW, I AM in Michigan. And the Republican business people here are the first tosuggest taxing the bejesus out of the upper 1% (Incomes of$1,600,000 and up) and probably the upper 5% (incomes of $200K and up)
You could weel be describing my best friend who owns a funeral home south of you, in Newaygo County.
He and his brother do well, but they’re disgusted with the upper crust types. The elitists get away with murder while my friend and his local GOP/Democrat friends and fellow biz owners continually get the shaft.
While I agree that it will shift politics, can electing someone who vilifies greed and wall street make much of an actual difference except in the short term? Sure they can go after lenders who committed fraud and the like, but what can they actually do about things like the loss of manufacturing jobs? We usually think of manufacturing jobs going to China, but for the last several years no country on this planet (yes, even China) has had a net increase in manufacturing jobs. While manufacturing may come back to the US, manufacturing jobs are not since so many of them have already been and will continue to be automated away.
Manufacturing jobs can only come back if we protect our workforce from having to compete against third world wages. We cannot, and should not have to, compete against workers who live 20 to a hut, whether they live in a communist country, or are living illegally in our own country.
Amen!
You haven’t answered my question. Yes, workers shouldn’t have to compete against third world wages and illegal aliens, but how can manufacturing workers compete against automation and robotics? Like I said before for the last several years NO country on this planet has had a net increase in manufacturing jobs even if said country has increased its manufacturing capacity.
Regardless of whether manufacturing is moved back to the US (and I think it will and should be), the fact of the matter is that manufacturing jobs aren’t going to be coming back for the most part. In the end China isn’t what is going to take away those jobs, its technology and no politician can do anything about that without creating a totalitarian state.
“the republicians might have a chance to win with this economy.”
are you kiddding? I’m a GOPer and I think we’re hosed. The Dems got a huge gift and I think right now they don’t quite believe their good fortune yet.
There is no gift here. The next presidential term is going to be very rough and no matter what reality is, the next president will get a lot of the blame for things that happen…and in the next 4 years, I think a lot of bad things are going to happen.
Heh, they never look that far ahead. But you’re right..
Yes, the new Prez will get the blame, but the economy might be bad enough by November, the voters will want a change. Most bad economies precede (inspire?) radical changes in leadership. Just like most major wars start a the bottom of economic cycles.
Both parties have destroyed their credibility but the Republicans have done a better job. They can’t even claim that they are fiscally responsible. What are you left with? A bunch of big business pricks that bow down to corporate interests, spend like fools, get us in messes throughout the world and act like cave dwellers when thinking about societal issues.
The Republicans have NO chance to keep the White House. Michael Dukakis could win this race. Harry Truman, from his grave, could win this election. The Republicans are the NFC this time around. The Super Bowl belongs to the Democrats.
Amazingly, in spite of all the crap going on, I think the GOP still has a shot strictly because of who the Dem candidates are. Unless McCain is the nominee, then I think they’re screwed. He can’t beat either one.
I agree Blanco. I think it’s also amazing that both parties have such a sorry bunch of fools to chose from.
The best thing that could happen for the Republicans is for a decent candidate to get the nomination, present a frank appraisal of the problems we’re facing, articulate a plausible vision to solve them — and then get beat by a couple of percentage points.
Then the Democrats will get stuck with trying to cope with the s**tstorm that will land on the head of whoever’s unlucky enough to land in the White House in January 2009. Government will continue to be divided, with the result that President Hillary will flounder ineffectively, causing her opponent’s platform to start looking better and better.
Sounds like a winner! Do we have anyone in the pipeline? Our guys are getting old.
I read somewhere recently that since 1855 or so, there have been seven election years when the economic was in an undisputed recession, and seven out of seven of those times the incumbent party lost the WH. It would be a true shame if American voters’ ignorance of economics proved to be the key factor behind an HC victory. She has nothing up her sleave that can fix things, but she will nonetheless pretend in order to blame the mess on the opposing party, and she has the luxury of proposing massive fiscal stimulus packages without concern about budget implications.
I understand frustration, PB, but why should we expect anything different from voters this time around?
Professor Bear….Hillary actually can speak complete sentences
and I haven’t heard once tell me that she makes her decisions on some voices in her head. You might be surprised what a comptentent leader could achieve.
doesn’t eleanor talk to her?
That is correct. She did indeed say that she converses with Eleanor when she needs strength and guidance.
I’d say Eleanor probably gives her better advice than whatever voices Bushole is hearing in his head…..
I’m confident she is far less likely than your friend Huck to start a war that will cost up to a trillion dollars, and force America to borrow more money from China to pay for it.
Yes - 1992 all over again. Groundhog Year.
Remind me again, who was in charge for the 12 years before 1992? Who was in charge leading up to the crash in 1929? Who was in charge the last 7+ years leading up to today?
Hint: It wasn’t a Democrat in all cases!
To point out some facts…
John Calvin Coolidge, Jr. was the Republican president from 1923 to 1929. He took over for Warren Harding, also a Republican, who died in office. He was widely known as a small government, deregulation kind of President. His policies, which were a continuation of the Harding polices, are largely attributed to the excesses that led to the Great Depression.
Herbert Clark Hoover was the Republican president from 1929 to 1933. He only lasted one term because people felt he was too slow to respond the the stock crash on 1929, and the ensuing Great Depression.
Fast forward to 1992…
After 12 years of Reagan and Bush Sr. policies of deregulation (S&L collapse, union busting, etc.) the economy was reeling. Bush Sr. was held responsible, and became a one term president.
I know this is going to make a lot of people upset here, but in both cases it was the failure of the Republican admins that led to the surge in Democrats. It explains why FDR got so many terms, followed by Truman, in addition to Bill Clinton.
Looking at the revitalization that occurred during the FDR and Clinton admin’s it is very hard to disagree that these Democrats were good for the nation.
Unfortunately once again a Democrat is needed to clean up a major Republican mess.
Thank you for that oversimplified partisan look at history. Once a partisan always a partisan!
At least you ignored the advantages Clinton had with the end of the Cold War and a really phony tech bubble economy. But your little reality is cozy to you so keep with it.
If you keep blaming the parties as if they were “opposites” or everyone in the party is the “same” then you will never get very far. You have to look at their specific actions. Ron Paul is a prime example. He is a republican, but actually understands economics. Any success we have had over the past 100 years has been the result of advancements in technology and the wealth our country built up from 1776 to 1913 when we had an economy much closer to a free market.
“Looking at the revitalization that occurred during the FDR and Clinton admin’s it is very hard to disagree that these Democrats were good for the nation”
You are a complete 100% knee jerk democratic or left-wing shill. The democratic reigns of Woodrow Wilson , Harry S Truman, and lyndon Baynes Johnson abounded in screwups and international policy disasters. All these populist Democratic presidents were deeply involved in unpopular wars during their administrations, and FDR was responible for the greatest public policy disaster of the 20th century, the handing over of half of Europe to his bosom buddy Stalin.
Study some history once in a while!
joe momma,
I agree with you.
Problem is, they really don’t have any good candidates for the Dem party, IMHO.
Can’t stand Hillary’s bailout plans, immigration stance, etc. And look at who her contributors are — can’t see how she’s different from Republicans on that front.
We need a better candidate.
The Republican candidates, political ideology aside, are a more well-rounded group than the Democrats with deeper business, military, and decision-making experiences. Right now I’d say McCain could take out Obama or Clinton; Giulani, Romney, and Thompson could take out Obama; and Huckabee or Paul lose to either. (Clinton is stronger than Obama, who has more to lose as he gets better known.) As/if the economy worsens, the chances on the Republican side improve.
As the economy worsens, Bloomberg may finally step up. He’s done a good job as mayor, and he understands business and the Wall Street crowd. Folks facing a serious recession may be interested in a guy who really understands finance. And Paul, Rudy was a truly terrible mayor…after all the boom years on Wall St, he squandered the city’s tax revenues, and left the city in terrible shape…and that was before 9/11. As for promoting a guy with mob ties, and embezzlement as a hobby first as Corrections Commissioner, and then Police Chief, then his biz partner and finally pushing Bush to make him the chief of Homeland Security, despite repeated warnings from his staff–you could say his judgement sucks.
I didn’t address Giuliani’s job as a mayor or whether he would make a good President. I’m writing as analyst. He has strong name recognition and a lot of support on both sides of the political aisle because of his strong stance on the “War on Terror”, his liberal slant on the social issues du jour, and his perceived leadership abilities, and he trumps some Republicans on the tax issue. Clinton stacks up at least 5 points better against him than Obama because of the international issues, which always become more important as the election gets closer. I stand by my analysis: Giulani beats Obama.
My side our yours…neither runs to serve.
Americans will have to spend exactly what they earn. The entire mechanism of living off of debt will break down. The first things that are cut back are nonessentials–toys, services, etc. Manufacturers of toys will be stunned by the lack of demand and lay off all of their employees. The resulting job losses will have no impact in the US. Service provides will also lay off all of their employees. The resulting job losses will not affect the official unemployment rate in the US.
If the US doesn’t manufacture, and illegal immigrants provide many of the services, a sharp falloff in US demand won’t affect the US citizens a bit.
