Tuesday, July 28, 2009

one income extended family

ONE INCOME EXTENDED FAMILY
Are you ready for your income to shrink 40%, as your grown children are moving back home and your aging parents are kicked out of the nursing home or their Florida retirement home? And that's the best case scenario where at least one of you keeps an income and you stay off of that junk land you didn't buy living in the tent you don't own. Now, I could drone on and on about cutting the cable and installing a roof top antenna. I could talk about substituting beans for some of your meat. We could talk about giving up one if not both cars, even though I know the average American would rather carve the bloody word "loser" into their forehead than give up their pimpin ride, yo. All these things will of course be necessary. But you also need to keep in mind that there is no such thing as the average middle class existence buying canned seeds and collecting rimfire ammo one second and fighting off jack booted thugs the next. In between a lot of crap is coming down and making your life very difficult. I'm not talking about a long slow collapse. I hate that theory. It is a cop out misdirecting you into believing you have plenty of time. We have been in a long slow collapse since the early Seventies. We are now on the edge of the abyss and will very shortly plunge over. But there will be a short period of time when everything that possibly can will go wrong.
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Your spouse will lose his job. I say a 40% income loss, it could be 50% or 60%. Hubby can perhaps sell your embroidered unicorn backpacks on E-Bay, or pick up cans on the highway. Whatever. Just assume your income is going to take a big hit. Then, Obammy, on instructions from the bankers, will make health insurance mandatory. One last bubble while the last of the elite scamper away to their Caribbean hide outs with satchels of decaying dollars. Luckily for us, in the end they will die as horribly as the rest of us, since they think money is the only survival tool they need. At least karmic justice will be served. Even minimum wage drones most likely will see their income further garnished. As has been repeatedly taught to me by experience, when it comes time to redistribute income, the government could care less if you have enough left over to survive on. Don't believe me? Try living on $400 a month take home paying rent ( and that was on $9 an hour gross ). This is desperation situation time for the banks and businesses. Why else would the bail out liabilities go as high as 23 TRILLION bucks ( and that figure is from the Treasury I.G. )? They aren't even worried about our inability to pay the interest on that amount, let alone ever repay it. It is an impossible amount- wheelbarrow full of cash type inflation is the only way to repay. And it doesn't matter, because our economy isn't going to recover. Green shoots will grow out of my butt first.
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You've lost half the household income. Your paycheck withholding went from thirty to forty percent ( and the medical portion will assuredly increase given enough time-the government will cut costs and pass on the savings as well as the Post Office does ). Food is inflating at a minimum of twenty percent a year. Next, your kids move back home. Your son dropped out of college after he racked up thirty grand in debt through a private bank loan ( backed by taxpayers of course ). Can you even discharge student loans through bankruptcy? Your daughter is knocked up by a macho bad boy gang member and thrown out on the street. She comes calling with about two months to go before she squirts the puppy. As soon as you seriously consider going postal on the family and suiciding by cop, you get news that your aging parents have lost the condo in Florida, don't have the cash to buy a used mobile home in a park, and will be moving in with you right after next months check arrives to finance their move. Before you know it you are going to have two adults and a dog living with you, all with bad hips and the inability to get to the toilet in time.
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What could possibly go wrong next? Gasoline climbs to ten bucks a gallon. Now getting to work proves almost impossible. You have to get up two hours early, carpool to downtown, then take a city bus that has a half hour flexible arrival time and is full of crack whores and homeless guys that haven't showered since the first Bush administration. And this is all before crime increases and you get laid off and store shelves start coming up empty. Or ration cards or political dissident camps. Or mass food shortages from Gore Warming and crop failures followed by grain fungal outbreaks and fertilizer shortages. Or heating oil becomes unavailable for any price. Or civil war breaks out next to your super farm retreat. Or sea levels rise ( what about that strange two foot surge the entire east coast just had, or New Zealand shifting an inch from one quake, or...? ). Are you paranoid enough? Because more than one bad thing is going to happen. Don't let down your guard. Be very afraid.
END

9 comments:

Maitreya said...

