Posted on 02/01/2012 6:12:40 AM PST by blam
Machines create the vast majority of wealth today, and they do not currently care about having their wealth confiscated. All they want is energy. A problem is as machines surpass human intelligence hopefully they will not linger long at our level else man and machine will become competitors and one will be killed off in war. Our best hope is that they leap so far ahead we become their pets.
“Nobody is redundant in a capitalist society.”
Maybe a few comatose and vegetables, but otherwise yes.
I’ve known of a permanent bedridden disabled guy who ran a profitable recreational pharmaceutical business from his gurney. Discovering that, I realized near everyone can contribute to society and earn their keep.
Meh, there are 3 certainties in life.... Death, Taxes, and Bill Gross will talk down the market.
Let's do it correctly:
WHEN the 10Y treasury goes above 5%, it's game over!!"
“” Sure, some folks could dig ditches rather than collect welfare checks,“
Not since the invention of the backhoe...”
Backhoes involve very high capital investment. If you can’t afford the up front cost, or won’t use it’s depreciation to your advantage, it’s a lot cheaper to just hire some guys to dig a ditch.
Except that paying would-be ditch diggers what their work is worth is illegal (but you can pay a backhoe and it’s owner that price).
Leftists absolutely love shortages of any kind - life, love, light, food, oil, money, education, etc. Those Regressives want to bring back the good old days of death, misery, division, disease, starvation, plagues, superstition, ignorance, human sacrifice, worship of animals, plants, stars and other things, pestilence, and every other abominable thing Western civilization has beaten back over the course of a 200 years.
I’m agreeing insofar as they’ll keep beneficial peons alive so long as their continued existence contributes to sustaining communism. But yes, once they can afford to kill off dissenters, they will.
I see a third option, and that's a combo of your #'s 1 and 2.
To writ: I think that we're rapidly approaching the point where there are not enough producers from which government may extract money - either at metaphorical or physical gunpoint. They'll either run out of money, or run out of means to create wealth.
Or, they'll just leave. Something that Liberals don't understand is that people with wealth, or even just with some smarts, are not limited to staying in their neighborhoods and taking their lumps. They can leave the city, state, country...pretty much at will (for now).
Take my case, for example. The city in which I live was sticking me up for an (IMHO) inordinate amount of taxes every year. It frosted me to no end, to watch crime increase, while the police force was cut, and simultaneously the city spent 10's of millions on new museums for the politically correct and massive swimming pools (voted in, mostly by people who DIDN'T pay property taxes....). So, I left for a place that was more rural, with lower taxes, less crime, better schools, etc etc etc. Easy Peasy, a no-brainer decision.
At any rate, once that tipping point is reached, then children *will* starve in the street. Not by choice, but because there's nothing left and no means to obtain more. The cupboard, quite literally, will be bare.
I'm hoping that the current political cabal comes to its senses before that point it reached. I'm not optimistic. I also think that the slide will take a couple of generations, but once that "tipping point" is reached, then its a point of no return.
YMMV. Just my $0.02
That may be a bit optimistic.
Glenn Beck is presently talking about how the Marxists always kill the farmers.
***Eventually?? Have you noticed that that Our Dollar has been DEVALUED by some 3500 Percent over the last 40 years.***
In 1888 a pair of Levis cost &1.80.
Seventy four years later, (1961) a pair of Levis cost $2.60.
Today, 51 years later a pair of Levis cost $35 dollars.
It first took 74 years for them to double in price.
It took 51 years for them to cost over a thousand times more.
Think how much a postage stamp has risen. 3 cents in the 1950s, now around 45 cents.
It is not a premise. It is a fact. It is an incontrovertible fact of history, and it it is happening right now while you read this - for example, in abortion-killing. It is a central part of their planning, and has been for a long time.
Cordially,
I have a feeling in our lifetimes we will see things that Science Fiction writers wouldn’t dare print...
***So a pair of Levis in 2011 at $35 has increased in constant dollars by about three quarters over their price in 1961 at $2.60. ***
Maybe that is because the “Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price” is much higher than the $35.00, around $50.00.
My calculator must be giving me the wrong numbers. I put in $2.6 X 1350% and it gives me $35.00.
Using the numbers in my original post, it still took 73 years for the price of jeans to double. ($1.80 X 150%=$2.7) Yet it only took 51 years to reach what it is now, $35 to $50 dollars.
If the inflation rate had been what it was between the 1880s and the 1960s, the price of jeans should only be around $5 or $6 dollars and not what they are today.
In 1956 a bottle of soda pop was 10 cents, if you took the bottle with you. Today that same size soda is $1.35 cents.
In 1956 all dollar bills had the words “Pay to the bearer on demand ONE DOLLAR in silver”.
Today all it says is “This note is legal tender for all debts public and private.”
Good point.
I think, though, that time tends to contract from a historical perspective. For instance, looking at WWII, the popular view is that Germany invaded Europe, Japan bombed Pearl, and then we won. The reality was that Hitler was almost 20 years coming to power before he invaded Europe, and Imperial Japan was on the march 10 years before we entered the war with them. Then, it was another 4 years before we settled things. So, to think "Hey, this is going to come at us fast" might be a little misplaced. Heck, without historical perspective, the events that we're discussing might be happening right now, and we're blissfully unable to connect the dots.
Lots of variables at work. The country might fragment. I can see large parts of the country (Texas, the Plains States) just splitting off. Maybe delaying the ievitable for themselves by trading food and oil with what's left of the country.
Or - IMHO, the most likely possibility because we're seeing it already - the parasites in the urban areas might just eat themselves. Things in the cities might be horrific, but rural areas would be largely untouched. That kind of unrest would delay, or perhaps even prevent the inevitable.
Or, the whole shooting match might go boom overnight. Qui Sait?
Assuming the $1.80 price is correct, rising to $35 over 124 years works out to an average inflation rate of 2.4%. That's not too bad, except Levis uses thin denim now and third world labor.
I remember reading a newspaper archive from about 100 years ago and there was a sale on dresses advertised for around $24. Adjusted for inflation clothing seems to have gone down in price over the years largely due to automation in farming, sewing, and shipping from third world countries.
It will not matter who is President, unfortunately, when it comes to the collapse. It's going to continue happening regardless of who is in office.
The only way to stop it is to literally deleverage our debt by 25%. To do that, we have to cut the size of the FedGov in HALF to have any impact.
No one, not Repubs or Dems, has the fortitude to do it.
How, then, will the President matter? He WILL matter when it comes to setting policy that doesn't HARM our already fragile economy, by reducing spending as much as possible, by keeping us out of war when countries start going after each other's throats, by not weakening our national defense, and by eliminating oppressive regulations that impact our ability to recover once the deleveraging cycle is complete.
There are only 2 candidates making a convincing case that they will change the present course: Ron Paul, who is absolutely RIGHT on fiscal policy but way off course regarding international threats, and Newt Gingrich, who is right on both issues.
If Obama wins, he will preside over a financial graveyard - you can bank on it.
LLS
Once, walking thru an international airport (Montreal?) I happened thru a “sculpture garden” advertisement for cigarettes. That half the ad copy was pushing the joys of product M, and the other half pushing grotesque imagery decrying the evils of smoking, for a surreal moment I couldn’t tell if I was experiencing the scene for real or watching a comic relief moment in some sci-fi movie.
Indeed, as we move into our science fiction future, some of it will be not just indiscernible from fantasy, some of it will be living stories writers dared not tell.
Yes, it will have to reach that point before enough people wake up.
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