Maryland had embraced “Lexus Lanes” to fund development of extra lanes on highways like the Baltimore beltway and I-95 through and north of Baltimore. These let folks who are willing to pay a surcharge during rush hour use a restricted lane of the road. When carpooling/sharing picks up and highway volume diminishes, there will be less need for people with disposable to take the Lexus Lanes, hence less revenue coming into those buckets, leading to higher tolls/taxes/fees for everyone to cover the transportation bonds.
Took a drive in the NY State thruway today. Fees up 20%.
LA is considering the same thing with the “diamond” lanes.
We are witnessing the destruction of the American standard of living as we once knew it. A strong currency, due mainly to fiscal responsibility, allowed the nation to have an above average standard of living. But unfortunately corporations decided the grass was greener in China (and elsewhere) and manufacturing lost 25% of the jobs in the last 7 years. As we have to increasingly buy stuff from abroad that has put a lot of pressure on the dollar, which has now imploded. Fortunately the innovators on Wall Street made out like bandits, so all is not lost.
I don’t think this is a temporary problem. I think we are witnessing the decline of the US as an economic super power as the Chinese and Europe emerge much stronger.
It is hard to blame anyone but ourselves. This country has been run like shit and now it’s time to pay the piper. To add a little political perspective, let’s not forget 28 of the last 40 years were basically one party rule, and that party wasn’t the Democrats. But plenty of blame to go around.
The next shoe to drop, in my opinion, is exploding rent prices. It’s the only thing that hasn’t skyrocketed, and it is coming. Some cities are already experiencing it big time, but much more is to come.
Americans are going to have to learn to live with a much lower standard of living, which is what most of the world dealt with for the last 60 years. It could have been different, but we had other priorities. Iraq, corporate welfare, huge defense spending.
The next shoe to drop, in my opinion, is exploding rent prices.
I don’t understand the logic of people that think rents will rise.
1. Legal immigrants are moving back to Brazil etc. for better standards of living.
2. Illegals are moving back to Mexico since there are fewer jobs now and laws are beginning to be enforced.
3. Young adults and college graduates are staying at mom and dads house for longer or renting rooms at friends house or sisters house.
Demand for apartments and houses is dropping across the board.
In the mid to late 90’s incomes were rising. People had more money and wanted to spend it on luxury apartments or new homes. Nowadays incomes are falling so people are looking for ways to spend less on shelter/transportation/food.
I can’t see rents going up, either. More likely to plummet. Rents are already at historic highs, percentage of income wise. (Rents bubble?)
Thank you, Mr. Jones. Rents in New York City are outrageous. They, too, have been subsidized by mortgage wealth. How many of these little 22 year olds are subsidized by mommy and daddy in New Jersey and Long Island? As their houses are worth less little Buffy and Cody might not continue receiving that help with the monthly rent.
I predict NYC rents to begin falling by ‘09.
I hope you are right but I remain skeptical. Inflation will give every landlord cover to raise prices.
Same thing for rents in every college town. Kids now HAVE to have a new 4×4 and condo for college. Dorms and beater cars are SO 1980’s…
We’re pre-paying for in-state college tuition (inflation hedge) and our girls will be responsible for everything else. Wanna go to Princeton? Earn a scholarship, take a loan, work and save. Want a nicer place to live? Just work hard over the summers and after school (high school forward).
“I hope you are right but I remain skeptical. Inflation will give every landlord cover to raise prices.”
Landlords are forced to raise prices with inflation. The cost of operations go up, so rents go up. There is no magic way that landlords can absorb higher taxes, higher utility costs, higher maintenance costs, higher payroll costs, etc. without raising rents. Cities make a point of sticking it to landlords when tax revenues fall by raising “fees”, shifting costs, etc. There is no free lunch when inflation gets going - it’s beggar thy neighbor all the way around.
That’s interesting, here in Chicago the kiddies come from throughout the Upper Midwest - but otherwise it is the same.
I worked with a guy who bought several apartment buildings with his uncle near Wrigley Field back in 1970s for unimaginably cheap prices. For laughs he would show us a few tenant applications - and they all clearly stated the parents were funding the operation. This was back in 1996 and those kids were the first to break the $1,500 a month mark north of Irving Park Rd. - a big deal at the time.
Landlords can try to raise rents all they want. If no one can afford them, they will sit empty. People do not get mortgages for rent. They are directly tied to peoples ability to pay.
4. There’s a huge amount of new houses and condos that people can’t afford that will either sit vacant, get bulldozed or provide more supply to the rental market.
IMO there’s no way rents are going to rise.
“1. Legal immigrants are moving back to Brazil etc. for better standards of living.”
It’s true. Skilled, highly educated immigrants, the type that buy expensive houses, are going back home. And their younger friends and family are not coming over. All the economic predictions about future housing needs have probably made the assumption people are going to keep immigrating to America in large droves. I think not. I know a lot of smart, skilled Indians and Chinese, and they have lots of opportunities back home. In fact, their former classmates that stayed home are often making more money than they are.
Any organization/enterprise has a life cycle, and we’re just hitting the end of a rather spectacular cycle, until we can somehow reinvent ourselves. The US has squandered some incredible natural advantages & resources, and for the past 30 years we’ve been behaving a bit like trust fund babies. Our flaw has been to assume that Americans enjoy some manifest density, when the history of all major civilizations have indicated otherwise. I’ve been fascinated with the TV series “Jericho” which is supposed to be returning for a new season. It’s an interesting examination of human nature, pitting the “I’ll feed my family at any cost” knuckle-heads against the “let’s work together” visionaries. Yes, we are all driven by self-interest, but when facing catastrophic events, individualism only takes you so far.
Americans enjoy some manifest density
Nice Freudian typo there.
Hey, that’s funny… they don’t call me miss malaprop for nothing!
More like, Americans are suffering from manifest density.
Jericho returns Feb 12 2008.
I watched the whole first season online. Phenomenal show. They really need to find a way to bring Gerald McRaney (Mayor Johnston Green) back.
Season 2 promo -
http://www.cbs.com/primetime/jericho/
Reminds me of “The Stand” by Stephen King - which I am currently re-reading. Great book, but a little dated, as he wrote it in the late 70’s (but fast-forwarded it to 1990 by the magic of fiction).
Seems a little quaint now, without mention of the internet, cell phones etc..
I was ready to give up “Jericho” after the first couple of episodes - glad I made the effort to carry on watching, as I agree that its turned out to be a really good series.
“Reminds me of “The Stand” by Stephen King…”
Do you have Youtube bandwith?
Thanks for the link rms
I saw the series a while back.
Unfortunately, bar a few exceptions (like “The Shining” for example) most of the adaptations of King’s work for film and tv seems to be, well, lacklustre.
Where is the Lingus when we need him?
Perhaps the only real way a true fundamental positive change in society could really be made would be to break up the corporate control of the main stream media and return the fourth estate back to the grass roots that it was in the past . The way things are now, it seems that the media is totally programmed away from intelligence and honesty and has absolutely no sense of responsibility to the people that it is (was) intended to serve.
Perhaps too, such a change in ownership could be a first leg to reclaiming the education system in some way or other.
Just an observation and fwiw.
I think that’s what is happening via internet blogs.
Yeah, I’d hazard a guess that teh interwebs are going to be the ‘grass-roots’ papers of the 21st century.
Its the only place I look for news.
I keep hoping the internet will reclaim the education system.
I have posted some of this before, so long-time readers will have seen this. I have several recollections from the Texas bust in the 80’s. The thing that wowed me first was half-empty malls. And I don’t mean foot-traffic, but empty stores in brand new malls, in Austin and Ft Worth/Dallas.
I think we can expect commercial/res. stuff that was planned during the boom, but opens now to be failures. I am referring to iffy areas that lenders and developers bought into while optimistic, but seem crazy in a downturn. There was a mall built by a very wealthy family in downtown Ft Worth. I went there early on and half the people were security guards! I remember thinking, what ever made them think this would fly in such a poor area? We hear a lot about repricing risk. Now I expect repricing concepts.
But I think it’s important to mention that this was a period when great fortunes were made by those who could see past the bust. There was a 4 floor office building in Deep Ellum, in Dallas for sale in 1987-8 for sale at $25,000. And a for-pay parking lot, half a block off of 6th street in Austin for about the same amount. It probably nets that much every two months now.
And it was in the late 80’s that the Perot group bought up half of north Texas for $1,000/acre, including around where the alliance airport is now. We are getting there folks, IMO, the place where cool heads and liquidity are going to make out alright. It should be tough, but there will be opportunity.
You are right Ben. There is a HUGE amount of money out there waiting to jump in when prices are right. Even one of my friends said, I can afford a Gulfstream to go to Houstan, but where are people getting the money to afford a gulfstream to go to Europe?
Ben,
I am not sure but I had read somewhere , this was long time ago. After selling EDS Ross Perot and his son had lot of land around Dallas and this is the present day Plano , Frisco etc…
Maria
There was a time when TPG signs lined little farm to market roads for miles up there.
I remember the 80’s as people with newly minted college degrees (such as myself) getting jobs as Macy’s salespeople (one of my electrical engineer friends), or managers at Pizza Hut (another friend). I ended up doing computer contracting programming educational games, and ended up making $12,000 that year. I lived with 4 other college graduates at the time, and we shared meals to stretch our budgets. It wasn’t until about 2 years later that I ended up with a “real” job paying $48K.
