Authored by Tom Chatham via Project Chesapeake,
In 1940 you could buy a nice cape cod style home for around $2,500. Someone entering the job market likely started out at $25 a week. A 1940 Buick with a straight 8 would run you $895 and up.
Why this stroll down memory lane? Because it is meant to show how much inflation has changed the price of things. When we still used money that was based on gold and silver, inflation was kept in check to some degree. Fractional reserve banking and excessive credit creation have distorted the value of things we depend on for life and we are coming to the end of that failed experiment. All of our recent prosperity has been paid for with our ability to print dollars out of thin air.
If you want to know where we are being led you only have to stroll down any city street where the homeless live, or you can look through the many pictures of the great depression. The American people are being systematically impoverished and it is being done knowingly by those in charge and is allowed by a dumbed down, apathetic public too busy staring at their iphone to notice.
If this nation is to survive and retain a reasonable standard of living and quality of life, we will have to downsize to a level that we can actually afford. We will need to forego the 2,000 sq. ft. $300,000 homes we all like so much and settle for a more affordable 900 sq. ft. $30,000 home we can actually pay for. We will have to give up the $40,000 autos coming out of Detroit now and settle for a smaller inexpensive model that can actually get 60 mpg.
We will also need to return to a financial system that is based on real value. This being gold and silver money. If we try to use anything else we are simply trying to fool ourselves. You cannot use a currency that does not act as a store of wealth over the long term.
We can do this by choice and salvage what is left of our country or we can continue on the current path and end up an impoverished country with a dictator in charge like most other failed nations in the world.
If we want to continue having a country worth living in we need to go back to what we know works and try to build up from there. We no longer have sufficient manufacturing capacity to employ all of the people in this country and any kind of welfare will not work without debasing the currency.
This will necessitate 20% of the population going back to living on small farms to insure they have a job and sufficient resources to care for their families. Nothing else in our current situation will work. We have too many unemployed people living off of the state and this will end soon. We will either have a mass exodus from the country or a mass extinction within it. As unpleasant as it sounds that is our future if we do not make substantial changes while we still have time. That time is nearly up.
Downsizing our lives and our wants will be a necessary change if we want to salvage something of our future. We have lived too long in fantasy land and now we must come back to reality. The west line has moved and we will never get back all of the production jobs we once had. We must accept that and accept that our country will be less productive and less prosperous in the future and learn to live within our means.
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I agree with you. We need to get back to basics. However, do you really think that the general population will jump off the free lunch wagon and start taking care of themselves? Better harden your heart, I think some dark times are coming.
I agree wholeheartedly with the tone of your comment but wish you would identify yourself to give your comment context with previous comments.
It will never happen willingly.
To many people in general from welfare to workers to business owners to politicians will not change significantly unless they are forced to with no other alternative but death.
That’s where another great depression and great war comes in.
This side of the rapture and/or after that is.
Nope. People have shown repeatedly over the past couple of decades that they are more than willing to give up their freedoms for the illusion of prosperity. That trend will continue until change is forced. I’d say that comes shortly after the USD looses it’s reserve currency status. Just sayin’.
The problem with downsizing is that the 900 sq foot home is eventually going to be $300K. Hell, in many places it already is.
Where I am (San Jose/Silicon Valley) it’s much worse than that. Near me a 1400 sqft house on a 2300 Sqft lot sold for 1.2M. And we have a homeless problem that appears to be headed for the likes of San Francisco and LA.
Downsizing $ depends on exactly where you size down at, and who builds it.
I am having a 2,000 square foot home, with an 800 square foot basement, built for well under 300K
I like the example of Motel Six. It was started in the mid 1980’s and named so because their rooms cost six bucks a night. What are they now? Fifty or sixty? It’s the same crummy room. Why 10X more? Currency manipulation, like empire, is beyond the realm of political discussion. It’s forbidden on the 3×5 card of allowable opinions.
And the author is correct. America has been bled white. All of our new jungle bunny citizens hoping to hop on the welfare gravy train are in for a lesson in moral gravity.
CC…I NEVER stay at a Motel 6 anymore . Tom Bodett keeps leaving that damn light on !
Sometimes I can’t figure out down votes…what do you two do…wake up in the morning sucking on lemons?
Thanks for the smile BUCKHEAD.
A Tom Woods reader 🙂
At this point I don’t see “them” turning around from their support & fervor of socialism. These decades that led to stagnating wages, higher cost of living, breakdown of the family, destruction of men is the product & responsibility of Democrats & Republicans that have given their loyalty to corporations.
If Trump wins will the 4 variables above begin to be reversed? They can if we elect politicians that understand them and are loyal to the American family. At the rate that Trump is not building the wall and allowing Jared to feed the Koch brothers & Israel with our money, the outlook is grim. Will the corporations allow legislation that will get money back into the hands of the American family?
Trump gets re-elected, goes 4 years and then what? I’m in the healthcare industry and no one, not doctors, nurses, assistants, janitors, pharmacist, maintenance men, firemen, policemen have seen any trickle of this “raging economy”. The executives have seen gains and unbelievable increases.
