A lot of folks are hoping — in a fantasy kind of way — that skills sets that are not valued now will be valued in the future. This is like hoping a certain stock will rise.
I understand this. I’m of the generation that valued skills such as tuning up or changing the oil in a car and basic household repairs. These skills are either now worth less than minimum wage performed by illegals or done by franchises on the cheap.
Conversely, skill sets that seem to have little practical value, such as marketing, building economic models and various other abstract type work has brought their practioners millions of dollars.
It depends on the economy in which one finds oneself.
Actually, we are discussing a form of economic modeling and speculative marketing models. We are in uncertain times. Nothing wrong with abstractions. I think there are a lot of people right on this thread with those sorts of jobs and many who are extremely successful and comfortable. However, in the sort of future we are essentially modeling here, the franchise will be gone because the credit lines will be gone. The illegals are not going to bother coming here if there are no low-skill jobs or any incentive via the American Dream model, due to the lack of either credit or stable currency or even the ability of a government to enforce law and order.
I think a majority of sober individuals see some huge changes coming in the world as we have come to accept it. Some of us are retired. Some of us have perhaps never had more than a dependable middle class job. Making preparations for dislocation is no different than preparing for an extreme weather event that might last longer than a week or so. Many folks have experienced this recently with the Gulf Coast hurricanes. In the instances we are trying to foresee, we are dealing with all the ways in which those in power could make things worse, through tax policy or lack of resource extraction, for example. Or through attacks on vulnerable-appearing rivals, like the USA.
I don’t think it is fantasy or hoping for wish fulfillment that would make marginal skills sought after. I hope fervently that nothing as dire as we project here ever happens. I hope that by 2012, we will joke about our stored supplies and arcane skills just as we do about our Y2K or Peak Oil planning.
It is easy to take it lightly when we are comfortable, have incomes, have dependable infrastructure, especially as we are in the deflationary portion of the crisis. I was raised by grandparents who fled Eastern Europe over 100 years ago and who, along with my parents, survived the Depression. Both totalitarianism and economic crisis exacerbated by that political modality are real possibilities in the near future.
I find utility in reviewing what skills and forethought would serve us best if what is approaching becomes real. It will happen quickly, as what has taken place already happened quickly.
There is economic evidence that the decline in consumer spending last Spring was actually a change in consumption from a variety of goods and services to a stockpiling of food and other consumables. The stats for all the large discount food and pharmaceutical retailers showed increased volume as appliances, entertainment, restaurants showed declines.
As for changing your own oil, I know professionals who decided this past summer to invest in older vehicles that they could service and repair themselves and not one of them could be considered a gearhead. These aren’t collectibles, but restored cars that will run in a world where an EMP is a possibility. Lots of people must do their own home maintenance. We have a friend who was earning six figures for over 25 years doing custom remodeling in Vail and Boulder and on the Chicago Lakefront. Beginning last June, his contracts for the the rest of the year were all put on hold as the housing crisis meant his clients no longer had an ELOC. Not one or two, but over a half dozen very wealthy and successful folks with those high-end skill sets found themselves short of cash/credit as the market began to deflate.
The coming storm is, IMO, very real. If I thought we could get through it on money, we have enough, even after our own losses, to hang on until things return to normal. I don’t know if things will return to what we all defined as normal just a year ago.
YMMV