You eat a lot of pasta, beans, and vegetables. You don’t go out a lot. You share things. Your entertainment consists of hanging out with friends. You don’t buy fancy new cars or condos straight out of college.
And you develop a work ethic.
However, service in restaurants and elsewhere was EXCELLENT during that time…see above comment on work ethic.
That sounds like hell to me. Focusing on people and relationships instead of cell phones and bling. WTF is the world coming to?
That’s the way we used to live as young families, but not cause we were poor - because that’s what we liked. Everyone got together, pot lucked, hung out and partied while the kids played in the next room or outside. We played cards or watched SNL. I just remember we had a blast. All this running around, restaurants, shopping excursions, fancy vacations, overpriced sporting events - just didn’t appeal. I’m not sure it has to do with money as much as changing times. We still do mostly the same stuff except the kids not bring their kids.
Arroyo,
I got my 1st “real” job after my ‘83 graduation relatively quickly after an 8 mos waitressing stint and and a brief appearance as a damage control rep with a moving company. But it wasn’t with an American company. It was a very teeny branch of a very successful French company that had top market share in Europe but was just expanding into the states. (sorry Palmetto, I think that goes against the globalism is bad argument)
OT but something for the just graduated to consider: In school, I had put together the start up of a college based business that still exists today. It was the business plan that got the attention of the company President. Someone else got “the job” they had advertised. They actually created the 2nd job for me. That was in 1984 in a state that was known for its lack of jobs.
Ben,
Was this happening prior to the aftermath cleanup by RTC ? I remembered the S&L crisis; Lincoln Savings and Keating Five. What a mess. I don’t think current banking situation is any different from that era except this time, may be the government is not holding the bag?
It’s right around the same time. As a matter of fact, I still get some RTC offices posting here!
You’re right, a lot of the bad loans in the 80’s were from Federally guaranteed lenders. And it wasn’t just land. They liquidated everything; office stuff, autos, planes.
I think “20 cent on the dollar is coming”. Who says history doesn’t repeat itself? For those who are waiting to buy RE cheap, your time will come. Just be patient.
True story. My wife was nagging me to buy a home for a long long time like at least 6 years; “if you dont’ buy, you will be priced out forever”. “there is always more people moving in to the state”. I did not want to. So, in summer of 2005 (peak of the bubble !), we were about to purchase one (so she can be off myback for Christ sake.) but after inspection, we decided not to go forward because the house had issues and it was a POS.
We really dodge a bullet and very happy. Now, the trick is figure out where is the bottom; Me think start looking 2010 for some real good property.
I also agree with Ben. Keep your financial powder dry now, so you can use it when the time is right.
Any recession or depression is temporary- it’s a part of the cycle. And it creates great opportunities for those who are prepared.
Totally agree. Keep the powder dry.
Crisis in Chinese composed of 2 characters. They mean “danger” and “opportunity”. Yes, we are in danger for a recession (I think we are already in ) but here comes the opportunity.
If you’re talking about Sundance Square, the Bass Brothers’ project, you’re right that it took a very long time to catch on, but now it is extremely successful and has revitalized the downtown, which for years was stone-cold dead. People had completely given up going downtown, but now it is very lively and fun.
There was a mall built by a very wealthy family in downtown Ft Worth. I went there early on and half the people were security guards! I remember thinking, what ever made them think this would fly in such a poor area?
That was an isolated bust, whereas this one will be pervasive. Any “money on the sidelines” will either evaporate, devalue, or (smartly) stay put for years.
First, crime will increase (its already started). Local gov’t will start to use alternative sentencing, since they can’t pay for incarceration increases (its already started). This will only add to the crime problem. Many, many union strikes (already starting) since both public and private union jobs will be looking for 80’s and 90’s wage increases which companies and municipalities cannot afford (globalization puts downward pressure on wages) which we have already seen. Homes and cars will get smaller (hopefully). Energy will be cheaper (less demand). MSM will follow the trends ( as usual ) and the masses will view economic hardship rather than economic, live above your means, entitlements. And my wish, a third political party will emerge.
Transpose 1931 to 2008? Now this assumes the household has already cut back on eating out and vacations, so
(1) First thing that goes from budgets are the personal services that people can do themselves. That means the
Housecleaners (run their own vaccum)
Lawn service (push their own lawn mower)
Personal trainer (do situps all by themselves)
Dog groomer (Fluffy can get in the tub)
(2) Next to go or get delayed or severely reduced are:
Vehicle maintenance (some can and do change their own oil and it takes 45 mintues to do the brake pads out in the driveway)
Haircuts (yes, you can learn to do a basic cut at home)
House maintence (they get out there and paint the house themselves)
Frou-frou prepared foods are replaced by buying ingredients (salad bar at the grocery or the deli, the frozen prepared meals etc are out and flour, eggs, and uncooked foods are in)
Rooms in house that are not used get closed off to save on heat and cooling
Cable TV goes or at least gets cut down to the very minimal number of channels. No more HBO and other premium channels.
(3) And all the while, sales of these things plummet:
Electronic toys
Cars, boats, and other vehicles
Appliances (washing machine, new upscale stoves etc)
Clothing (garage sales will get real popular as well as consignment shops)
All the ’stuff’ - if you can’t eat it, wear it or live in it (shelter, basic utilities), you don’t buy it.
(4) And yes, Virginia, people will have their electric and heat and water turned off. They will have to move in with others or bypass the meters and steal services. They will dump their trash at night in commercial dumpsters.
(5) In order to pay housing expenses, the ridiculous McMansions with 2 times the number of bedrooms than people living there will become the new boarding houses as they rent out the rooms.
(6) A LOT more uninsured drivers - they won’t be able to afford it.
(7) And yes, people will die from the cold, the heat and starvation. (Food stamps are (a) hard to get - any assets over $2000 for an individual or $4000 for a couple and they don’t get help. That includes things like life insurance policies and a 2nd car. Plus income has to be below 150% FPL which is around $20,000 for a couple; and (b) the maximum is $125 per person and that doesn’t go far. The gov’t budget for utility assistance is usually exhausted within 4-8 weeks from when the funds are available right now.My state has no money for it because of budget problems.)
(8) A LOT more people will be homeless. Not everyone has relatives they can move in with or relatives who have room. There is not enough housing assistance - Reagan started it and the Reps have kept it up so housing assistance has been cut by over 30% since 1980.
(9) As more people lose their jobs and thus lose their health insurance coverage, the public hospitals will be swamped even more and they will collapse financially. (Many are already teetering on the edge of closing because of the number of uninsured and underinsured.)
(10) Petty theft will rise -things like driving off without paying for gas, food from stores, electric service by bypassing the meter,….
It will be very very very grim. Out of work are the ‘personal services’ people, retail workers who sell things that are not basic to survival, construction, manufacturing (the little the US does), the IT people since grocery stores don’t have a huge need for fancy computer stuff, any job that is in any business that does not produce basic necessities (and that means all those’knowledge’ workers who don’t do much substantive), engineers, salesmen in nearly all industries,………
I agree with your evaluation of most of the steps people will take toward conserving whatever capital they have. This past year in our community, I’ve seen more folks out on riding lawn mowers or doing their own pressure washing rather than pay a crew. My friend let her housekeeper go, and I have a FSBO sign in front of my house in order to save on realtor’s fees.
Something like that I remember at the end of communist economy and its transformation to capitalistic one. Also I remember increasing number of suicides, since many people were unable to cope with lost of job, prestige, and no income. I had lonely, old, cat-loving woman living in the neighborhood who committed suicide and killed all her cats, since she was unable to feed them. She left note, that she cannot bring her self to see her beloved kitten starving. During depression, there will be many personal tragedies, and it will depend, if person have a strong family/friends backing.
Up to #6 you are describing my life after my real estate debacle some six years ago. Today I’m debt free with savings. There’s not a thing on this planet I want bad enough to go borrow money for. I gave up my dignity in a bankers office and I will never do it again
In the early 80s my folks were hit hard by the recession in SoCal and my dad couldn’t find any work commensurate with his education/experience so he took a job as nightwatchman at the San Onofre nuclear power plant. His resourceful spirit helped him ride out the many indignities he had to endure, being low man on the totem pole. However, he now has Stage 4 cancer and I wonder about radiation exposure, since he led a very healthy lifestyle, and was an early adopter of whole foods and vitamins back in the 60s.
“he now has Stage 4 cancer”
I’ll keep you in my thoughts and prayers, Salad.
Thank you…I so appreciate your kind thoughts. Dad is frail due to chemo, but like the Energizer bunny, or Timex, he keeps on tickin’. He’s my hero.
I’m sorry about your Dad, Salad. I know it’s very hard to see our beloved parents sick…my mother developed fast-advancing Alzheimer’s disease & Parkinson’s several years before she died ( they are somewhat linked ), and it was very difficult for her. And for us. She is at peace now.
Salad, your Dad was picking up 300 millirems a year from natural background radiation before he got his job at San Onofre just like you, me and everyone else on the planet and he was picking up 300 millirems a year while he worked there.
You want to know what job category has the highest occupational radiation exposure? Airline stewardess. Spending so much time at 30,000 feet you pick up a lot more cosmic rays.