Anger turns to rage when an employer tells their employee of ten years, “I’m going to get you that raise Hank, just hang on a little longer.” 4 more years pass, then 4 more. Anger turns to rage turns to socialism.
I agree with the writers below. Change will come at our hands, not the politicians.
icutrauma,
Yep, people can posture all they want about morality and work or die blah blah blah ( I don’t disagree that if you want to eat, you must work) but there be a pernicious cloud be working against the morality of our society. Yes, we will be getting more socialism.
Pffft. No sale. We. Ha. There is no we except the we that has no power to change anything.
Blah, blah, blah…like this hasn’t been discussed ad nauseam. No one has ever been elected by saying they will do less or give less free stuff to the sheep. It’s always been that way.
Don’t borrow money, pay cash, and the rest seems to pretty much take care of itself.
You got that right. Pay off that loan and save those pennies.
Clip coupons.
That sucks. I vote for free shit paid by someone else.
Haha
Well, there is an alternate possibility, one where the crash is sudden and massive whereby nobody has the time or ability to “downsize” sustainably as the author notes. Resulting in macro scale bankruptcy and violent loss of control. Accompanied by wanton destruction in urban areas.
Providing the need for massive rebuilding and credit expansion, here this time, versus “overseas” as has always occurred in the past, except for the Civil War, which incidentally was followed by the Reconstruction Period and Americas Gilded Age.
So no worries, things will be great, just a small bump in the road…..
Stupendous
Why has the show,”Tiny House Nation ” become do popular ? Because after the collapse that’s all the average American will be able to afford . ..if they are lucky .
Down in the south those tiny houses are called travel trailers or garden sheds. Old ‘tiny houses’ get drug out to deer leases or become home to illegals and others in need of a place to squat.
As to the cost of things? What drives up costs? Taxes, government mandated rules and regulations and fees, crony capitalism where failure is laid on the taxpayers to recoup and profit is private to the company execs, unions (not as much but still there) welfare (corporate and private individual) dollar devaluation (done to compete w/ China and other slave labor countries and cover massive debt) and middlemen. That’s off the top of my head, add to the list as you see fit.
https://discussions.texasbowhunter.com/forums/showthread.php?t=523309
I wish that they would do the follow-up to each episode, six months later, when the happy couple is signing the divorce papers. Nobody can live with another person cramped up like that for any extended period of time.
That 2nd picture looks almost like Maggies childhood farm that she posted a while back.
Soybean fields all look about the same.
We built my son a 1400 sq.ft. house for right at 28k. Solar panels,composting toilet,rain water catchment,wood heat. If you can build it yourself materials cost is what determines the size. It took two years to build out of pocket, but he doesn’t have a mortgage.
That doesn’t work most places. To meet city, state, and federal building regulations and requirements you’ve got to put in a lot more than 28k and there are parts that you can’t, by law, do yourself.
Avoid building codes.
Sorry, the article does not actually call out what works beyond the simplistic “hard money”. The problem with the gold standard is that there is not nearly enough gold in the world to back the amount of USD in existence. Mechanically gold just doesn’t work at the scale of the world economy now. Alternatively as currently structured the privately owned and operated Federal Reserve Bank that issues our Federal Reserve Notes (debt instruments!) no longer works if it ever did (I would argue it never worked for Americans but was awesome for bankers, the elites and government).
Nope, the whole structure is rotten to the fucking core and needs to be taken down…..that means no government welfare/transfer payments. We will either transition out of medicare, social security, welfare on our own timeline or it will crash anyways….governments will never willingly deny benefits to voters (They just inflate them away to $0) so it will be a crash, not a coordinated transition.
The very best way to help the homeless, drug-addled, poor, etc is to leave them alone and stop “helping”. The government encourages dependency and disfunction and has never ever solved a single problem (have you ever seen a government bureaucracy shut down?)
It used to be that a family of four in MT could make a nice living with 50 head of cattle…..in a cow/calf operation. Now that number is 500 head and it still won’t pay to buy the land…..so if you own/lease 5,000+ acres already you can make a living if you have 500 head……but nobody new can start a ranch because the cost to the 5,000 acres is in the millions……..
Going back to the farm is not going to work….agriculture is a commodity scale business and a new tractor is $100K+ plus lots of attachments, seed costs, irrigation, and on and on……you want to make a small fortune in agriculture, make sure you start with a large fortune!
Subsistence farming is back-breaking work and there is a reason every farm kid in America wants to move to the big city……Farming is a bitch.
The big cities are where the jobs are……no matter where you look in the USA the big cities show much more economic growth relative to rural areas (except for Detroit and a few other shitholes), the population is also rapidly moving to low tax states (Florida, TX, AZ) in the sunbelt…
So while hard to see……the old system is getting hollowed out and will change (4th Turning) but the “reset” is going to be exceptionally painful. We are going to go through the last gasp of collectivism/statism before a majority people say…..”fuck you government I am better off on my own.”
When people stop shopping at Walmart, Amazon and eating at fast food places….well will be getting close. When AOC becomes dictator for life….we will be closer.
