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The Last Days Of The Growth Story
Submitted by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,
Dorothea Lange Rear window tenement dwelling, 133 Avenue D, NYC June 1936
I am thinking about the similarities between a financial crisis and for instance a family crisis, the death of a loved one or close friend, a divorce, or a personal bankruptcy.
And I wonder why in the case of our recent (aka current) financial crisis, we allow nothing to enter our communications, and our train of thought, but the idea of recovery and a return to growth. Has everyone always reacted that way after earlier financial crises – history is full of them -, or is something else going on?
Why do we insist on returning to something we once had, even if we have no way of knowing whether we can ever return? Why don’t we focus – more – on what lies ahead, instead of what is behind us? Is it because we loved what we had so much? Or is something else going on?
Even if we do love what once was so much, there’s a time to move on after every disaster, every death in the family, every bankruptcy. And deep down we know that very well. Life will never be the same, but it’ll still be life. It seems safe to say that in general, life is about turning, not returning. Life changes, we change, every day, every minute, every millisecond.
This refusal to turn a new leaf and find out what’s on the other side of the hill has enormous consequences. We are actively digging ourselves so deep into debt that it’s preposterous to claim this debt is ours only, because it’s painfully clear, though we would never admit it (too painful perhaps?), that we can never pay it back. We leave that honor to our children, and to the generations after them.
We should undoubtedly have protected us from ourselves, by making it illegal and punishable by law to engage in such behavior (something along the lines of Child Protection Services). We chose instead to be blind to it. We still could – should – write such legislation, but it looks as if present politics and economic ‘thinking’ will only exacerbate a situation that is already far worse than we care to know.
The overruling ‘wisdom’ looks to be that we miraculously freed ourselves from the yoke of a balanced budget, an idea seemingly justified by the fact that a return to growth has been elevated to the status of a law, of either physics or a deity of our choice, growth that will subsequently make all debts melt like the snow on the Kilimanjaro.
That overruling wisdom, as should be obvious, is at best wishful thinking, but far more likely pure fantasy. Which has become our main, make that only, approach of the crisis we find ourselves in. If only we believe, our leaders will deliver us to growth heaven.
But what if this is the end of the growth story? What if it’s already behind us? It’s not as if growth has been a constant factor in the lives of our ancestors. And it’s not as if the laws of physics put no limits on everlasting growth. Growth is a passing thing, it’s a phase.
Most of us have heard of the seven stages of grief. Shock, Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Guilt, Depression, Acceptance. Where are we in our journey through these stages when it come to the financial crisis, and to growth? There’s only one stage that even remotely sounds right: Denial. We’re not even close to Anger yet, not when it comes to the larger population.
We simply deny that something has really changed. And even if you wish to claim that it hasn’t, no-one can deny the possibility that it has. Still, that is exactly what happens. Denial, everywhere you look.
The something else that is going on is that our brains have been kidnapped by those who (probably not even always consciously) seek to strengthen their – power – political and financial positions by making us believe in the growth story long after it has – for all we can see – died. That’s why we listen only to the growth story, to the exclusion of any and all other stories.
It’s a form of progress, though not a benign one. Freud’s ideas are (ab)used to hide reality from us (to ‘sell’ the message), while Keynes’ ideas are abused to hide the reality that you can’t buy growth with debt your children will have to pay back. Pretty simple, when you think about it.
If you know how to sell people detergents and presidents, abstract ideas is easy. And if those ideas are about economics, that nobody knows much about and all the trusted experts and press have the same message about 24/7, the circle is pretty much closed. All that’s left then is places like the Automatic Earth and others to get your alternative stories, but that’s no match for full blown propaganda.
Still we’re seeing, we’re living in, the last days of the growth story. And when the master class decides to drop that story, watch out. The emperor is one ugly wrinkled old duckling when he’s naked. You don’t want your kids to see that.
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Growth is dead because tens of millions of people who don't and will never work have killed it. Tens of millions more that extract financial rent and produce nothing buried it.
Real growth comes from the successful free associations between human beings. The less freedom people have, the less free associations they have, the less prosperity they can produce through associations.
It's pretty simple really.
1/2 way through phase 1 and we can't see success until we have completed phase 2. It's going to be a long night folks.
Dead right, Bluntly. Unfortunately, politicians would need to voluntarily yield their grip on power to let the free market and free people operate as they should; ie, there is an inverse correlation between gov't power and economic health; double-ie, since they got theirs, they wanna make sure you don't get yours, or else you'll have the resources to challenge them.
Hard to get a job when the manufacturing industry has been moved offshore and the growth of computers has reduced job demand.