I agree with alot of what you say and suspect more of it already goes on than people know. We choose to pay for digital cable and DVR, but we don’t buy dvds, rarely go out to movies, don’t buy video games or any of that type of stuff and I don’t use gas driving all over town for entertainment. In terms of food, people would be better off not buying all that processed stuff anyway. Much healthier to make your own food with real ingredients. People should look at food in terms of quality/dollar. I may pay more for fresh fruits and veggies, but I don’t spend anything on sodas or junk food.
Funny AnnScott..love your comments..what I find most interesting is that the first 2 items I have always done..even when I could have afforded not too…
Housecleaner..I have always done it myself and with the help of the kids..(they have earn their itunes money). Plus let’s face..with kids how long after the housekeeper leaves will it be a mess again! Especially the kitchen!
Lawn…hubby figured out a long time ago that one spring/summer would pay for the riding mover..he happily does it and waves to the neighbor next door as he is doing it..
Personal trainer..been using the same DVD for 3 year and the treadmill in the basement for 6 years…
Dog groomer..well everything is set up in the garage for the Saturday morning baths..(although once every 6 months she goes for a haircut. I do the in between myself)..
It isn’t because we couldn’t afford it..but we were selfish and rather use the money for family vacations and eating out with the kids..
Dog groomer..well everything is set up in the garage for the Saturday morning baths.
I’ll save you some work. I have shown and handled dogs for over 45 years (started as a very young child showing dogs - I’m really not 80+.) You shouldn’t bathe a dog mcsh at all. Once a week baths dry out their skin and that can cause skin problems which means vet bills. Unless they are showing and have to be perfectly groomed for the ring,
(1) 1 bath in the spring and 1 in the fall when they are shedding out to help get rid of the dead hair; and
(2) a bath if they have gone out and rolled in something nasty.
Feeding nutrient rich food high in oils will keep the coat shiny and the skin in good condition (which means less odor.) I use Caribou Creek Gold - same food the sled dogs running the 1000 mile Iditarod use. Small company and a boutique food - I email them and they ship it to me. It is more cost-efficent than any popular commercial food. Costs more per bag but is has nearly 2 xs the nutrition per cup as compared to Iams.
Insurance rates for workman’s compensation, commercial vehicle liability and general jobsite liability coverage tend to rise during a recession as fraudulent claims become rampant. It’s a vicious circle that saps businesses of their profits. Don’t expect local or regional governments to help either. Been there, done that!
If you haven’t seen, “Children of Men,” you should check it out. Of all of the “future movies,” I think it’s probably the most likely to happen (maybe not because of infertility, but economy).
Or the future will be a combination of Children of Men & Idiocracy.
Or, if you live in Florida, it will be like adding Children of Men to Idiocracy.
Or, if you live in California, it will be like adding Children of Men, Friday, Mad Max and Fraggle Rock. People will get high by eating bridge parts.
How about “Cinderella Man” and “V for Vendetta”?
I think things could get a lot worse before we see any “Road Warrior” type scenarios. One only has to travel to developing countries to see how much worse things could get without totally falling apart. There are a lot of countries where there are slums the cops don’t venture into, but also have their rich enclaves and somewhat of a middle class as well. I think the U.S. will devolve into something like that.
My daughter just got back from Dubai. She said the amount of money there is staggering. From yachts owned by 21 year olds to everyone wearing diamond studded Rolex’s and Blanchpain cufflincks. quite remarkable
For Dubai, not at all remarkable.
“Choking up with emotion, the woman said, ‘In my neighborhood, there are brand-new homes, but the value is nothing. I’m glad you are here so I can tell you, because you’re going to be the president, I know.’”
This economic slowdown, or recession, or whatever it is, provides an opening for HC to pander to the economic ignorami. Don’t buy into it. Wake up, America!
Assuming we will some day have a black president and also will some day have a woman president, wouldn’t you rather have a black president who carried his own water than a woman president who mainly got there thanks to her husband’s past tenure in the WH, and who chose to denigrate herself for the opportunity to do so?
Do not kid yourself. She ran the Whitehouse. I know this firsthand.
I believe that !!
And as a side benefit we would also get our first lesbian president.
Omigosh lololol!!!!!
You are too funny NYCB.
“And as a side benefit we would also get our first lesbian president.”
35% on the Fox News poll still show President Bush is doing a good job. So, no matter what has gone wrong in thre last
7 years, this failed leadership gets a pass. But Hillary has high negatives and has not been in the White House for one day.
Britney Spears for preseident. Well known and likeable.
Good - I think we need a lesbian president. It would cause more of the neo-con righteous Moral Majority to have heart attacks and get to Heaven faster.
At least we wouldn’t be getting a woman president.
Wouldn’t take much to convince me she is sporting Bill’s nuts.
For not divorcing her husband, after the way he treated her, she should be ashamed to show her face in public.
I prefer neither, thank you.
I read somewhere (sorry, it was a long time ago & don’t remember which book) that Hillary ran all of the campaigns Bill won. When she wasn’t involved, he lost.
With all due respect, Hillary has 1,000X the intelligence of our current president — not that I intend to vote for her.
To add to my earlier post, I’m not a fatalist. Oil will never go below 50$/barrel ( Russia and Venezuela won’t allow it). Homes will become affordable and life will be better, more frugal and sustainable.
And just how does Russia and Venezuela prevent oil, denominated in dollars, not fall under 50?
Stir up Sh*t in Africa and the Middle East.
Cartels - they cooperate to control production to manipulate prices. Unless one big oil producer wants to screw the others and over-produce, they will usually collude to slow production and keep prices high. Why wouldn’t they want to keep profits high?
Oil producers are making noises about switching off the petrodollar to the Euro. That will prop the price of oil up in $US, too.
Can you imagine the burglaries? There are people who, when faced with a poverty of resources, will not rein in their spending: they will come after other people’s stuff. (Much of the activity not revolving around need.)
In the 1970s when gas prices went up, there were people who would drive around with a length of hose in their trunks; when they were low, they’d pull up next to a car and siphon the gasoline out of someone else’s car. (That’s why gas caps lock nowadays.)
The trajectory seems ominously to be heading in three complementary directions:
1. It costs more not only to fill up the tank in order to transport food, but also to grow it. We went from burning not only hydrocarbon reserves–but now we’re also burning away our topsoil too, in order to fill up cars.
2. We no longer manufacture stuff. The economist Lester Thurow once said that you can’t only have a service economy, that you also have to “make stuff.” A country that squanders all of its capital on overseas stuff, without the self sufficiency to internalize production, soon runs out of money. There’s just no more of it.
3. A country with no money–and a country with worthless money–cannot keep the heat on. Cannot burn a street lamp on every other building’s sidewalk of a city block. Cannot pay pay idling workers. Cannot do this without taxing the concept of middle class into extinction. There will be the very wealthy–and everyone else. No in between.
AnnScot, I think you’re spot on - except for the TV/Movie/entertainment part.
While I think the days of the $100 million ‘blockbuster’ movies (and $15 dollar seats in movie theatres) might be ending soon, I think people will still be willing to pay for a cheap way of entertaining themselves.
Maybe not a game console in every home, or cable TV (or even a TV), but I think people would get more neighbourly about those things: local kids go over to someones house who has an Xbox; people visit the person in the neighborhood who still has cable, to make a nice social night of it (and drop a couple of bucks in the collection box for next months cable bill).
Entertainment is one of those things that people will still be willing to pay for, within reason.
My mum was born during the Great Depression, and I remember talking to her about just this subject.
She remembers the movie theatres in Central Louisiana (where she grew up) being packed when she was a kid. You could go and sit in an air-conditioned theatre (a godsend in pre-HVAC days) and watch a couple of movies for 5c - cheap enough that most people could ’splurge’ once or twice a month to sit, get cool, and be distracted for a few hours.
Obviously, the media has changed in the last 70 years, but I’d bet that the underlying reasons for doing it will still hold true.
Just my tuppenceworth.
During hard times, people will likely spent more time to entertain than usually, since it will help them better to cope with the hardship. My mom (born in the 30’s) told me that as kid during WWII she spent a lot of time to go to movie theaters, concerts, and galleries. Some of them were open non-stop. It was way for people to escape the reality of war.
My grandfather was the biggest music publisher in the country and made the majority of his money during the depression. People would buy sheet music. My dad said that people spent money on entertainment to escape the grimness of life. Entertainment was much simpler and cheaper in those days - I think seeing a movie cost a dime.
“Entertainment was much simpler and cheaper in those days - I think seeing a movie cost a dime.”
I guess that translates to about $3 today.
Thank you for sharing that fact about your grandfather. I really enjoy hearing who was doing well during the Depression. Only 25% of the workforce was laid off which was awful. And a few years into it, many workers who kept their jobs did have to face reductions in salaries. But many people don’t remember it as that bad a time or perhaps mention it as an awful time in sympathy for others’ plight.
My grandparents rarely spoke about those years much to my dismay. To tell you the truth I think the stoicism was more due to family issues than money issues. I did realize in adulthood, that it was in the Depression years before WWII that both my parents’ families made the move from Massachusetts where they were from to New Hampshire. But my mother’s parents, newly married, did build a home just 1/2 a mile from the ocean so it couldn’t have been that horrible. There are stories of my grandfather, a milkman, leaving milk at his cost for for people that he knew couldn’t afford it.
