Since the late 1990s, globalization has seemed to be the great hope for the future. Now this great hope seems to be dimming. Globalization sets up conflict in the area of jobs. Countries around the world compete for development and jobs. If there is not enough cheap-to-produce energy to go around, huge wage disparity is likely to result.
We know from physics and history that economies need to grow, or they collapse. The wage disparity that high-wage countries have been experiencing in recent years is evidence that the world economy is already reaching energy limits. There are no longer enough jobs that pay well to go around. Any drop in energy supply is likely to worsen the job situation.
Most observers miss this problem, because they expect high oil prices to signal energy limits. This time, the signal is low wages for a significant group of workers, rather than high oil prices. This situation is possible in a networked economy, but it is not what most people look for.
Unhappy citizens can be expected to react to the wage disparity problem by electing leaders who favor limits to globalization. This can only play out in terms of reduced globalization.
History and physics suggest that economies without adequate energy supply can be expected to collapse. We have several recent examples of partial collapses, including the Great Depression of the 1930s and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Such collapses, or even more extensive collapses, might occur again if we cannot find energy alternatives that can be quickly scaled up to replace oil and coal in the very near term. These replacements need to be cheap-to-produce, non-polluting, and available in huge quantities.
The story that the economy doesn’t really need a growing supply of very cheap-to-produce energy is simply a myth. Let’s look at some of the pieces of this story.
[1] The world economy needs to grow or it collapses. Once all of the nations of the world are included in the world economy, one obvious source of growth (incorporating nations that are not yet industrialized into the world economy) disappears.
The reason why the world economy needs to grow is because the economy is a self-organized system that operates under the laws of physics. In many ways it is like a two-wheeled bicycle. A bicycle needs to roll quickly enough, or it will fall over. An economy must grow quickly enough, or debt cannot be repaid with interest.
Also, government promises may be a problem with slow growth. Pensions for the elderly are typically paid out of tax revenue collected in that same year. It is easy for a mismatch to take place if the number of younger workers is shrinking or if their wages are lagging behind.
Figure 1. Author’s view of analogies of speeding upright bicycle to speeding economy.
I explain a little more about my bicycle analogy in Will the World Economy Continue to “Roll Along” in 2018?
Economies throughout the ages have collapsed. In some cases, entire civilizations have disappeared. In the past 100 years, partial collapses have included the Great Depression of the 1930s, the collapse of the central government of the Soviet Union in 1991, and the Great Recession of 2008-2009. Economic collapses are analogous to bicycles falling over.
[2] A growing supply of energy products is extraordinarily important for keeping the world economy operating.
We can see in Figure 1 that the energy of the person operating a bicycle is very important in allowing the operation of the bicycle to continue. In the world’s economy, the situation is similar, except that we are facing a problem of a world population that is continually growing. In a sense, the economic situation is more like a rapidly growing army of bicycles with riders. Each member of the economy needs goods and services such as food, homes, clothing, and transportation. The members of the economy can collapse individually (for example, growing suicide rate) or in much larger groups (collapsing government of a country).
Figure 2. World population according to the United Nations 2017 historical estimates and Medium forecast of population growth after 2017.
In an economy, we have a choice regarding how much energy to use. If more energy is used, workers can have many tools (such as trucks and computers) to leverage their productivity. If all goods are made with few energy inputs other than human labor, most workers find themselves working in subsistence agriculture. The total amount of goods and services produced in such an economy tends to be very small.
If supplemental energy is used, many more jobs that pay well can be added, and many more goods and services can be created. Workers will be rich enough that they can pay taxes to support representative government that supports many services. The whole economy will look more like that of a rich nation, rather than the economy of Somalia or Haiti.
Individual nations can grow their economies by using available energy supply to create jobs that pay well. Globalization sets up competition for available jobs.
If a given country has a lot of high paying jobs, this is likely to be reflected in high per capita energy consumption for that country. There are two reasons for this phenomenon: (1) it takes energy for an employer to create jobs, and (2) workers can use their wealth to buy goods and services. This wealth buys more goods and services made with energy products.
[3] One measure of how well the world economy is doing is world energy consumption per capita. On this basis, the world economy is already reaching limits.
Figure 3. World energy per capita and world oil price in 2016 US$. Energy amounts from BP Statistical Review of World Energy, 2017. Population estimates from UN 2017 Population data and Medium Estimates.
It is clear from Figure 3 that energy consumption tends to move in the same direction as oil price. If “demand” (which is related to wages) is high, both oil price and the amount of energy products sold will tend to be high. If demand is low, both oil price and the amount of energy products sold will tend to be low.
Since 2014, energy consumption has remained quite high, but oil prices have fallen very low. Today’s oil prices (even at $70 per barrel) are too low for oil producers to make adequate investment in the development of new fields and make other needed expenditures. If this situation does not change, the only direction that production of oil can go is down, rather than up. Prices may temporarily spike, prior to the time production falls.
Looking at energy consumption per capita on Figure 3 (above), we notice that this amount has been fairly flat since 2011. Normally, in a growing world economy, a person would expect energy consumption per capita to rise, as it has most of the time since 1820 (Figure 4).
Figure 4. World Energy Consumption by Source, based on Vaclav Smil estimates from Energy Transitions: History, Requirements and Prospects (Appendix) together with BP Statistical Data for 1965 and subsequent, divided by population estimates by Angus Maddison.
The fact that energy consumption per capita has been nearly flat since 2011 is worrying. It is a sign that the world economy may not be growing very rapidly, regardless of what government organizations are reporting to the World Bank. Some subsidized growth should not really be considered economic growth. For example, some Chinese cities have been buying off the country’s housing glut with borrowed money. A better accounting would likely show lower GDP growth for China and the world.
Looking more closely at Figure 3, we note that energy per capita hit a high point in 2013, just before world oil prices began sliding downward. Since then, world energy consumption per capita has been trending downward. This is part of the reason for gluts in supply. Producers had been planning as if normal growth in energy consumption would continue. In fact, something is seriously wrong with demand, so world energy consumption has not been rising as fast as in the past.
The point that is easy to miss is that (a) growing wage disparity plus oil gluts and (b) high oil prices are, in a sense, different ways of reflecting a similar problem, that of an inadequate supply of truly inexpensive-to-produce oil. High-cost-to-produce oil is not acceptable to the economy, because it doesn’t produce enough jobs that pay well, for each barrel produced. If oil prices today truly represented what oil producers (such as Saudi Arabia) need to maintain their production, including adequate tax revenue and funds to develop additional production, oil prices would be well over $100 per barrel.
We are dealing with a situation where no oil price works. Either prices are too high for a large number of consumers or they are too low for a large number of producers. When prices are low, relative to the cost of production, we tend to get wage disparity and gluts.
[4] The reason why energy demand is not growing is related to increased wage disparity. This is a problem for globalization, because globalization acts to increase wage disparity.
In the last section, I mentioned that demand is closely connected to wages. It is really wage disparity that becomes a problem. Goods and services become less affordable for the people most affected by wage disparity: the lower-paid workers. These people cut back on their purchases of goods such as homes and cars. Because there are so many lower-paid workers in the world, demand for energy products, such as oil and coal, fails to grow as rapidly as it otherwise would. This tends to depress prices for these commodities. It doesn’t necessarily reduce production immediately, however, because of the long-term nature of investments and because of the dependence of oil exporters on the revenue from oil.
Figure 5 shows that China and India’s energy consumption per capita has been rising, leaving less for everyone else.
Figure 5. Energy consumption per capita comparison, based on energy data from BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2017, and UN 2017 Population Estimates.
A major way that an economy (through the laws of physics) deals with “not enough goods and services to go around” is increased wage disparity. To some extent, this occurs because newly globalized countries can produce manufactured products more cheaply. Reasons for their advantage are varied, but include lower wages and less concern about pollution.
As a result, some jobs that previously would have been added in developed countries are replaced by jobs in newly globalized countries. It is probably not a coincidence that US labor force participation rates started falling about the time that China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.
Figure 6. US Labor Force Participation Rate, as prepared by Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
Lower wages for unskilled workers may also occur as the result of immigration, and the resulting greater competition for less skilled jobs. This has been a particular concern in the UK.
[5] Adding China, India, and other countries through globalization temporarily gives a boost to world energy production. This boost disappears as the energy resources of the newly added countries deplete.
Both China and India are primarily coal producers. They rapidly ramped up production since joining the World Trade Organization (in 1995 for India; in 2001 for China). Now China’s coal production is shrinking, falling 11% from 2013 to 2016. Both China and India are major importers of fossil fuels (difference between black line and their own production).
Figure 7. China’s total energy consumption compared to its energy production by type, based on BP Statistical Review of World Energy, 2017.