Hard to find employment when no "wanted" ads are published.
Hard to find a job when corporations have shipped growth into low-paying countries to increase profit margins.
Hard to find a job if the number of applicants for any position are in the 100's or 1000's.
I know many grew up and are accustomed to the "dole".
I personally have seen this dynamic for decades.
But I also see people who are willing to work being able to find nothing.
And to be absolutely impartial. I know entire families who depend on giving birth as a manner to increase welfare benefits. I know women who have deliberately had relationships with First Nations (here in Canada) in order to give birth to a child entitled to benefits that are unavailable to other Canadians.
But this is not some majority of intention I see. I see many people who wish to work and find nothing.
Given the choice many people will look at part-time wages (minus taxes) and do the math. Social benefits will sometimes be more advantageous than working. Especially when you factor in day care and time lost from family.
I have done the math.
That's great, you know the people who are wrong for this country, now go fix the pain in the neck problems, YESTERDAY!
Middle-class people in the USA have a median of $20,000 saved for retirement, far short of the $250,000 they think they'll need during that time of their lives, a new survey shows.
A third (34%) of working middle-class adults aren't contributing anything to a 401(k), IRA or other retirement savings plan, according to the survey of 1,001 adults, ages 25 to 75, with a median household income of $63,000. The survey was conducted by Harris Poll for Wells Fargo (WFC).
Those who are putting away money for retirement are currently saving a median of $125 every month, the survey shows. About 61% say they're not sacrificing a lot to save for retirement, but 38% are sacrificing to tuck away money for their golden years.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2014/10/22/retiremen...
All part of the Robust Rekovery.
Nice armchair advice. Lofty removed advice.
I did not create the inequality and the centuries of repression (for Native people). Nor did I perpetrate the smallpox laden blankets or residential schools. Nor did I confine masses to reserves. Nor did I slaughter on a huge scale.
So thanks for the advice.
Nor can you pontificate that somehow "these folks" have created the problem that exists. It is narrow minded to think so. I retort to you "go fix the pain in the neck problems, yesterday."
Nice to blame. Glad you had advantages.
So did I. Does not mean I cannot see.
Time to quit blame and start to look for cause/solution. Take a look at Sweden/Norway. Maybe think of affordable national daycare so that women can work.
Many things that can be done but nothing is accomplished with you opinion of blame.
The only solutions that can work are on an individual basis. Your example of child care by the government is not a workable solution but a continuation of the problem. Think self reliance and help your neighbors with your own efforts not someone else's and things will get better.
Corporations also moved jobs out of this country because of the onerous and assaulting regulatory and legal burdens inherent in employing American workers.
I disagree.
First; I do not believe in the throne that corporate profits and growth have been elevated to.
Nor do I think that corporations ahould have unlimited power to influence politics.
Nor do I think that corporations should be permitted to determine the agenda of nations.
Nor do I think corporations have the same (or more) rights than people.
Unions were formed at a time when workers were basic serfs. Low wages, dangerous working conditions and not one benefit.
So corporations exported the ability to duplicate those conditions to say Pakistan. Poison environments, poison people, factories that are death traps, child labour. Yipee.
Profit, fair living profit is way frigging different than what has gone down.
Onerous? Assualting? regulatory burdens? Corporations have run their cheap/dangerous employment conditions but more so they are exporting any minimal repsonsibility to pollution standards, preservation of this planet.
Give your head a shake.
Give my head a shake?
As if.
Move along Commie. You've got nothing but the same tired, anti-corporate boilerplate, partially clad in ignorant Green bullshit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PQrz8F0dBI
This guy was on the money
If you rely upon the market, you need to rely upon the market. If you prevent the market from working (eg, outlaw movement of jobs offshore), it will only get worse.
That's half the problem. The other half is the degenrate gamblers on Wall Street that keep getting bailed out by those who work for a living
@ Duo:
No!
Growth is dead because politics is dead, you do not vote for their representatives, this is a bankrupt company in every way.
Who rules are the banksters, not natural.
Do not worry, nothing a good guillotine, a rope + tree or an excellent firing squad does not solve the case.
See Ukraine.
hehe.
Denial, it's not just a river in Egypt.
Lets not forget that ego is the root cause of denial.
Ego and hubris are Siamese twins.
I think it's a form of denial to think this debt will ever be paid back. Well, maybe in blood. Isn't this was history has taught us?
Have mulled over what the world will be like in a year or so. Hard to prepare for the unknown.
It's a form of denial to think this debt needs to be paid back in full. Win a war, sign a treaty canceling some debts, roll over others, and off we go again.