My husband’s mother has written a booklet about her childhood Depression experience. Her father always had a job as a conductor on the railroad. So she doesn’t remember feeling any hardship except for sometimes mentioning a doll the neighbors had that she coveted but did not receive. Other than that she felt they had lived relatively well.
Yes, the movies in the ’30s were the escape from reality - and pretty much one of the few places with A/C. The world on screen was so much more appealing than reality.
Now? When tickets cost more per person than the median hourly wage of $14.80? Probably won’t be the escape unless prices plummet.
The option of choice may be the movies at the local library if it has a good selection. (Our library is fantastic -they specialize in classic movies and the best films of the year. BTW, ‘film’ is not the same thing as Steven Speilberg or blow ‘em up movies. It is $1 for 4 days. )
Public facilities that are free or low cost will be popular. Museums, parks and a picnic, national forests and a tent, free or low cost concerts (like less than $15 per - not the $60 or more for the big name concerts) , the public beach……
You will see things like locally organized entertainment such as a commnity potluck or picnic.
Here in the Northeast they’ve been shutting down libraries or severely limiting hours down to one or two days a week due to budget constraints. A lot of the public facilities are coming under scrutiny.
I guarantee everyone will still have their TV. Just go to the poorest villages in any third world country, and yep, every hut just about, has a satellite antenna or some other means of receiving the idiot box.
I did without a TV for about 5 years. The only reason that I now have a TV service is because I moved, and to be able to get either a ‘puter cable or DSL service you MUST pay for the TV service.
If these idiotic utilities ever get a clue, I dunno if I will once again give up the TV. I will know if and when I get to that bridge.
Most J6P’s keep the cable TV going 24×7. When the average family can’t afford cable, that is when all h#** is going to break loose.
I can share second hand (via my wife and inlaws) what happens when a financial crisis pushes a society to the edge of collapse. I was student in bulgaria in 1995, right at the end of the first bosnian war. Bulgaria had come out from communism in 1989, and after the bloom of the reformist parties wore off, the bulgarians voted a reconstituted communist party (socialists) back into power on a nostalgia vote. They stayed in power from 94 to 97, but toward the end were openly manipulating the economy. I think it was 96 and there was an election, and they managed to hold off economic collapse until just after the election (I wonder if that is the plan in the US?). I don’t know the exact mechanism of the collapse, I think it involved some bad lending, not paying back international debt, and a sharp drop in the GDP of the country.
Anyway the collapse was pretty ugly. The dollar went from 1 to 78 to, at one point, 1 to 2XXX. Looking at the inflation chart for bulgaria in 1996, it was 123%, in 1997 it was 1061%. The impact on the everyday people was profound:
- Food scarcity. My sister and mother in law had to queue in hours long lines to get food. I’m sure you have heard of this before (from WWII type of stories) but often as they stood in line the price of food would increase several times. Many people were “hungry” (at or below subsistence calorie level) during this time. I’m not sure if there was starvation or not. My in-laws were lucky because the grandmothers on both sides were peasants, and peasants stockpile large quantities of food in their cellars. They were also lucky because we were able to send infusions of dollars at critical points.
- Widespread electrical problems. There were daily rolling blackouts as the country couldn’t afford energy to keep the lights on. For the first time, people’s power was shut off for non payment.
- Rise of the dollar as the defacto currency of the country. Even before this, the dollar was often used to quote the price of large consumer items because of high inflation. Payment was in leva, but the underlying price was dollar denominated.
- Consumer product scarcity. Anything that could not be produced in Bulgaria was either extremely expensive or not available. I’ve heard for stories of tampons disappearing from the store shelves for months, for example. Also shopkeepers hoarding available merchandise.
-Eventually civil unrest, culminating in a mini-revolution (bloodless) in 1997 which overthrew the socialists.
The situation in bulgaria was eventually stablized with help from I think the world bank, which helped them set up a currency board and recommended austerity measures. Things were quite grim for several years, but by 2001 you could tell that things had turned the corner and were really getting better. Now, in 2008, bulgaria is doing quite well, although it is still one of the poorest countries in Europe.
The La Quinta story is interesting in that they are saying the higher density housing is needed to make it more affordable. Where do they get that $300-$400K is affordable? They don’t need to make it higher density, they need to make the homes smaller with less frou frou finishes. On the other side, the snobs of PGA west just don’t want lower end housing impacting they values, nor do they want the type of folks that need affordable housing in their area. La Quinta is a horrible pain to live in. The drive out there is long and crowded and it’s out of the way IMO. I have to go out there today to go to the MAC gallery - it will take me nearly 30 mins to get 15 miles. From La Quinta to Palm Springs is a good 40 to 50 min drive.
I lived thought deep and brutal economic depression that started with the collapse of communist economies. The recession was sudden, deep, and lasted for 4 years. People had to change their lifestyle, but certain things never change. People still want to enjoy life, have fun, and entertain; but they will watch out carefully how the money is spent. I had witnessed both inflation and deflation of goods happening at the same time, so I believe that these two are possible to concur here in USA as well. Prices of real estates will go into depressional spiral, while prices of food/energy will tick up. Depression does not mean end of civilization. People still will need to eat, work, travel; however, their financial priorities would change. During post-communist depression, families did stick together to support each, as we did for 4 generation of us. We had to minimize all expenses, but it was hard to keep cash in the waves of collapsing banks. Depression also brought wave of crime, and widespread prostitution. People were doing everything to survive. It took about decade, when the economy got back to 1989 level.
Thank you for your valuable input, Virginian!
“La Quinta Mayor Don Adolph, who lives at PGA West, had even harsher words for Cordoniz: ‘The houses, my God, they’re on top of each other. It looks like a tenement.’”
Oh, the horror.
I lived thought deep and brutal economic depression that started with the collapse of communist economies. The recession was sudden, deep, and lasted for 4 years. People had to change their lifestyle for sure, but certain things never change. People still want to enjoy life, have fun, and entertain, but they will watch out carefully how the money is spent. I had witnessed both inflation and deflation of goods happening at the same time, so I believe that these two are possible to concur here in USA as well. Prices of real estates will go into depressional spiral, while prices of food/energy will tick up. Depression does not mean end of civilization. People still will need to eat, work, travel; however, their financial priorities would change. During post-communist depression, families did stick together to support each, as we did for 4 generation of us. We had to minimize all expenses, but it was hard to keep cash in the waves of collapsing banks. Depression also brought wave of crime, and widespread prostitution. People were doing everything to survive. It took about decade, when the economy got back to 1989 level.
Went thru the 80’s recession. We sold both vehicles and bought one that got high mileage. We didn’t eat out at all for probably 3 years. We didn’t take vacations. We had no cable. We bought nothing extra besides food, utilities and gas, including clothes for us. Kids had to have clothes as they grew but we bought from discount stores.
I cooked from scratch, canned because my fil always had a big garden, baked my own cookies, always cleaned our own house and car. Mowed our lawn ourselves. Cleaning the house, washing the car and mowing the lawn are things we still to this day do for ourselves.
Entertainment consisted of having friends over to play games and cards. We took the kids to the playground at the park. The only splurge was a $50 season swimming pass at the community pool.
My kids never stayed in a hotel until they were 4 & 5. The first time they flew for vacation they were 15 & 16. But we are now ready to retire in June in our mid to late fifties and we have a paid for house and two college educated kids. That tight time in the 80’s carried over with us thru the years. Yes, when we could afford it we took lots of vacations and ate out. Our sacrifice was to get a 15 year mortgage with a higher payment (that we paid off early) and to buy fairly new cars (but not brand new)that we always drove for 10-15 years. Those two things alone saved us tons of money over the years. Unfortunately, many boomers never learned from the belt tightening of the 80’s and they’ll be working well into their 80’s.
“Kids had to have clothes as they grew but we bought from discount stores.”
Same here, and garage sales and thrift shops. I never thought I was having hard times. I figured it was normal for a family just starting out and I still do.
“a family just starting out”
Except then you get addicted to the finding of bargains, so even when you make more you still shop there. I can afford high-quality clothes, but since I’m a non-standard size (actually, I’m three standard sizes that are incompatible
) and I STILL won’t find clothes that fit at a nice store, it’s more fun to go to Ross and come up with the occasional gem, such as my longish gray skirt that looks oh-so-professional and cost me all of twelve bucks. I love that skirt.
And I could win the lottery and I’d still be addicted to used book stores. You can get so much for so little…
I feel unemployment will go through the roof. Our economy is extremely overextended with no possible fair way out. The government will bail out everything in sight which will devalue the dollar to zero. It will not do any good because they will do it 50
billion here 50 billion there. So it will not be able to replace the 800 billion annually in MEW.
As for a day in the life of the average American
People will eat at home more I do already.
People will drive older cars I already do its 4 years old.
People will buy what they can afford using less credit I already do.
People will live in what they can afford I rent 3000sqft for 1500 a month.
People will save more and spend less I save 20% of my salary.
People will do more things for themselves I always have.
Guess most everybody will be depressed I will just keep living the way I have withen my means.
There are workers now in their 30s who have never experienced unemployment.
4 years is NOT an old car. Mine was 1990 with 200K miles and still going strong.
4 years old is NEW!