Great post. Chillingly realistic.
Makes me glad I'm traveling light.
Critical mass is coming soon.
I look forward to karmic justice being served.

Found a place, found a tribe, preparing to hunker down.

It really is more likely for green shoots to grow out of Jim's butt than to appear in our economy.
He can just stick a sweet potato up there and wait 4 days. The solutions to our problems as a species are not quite so simple.

No, student loans are not eligible for dissolution in bankruptcy.
Nor are backed taxes.

Good luck y'all.
Blessed be.

bigunsfan said...

Glad to see you're in a good mood today and so optimistic!

Jim you may be on to something. I haven't been able to find any embroidered unicorn backpacks on Ebay. Sounds like a potential business opportunity to me,thanks for the idea.

Buzz Kimball said...

EBAY is getting real scary these days. Scammers galore.... Sellers pulling the old switcheroo. "Naked Short" buyers who bid on many of the same items and won't pay except for the lowest priced one...

I don't do a whole lot of it, so i had only been averaging one scam a year. It's been 4 in the past couple of months.

Not sure if it's a sign of the time or whether EBAY doesn't give a shit, since their only other competition is craigslist.

HermitJim said...

Makes me real glad I'm only having to look out for myself! Wouldn't want the responsibility of looking out for anyone else...

Spot on with the post today, Jim

Anonymous said...

Good post, Jim. A very fine piece of writing.

The only trouble with it is that it's describing a lot about what is happening and has happened to me and possibly my future. I can't say that I have reached suicidal depression or will: I doubt if it's in my character. Instead, I am thankful I have a big house and plenty of room for my more-and-more extended family. Things will go wrong and probably get worst, but we all have each other. Also, for now, my work is close by and seems secure. Still, from my past experience, I know things can happen very fast. And, things can go terribly wrong all at once. That's why we have grains and beans, dry milk, and fuel stored. Also, we have a lot of extra buckets and containers for wind-falls, water, etc.

The one thing I have learned is when things do go wrong, I don't like facing it all alone. I don't quite understand the logic of going out in the middle of nowhere on a piece of land that is, by definition, worthless and therefore cannot sustain life. Also, if done without other people, well, I consider being alone a sort of death

Anonymous said...

By the way, it really is better to give than to receive. Having been in the position of receiving help from others, I understand the position of those people who are accepting my help. Receiving help is hard on the old pride. Also, in helping others, I try to not lord it over them, and I try to accept, from them, graciously, anything they can do to help. Also, receiving help, when necessary, is a real survival skill. Once you have needed and received help, you understand how important it is to give needed help when you can. You will come to understand that giving help is also a real survival skill.

fallout11 said...

I agree with you Buzz, I've been on Ebay since 1998 and yet both of the bad experiences I've ever had happened in the last 12 months.
I suspect it is like the email spammers/scammers, proliferating because of the economic decline. Always brings out the crooks and desperate.

Gringo_Malo said...

Good points, Jim. You could say that it took the Roman Empire about two and a half centuries to collapse, beginning in A.D. 235 with the interval of military anarchy. Of course, for a good many individual Romans, TSHTF many times during that 240-odd years before a barbarian general deposed the last emperor. Our collapse might be fast or slow, but we Americans will take it in the shorts either way.

Your chances of survival might be better if you can produce your own food and defend your property. Then again, a government dominated by aliens might decide to tax you out of existence. Or it might decide to forcibly "buy" your produce with worthless money to feed another bunch of aliens who just swam the river. Or it might decide that your land should be redistributed to "the people," none of whom looks anything like you. Or it might forbid you to possess weapons, thereby allowing its protected classes to kill you. Or it might try different combinations of the preceding at different times, as the Roman government did. The only sure thing is that life will become increasingly unpleasant.

Maitreya said...

Holy crap Jimbo,
intelligent readers are coming out of the woodwork!
What ever happened to Ho Ho's Troll?

Maybe people really ARE waking up.
YAY for HUMANITY!!!!!

It just gets better from here!
(That last sentence was sarcastic, if anyone failed to catch it.)