Figure 8. India’s total energy consumption compared to its energy production by type, based on BP Statistical Review of World Energy, 2017.
China and India’s big surge in coal production has had a major impact on world coal production. The fact that both countries have needed substantial imports has also added to the growth in coal production in the “Other” category in Figure 9.
Figure 9 also shows that with China’s coal production down since 2013, total world coal production is falling.
Figure 9. World coal production by part of the world, based on BP Statistical Review of World Energy, 2017.
Figure 10 shows that world GDP and world energy supply tend to rise and fall together. In fact, energy growth tends to precede GDP growth, strongly suggesting that energy growth is a cause of GDP growth.
Figure 10. World three-year average GDP growth compared to world three-year average energy consumption growth. GDP data is from the World Bank, based on 2010 US$ weights of GDP by country; energy consumption is from BP Statistical Review of World Energy, 2017.
If a growth in energy consumption is indeed a primary cause of world economic growth, the drop in world coal production shown in Figure 9 is worrying. Coal makes up a large share of world energy supply (28.1% according to Figure 12). If its supply shrinks, it seems likely to cause a decline in world GDP.
Figure 11 shows energy consumption growth on a basis comparable to the energy consumption growth shown on Figure 10, except for different groupings: for the world in total, the world excluding China, and for the combination of the US, EU, and Japan. We can see from Figure 11 that the addition of China and Japan has greatly propped up growth in world energy consumption since 2001, when China joined the World Trade Organization.
Figure 11. Three-year average growth in energy consumption, for the world total; the world less China and India; and for the sum of the United States, the European Union, and Japan. Energy data from BP Statistical Review of World Energy, 2017.
The amount of the “benefit” was greatest in the 2003-2007 period. If we look at Exhibit 10, we see that world economic growth was around 4% per year during that period. This was a recent record high. Now the benefit is rapidly disappearing, reducing the possibility that the world energy consumption can grow as rapidly as in the past.
If we want world energy consumption per capita to rise again, we need a new large rapidly growing source of cheap energy to replace the benefit we received from China and India’s rapidly growing coal extraction. We don’t have any candidates for a suitable replacement. Intermittent renewables (wind and solar) are not candidates at all. According to the IEA, they comprised only 1% of world energy supply in 2015, despite huge investment. They are part of the gray “Other” slice in Figure 11.
Figure 12. Figure prepared by IEA showing Total Primary Energy Supply by type from this IEA document
Academic studies regarding wind and solar have tended to focus on what they “might” do, without considering the cost of grid integration. They have also overlooked the fact that any energy solution, to be a true energy solution, needs to be a huge energy solution. It has been more pleasant to give people the impression that they can somehow operate a huge number of electric cars on a small amount of subsidized intermittent electricity.
[6] On a world basis, energy consumption per capita seems to need to be rising to maintain a healthy economy.
When energy consumption is growing on a per capita basis, the situation is similar to one in which the average worker has more and more “tools” (such as trucks) available at his/her disposal, and sufficient fuel to operate these tools. It is easy to imagine how such a pattern of growing energy consumption per capita might lead to greater productivity and therefore economic growth.
If we look at historical periods when energy consumption has been approximately flat, we see a world economy with major problems.
Figure 13. World per Capita Energy Consumption with two circles relating to flat consumption. World Energy Consumption by Source, based on Vaclav Smil estimates from Energy Transitions: History, Requirements and Prospects (Appendix) together with BP Statistical Data for 1965 and subsequent, divided by population estimates by Angus Maddison.
The flat period of 1920-1940 seems to have been caused by limits reached on coal production, particularly in the United Kingdom, but also elsewhere. World War I , the Great Depression of the 1930s, and World War II all took place around this time period. Charles Hall and Kent Klitgaard in Energy and the Wealth of Nations argue that resource shortages are frequently the underlying cause for wars, including World Wars I and II.
The Great Depression seems to have been a partial economic collapse, indirectly related to great wage disparity at that time. Farmers, in particular, had a difficult time earning adequate wages.
The major event that took place in the 1990 to 2000 period was the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The central government collapsed, leaving the individual republics to operate independently. The Soviet Union also had strong trade relationships with a number of “satellite” countries, including Cuba, North Korea, and several Eastern European countries. In the next section, we will see that this collapse had a serious long-term impact on both the republics making up the Soviet Union and the satellite countries operating more independently.
[7] The example of the Soviet Union shows that collapses can and do happen in the real world. The effects can be long lasting, and can affect trade partners as well as republics making up the original organization.
In Figure 14, the flat period of the 1980-2000 period seems to be related to intentional efforts of the United States, Europe, and other developed countries to conserve oil, after the oil price spikes of the 1970s. For example, smaller, more fuel conserving vehicles were produced, and oil-based electricity generation was converted to other types of generation. Unfortunately, there was still a “backfire” effect related to the intentional cutback in oil consumption. Oil prices fell very low, for an extended period.
The Soviet Union was an oil exporter. The government of the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, indirectly because with these low oil prices, the government could not support adequate new investment in oil and gas extraction. Businesses closed; people lost their jobs. None of the countries shown on the Figures 14 and 15 have as high energy consumption per capita in 2016 as they did back when the Soviet Union collapsed.
Figure 14. Per capita energy consumption for the Soviet Union and three of its satellite countries. Energy data from BP Statistical Review of World Energy, 2017. Population data from UN 2017 Population data and Middle Estimates.
The three satellite countries shown on Figure 14 (Bulgaria, Hungary, and Poland) seem to be almost as much affected as the republics that had been part of the Soviet Union (Figure 15). This suggests that loss of established trading patterns was very important in this collapse.
Figure 15. Per capita energy consumption for the three largest (by population) republics that made up the Soviet Union. Energy data from BP Statistical Review of World Energy, 2017. Population data from UN 2017 Population data and Middle Estimates.
Russia’s per capita energy consumption dropped 29% between peak and trough. It had significant fossil fuel resources, so when prices rose again, it was again able to invest in new oil fields.
Ukraine was a major industrial center. It was significantly impacted by the loss of oil and gas imports. It has never recovered.
The country that seemed to fare best was Uzbekistan. It had little industry before the collapse, so was less dependent on energy imports than most. Of all of the countries shown on Figures 14 and 15, Uzbekistan is the only one that did not lose population.
[8] Today, there seem to be many countries that are not far from collapse. Some of these countries are energy exporters; some are energy importers.
Many of us have read about the problems that Venezuela has been having recently. Ironically, Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world. Its problem is that at today’s prices, it cannot afford to develop those reserves. The Wikipedia article linked above is labeled 2014-2018 Venezuelan protests. Oil prices dropped to a level much lower than they had been in 2014. It should not be surprising that civil unrest and protests came at the same time.
Figure 16. Monthly average spot Brent oil prices, through December 2017, based on EIA data.
Other oil producers are struggling as well. Saudi Arabia has recently changed leaders, and it is in the process of trying to sell part of its oil company, Saudi Aramco, to investors. The new leader, Mohamed bin Salman, has been trying to get money from wealthy individuals within the country, using an approach that looks to outsiders like a shake-down. These things seem like very strange behaviors, suggesting that the country is experiencing serious financial difficulties. This is not surprising, given the low price of oil since 2014.
On the oil-importer side, Greece seems to frequently need support from the EU. The lower oil prices since 2014 have somewhat helped the country, but the basic shape of the energy consumption per capita chart makes it look like it is struggling to avoid collapse.
Figure 17. Greece energy per capita. Energy data from BP Statistical Review of World Energy, 2017; population estimates from UN 2017 Population data and Medium projections.
There are many other countries struggling with falling energy consumption per capita. Figure 18 shows a chart with four such countries.
Figure 18. Energy consumption per capita for Japan, UK, Italy, and Spain. Energy consumption from BP Statistical Review of World Energy; population from UN 2017 Population data and Medium Estimates.
In a sense, even though oil prices have been lower since 2014, prices haven’t been low enough to fix the economic problems these countries have been having.
China is in a different kind of situation that could also lead to its collapse. It built its economy on coal production and rapidly growing debt. Now its coal production is down, and it is difficult for imports and substitution of other fuels to completely compensate. If slowing growth in fuel consumption slows economic growth, debt will become much harder to repay. Major debt defaults could theoretically lead to collapse. If China were to collapse, it would seriously affect the rest of the world because of its extensive trading relationships.
[9] Leaders of countries with increasing wage disparity and unhappy electorates can be expected to make decisions that will move away from globalization.
Unhappy workers are likely to elect at least some leaders who recognize that globalization is at least a small part of their problems. This is what has happened in the US, with the election of President Trump.