We have 2 Escort wagson (see my comments above about my being cheap and fretting about gas prices 5 years ago) which area ‘92 and a ‘96. I had to have a wagon for dogs who are nearly 2 1/2 ft at the shoulder and weigh over 115 lbs. (And I insisted on over 30 mpg.)
My 1 T -1 1/2 T extended cab pickup (specialty production and 1 of 3000 made) should get the prize. It is a1988 and perfect. It is only used for the jobs for which it was built -hauling and towing. I had it competely restored aboout 4 years ago. It made a lot more sense to spend $8000 making it like new than spend $65,000+ on another one just like it.
The fleet manager for Aspulundi (big commerical tree service in the east) told me that have a bunch of those trucks. They figured they would be good for 300,000 miles but now it looks like the trucks will easily get to 500,000 miles. SInce I have under 200,000 on mine, I figure I’ll be dead before I would over 300,000.
I can’t speak for the poster, however, 4 years can be older, comparatively speaking, when your living in the rust belt. I just got rid of my 1999 Corolla (severely rusty underneath) with 200,000+ miles and bought another 1999 Corolla with 45,000 miles from down South - no rust. Feel free to flame me for owning a foreign car. I tried American 4 times and finally had to give up. Granted I have never bought new, however, quickly grew tired of the constant repairs.
Our first car managed twelve years and nearly 150,000 miles (50,000 over average for that model) before it died. Its successor was taken out by a hit-and-run driver (caught) before we got to find out if it would last to be an old car. Our current car is only a couple of years old, but it’s already survived one bashing by a hit-and-run driver (also caught) and we hope to use it until its last gasp. Hopefully through engine trouble, not accident!
I should qualify— that first car was “inherited” from my husband’s parents, and unfortunately they didn’t give it a going-over before passing it along. Most of the repairs we had to do were the result of delayed maintenance, which instilled in us a deep desire to be ABLE to do maintenance on a regular basis.
We have 2 Accords. 94 wagon with 200K+ miles (broken odometer) and a 96 sedan that just turned 340,000. Both are great cars. It would be nice to have something a bit more upscale, but the money we’re saving by not having car payments allows us to pay private school tuition for one of our kids.
Does anyone want to guess on investing/building manufacturing facilities in this country? Will the pendulum swing back in favor of cheap labor and good infrastructure here? Unfortunately, I think the best money to be made might be military manufacturing in the near term.
That will happen when some liberal types in Guangdong decide it would be a cool idea to give us micro-loans so that we can make trinkets to sell to our neighbors.
There probably is a ton of real manufacturing opportunities ready and available to be hatched in the U.S. It just seems that it is better for “All” to go with the flow and continue to dismantle and offshore things for the incremental and almighty dollar.
One would think that somewhere, somehow, all the “Gamers” that have so far extracted so much from this country with their wins would/should/could take a bit of time for some reflection and start to put something back. After all, you’ve got to prime the pump if you are to continue to get water back from the well and without water, ultimately no one can survive. Where are guys like Buffett and Gates, et al when they talk the talk……….
A bad recession will change our service industry and future job choices dramatically. The massuese at the salon will give up waiting for someone to ask for a massage. Women will start to paint their own toenails. It will make a difference how you maintain your vehicles because buying a new one won’t be an option. Enrollment in the liberal arts will go down because people will be looking for practical, occupational training in order to get a job to support themselves or help their families. Distance Learning will increase as the cost of gasoline becomes more of a factor for commuting students. People will become more distrustful of financial planners who have vested interests in promoting their own products. There will be less ability to spruce up homes due to the lack of HELOC money. Storage industry will be good for awhile and then look for huge auctions when people give up on the bill for keeping their stuff. Theft already has, and will definitely increase as service jobs flounder and knowledge of assets such as cash, firearms or jewelry gets passed on by former housekeepers, contractors, etc.
Unemployment will be high - think of all those (empty) stores out there!
Every Saturday morning we take a long walk through Chicago’s north side, paying special attention to the stores. The stores are not seeing the traffic they once did -and these stores face high rents and operating costs. What’s the tipping point before you’ve got to shutter a place?
My father was a teenager in the depths of the Great Depression. When I was a teen in the 1970s I recall how frugal both my parents were. There were times that my dad was close to making the big deal in commodities, but it never happened. Instead we had one car in the family, one television set, and no vacations and no restaurants. Even for high school kids, we never had ocean cruises like today’s California high school students. The highlight for us was grad night where seniors from all over the state would have Disneyland to themselves (and the chaperones).
That aside, I’m used to living simple. Outside my 401k and IRA I have been investing very conservatively. I have no manual labor skills to speak of, as my training is in mathematics and computer science. However, I have enough resources to hire people who will do the manual labor for me.
The most important thing any individual can do right now is to be sure they are in great (as opposed to good) health. This means to not be obese and to have clean lungs and maintain it. Catastrophic illnesses are mostly preventable by maintaining low body fat and not smoking. Otherwise there is a good chance you will have to spend tens of thousands of dollars, or hundreds of thousands of dollars to get well.
Overextended people almost never anticipate health problems, especially those Pollyannas who bought far more house than they could afford becase “real estate always goes up!”
I seriously doubt if we will go back to the technological level of the 19th century just because we are going to run out of inexpensive fossil fuels. We are about a year and a half past world peak oil and will have to cut back on it while prices keep going up and world demand for energy and modernization will not back down. However, i’s a preposterouss notion that humans will shut off our creative brains and live like the Amish for decades. I have no interest in becoming an agrarian. You small farmers with thousands of rounds of ammo out in the sticks will still want gold, labor saving devices, clothes, health care, pharmaceuticals, and so forth that are produced in the cities. You will still trade your food for our products in the cities. Many of you people who think cities are the worst places to be in a depression forget that city residents prosper by the division of labor. So ya think that long tested economic laws are going to go out the window in a depression? Funny! The confident Howard Roark type would be even more attracted to the biggest city rather in a depression because he feels most alive by being challenged. How long does it take an ambulance to get out to your rural area from the best hospital in your state?
Catastrophic illnesses are mostly preventable by maintaining low body fat and not smoking.
Don’t be so sure about that.
(1) A hospital nutritionist told me that all the ‘correct diet’ in the world won’t prevent heart disease if you parents, grandparents etc had it. Euell GIbbons (orignial health food & exercise guru dropped dead around 60 years old while out jogging.) Cancer? It is largely genetic.
(2) I have a permanent catastrophic health problem thaat can not be cured or repaired. I ruined my shoulder and neck doing sports at Pan Am -Olympic level. My medical bills every year are more than the median income in the US. It will never get better - all that can be done it to manage the pain and reduce it about 505 of the time.
This ‘eat right’ and you won’t get sick nonsense is a myth promulagted by people who won’t face the reality that they too can have heart disease and cancer even if they run 30 miles a day, have a BMI of 18 and live on organic produce. They want to believe they can control their fate and beat the genetics because they are too afraid.
You’ve been sadly misled. The “eat crap because it won’t make a difference” myth is promulgated by industrial food companies who’ve made fortunes pandering to our nation’s desire for fat, salt & sugar.
Cardiac disease can be reversed in many people (but not all) given good nutrition, stress management, & moderate exercise. At the very least, taking these steps will dramatically improve your quality of life. My family is living proof.
I second that, redhead. Why would someone with 3 degrees consider a “hospital nutritionist” a final word on cardiac disease?
In fact, most “hospital nutritionists” don’t understand statistics or even appreciate the difference between correlation and causation. Thus you hear things like, “80% of heart disease can be traced to hereditary factors.” But this never controls for the fact that there is a high correlation between the types of activities, diet, and so forth that, say, father and son engage in. If son separates self from the negative dietary and (lack of) excercise characteristics of father, then we can talk about hereditary factors. Hereditary factors exist, but are more related to absolute physical characteristics, such as size of heart and lungs, bone structure, and so forth. Hereditary influence in things like cholesterol count, diabetes, blood pressure, and the like are wildly overstated - these are lifestyle choices, which are highly correlated in families.
I have a hypothesis as far as heart diseases go, which comes from careful observation. Men who come from families with a history of early onset heart disease face DECREASING chances of heart attacks once they pass the crucial mid-40s to early-50s. Hereditary factors play less and less of a role as one ages, and the lifestyle choices which helped get people past the crucial problem years of their ancestry are likely to persist and make late-life heart problems less of a concern.
I’m seeing a lot of hand-wringing and anti-free will commentary on this blog today. Why do liberals insist on holding others to much lower standards than they would ever hold themselves?
Paul: Why do liberals insist on holding others to much lower standards than they would ever hold themselves?
because that’s what they do
I’m speaking for statistics, of course. I am sorry for your own situation. I still stand by my line that avoiding obesity and tobacco products is the main way to PREVENT (did you see the word “prevent” in this sentence?) catastrophic diseases. I am well aware of Jim Fixx, the fitness runner in the 1970s who died of a heart attack. I think it is VERY important for everyone to get a regular physical exam.
Berlin, Germany (AHN) — An employer for a German company fired three of its ten workers, who he claimed were “disturbing the peace” by demanding a smoke-free environment.
http://www.ncbuy.com/news/2008-01-11/1015941.html
Jim Fixx was probably in the bottom 10%-ile for 20 or more years in terms of his risk factors: obesity, heavy smoking, heavy meat eating, high stress work. There ain’t no such thing as forgiveness in real life; you pay for all your sins.