You called it. I think that’s the way it’ll go down.
Hammer Head , you ding-a-ling . You haven’t learned much from reading about how Hitler took a flat broke Germany to an industrial superpower is just 7 years.. We have to do what the Germans did. It’s our only hope. You are right !!!Gold is good but Germany had no gold or silver. They had been bled dry. So ” hard money ” is not the whole answer. There are some excellent articles on line about how Hitler did what he did. This is your homework assignment.
One other thing. The earth is flat , fixed ,none moving . If you say otherwise then you call God a liar. You don’t want that. Outer space is a Hoax. Does not exist. Gravity is Hoax. All lies. No satellites either. I like you Hammer Head . That’s the reason I give you much to think about.
I’ve researched to the best of my ability ( not religiously, mind you)… Dr. Schott et al as Nazi Finance Minister, appears to have been at the forefront of a system of simple and unbridled theft of all comers. Please be so kind as to illuminate for me Mr. Hitler’s grand financial acumen?
Ps. The good doctor wasn’t hanged. Go figure
You opinion is certainly valid, but it isn’t universal. I know plenty of people living on multi-generational family farms who wouldn’t trade it for any amount of money. Farming is- for us at least- the very furthest thing from being a bitch. It’s the most rewarding work imaginable, but it does take a certain mindset.
I think most assume if you plant a crop or raise an animal you have harvest. That is far from true, as you know. The time and effort put in to raise a dud cannot be recovered either.
In my case, this is a terrible year for spring/summer honey. I just got back from my newest outyard. Half of the hives didn’t store any excess and in those that did the harvest will be quite meager. Probably 25% of a normal year.
Now, they will have to make it up on fall honey which looks really good right now, or they will starve this winter. If we get a wet fall that washes the nectar out of the goldenrod it will be a bust.
As it is now, I will have little if any excess to sell and this year will just be a wash. Thank God it isn’t my primary source of income. But, that’s what real farmers have to deal with every year.
That’s why farms are diversified where ag ops are monocultures. One operates on the old ‘don’t put all your eggs in one basket’ format while the other profits on margins.
You are the exception to which many of us aspire to emulate. Most folks don’t have internal strength to make agriculture self supporting. I don’t think it will be a viable option for most millennials. Martel.
I’ve been a lifelong gardener, but my delicious ongoing fulfillment of a lifelong day dream of living self-sufficient/homesteading/farming journey started in 2013 at 63.
All the books and magazines in the world (and I have a massive library) will not matter compared to learning by failing.
Just like everything else in life.
If you have the passion, enthusiasm, persistance, and the physicality your failures in working the land are your path to success.
I cant wait to screw up my next project!
HSF – farming is the classic “anyone can do it” that I have talked about. Anyone (of course not anyone, it is a generalisation) can do what you do. But not everyone will. But if everyone would, it would not work – too many people, too few farms to generate a standard of living anywhere near what Americans would find acceptable.
Smart, industrious folks like yourself can do well, so long as everyone does not do it. There is around 1.5 acres of arable land per person in the US. You can do the maff from there.
The gospel truth.
They tried that 50 years ago in Rhodesia.
Unable to reboot when sold out.
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Is the author suggesting we can fix America before this happens?
Yeah, and a silver dollar was actually worth a dollar. Today that dollar is worth about three cents.
That’s why we put “In God We Trust” on our coins. Really. We get to keep 3 cents, and trust God for the the other 97 cents.
>> .. 20% of the population going back to living on small farms ..
I know firsthand that 1 person can produce the vast majority of a family’s fruits & veg. on 1/4 acre. Bulk grains, meat, and dairy no way. But you can go a very long way towards feeding yourself instead of having a useless lawn. Less money needed and you’ll eat better too.
aka “Victory Gardens” and then you do the canning and voila, food for most of the year. Lots of zoning problems today but that will change. On 5-10 acres depending on where you are in the US and you can grow lots of vegetables, chickens, hogs, have a small fruit orchard and maybe a couple of dairy cows. That’s HSF’s point of “Farming” vs. Agriculture (aka factory monoculture). If you can share equipment with your neighbors and quickly develop your skills (Farming is skilled just like anything else) it can work but it is a lot of work and the work never stops……there is always something to do. If you are up to the challenge it is a life worth living.
Big fat lazy meat rabbits. Two does and a buck will produce 150 lbs of meat in a year. Of course, there’s also the pelt industry.
Just sayin’
I disagree with your premise. All of those homeless are only in that situation because they are lazy and most likely receiving one government stipend or another. Most, probably like living that way.
most have mental health issues in addition to alcohol or drug issues–
We used to institutionalize the mentally ill now they just shit on the street and scream at the passers-by. Drug and alcohol addicted are also often self-medicating mentally ill and then there are the criminals on the run, the health cost bankruptcy cases, the laid-off, and yes those who willing chose to be homeless because it is easier. I wonder if my old pals in CA who enjoyed the antics of the homeless in Santa Monica and Venice beach are still amused? I doubt it.