The hope, of course, is that even though the rest of the world is becoming poorer and poorer (essentially because of inadequate growth of cheap-to-produce energy supplies), somehow a particular economy can “wall itself off” from this problem. President Donald Trump is trying to remake trading arrangements, based on this view. The UK Brexit vote was in a sense similar. These are the kinds of actions that can be expected to scale back globalization.
Conclusion
Having enough cheap energy for the world’s population has been a problem for a very long time. When there is enough cheap-to-produce energy to go around, the obvious choice is to co-operate. Thus the trend toward globalization makes sense. When there is not enough cheap-to-produce energy to go around, the obvious choice is to try reduce the effects of globalization and immigration. This is the major reason why globalization can’t last.
We now have problems with both coal and oil. With the decline in China’s coal supplies, we are reaching the point where there are no longer enough cheap energy supplies to go around. At first glance, it looks like there is enough, or perhaps even a superabundance. The problem is that no price works. Producers around the world need higher oil prices, to be compensated for their total cost, including the cost of extraction, developing new fields, and the tax levels governments of exporting countries need. Consumers around the world are already having trouble trying to afford $70 per barrel oil. This is what leads to gluts.
We have been told that adding wind and solar to the electric grid can solve our problems, but this solution is simply absurd. If the world is to go forward as before, it somehow needs a new very large, very cheap supply of energy, to offset our problems with both coal and oil. This new energy supply should not be polluting, either.
At this point, it is hard to see any solution to the energy problems that we are facing. The best we can try to do is “kick the can” down the road a little farther. Perhaps “globalization light” is the way to go.
We live in interesting times!
US Treasury Posts Gigantic $1.16 Trillion Shortfall in Fiscal 2017, Hilariously Points out “Where We Are Headed”
Just add tax cuts and ballooning expenditures. The media chose to silence the report to death.
“If a tree fell in a forest and nobody heard it, did it really make a sound?” asks our favorite fiscal gadfly and Director of Research at Truth in Accounting, Bill Bergman, referring to the media coverage that the Treasury Department’s “Fiscal Year 2017 Financial Report of the U.S. Government” has received, which was, at the time he wrote it 24 hours after the February 15 release of the report: “Nothing. Zip. Scratch.”
Friday’s issue of the Wall Street Journal did not say a word about our public purse, or what happened to it last year. In the “What’s News” section on the front page, we learn about compelling things like “Billionaire investor Thiel is relocating to Los Angeles,” “Nestle’s sales growth last year was the slowest in decades,” and “U.S. motor vehicle deaths remained near decade-high levels in 2017.”
But we don’t learn anything about the financial condition of the federal government, from neither the Wall Street Journal nor the New York Times.
The largest financial institution in world history issued its annual report yesterday, and nobody cares.
That’s probably a good thing, given the kind of fiasco it is:
https://wolfstreet.com/2018/02/19/us-treasury-posts-gigantic-1-16-trillion-shortfall-in-fiscal-2017-hilariously-points-out-where-we-are-headed/
Nicely written. Entitlements are the largest issue and I am one of the entitlees; SS and Medicare really are wonderful in terms of value received. Even at the high end, Medicare is somewhere between $400 and $800 per month less that private insurance and this includes all the supplemental policies, etc. The government does a nice job of controlling prices here compared to what is charged.
Going forward, I expect my benefits to be cut which means when and not if the life ending disease strikes, treatment will be deferred until no longer necessary; this can be expected with the rise of the millennials in to voting ranks. Or, the deficit will go down and I along with it.
It is still a beautiful world FE, I am hoping and assuming your home was spared the worst of the bad weather. Doomsteads really are a waste of money and time, aren’t they? We look forward to hearing about your replacement home and lifestyle. You are knowledgeable and entertaining.
I saw this article. I earlier saw an article about how the US government was changing its accounting, so as to treat some expenditures as “investments” rather than simply outflow. I suppose that there is also the issue of regarding all of the student loans the government is giving. I am sure that the government is assuming that this will be paid back, with interest. I will have to take a look at the report. A person wonders how much debt really needs to be added.
All Hail! King Kaku
https://youtu.be/cjQs447hHbo
recent Canada and uk leader came to India for free trade agreement
so is canada and uk economy is really that bad that they have ask for free trade from india
Its just the human condition; everybody wants a freebie. Speaking of which I heard the EU has decided against free trade with the US unless they re-join the Paris Accord.
A little taste of the end of an end of the world scenario today — re-routed 3x driving along the east coast then back across via west side of the south island due to slips and floods … unable to get to our house due to massive flooding…. tomorrow will be bright and sunny though…
When the real end hits… there will be only darkness afterwards….
Either put these wander-losers on a fossil fuel diet, or make them go cold turkey.
Yes, guns are the issue. The reason is gun manufacturers, like all connected businesses, have unlimited credit to keep on making and selling deadly guns to the American public for profit. These are not self defense weapons, these are designed to kill and do so in large numbers. The gun problem is no different than the drug problem or anything else.
But I guess dead kids doesn’t register to you “capitalism at all costs” doomers. Who cares about the next generation of human beings as long as Fast Eddy and his gang can hoard weapons and believe they will outlast the zombies in their bunkers, right?
Prior generations also believed in weapons and war. They believed they were immortal and all powerful. Look at how it turned out for them. Someday, one of you is going to get shot. I won’t have sympathy for you on that day, because that is your idealogy, that is your belief.
shit happens
“These are not self defense weapons, these are designed to kill and do so in large numbers.”
Yes, they are military weapons, like the AR15 which was used by US forces in Vietnam. My argument against weapons that can kill large numbers of people fast, is they don’t sell grenades do they? Fact is a person with an AR15 vs. a person with grenades would most likely be able to kill more people faster. But if you ask people why don’t they sell grenades to the general public people scoff at that very question. Isn’t that interesting. They won’t even entertain the question, yet an AR15 can kill more faster. Food for thought.
How often does this self-defending with gun work?
It is a hassle bringing a cell phone to the beach or gym, how about a gun?
Assholes approaches you. Start verbally abusing you. Then push you. Then draws knife, and then gun. At what point are you supposed to pull your gun and shoot him?
as soon as possible. aim carefully.
A significant number of shootings are accidental and take place in the home. There is no verbal abuse. A loaded gun is left in an accessible place. A person, often a child, picks it up and shoots a family member or friend dead. Then sometimes the shooter takes his/her own life as well. A nice kettle of fish.
That was what I was after. If it should be any use you have to have it with you, loaded, easily accessible.
Unlikely being of help when jumped from behind in an alley, but likely leading to accidents and killing colorful people who was gonna ask about directions to nearest KFC.
Duh….jumped from behind in an alley?
The entire concept of self defense is self awareness….being aware of possible assaults and avoiding them. No sensible, self aware person gets jumped from behind in an alley. What were you doing in that alley anyway? Buying drugs?
Responsible gun ownership reduces crime.
The US looks to be nightmarish.
Thankfully, in England guns are very strictly controlled, and the criminals (foreign and the semi-human layer of society) mostly blow one another away in their awful suburbs – for now.
Having had a lot of trouble with the local thug, death threats, etc, I unexpectedly turned up behind him one night while he was walking his dog, with a heavy ‘walking stick’ in my hand. In a village, you get to know everyone’s habits, so planning is easy enough. Not a word was said.
He got the message, I think, as to what could conceivably happen at any time, and has been as quiet as a lamb since…..
In the peaceful UK you just have to worry about being knifed to death, like what happened to my son in law, and what did happen to a man complaining about noise in front of his house to drunks, who killed him, while I was in the UK once.
UK under-reports their homicide statistics compared to the US methodology. US lists homicides at the time of the crime – UK at the time of conviction. Depending on your source, it seems like more than half of homicides go unsolved – so food for thought when thinking about these risks.
..you just admitted that all jaw abiding people in the UK can’t have guns, but the criminals do have them.
“but the criminals do have them.”
Thats because of EU.
In the UK an AR-15 sells for around 35k dollars on the black market..And if you have 35k to blow on a gun you don’t need to be a criminal….
why were you getting death threats?
Legally obtaining a shotgun in the UK is fairly easy. In the absence of a criminal record or a medical history of mental problems, applications for a shotgun certificate are rarely refused.
Getting a firearm is more difficult. The police want to see the applicant has a good reason for wanting a firearm, e.g. being a member of a gun club for at least six months or eradication of vermin on a farm, before granting a firearm license.
Can you walk around on town with your guns? Keep them in the glove department? In the (unlocked) shed?
generally speaking we dont need to do that
http://www.murderuk.com/misc_crime_stats.html
–about 500 a year….gun deaths are about 0ne per million people, around 60 a year
other forms of violent death are way higher than that—cars etc
it’s part of the beauty of this place—unpleasant in some quarters i agree, but in general our police just offer friendly advice, they dont shoot first.