Although I’m sure that some of the things you’re saying are correct Ann, Bill is totally correct in many of his statements. Everyone in my family is thin except for myself and my brother. Guess who has the worst heatlh ? Me, followed by my brother. My husband & I are trying to reverse years of not properly taking care of ourselves by eating better-quality food, much smaller portions, and exercising much more ( at least for us ), but the damge is probably already done. My father is as thin as a rail, eats a very good diet, takes supplements etc. which he has carefully reasearched, and still walks on the beach for 3 miles a day, swims every day, goes to the gym every day, and reads, drives boats and cars, and is able to think and converse very well. He will be 83 at the end of February. Long may he wave. He told me rather sadly that his is the first generation where the kids are dying before the parents. I know he was thinking about me….
I see no reason at all to think that life expectancy in America will continue to increase.
Sadly, I agree with you. I was really a nerd at a very young age when Durk Pearson’s “Life Extension” book came out. I think it was 1980, when I was 21. I wanted to stay 21 in appearance for 50 years! I think the best lesson from that book was that you should learn your own biochemistry. The only drawback is that it cost a lot of money to do all the required tests. That book also was not shy about being libertarian and blaming government regulations for not giving researchers the incentives to eradicate catastrophic illnesses (I think that if we became a libertarian society in 1980 my mother and father would be alive today because biochemical researchers and drug companies would have found cures for their illnesses). Now at 48, I am frequently told I look much younger. I agree I look younger than men my age. It’s disconcerting to think the Bible thumper “debt free” talk show host Dave Ramsey is one year younger than me and sometimes calls himself old! I credit my youthful appearance with my attention to extending the youthful part of my life since reading “Life Extension.”
I still agree with Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw today that we are an overregulated society. In many cases, we have more regulations against research than countries we consider communist or who are rapidly freeing up their markets. So my best alternative is to try to delay aging as much as I can.
I think in my parents’ case, their cancers were from environmental causes and preventable. They were both obese and they did not exercise. They had a moderate diet, but should have been pure vegan to counteract their lack of exercise. Also they lived in Fresno in an industrial part of the city and one of the top three polluted areas. My mother died at 65 and my father died at 79. On my mom’s side, her mother died in her 80s and her aunts and uncle died in their 90s, while my grandmother on my father’s side died in her late 80s.
It is no coincidence that in the extreme leftist societies, such as the Breshnev era of Soviet Russia, life expectencies are much lower than societies with free economies. The socialists Huckabee, Obama, and Clinton will do a great disservice if the sheople elect one of them. In the Breshnev era, the life expectency of the average male was in his late 50s.
Bill,
Both of my parents died from cancer.
Neither smoked.
Both exercised daily (my mother was exercising, as best as she could, less than a week before she died).
Both ate well (especially my mother, who ate tons of fruits and vegetables and no processed foods).
Both drank little/no alcohol.
My father was diagnosed with leukemia at age 50 (probably had it before this), melanoma at around age 73, prostate cancer at around 70.
My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer at around 65 (did have it before then, as they saw when looking back at previous tests), uterine cancer at around 70.
ALL of the people we know who were diagnosed with cancer before age 50 (unfortunately, we know quite a few) were thin, non-smokers, very active and lived healthy lives.
——————-
That being said, I DO think lifestyle choices affect your health in later years, but young people…it’s just chance, IMHO.
“Catastrophic illnesses are mostly preventable by maintaining low body fat and not smoking” BS! Everyone dies eventually of some kind of catastrophic illness. None escapes their fate.
I think there is going to be a growing dissatisfaction with local government workers and the size and inefficiency of local government. There will be a freeze on hiring, but since no one ever quits or get fired or gets their pay docked, the position of local government workers relative to others will continue to improve, as it has for the last 20 years.
People will hide the fact they work for the government. Amazingly, though, a lot of people are so stupid they are not even aware that they work for the government, or perhaps think everyone does (various social and health workers, nanny state enforcers, certain teachers and consultants - look at the payer on your pay stub, stupid!)
I agree. My city/county government has entire departments that are completely useless. As I wrote this post, I went to the county’s website to try and figure out what these useless departments did, and I couldn’t figure it out at all.
Recently I got a parking ticket for not having my car registered. In reality it was registered and had all of the stickers on it. To get rid of this thing, I had to go to the clerk of the court who told me that I had to setup a court date to take care of it. Said clerk lied to me and told me that it would cost me $61 just to go to court. In reality that cost only exists if you are found guilty. By the time I go to court a month and a half later I am one of a large group of people all doing the same thing, challenging a parking ticket that claims we were not registered or inspected. The judge ended up just calling our names, and every 15 seconds a person had their ticket expunged. It made me wonder just how many people paid the ticket even though it was incorrect. This is a very telling experience how local government is trying to tax us without making it look like we were taxed and not cut their own (in many cases useless) expenses.
Wouldn’t it be better if the police where simply more law abiding?
This reeks too much like Mexico.
Interesting. I drive thru this small town about once a month. A couple of years ago I was given a ticket for speeding in a residential area. Thats what the policeman said. I told him it sure didn’t look residential especially considering the factory drive I pulled into to talk to him.
In any event, I simply did not see the speed limit sign. And no wonder. The next time I was there I stopped, got out of the car to look for it. Sure enough I found it. With a tree growing directly in front of it, the sign could not be seen from the road. When I mentioned this to the judge at traffic court he asked me if I were being argumentative, I could face a further fine, etc, etc. Finally, I paid a non-traffic violation fine and left followed by the policeman who smiled at me.
Similar thing happened to me in Flagler Beach, Fla., getting busted for 55 in a 45 where speed limit was unclear. The cop with a New York accent had the audacity to ask me what I was doing there - my license is from one county away. I should have said, “WTF are you doing here, pig?”
I called for days and days to Bunnell, Fla. trying to set up a court date. Could not get through because (as I eventually found out) they were moving the offices and leaving phones unanswered. Had to pay the extortion.
Expect this kind of stuff to get worse until we tell all the welfare whores and pimps (i.e., local government workers) to go take a flying F.
Crazy idea…but anybody know about raising rabbits for food? This has been my fallback scenario if the s#it truly hit the fan. I have a small backyard, with mixed sunlight, so planting a vegetable garden isn’t realistic. I’ve always heard that rabbits provided the most protein for the buck (no pun intended) and I don’t have any qualms about killing Thumper. On the otherhand, if it’s a messy, stinky operation, my neighbors will complain.
Killing animals isn’t too awfully messy, but skinning ‘em and cutting ‘em up sure is. It’s a messy, stinky operation that will attract flies and other undesirable creatures, and if you don’t have a lot of space your neighbors will rightfully complain.
I’ve always wanted to raise chickens for their eggs and meat. But I bet rabbits are quieter, need less space, and smell less.
My folks had chickens for awhile, but they’re actually not as hardy as you’d think. Several were eaten by neighborhood dogs, and others got sickly and didn’t produce eggs. My folks grew up in rural Michigan, so they knew pretty much how to raise chickens, but on a small scale it became more trouble than it was worth.
Yes, raising chickens sucks. IMHO it’s a lot more trouble than it’s worth. Sometime in about ‘75 we had a huge pile of relatives over and got rid of our chickens in 1 afternoon. I’ll never forget that one! I know somebody raising some today and he’s spent a lot of time building this movable fence thing to keep the chickens from filling up one place with stinky goo. Totally not worth it.
Haven’t raised rabbits, but where I live, it’s probably cheaper to just harvest all the rabbits nature provides. The cool thing about rabbits is that a person could have a whole lot of them and nobody would ever know. Chickens are noisy and stinky.
Read “The Egg and I” before getting into chicken-raising.
I wouldn’t bet on that ’smelling less’ part. I’ve raised both. Rabbit urine is QUITE pungent. Also, slaughtering chickens is quieter by far than rabbits.
See the movie “Roger and Me!”
I think we will see the self sufficiency movement become popular again like the “Mother Earth” magazine used to be in the 70’s with home gardening and learning to make do. I am looking forward to it.
A 2 metre square vegetable garden can feed a family of 4 - don’t worry too much about mixed sunlight - there’s a lot of plants that like a bit of shade, and there are varieties of sun-lovers which have been developed for lower light.
You might not be able to grow avocados, but basics like potatoes, carrots and cabbage do well in less than optimal conditions.
As for rabbits - I’m interested in Angoras. Not only for meat, but also for the fibre they shed. It makes beautiful yarn.
Its something I’ve been interested in for a while: the Husband is happy being a worker-bee in the games industry, but I’m getting more and more interested in smallholding, both for providing food for ourselves, and hopefully a small amount of income.
Anyone ever raised Angoras? Would love to hear any advice or tips.
During the commune rage of the Sixties it was discovered, contrary to myth, that the typical commune could not grow enough food to substain itself.
The solution to this problem was to have at least one member of the commune work at a grocery store whereby food could be stolen to supplement the commune member’s diets.
LOL - the good old ‘Liberation’ diet…
“A 2 metre square vegetable garden can feed a family of 4″
Is there a good book or something you would suggest along these lines?