I have no problem with debt default....as long as it includes me. And I end up with everything I financed and gambled on. Not a problem in the world with that.
Let's excuse all consumer debt (includes mortgages). Way better QE.
I will spend more money at the mall if I am allowed to repudiate my debts and free up my income.
But hold the bankers to their reckless gambling derivatives. About time they did the bail-in. Come on guys only fair. We did it for you. Now your turn.
Ego is everywhere one attributes what one does to "I". The ego can be present in a generous mind as much as in a cheap one, or in a genius, or in a retarded. Ego is an omnipresent illusion about being the sole "doer." The ego is present in acceptance as well. Although acceptance is much more conducive to ego-less-ness than denial, the ego-illusion is thinner, and acceptance has much less affinity with hubris than denial, that's probably why from acceptance something new and balanced can be built. Denial is a real raving pain.
I've been in every stage while on ZH. It was fun to rage, then I got depressed because despite all the news, things are still where they are. Now I just mostly wait for enough to awaken and do something.
The wait will only make you more depressed and outraged, as you realize it can't possibly happen to an enslaved/dependent populace.
Then you'll get even more depressed and outrage when it becomes glaringly obvious that it's all by design.
And if something does happen via an "awakening" it will only make things worse, as these people will also be depressed and outraged, setting themselves up to be the self-propelled tools of others.
Really, all you can do is to try to live your life the best that you can, in spite off all of this. It is also the only "something" that's beneficially awakening.
As many others here will no doubt agree.. I'm long on Bullets and extended proximity from socioeconomic areas that resemble Camden, NJ. When those uninitiated, totally enslaved masses lose their ability to swipe an EBT card to survive.. the ability to protect ones livlihood will be paramount.
Yeah I am with you there.
Prep. Buy bullion, and pat your puppies.
I, like you, went thru all the stages until I realized several truths:
1. I cannot, and do not wish to, control the actions of others. Therefore I am not responsible or liable for their behavior. If they wish to remain asleep, their choice.
2. It does not matter who is in charge, the Red Shields or the Obama’s or Marty McFly , the system itself is designed to enslave me. Voting does not changes the system, only the faces that represent the system.
3. The system can only enslave me as long as I choose to participate. If I walk into a casino, I am well aware of the house rules and accept them implicitly. I am always free to walk out. If I do business in currency or earn enough currency to be taxed, I will be fleeced. I accept this reality. I remain free to walk away. I choose when I work for currency and how much I make with the clear understanding that the state/banks/assorted agencies will fleece me whenever I do.
glitched
"you can’t buy growth with debt your children will have to pay back"
ROFLOL!!!! Who can possibly believe the debt will be paid back? Too funny!!!
Agreed. The mathematics do not lie.
So who, SPECIFICALLY, ain't gonna get paid?
And, what exactly, will they do about it?
WWIII.
Let the Fed keep buying Treasury paper. When the USD finally loses credibility, cancel the debt held by Fed (in exchange for immunity, perhaps), dissolve the Fed and issue a new currency.
US total debt (govts, households, business) approaching $60 trillion ... during the recession brief deleveraging by consumer ... a "whopping" $800 billion ... which even NYFRB admitted was mostly from write-offs.
The ponzi can't survive without ever greater credit/debt growth ... hence interest rates will continue to go down ... the only way to move the can forward
Trust me, it will be repaid through our retirement and bank accounts unless we do something about it. Do you really think the financiers will walk away empty handed without a fight?
Oh it will come through the back door.
Those trillions of retirement savings were in the sightlines decades ago. Like a cushion or cookie jar.
I have gotten out 95%.
Problem is that those trillions in retirement savings (liabilities of the financial sector) have all been intermediated into assets and then leveraged 20x (up to 70x) over.
When the boomers draw down or the Feds raid accounts, the subsequent runs in the banking system (shadow and traditional) trigger more Fed bailouts, primarily triggering TSY OMO.
So the Feds raid retirement savings to pay for their debts, causing the Fed to buy more TSYs in a spiral of doom, TSYs that Treasury is more than willing to issue because raided retirement savings put more people on welfare. Hilarious spiral down.
It "works" because Treasury does not legally have to pay interest on debt to the Federal Reserve (though the banksters still get their pound of flesh via operating expenses and OMO commissions/front-running).
End result: more people in poverty, higher govt debt, weaker USD and no difference to the fat cats on Wall St. At some point the guillotines get rolled.
Same as it ever was.
In honor of my wise, departed, beloved depression-era grandma, I stuffed 13 thousand fiatscos under my mattress the other day.
I would have put away $13K oz bullion. Take your pick. Just a bit more lumpy.