“compartment”
Nope. Guns cannot be carried around in public without a legitimate reason and must be stored in a locked cabinet when not in use.
What about Cars? They kill people too! /s
since boadicea stopped driving they took knives off the wheels
The logic in the courts often goes that tools (weapons) used by police in the ordinary course of protecting their lives are legitimate means for citizens to defend themselves. A grenade cannot be targeted with any degree of responsibility, given that both citizens and law enforcement are responsible legally for collateral damage of both life and property. People do entertain these questions quite seriously.
So you want MS-13 to be the only one with guns? /s
Look at how it worked out? It worked out that people with strength of arms and weapons dominated those who had none, until the latter used violence or the threat of violence to enforce their interests.
LA homeless problem getting worse:
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-homeless-housing-gaps-20180217-story.html
“Providing permanent housing for the county’s chronically homeless population would require more than 20,000 new units, about 5,000 more than projected two years ago, the report said.”
SF… Diseased Streets:
https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Diseased-Streets-472430013.html
“… Needles and Human Waste in San Francisco Have Steadily Risen Since 2008.”
I worked in SF as a commercial RE agent back in the 80’s before moving the family to Jackson Hole. There were so many people on the streets asking for spare change. We had this building south of Market (SOMA) that needed cleaning and stuff thrown into a dumpster. Being young I suggested we hire the homeless. Hired 5 out of 11 off the street applicants. 3 worked one hour and wanted payment, then quit. 1 worked 2 hours and bailed out. Only one worked for 3 hours and the actual work done was not much. We came back the next day in our junky cloths and the two of us RE agents did all the work in one 10 hour day. The next day we went back to work in our suits getting to work at 7am.
They use to hand out cans of food to the homeless. The homeless would take the cans and spread out in different directions selling the cans to get money for alcohol.
My lesson: There’s a reason their homeless, or at least there was back then. Maybe the metrics have shifted – I don’t know if that’s true or not. Whenever I’ve needed work a fever comes over me and I find work by whatever means necessary. I think it has to do with motivation. You can’t force a person to become motivated.
Yes, sadly true: drink and drugs, mental illness – often beyond help really. Lots of fake beggars here though – as it’s a rich town, they congregate in order to try it on.
The richest—–
But it is a huge problem.
new post tomorrow?
cryptocurrency update:
Cryptocurrencies: 1545
Market Cap: $510,363,795,679
Bitcoin dominance: 38.1%
I was following this in January when the number of cryptocurrencies was ONLY 1385.
venezuela is now thinking about the ”petro” a crypto currency based on the value of oil
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/19/venezuela-petro-cryptocurrency-pre-sale-starts-february-20.html
Is the global economy facing a financial armageddon?
An Australian economist is warning the recent turmoil on global stock markets is just a sign of things to come, and a massive crisis is on the cards.
https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/business/350776/is-the-global-economy-facing-a-financial-armageddon
Pretty much getting to the pointy part of the whole deal now..
‘After 2008, we added monetary adventurism to the mix, adopting policies which boosted apparent activity by destroying pension provision. This is why, as a recent WEF report showed, pension provision in an eight-country group had soared to an estimated $67 trillion by 2015, and is likely reach $428tn by 2050, a number which dwarfs any conceivable level of world GDP at that date.’
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2018/02/18/119-a-predicament-in-pictures/#comments
However, some of the flashest RE developments I see around my part of NZ are the retirement villages. No shortage of money to extend and pretend in that demographic.
“… estimated $67 trillion by 2015, and is likely reach $428tn by 2050…”
I estimate pension provisions in 2050 at approximately $0 trillion…
I’m pretty sure my estimate will be much closer to reality.
When you get to the point of retirement the main issue is how many “good” years are left. Make a guess, divide into net worth and the answer is given.
The view is different the closer one gets to the end.
Dennis L.
I believe I will need 1 trillion dollars. Ya know, just to be on the safe side.
Very funny, laughing quietly.
Dennis L.
google it…manifest it…its out there somewhere
You’ll need 2 trillion dollar notes and that’s for lunch only. 1 trillion for the sandwich and 1 trillion for the glass of beer.
Sandwich too high, buy beer.
I want one of these for bragging rights..
https://www.glenstephens.com/June09-Zimbabwe%20100%20Trillion%20banknote.jpg
The world of reverse mortgages; the banks are laughing on the way up, and on the way out!
in the link (very good, and short), Tim Morgan writes:
“The only realistic conclusion which can be drawn from fig. 6 is that a very serious crash is extremely likely to occur at some point well before 2030.”
because debt + pension shortfalls will = $800 trillion worldwide…
debt alone = $500 trillion…
a person could be optimistic and guess that the $500 trillion debt will be manageable up to 2030…
but Morgan is a very smart dude…
serious crash well before 2030?
we shall see in about 7 years.
he projects that claimed GDP in 2030 will be about $193 trillion…
so debt that is 250% of that could be manageable.
What does it mean for debt to be manageable? Either it can be paid off or it can’t. If the latter, it doesn’t really matter how high it gets as long as most people believe it can get even higher. Can they maintain that belief for 7 more years amidst decreasing/stagnating prosperity for all but the richest? I doubt it.
The serious crash will most likely happen very soon, because it must. It’ll be the first step in stepwise collapse, representing the full realisation/admittance/acceptance of promises withdrawn and trusts betrayed. After that will come more realistic (or alternatively more insane) promises taking account of the fact that, to paraphrase Steve Ludlum, not everything can be perfect forever. In fact the latter “step” is happening right now, but it is still hidden under the increasingly sexy veil of infinite prosperity.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09rwszj
worth a listen on bbc radio for all who can link to it
The final few words of the introduction are chilling..’perfect the art of persuasion’. Shameless counter to individual freedom. Obama was pretty persuasive and after 8 years of sweet crocodile smiles we ended up with the Don.
the intriguing part of that radio talk was that pinker alluded to ”the enlightenment” as being instrumental in bringing about our ”current prosperity”
he never mentions the industrial revolution or the input of fossil fuel energy
Never had to get his hands dirty methinks. More silo-thinking from them experts again. What a great place it must be to live huh? Jetson philosophers; just push a button and pull a lever and hey presto!
Pinker = academic rentier class.
Pinker elsewhere spoke about industrialization as being good because it brings affluence, which he also said was good because affluence brings progress…
but yes, again he never mentioned the FF that provides the energy which enables industrialization…
so he assumes progress will continue, since he seems to lack the knowledge of the imminent decline of FF.
In the course of some discussion (how life was before, how it is now, how it will be in the future, and what we can do to affect the future) you can point out (politely) to people that FF are the base of everything and that unless that is considered in their discussions everything they are saying is off-track and essentially of no value. They just go quiet for a minute.
When the discussion – of the economy, of certain historical trajectories, of nation conditions, whatever – comes up again, it proceeds with no adjustments to their thinking at all.
It’s like spitting on a tortoise. They just keep on going unaffected.
People are used to dealing with concepts abstracted from the reality that underpins and drives them. Thus people can talk about the economy by only looking at finance, completely ignoring that the finance economy is a superficial layer dependent on the economy of real goods and services which itself is a superficial layer on top of the energy and resources economy.
There are a lot of restaurants struggling in the UK at the moment.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/feb/19/number-of-uk-restaurants-going-bust-up-by-a-fifth-in-2017
It seems to be mid range places that are suffering, “gourmet” burger chains and places like Jamie’s Italian. Where I live the Subway, McDonalds, pizza delivery, kebab and chicken shops still seem to be doing quite well. The cheap stuff is still selling.
And now Peak Chicken.
peak chicken:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/feathers-fly-chicken-shortage-shuts-kfcs-across-britain-154601814.html
the UK does it again.
I’ve heard that ‘Jamie’s Italian’ is truly awful and expensive, so demise would be assured even in a boom: people just don’t go back there. Only having a Subway next door would make it look good, possibly.
In this town, they are in a former bank branch, a rather nice Edwardian building: all the banks of my student days are now either restaurants or female fashion shops.
The £15 (!!!) pizza place here seems always to be packed, to my utter amazement.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/plans-school-walkouts-sit-ins-florida-shooting-232624852.html
School walkouts, sit-ins planned after Florida shooting
Some things change and some things never change. The NRA just has so much more political lobbying power than regular voters that any change is up to the NRA, and they won’t budge so nothing will change. That’s the problem with allowing the federal government to corruptively morph into a lobbying 1st institution.