Muggy -try looking into Permaculture - its been a bit ‘hippy-dippy’ for the last three decades or so, especially in the recent ‘I got mine!’ zeitgeist, but has some good ideas about land use and crop rotation, especially in small spaces.
Here’s a link:
http://www.permaculture.org/nm/index.php/site/index/
The ‘2 metres squared’ thing is possible, if hard - although you have to be willing to eat stuff in season, and plant things that a) don’t expend more energy to grow than the final result produces and b) will fit in a small space, eg fruit trees are out.
Obviously things like grains, cheese and meat can’t be grown on such a small scale. But cutting costs on ‘everyday’ veg means more cash for other foods. And, even in such a small space, you’d be astonished at how much you grow.
I made a modern day ‘Victory Garden’ in my miniscule back yard in London, when I still lived there.
Grew salad greens, kitchen herbs, zuchini, french beans and peas (up against a wall), tomatoes, spring onions and capsicum peppers.
I’d overwinter stuff like potatoes (never eaten a better spud than one fresh out of the ground), carrots, savoy cabbage, kale and other winter greens for early spring harvest.
Never got round to the more ‘interesting’ stuff like asparagus (takes too long and takes up too much room) or bulb onions (again too much room, and, frankly, cheaper to buy than grow yourself).
If I wasn’t responsible for the upkeep of my Landlady’s (dreary) rose bushes, I’d be planting Pink Fir Apple and Belle de Fontenay potatoes….well…right about now.
And don’t even get me started on how big a waste of space a whole back-yard full of lawn is, especially in Los Angeles….still, not my place, no point in upsetting the LL with messy compost heaps and raised beds.
Ok, now you all think I’m sort of millenial freak.
Just love growing things, then eating them.
Honest
I’m definitely going to try planting potatoes. I have a “compost” heap outside (it’s actually a shady spot where I throw vegetable waste from the kitchen door) and I’ve noticed that the moldy potatoes I’ve tossed end up sprouting quite nicely. I agree about the pointlessness of a backyard lawn, especially if it’s a small area. I pulled up the sod– which was a be-atch– and have been plunking in an assortment of interesting plants. It’s wonderful not having to do the mowing/edging thang.
Muggy,
Check out square foot gardening. Very easy and effective.
I had a friend who came from a family of 10, and raised their own rabbits to eat.
Big rabbits are the latest craze. Check out these breeds which grow to 22 pounds and yield 15 pounds of meat: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6865800
Dang, those are some BIG rabbits. Don’t know if I could kill food that could beat me up…they’re like those monster fruit & veggies in Sleeper.
I think I’ve solved the mess and smell issue. If things get really grim “out there” I’m sure my neighbors would hold their noses in exchange for some of my rabbit largess. In fact, it doesn’t seem that far fetched to organize the neighbors to each grow/raise some food stuff that we could barter. Green Acres meets Little House in the Suburb. Quick question for the hipster Boomers out there, if no sex is involved, it’s not a Commune, right?
Well folks, I am no goldbug. I am also not a wack-o. I do have a couple of goals this year - 1) purchase some physical gold, silver, and other near liquid assets. 2) purchase a .45, 9mm and a shotgun. So far, have acquired some gold, and made arrangements to trade a collectible rifle for the two hand guns (already have hunting rifles). Don’t know what the future holds - but think it isn’t looking all too great. Grandfather spent years telling me about the great depression of his youth. Invaluable in my upbringing. Unlike many of my generation (born 1970), I can read, hunt, fish, cook, garden, camp, construct, destruct, remodel, paint, sew, and have training in first aid & alternative energy sources. Should be able to get by. I realize my line of work (web programming) is not going to be in demand as much as what else I am capable of doing. Just glad I am stuck here (cc nv) and not in San Diego or LA. I want to thank this blog for getting me interested in following the economy. I started reading THBB about three years ago, and by following the links, and links to links on this site, I have learned a great deal. Ben, you have been awesome. I have really enjoyed Neil as well. I have spent literally years wondering what people are counting on. Many others in my age bracket are so leveraged with debt that they can’t even think or talk about it. It’s like a classic case of denial. They continue to live their lives as if nothing is wrong, and everything is wonderful. I can’t live that way: at someone else’s expense. Last year my wife of 9 years and I had our first child. We waited those 9 years because we were both the product of broken homes, and because we wanted to have the necessary financial security in place before we had a child. Planning in this case was just not enough. Our son was born with a serious heart defect. He had to be rushed to Standford and have several surgeries. He is now fine. The cost of this adventure is close to 800,000.00 and our insurance has covered a great deal of it. On the items that are not fully paid - our local hospital turned us over to a non-collection agency which issued us a loan at 15% without any notification to us until after the fact. The hospital won’t even talk to us about it - this must be health care ferorm in action. WTF? I didn’t even know they could do this. Had I been completely irresponsible and broke - Standford & local hospital would have written off my debt and moved on. - Oh Well - I remain stuck_in_nnv.
Whereabouts are you, stuck? I spent many years on the Nevada circuit and played just about every town.
(cc) Carson City. A speck that wouldn’t be on the map if it were not for the state capital.
I have stayed at my current job the last couple of years pretty much primarily because I feel it is recession-proof. Well due to some events that occurred last week, I now want out. I’m afraid, however, that it might be a bad time to change jobs… Perhaps I would have been better making the move a year or so ago.
So what will a recession / depression look like for me? If I take another job and get laid off, quite possibly my son and I will have to move in with my parents (worst case scenario). Being that they are planning on downsizing from their 5 bedroom colonial to a 2 bedroom ranch in a retirement community, that wouldn’t be cozy.
If they live close to you, maybe you could live with them in the 5 bedroom? Sounds like everyone would have enough room, and they could help babysit?
In my personal opinion, try seeing if you can fix whatever happened and stay with your current employer. IMHO, it’s not a good time to be looking for a job.
Here in the small Central Florida Town I live in crime is WAAAAY UP!
In the 80’s and 90’s I lived here. 10 Years and I used to leave my doors unlocked. Moved back 2 1/2 years ago. Been burgularized , vandalized so many times , I can’t even remember a close number to write down. Called 911 twice, car got vandalized, and 4 guys were running down the street with my ladder rack ( 300 lbs of steel), just this last 2 weekends.
Courtesy of the Marine Corps my first job was firing an M-60 machinegun, throwing grenades, taking supplies off of the bodies and living off the land. Now that is a resume for the future.
I spent some time in the military as well. One thing I observed: extreme danger dispells all manner of depression and neurosis. When I think of the legions of bitter, depressed, futureless young men who are going to be casualties of any major depression - especially the Iraq war vets - it scares me to think how many are going to find solidarity and relief by linking up with others of like mind for criminal enterprises, for the rush as well as to survive and punish the “haves.”
Already happening. The TV showed a robbery of a convenience store by armed young white guys. It was done with military precision. They had a guy at the door counting off every five seconds. They did catch the guys - Iraq vets - using military issue weapons.
“America is much different now. How would people eat? Would there really be “Hoovervilles”? Would everybody’s electricity and water really get shut off? I’d be interested in ‘real-world’ thought experiments about what it would be like.”
As in every other financial meltdown - the population will be reduced. Last time, it was WWII - which wiped 50 million off the face of the earth.
It is - and will be - much worse this time and, therefore, WWIII (or whatever population control is deployed this go round) will remove significantly more people from the books.
I think you may be right. It seems almost as if war is in our genes as a population control method. And it sure seems to be a method for a country to get out of a depression. Time will tell.
Ben, a depression thread? My, how far we’ve come… or should I say, how far the overall HBB crowd has come, since some of us have been there for years now.
BTW, JIC you didn’t see it (and knowing you, you probably did) that LV’s gaming revenue was down 14% last month?
back to basics…
plant a tree.
till a garden.
fix a tire.
bake some bread.
My grandfather used to talk about the Depression. To hear him tell it, they were sunny days of outdoor concerts and tennis games. Of course, the subtext is you have a lot of leisure time if you’re unemployed–and he must have lived in a household with a wage-earner.
My grandmother’s experience is probably more typical. Never get rid of anything. Stale bread is good for you. Pay cash for everything including your house. Her brother was raised in an orphanage because the family could not afford to keep him after her mother was widowed and the orphanage was for “fatherless boys.” I can’t imagine worse than giving up your child to be raised by an institution.
I’m a Gen-Xer and I have been in the working world for 2 recessions so far so we do know something of hard times. How serious this recession will be remains yet to be seen.
The biggest problem with a Greater Depression is that the current population is psychologically ill-prepared to deal with it. Katrina is a case in point — the masses are conditioned to a nanny government, lack many basic skills, and feel entitled to a high standard of living.
There will be widespread “unrest”.
i find this a very interesting topic. i don’t think people do understand what the depression did to everyone. when my father died (born in 1930) he had 20k in a box in the basement. oh, he had money in the bank but i suppose he thought he wasn’t going to run out with the “lockbox” in the basement. his mother (great grandma to me) died in 1991. she lived thru all parts of the depression. and you know what, she still had some of the script/coupons for gas, sugar and stuff people could not get. she also had a lot of stuff that was new and never opened in one of her closets. maybe people are just like that but i think they both had a lesson and from that time on they were saving for a rainy day cause they weren’t goin to do that again.