Some things change and some things never change. The political blame game being a case in point.
https://kellidgordonlibertyblog.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/gun-control-cartoon-mass-shootings-blame-the-law-abiding-gun-owner-finger-point.jpg?w=300
No blacks in that cartoon. “Criminal” character is white. How propaganda and self censorship work.
Obama?
School shootings = entertainment!
But they are getting a bit dull… how about a Lunch Time on Wall Street version?
the solutions are simple: (a) everyone gets guns or (b) nobody gets guns. when i was a lad in high school, the mortal threat was knifings. a certain ethinic element all carried them, in the switch blade variety, as you could only get so expelled for carrying a knife. for me, the solution was to respect and befriend.
I see Elon has a flame thrower for sale….. that could do a hell of a lot of damage to a school and the students in the hands of the right person
good point, if the story is true…
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2018/01/29/elon-musk-has-already-made-millions-selling-a-flamethrower/?utm_term=.0e0e2313b8f3
oh wow, it is true!
is Elon just plain bonkers?
uh… yes, isn’t it obvious?
“Musk claims his flamethrowers — which appear to expel a glowing, meter-long stream of sizzling terror — are good for roasting nuts.
Despite being phased out by the Defense Department decades ago, flamethrowers are unregulated in almost every state.”
$500 each… get yours today!
Please don’t, this is a rare site where we see a wide range of ideas, this one is neither funny nor entertaining. It is beneath you.
Dennis L.
guns aren’t the issue. It is the mental state of the US. Australia and Switzerland have more guns per capita and you don’t see much of it there. Besides people can be far more creative than guns. Pool chlorine and brake fluid make an interesting mix. I learnt that at school in chemistry. I guess school is the issue (sarc).
Oh come now …. I have barely nudged the bar lower….
You want lower? How about a spree at a Green Groupie protest demanding more ‘renewable’ energy — or one banning EVs…. now that would be entertaining!
That is actually a good point FE. Imagine if instead of women and children being shot at schools and concerts, it happened to high level bankers and billionaires.
I think change would come remarkedly swiftly.
the main thing that looks to be a certainty is collapse looks to be very close most definitely this year Gail picked it way before me so all credit to her hopefully the central banks can kick the can down the road a while longer through any means necessary because we all know the grim reality of what lies ahead I personally am stocking up on silver coins food and water it may help or it may do no good at all the main thing we can all do is keep on commenting on this one of a kind website it keeps me sane as I’m sure it does the trick for many others.
sanity is only the opinion of other people
always keep that in mind
“… hopefully the central banks can kick the can down the road a while longer through any means necessary…”
yes, this is a gem of a comment…
why would the CBs do nothing when they most likely are able to kick the can?
That’s right. I’ve read the CB’s are extremely fearful of any change that might cause a game over tilt. They remain perched on the edge of readiness to any sign and will intervene as necessary. What that suggests is they will continue to push this dreadnaught as high as required, but once it can no longer hold, no matter what they do it will fall. We just don’t know when.
“Women in Saudi Arabia can now open their own businesses without the consent of a husband or male relative… Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia’s cabinet has approved a bankruptcy law, sources familiar with the matter said yesterday, giving a boost to efforts to make the kingdom more enticing to investors.”
http://news.kuwaittimes.net/website/saudi-women-can-start-business-cabinet-approves-bankruptcy-law/
“In the European Union in 2016, 117.5mn people, or roughly one-fourth of the population, were at risk of falling into poverty or a state of social exclusion. Since 2008, Italy, Spain, and Greece have added almost 6mn people to that total…
“In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, the probability of falling into poverty increased overall, but particularly for the young, owing to cuts in non-pension social benefits and a tendency in European labour markets to preserve insiders’ jobs. From 2007 to 2015, the proportion of Europeans aged 18-29 at risk of falling into poverty increased from 19% to 24%; for those 65 and older, it fell from 19% to 14%.
“The share of young people now experiencing severe material deprivation, at 12% of the total population, is almost twice that of the elderly. As Christine Lagarde, the International Monetary Fund’s managing director, noted at the World Economic Forum’s meeting in Davos this year, young Europeans “are putting their dreams on hold.””
http://www.gulf-times.com/story/582013/Europe-s-poverty-time-bomb
I think they measure relative poverty.
While it of course sucks to be poor in relation to neighbours and relatives it sucks less than being homeless, freezing and starving.
the eu was created in the 50s and 60s on a rising tide of collective affluence
”collective affluence” is just another term for ”increasing energy availability per person”
now we have reached the stage where that energy availability is declining. It will continue to decline
and with that decline the overall poverty will increase, as will political instability—there have been no european wars because everyone has had ”enough” to live on.
As usual, I am having difficulty getting my next post finished on time today. I think comments will cut off sometime today.
Maybe you might try making us go cold turkey for a few weeks?
thats wat i said last month
the don might make doompeddling illegal
Hopefully not. It is just that when I am back and forth to comments frequently, besides being back and forth to a whole lot of other things (getting enough exercise, cooking, laundry, taking a son who doesn’t drive to his activities, volunteer activities, family related activities, etc.), I find myself without the concentrated period of time I need to finish up a post.
robotics is the answer
Perhaps stick up a blank post in the interim and allow users to continue to post articles and comments?
I should finish up shortly. A blank post is a little strange to come into 22,000 people’s in boxes. Not all of them are aware of all of the comments.
I had been reading your posts for years before I ever took the time to read the comments…
somehow, I know your posts are primary…
but then I discovered that the comments are Doomer paradise!
and informative too.
First things first, health is number one, the rest can wait. Thanks for the site.
Dennis L.
All right, a new post. Look forward to it, Gail.
as usual, Lagarde is clueless:
young Europeans “are putting their dreams on hold.”
no, Europe has a permanent massive deficiency in FF production…
which will lead to a permanent state of unobtainable “dreams”…
that 12% share of poor young people will be rising probably non-stop to 90+%.
“A decade after the global financial crisis, household debts are considered by many to be a problem of the past after having come down in the U.S., U.K. and many parts of the euro area.
“But in some corners of the globe—including Switzerland, Australia, Norway and Canada—large and rising household debt is percolating as an economic problem. Each of those four nations has more household debt—including mortgages, credit cards and car loans—today than the U.S. did at the height of last decade’s housing bubble.
“At the top of the heap is Switzerland, where household debt has climbed to 127.5% of gross domestic product, according to data from Oxford Economics and the Bank for International Settlements. The International Monetary Fund has identified a 65% household debt-to-GDP ratio as a warning sign.
“In all, 10 economies have debts above that threshold and rising fast, with the others including New Zealand, South Korea, Sweden, Thailand, Hong Kong and Finland.
“In Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, the household debt-to-GDP ratio has risen between five and ten percentage points over the past three years, paces comparable to the U.S. in the run-up to the housing bubble. In Norway and South Korea they’re rising even faster…”
“Collectively, those 10 economies have $7.4 trillion in total economic output and a household debt stock about the same size. Taken as a whole, that’s more than the output of Germany or Japan. Moreover, many of them have a large stock of adjustable-rate mortgages that could suddenly become more costly to service should global interest rates rise.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/household-debt-sees-quiet-boom-across-the-globe-1518969601
Bwah… negative interest rates, at least for attractive clients, and debt is no problem.
Not sure how critical household debt is as a signal, but rather it’s government debt that has the potential to cause major problems once confidence in its currency fails.
Is it really important to separate government from household debt? The government is backed by the tax payers.
May not apply to US who for some reason doesn’t seem able to tax their citizens.
Household debt levels obviously have a bearing on how much consumers can continue to spend into the economy. The likelihood of rising interest rates is alarming in that context.
looks like the turnbull government is getting us ready for the planned june the1st restructuring of the economy by sneaking in the bail-in bill this is what I think is coming after the next GFC 2 hits world-wide bail-ins will confiscate all our money we will be broke and the banks will have all the money from there the entire world will be on permanent negative interest rates and only digital currency will exist we will all be given a universal basic income and we will be charged interest to keep the money in the bank.Only by going cahless can negative interest rates be brought in and the can kicked down the road once more.
“… we will all be given a universal basic income…”
will anyone have to work?
if so, why would anyone work hard?
that would be quite the trick…
we all get UBI, but no one has to work (hard)…
I’m sure food will remain plentiful [sarc]…
and all essential services will continue [ditto]…
so how will UBI be administered?
This is what you don’t understand regarding UBI. In the developed world governments are since a long time responsible for citizens sustainance, might not apply to the US.
So UBI should just replace unemployment benefit, child benefit, guaranteed pension, sick benefits, and hundreds of other systems.
It would not be a bigger cost than the current, in fact lower administration. Just pay out to everyone with a tax account and/or social security number.
The amount will be so low that you will work if you are allowed.
But …
Of course this is politically impossible. Most of what politicians do is taking money from one group and giving to another.
UBI would be admitting full employment is impossible. So why full education? And why immigration, with UBI it would be obvious we just give money for nothing to foreigners.
So UBI will unfortunately not happen.
Why should the banks confiscate the money? With negative interest isn’t it
better to have the money at the clients?
I don’t see any great issue with the bail-in type legislation. In the Cyprus case a few years ago, there was no ‘Bail-in’ legislation, but the government just closed the banks over a weekend, then limited withdrawals after a week or so of no banking.
In other words governments can do a bail-in anytime they want when the situation gets rough enough. Cyprus was using the Euro as currency (outside control) so the govt had no choice, as they had to repay Euros, not a local currency.
In the US in the GFC, the Fed Reserve with permission from the Whitehouse, just printed out an extra $700b pretty much overnight.
In today’s world of huge deficits, lots of money printing etc, it will only be those that don’t control their own currency that will bail-in funds, the rest are likely to just keep the printing presses running.
Adonis is talking about a global bail in at june 1st, not a few banks in a small country being under the water.
I don’t see the connection between Cyprus and a new planned global monetary system.
this at least gets the paper work in order before hand rather than afterwards and then trying to negotiate deals. Stock up on assets.
then why have bail-in laws been passed obviously to take all the money when crisis hits that way people will be desperate and open to any thing such as elimination of the vast majority of paper currency imagine an india style declaration on the whole world making all notes above 5 dollars obsolete. Janet Yellen said an interesting comment a while back something to the effect of “We must bring in a command economy’ so I think a digital currency with negative interest rates will cause growth as people would not leave their money in the bank as it will be taxed through negative interest rates money is energy so think of all our money being bailed in as energy that will not be available to you the banks will have full control of the money/energy
Removing physical cash is not the same as confiscating peoples money.
I don’t believe it is necessary to remove physical cash for negative interest, until deep negative, but that is another matter.
Pingback: Why the Reindustrialization of SE Wisconsin Will Fail – Concerned Racine County Residents Just Say NO To Foxconn
https://www.facebook.com/notes/citizens-electoral-council-of-australia/government-sneaks-through-apra-bail-in-law-but-fuels-anti-bank-revolt/1821080891296885/
so is this part of the plan that will unfold on June 1st?
yes it is part of the plan it is now too much of a coincidence that this bill has come in at this time you still have time to stock up on dark chocolate.
yes!
I knew it! part of the plan!
and good idea on the dark chocolate…
lately, I have not noticed any inflation on the brands that I prefer…
tomorrow is a holiday here in the USA, so I might just do some bulk shopping.
Gibson guitar company, maker of the Les Paul, facing bankruptcy after 116 years in business
http://www.ajc.com/news/national/gibson-guitar-company-maker-the-les-paul-facing-bankruptcy-after-116-years-business/OlaIEYdtLEv1rP92RvZFrM/?
Could it be that fewer people have the time to play guitar and other instruments? That’s just a guess but my wife and I watched ‘The Birds’ last evening, and one woman said, “We have plenty of time out here.”, meaning in Bodega Bay, CA in 1963. It was like that back then too. The cost of living was very low, so people had lots of time to do other things like learn a musical instrument and if you look at how much music was produced in the 50′-70’s it’s a good indicator of the free time people had.
Actually, thats what it is. Depending on your place-status-location on the planet, groups are preparing for completely different futures. You can justify your belief in the direction the world is taking by googling exactly that future. …we here at OFW do just that, as do others who are packing ready for Mars. Anything is possible via google!
……the centre cannot hold…comes to mind.
confirmation bias… we see it here at OFW and everywhere else…
“… googling exactly that future…”
try googling “Mars Generation”…
but, just because naive people THINK they have a dreamy future, doesn’t mean it will be so…
FF is the one true primary source of wealth and progress, and the decline of FF will be the hammer that shatters those naive dreams.
Maybe it’s just evolutionary pressure…………..
I liked this your comment. I hope i’m allowed to paraphrase it in my next article;)
We are all riding on our elephants of emotions and intiutions, and trying to figure out reasons why we are moving in this or that direction. We need to meet other elephants with different inclinations to get a bigger picture and broaden our mind.
At the moment in NZ we are waiting for the remnants of a tropical cyclone to hit us; a weather bomb according to the hyped-upped met office we have here. Its a weird time, with strange calmness mixed with preparations for a few bad days of weather.
We seem to be the same in the western world; so many people know there is something over the horizon – some believe its a colony on Mars, some believe its a generational change, some see an end to life-as-we-know it. So all around we see so many different expectations of what the future will bring that the clash of ideas and prescriptions are bewildering. Insecurity is the one common theme.
Waiting for Godot. It is going to change, we can’t change it, we can adapt, we can smile, be happy for life; it is not all bad. Insecurity is common, live with it, carpe diem.
Dennis L.
‘What’s the use of worrying? It never was worth while, so pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, smile!’
“a weather bomb according to the hyped-upped met office we have here.”
I saw a NOVA special on hurricanes in the area Puerto Rico got hit and from evidence they were able to put together, there was a monster storm that raked through something like 150 years ago. If another one like that hits in this day and age, the damage will be off the charts. Our species just keeps pushing and where we stop nobody knows, but it’s bound to be a wild ride.
I find myself waking up at strange hours… as if something ominous was about to strike….
https://i.redd.it/9yphy4lmjzg01.jpg
What happened to all the Jobs?
https://imgur.com/a/azlwP
That chart looks like a giant sucking sound of jobs leaving America.
My parents survived the depression living in a tent doing surveying work for the Coast and Geodetic survey. My grandmother lived with us until her late nineties due to her husband being killed working on the railroad. They kept a house and did so through the depression and what followed, and they did it without a cellphone.
The only thing that makes a difference in my life is what I can do with what I have. I am an old fart who is damn lucky to have excellent health, but I accept that things change, conditions change. I adapt. We can’t change the debt, etc., we can adapt, be happy and go forward.
If has been done, it can be done.
Yeah, Dennis, but wasn’t that with a whole lot of cheap FF still to be extracted? Now we just have the more expensive stuff. I’m not saying people can’t find ways, but the next depression may be permanent, with only a downside from there. One possibility is if the population squeezed through a small enough bottleneck, those emerging on the other side might live relatively well because of a lack of competition for what good remaining stuff is left over. But that’s going to be a rather dystopian existence compared to full on FF super charged BAU we’ve been used to. I want my teeth cleaned every six months, sonicare replacement toothbrushes, carrot juice, Drambuie, Swiss chocolate, propane for heating, new white sox every now and then, grid electrical supply, water-sewer, European bock beer, an XLT Ford truck, 65″ ultra high definition Samsung with a DVR connected to a satellite dish, 4 quad mini-split AC/heat, full array of organic produce, all that stuff will be forgotten like tears in rain.
WWII was a bitch for my father, swimming up on beaches to make way for Marines even though it was the sunny Pacific. I am not sure about he last part of your comment, I think it is sarcastic. All that stuff really is a burden, more than most people know.
My parents’ home had a 30 amp per leg electrical supply, the whole family lived into their nineties without all that stuff. We were happy, it was all good. For me, we are trying to purchase who we are, it is within us; but, I have been very lucky and I am grateful for that.
If it has been done, it can be done.
Dennis L.
Next depression?
We have been in a depression for the last 11 years already…Depression means “Depressed Economic Growth” as in low…What we are headed for is an economic collapse soon..
The Great Depression 1929-1940 US Economic Growth GDP (1%)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression
The Great Recession 2006-2017 US Economic Growth GDP (1.5%)
https://www.statista.com/statistics/188165/annual-gdp-growth-of-the-united-states-since-1990/
OECD Economic Growth GDP Per Capita
https://imgur.com/a/HXBkr#Bv4I4AF
“has been done, it can be done.”
It was done with half the population, twice the resources and a fraction of the complexity.
Is it my mistake or wasn’t there a thread about this not being possible?
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-02-18/waymos-uber-killer-robo-taxi-set-arizona-rollout
If it works, trucks are next which implies capital costs go down for trucks(assuming solo drivers) as the truck can run 24/7 with no rest breaks.
It is a great time to be alive, so much progress.
I’m not American, but I’m guessing Arizona isn’t a heavily populated area with lots of traffic.
“In November, the company said a portion of its cars in the Phoenix area were operating in fully autonomous mode, what’s known in industry parlance as level four autonomy.”
What that ‘portion’ actually is and in which traffic scenarios it is implemented will tell you whether this will work and be adopted elsewhere. Fun fact – level 4 autonomy is effectively intended for scenarios where 100% of other vehicles are operating with level 4 autonomy.
Arizona also doesn’t have snow or much rain.
When they get rain you see all kinds of cars in the ditch.
Not all malls are dying. Malls for the very rich are doing quite well.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-02-08/this-mall-is-only-for-the-rich-and-it-s-doing-fine
The Santa Anita mall in Arcadia is also doing great. It looks like it is in Taiwan, full of Chinese and other Asian stores and restaurants. And the Chinese make sure the ‘youths’ are kept out.
Infrastructure Spending Will Be Difficult With Massive State And Local Debt
https://www.forbes.com/sites/eriksherman/2018/02/17/infrastructure-spending-will-be-difficult-with-massive-state-and-local-debt/#c54ba796c9c6
Barnes and Nobles (781 bookstores) lays off all full time employees
https://i.redd.it/luk87ku8uwg01.jpg
This is what someone on Reddit says. Is it really true? I didn’t see mainstream news outlets reporting on it yet.
A search brings up 3 stories… nothing in the MSM other than CNBs….
https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/16/barnes-noble-is-killing-itself/
When the MSM does not report — it means things are getting bad… (more effective than lying)
Anticipating the Apocalypse? How to Grow Bud in a Bunker
https://hightimes.com/grow/anticipating-the-apocalypse-how-to-grow-bud-in-a-bunker/
“… the fact that at times there are over 150 one thousand-watt lamps running inside…”
so, AFTER the “Apocalypse”, they are assuming plenty of available electricity?
b w a h a h a h a h a…
Dude, why you all gotta be so negative and stuff? The bud will see us through the pocylipse. It’s going to be totally awesome.
sorry, dude, Dave’s not here:
Nice! I was raised on cheech and Chong . I guess that dates me.
I am slow and old, thought this was about Bud beer, my error.
The German police can not control the ban of diesel cars: there is not enough personel
http://www.spiegel.de/auto/aktuell/abgasskandal-polizei-kann-diesel-fahrverbote-nicht-kontrollieren-a-1194057.html
The different “parts” of a barrel of oil have been divided up the way different countries made choices. Germany opted for diesel vehicles. There is not enough extra gasoline to replace the diesel cars with gasoline if we wanted to. Germany has electricity problems already with all of its wind and solar and very high rates. I am not sure that it could convert to electric vehicles if it wanted to.
@Gail
The German politicians (and people) don’t get it – its not about facts, science or reality. It’s about ‘being good’, ‘Ideology’ and the like. Its a real pitty…. Even the car manufacturers don’t argue with the facts but ‘chime in’ (hope that works) into the e-mobility bandwagon. When I speak with people in the automotive industry… most of them have no clue concerning the big picture. I don’t know how intelligent the higher echelons of the automotive industry are… but I have sometimes my doubts…
For German readers here, you may want to take a look at: http://www.peak-oil.com/2017/07/e-pkw-mobilitaet-die-fehlentwicklung-und-politische-doppelzuengigkeit/ – there are these issues are written about.
Unfortunately the peak-oil discussion in Germany is quite dead. Even peak-oil.com only survives on a bare level, getting some 3-4 guest posts a year.
Unfortunately, the story is more complex than “Peak Oil.” I don’t blame people for not paying attention to the peak oil story. It really isn’t correct.
” I don’t know how intelligent the higher echelons of the automotive industry are… but I have sometimes my doubts…”
It’s not even a question of intelligence really. People tend to not look at the big picture and instead focus on their area of specialized knowledge. For other areas they trust the mainstream experts and never look at the details. This it becomes possible for the 150 IQ automotive engineer to focus on the “EV of the future”…
Why we’re underestimating American collapse – The strange new pathologies of the world’s first rich failed state
“Let me give you just five examples of what I’ll call the social pathologies of collapse — strange, weird, and gruesome new diseases, not just ones we don’t usually see in healthy societies, but ones that we have never really seen before in any modern society.”
https://eand.co/why-were-underestimating-american-collapse-be04d9e55235
Americans just don’t care. The pursuit of materialism is probably mostly to blame. The endless pursuit of profits above all else could be a cause as well. Don’t let any good crisis go to waste. If there is a way to profit from a crisis, no matter how grotesque, it will be done. I think the country is eating itself from the inside out at this point.
Search and read Bernays and a different view of what has shaped opinion and why might emerge. We have gained much knowledge and with that gain comes a responsibility to use it wisely; this is not always the case.
Americans do care greatly and we are a great people; some ideas don’t seem to work, secular humanism seems to be one of them.
America put whitey on the Moon. But, it also is the only country to use nuclear weapons on civilian populations, apparently just to see what happens, as the war was basically so over by then that the Japanese government took several days to figure out what had happened to them.
McDonalds doesn’t care, Wal-Mart doesn’t care, Amazon doesn’t care. The corporations that are now the owners of what was America – they just don’t care about anything but profits. The corporations are the new America. The suffering (of what was once America and Americans) is a symptom of this take-over. Just collateral damage. Look at how homeless are treated in California. That is the new order of our nation.
If only there was a German Philosopher who lived over a hundred fifty years ago who could have predicted this would happen?
And if someone had listened to him.
Pension plans demand 7-8% returns from their stocks with an economy growing maybe 3% on a good day. Managers have to meet the goals of their stockholders and stockholders get managers who will make that goal. The real change in wealth is moved to the retires with a skim for those doing the stripping of the economy. The most egregious seem to be state and municipal governments; they promised to get elected, got elected and hired who ever it took to get the returns. One of the largest if not the largest holders of stocks are pension plans, they are driving the the companies. We have met the enemy and he is us.
An awfully lot of our young people are finding that they did everything “right,” but they still cannot find a job that pays a living wage that in anything close to their field of study. And they have huge debts to pay when they get out of school. The situation is true whether the young people drop out of school, graduate with a degree (except perhaps if it is in a few favored areas, such as information security), or go on to get a master’s degree. People with a Master’s Degree often find that they are turned down as being overqualified, when they apply for a job that a person with a lesser degree could do.
Other people are older people who started out with a high school degree, and worked themselves up through the ranks of one or more employers. But they get laid off for one reason or another, and find the doors are now closed to them. Although they know the industry well, and have worked themselves up through the ranks, they need to find some job, any job, that they can support themselves on. I know one man who is now repairing appliances. His mechanical skills carried over well enough that he found that was a niche he could fit into. But it is very difficult to have to start over at the bottom in a new industry.
I know my company will never hire a young person due too the sjw mindset.
I think the earth is trying to tell us that it doesn’t need more people.
Yep, we need to go from 7.6 billion back to 1-10 million, which was the population for most of our existence. Of course, we had a rich, intact planet then.
So are you one of those who are volunteering to not go back with the 1-10 million, if so, my thanks and gratitude; me I am an old fart who is going to hang on and see what happens.
Yes DI, I think you are saying the population thing will take care of itself and I agree it has to happen eventually. Maybe we can still have some wild places somewhat intact for whoever remains.
“… the world’s first rich failed state”
the hyperbole is very thick in this screed…
he may be correct in recounting his examples of dysfunctional Americans, but these are small percentages of the population…
if these issues continue to grow, then eventually they could cause America to become a failed state…
but for now, there is no “American collapse”, in spite of these serious issues.
“There Is An Acute Crisis Coming”: Apartment Developer:
“There is just one problem: developers are putting up the wrong kinds of buildings, focusing almost entirely on the luxury segment. However, as discussed here recently, the luxury market is by now largely overbuilt, while the shortage of affordable rental housing is growing, as developers remain hamstrung by the now record-high cost of construction.
Why is the sub-luxury segment being ignored? Simple: the need to maintain high margins amid rising input costs:
“It’s really tough to deliver product at those lower price points. The cost of land, the cost of building materials, the cost of labor. It’s really about the same regardless of what product you’re doing and it’s just tough to make a deal work financially if you’re going toward that middle-market price,” Greg Willett, chief economist at RealPage, told CNBC.
“The two-by-four doesn’t care whether it’s in a luxury building or in an affordable building. It costs the same,” said Bozzuto. “The differential of course, is the rent and there’s a huge disparity in high-end rent versus low-end rent. So the issue is for us to develop an economically viable, feasible project, it has to be, by its very nature, high end. The rents have to be high to support the cost.”
And for those who have troubling finding input cost inflation, here is where it’s hiding: the cost of that two-by-four, lumber, is now at a record high. Other products like steel and concrete are more expensive, but the real cost spikes are in land and labor. Skilled construction labor is not only expensive, it is extremely difficult to find.
The biggest problem, for developers, is passing on these soaring input costs to renters, something which is virtually impossible when nearly half have zero incremental capacity to absorb even higher rents.
Investors, according to Bozzuto, are now moving away from new construction and instead rehabbing older rental stock. These so-called value-add projects just raise the rents on current tenants even more.
Meanwhile, the Fed is unable to find inflation anywhere it looks or, as Janet Yellen recently said, it “remains a mystery.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-02-17/there-acute-crisis-coming-apartment-developer
Yes, and Glenlivet is up close to 21% at my pub YY also. Food is up, I am redoing my home, materials are up, meals out are up, real estate taxes are up, medical insurance premiums are up, auto insurance premiums are up, etc. Where is deflation? I suspect it is in things that one time produced more value than they consumed. A fracking oil well would be an example. Invest 10K and get 7K back in total. GE has been selling off machine tools used in manufacture of generating turbines, it appears these tools are selling below their book cost which means prior year earnings were inflated. GE stock is down, that is deflation. Purchasing income is incredibly difficult to maintain and is deflating, stuff seems to be getting more and more expensive.
Dennis L.
I know with new homes, many of them are being built at for the luxury buyer, because the margins are better. It stands to reason that the same thinking pattern would go for apartments.
If poor people are getting poorer, the thinking is probably that they can simply more together more closely (get a roommate, for example). That way, no more apartments are needed. It is the rich people–perhaps retirees, downsizing from a big home, who want a fancy apartment.
even though “… with new homes, many of them are being built at for the luxury buyer…”
I have heard that the construction is still low quality…
which has much to do with profit margins…
anyone have backup/reference for that?
This article https://www.realtor.com/news/trends/new-home-builders-recovery/ says,
Also
Labor ain’t cheap either
Loans are tough to come by
Another issue, that I have read about elsewhere, is that local governments are having problems financing new roads and schools. They add a fairly high fee per unit for new infrastructure to support the new homes in many places. It is easier to hide this high fee in a high cost home than in a low cost home.
Some people do not see it: when the construction materials are cheap due to the oversupply and the interests are low, they think that now is the time to build a house I have dreamed of. But who will care for that house, when they are old and they lose their job?
I have a heard a story from my friend about and old university teacher here in Slovakia: he got deep into debt because of the loan/mortgage for a new big house close to his work at a university. Then he was fired from that university, as the population of the new students is shrinking. Now he has got a big house and must travel hundreds of kilometers to a different university. Certainly, he did not get it…
Re older people and homes. I have no data, but twenty to thirty years ago, living on a very nice golf course I heard many people tell me that large homes were not very comfortable, too much space, etc. I have no idea what is the case now, but more is less; try and find a good cleaning lady and you quickly understand the issues.
Dennis L.
It is simple and always has been.
Assume a 10% profit margin and a $1 cost. To the homeowner a penny change in costs is 1%, to the builder it is 10%, the builder will always try and cut that 1%. Solution, hire an onsite architect to supervise the job.
okay, there’s the logic…
I suppose a builder will go for making a house appear as expensive as possible, while internally the construction is at the lowest cost possible.
Inflation by nature follows the same way as “bankruptcy” – slowly and then everything at once. This applies to every single incident of hyperinflation. The reason why it is a political reason rather than economic reason is because of the following :
When money printing starts, it usually goes to the top 1% first as they are close friends of the “money printer”. They benefit the most. The money printer continues to print more and more and thus raising the prices of assets like RE, stocks, etc. The average Joe is not the receiving end of the free money yet. The free money will trickle down when there are transactions on the assets. The top 1% bought a block of condo and sold it to the upper middle class. The upper middle class sold the condo and bought something cheaper (maybe 2 units of “normal condo” as an investment instead of 1 luxury condo). The owners of the 2 “normal condos” are now richer because of the free money. That is how the money trickles down and that is how the super rich think that “trickle down economy works”.
Think of this as a pyramid (and thus exponential) where the top 1% bought and sold assets and it trickles down. At one point of time, there will be a lot of money at the bottom chasing fewer goods. Does this help the poor or normal middle class ? Not at all if the lower and middle class is struggling to survive. It will not make it better but make it much worse because they now have to contend to rising prices.
** The keyword is exponential because that is what Prof Bartlett reminded us.
The time it takes for the trickle down inflation to happen varies from days to months and years depending on whether it is Weimar (socially it is already at boiling point) or Roman where the economy is not complex or too interconnected. When it happens, there is NO way it can be stopped because the money has already flowed into the system. Raising rates DOES NOT have any impact on this at all.
Look at China. They printed so much, given to the top people and they are obscenely rich. It flowed down to the first tier, second tier and stops probably “just before the tier of average Joe”. Does the average Joe gets the benefits ? No. However, with so much money sloshing around, inflation on normal goods is horrible. If China does not control its currency, we would have very high inflation in every country of the world. Can China stop its inflation? No? In fact, they pressed the gas pedal even harder by creating more than USD500b in credit in January alone. https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-02-14/china-just-created-record-540-billion-debt-one-month
We are not talking about a one-level economy or a simple economy but a very complex global economy where everything goes at the speed of light. What happened at Weimar will not be exact as in 2018 or Roman times.
We are currently seeing inflation ticking up everywhere in the world. It will not be long before it goes exponential.
Slowly at first and then all of a sudden. Take the heroin and slowly increase it to get more kick until the very last jab that kills you. You cannot die slowly but it is always the last jab that kills you.
just because China created $500B debt in January doesn’t mean they will do that every month…
“We are currently seeing inflation ticking up everywhere in the world. It will not be long before it goes exponential.”
the CBs surely see this starting to happen before the public sees it…
will they allow hyperinflation?
of course not… hyperinflation and deflation must be avoided above all else…
they aren’t stewpid…
though they could mishandle this… we’ll see in the coming years.
Very nicely explained. I’m surprised I didn’t notice your posts here before.
Appreciate if you check the data before you post. Is the trend going up or down?
https://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2017/02/08/china%20total%20debt%20jan%202017.jpg
Why would the CB continue printing if they know this will happen?
It is not a matter if they allow it or not. It is now beyond their control. What they can do is just to tame whatever may come.
We will have both inflation and deflation at the same time on different areas of the economy. Inflation for inputs like food or materials for manufacturing and deflation for outputs especially for non-essential items (because no one has any money to buy a lot of stuff anymore)
“We will have both inflation and deflation at the same time on different areas of the economy.”
It seems to me we’ve had this dynamic already for some time as the wealth gap has completely polarized. Anything that is marketed specifically to the top ~10% can see its price go to the moon for all it seems to matter, while any product that wants to hit the broad market gets stuck and even has significant downward price pressure.
Good point!
I used to post a lot but then I lurk more. The regulars know me.
“The regulars know me”
Yep CTG, you are one of the best commenters since I started following this blog all the way back in 2011 🙂
Man time flies!!!
BAU UP YOUR ARSE BABY!
(Gail’s busy and the comments are about to be cut off)
🙂
wow, no collapse since 2011…
does that tell you anything?
I’ve been reading Gail’s articles since then, also…
let’s go another 7 years!
BAU everywhere, Mark! 🙂
“Is the trend going up or down?”
yes, up… but no trend can continue forever…
“It is not a matter if they allow it or not. It is now beyond their control. What they can do is just to tame whatever may come.”
okay, you have the opinion that it is “beyond their control”…
while I am not so sure…
I think they can “tame” it for a lot longer…
we’ll just have to wait and see what the next few years brings.
Bulletproof backpack sales rise in wake of mass school shooting
https://nypost.com/2018/02/16/bulletproof-backpack-sales-rise-in-wake-of-mass-school-shooting/?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_source=NYPTwitter&utm_medium=SocialFlow
Can’t wait for it to be on the trump store. The MAGA red bulletproof backpack would go great with my red Russian history books. /s
So a student gets shot in the chest and the bullet lodges in the backpack. What good is that? I guess it makes it easier for ballistics later.
Bill Maher: Jeff Sessions has already ordered the arrest of the Black Panther….
Volatility is driving the markets towards chaos
As the stock markets showed recently, volatility is back, with stomach-churning extreme highs and lows not seen since the Great Depression, according to analysts.
https://nypost.com/2018/02/17/volatility-is-driving-the-markets-into-chaos/?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_source=NYPTwitter&utm_medium=SocialFlow
Tax cut scoreboard: Workers $6 billion; Shareholders $171 billion
A survey of Morgan Stanley analysts released last week found that just 13% of companies’ tax cut savings will go to pay raises, bonuses and employee benefits. 43% will reward investors with stock buybacks and dividends.
http://money.cnn.com/2018/02/16/investing/stock-buybacks-tax-law-bonuses/index.html
It ends up being nothing more than a transfer of increasing debt for corporations.
Meaning increasing US (people) govt. debt via tax cuts.