UTOPIA
That picture looks like a 1 br, with a terrace, close to williamsburg? Maybe $1million?
"We should undoubtedly have protected us from ourselves"
But you didn't.
You acted like a coke whore on midnight eve 2011 in south beach.
Here is just a small drop in the galactic black hole that eminates from deecee...
http://benswann.com/waste-report-dept-of-defense-to-spend-1-billion-dest...
Let's do the math.
17,000,000,000 divided by 310,000,00 is...what?
Almost 55,000 per us citizen wasted.
And you call people "free shit army"?
Well what is the US military industrial complex but a "free shit army".
Yabut...
It's YOUR Free Shit Army.
So you can take some pride in that.
Booyah.
we had our chance [Ron Paul] and we blew it... so it is decline, fall, revolution, counter-revolution, and finally counter-counter-revolution, as far as the mind can think...
Ron Paul?
Ha! A token libertarian.
You "counter-counter revolution" line reminded me of this.
http://youtu.be/Y0cF2piwjYQ
Thanks Homersghost.
Your bio:
I am a man of any time.
I am a man of any universe.
I have come before.
I shall return again.
member 2 weeks 6 days.
Friday is payday is it not?
But look on the bright side. That's less ammo which is going to be used against us.
"hat's less ammo which is going to be used against us."
You don't need ammo to destroy civilization any more.
Import goobacks, offshore the jobs, go into debt, stay in denial, a false flag every couple of months, blame the kids for being "lazy and not trying to get a job"....
I doubt the ammo cost that much anyway.
Probably marked up so that all those flag waving conservatards jerk each other off about their gun rights to plink small, defenseless animals while wasting resources on this and getting your MIC investment to go up .2%.
"I don't think the heavy stuff is coming down for quite some time now".
There's no such thing as infinite growth....
And no such thing as an eternal fiat public currency issued by private bankers as a loan at interest - it is axiomatic that "debt" grows faster, and at an accelerating rate, relative to circulating currency.
If growth is the gas pedal, debt is the brakes - we're basically pressing down both pedals, and borrowing money from China for gas.
infinite personal growth exists, perhaps, but that commands as much respect as gold these days.
Why do we even need inflation for stability? Is inflation, by definition opposed to stability?
Countries should all take back their power to create their own currency. Central Banks have fed nations nothing but garbage.
This is what happens when you ship good paying jobs to China for 30+ years.
REAGANOMICS BABY !!!
It's the workers fault for not all becoming computer progammers.
You mean Democratnomics. NAFTA and GATT were both signed under Clinton in the 1990's.
China was still hard core Communist in the 1980's and didn't loosen up until after Tianemen Square in 1989.
"You mean Democratnomics. "
NAFTA and GATT happened because of reagonomics, what king bush called "voodoo" economics.
Anyone anyone?
http://youtu.be/uhiCFdWeQfA
yeah, dat whut nice about d'merica...dey ain' no jobs no mo'...dat why d'ebt recip'nts like livin' ova here...dat funny too 'bout d'places in d'merica whey dey all white folks, youda thunk ebt recip'nts would like it dere cuz dey ain'no jobs no mo'...wudn't d'Reagan d'supply side brothah...I 'member dat, he sho' kno' to supply d'ebt...
Don't forget Bill Clinton signed NAFTA...
lester = doosh simpleton bytch.
Inventory Turnover
This is the issue, and you can make a life recycling treasures that others have discarded for lack of labor, out of willful ignorance, and if you do not repeat their mistake, fearing sunk cost recognition and holding the wrong inventory, one timely decision can create an avalanche, in your favor.
Whether the Fed, the dependent critters in the FILO bankruptcy queue, or neither is in control depends upon your perspective, position and discernment. There is nothing new about civil law by class, and critters assuming that equality means that you must be bound by the laws of their class system, as defined by those above them.
Public education has many ways of testing compliance aptitude, and I never got past the George Washington cherry tree myth, but I did spend 25 years in public education going through the ranks, looking at why a system producing such stupid outcomes for so many was the focal point of State resources.
In the grand scheme of things, the idea that the earth can be owned is absurd, but the idea that the skills born on talent to make that land productive for you, your family and your community, by you, to be passed down to your children and theirs, even John Locke had to accept, before he made the bait and switch back to the English mortgage virus.
In case you are not familiar with your history, which public education doesn’t teach along with grade school mythology, the American aristocracy was given land in the colonies, under the assumption that it belonged to the King, to reboot the land virus consuming England at the time – lease, on the empire’s terms, or quit, as in be branded a criminal. The English monarchy was just more desperate than the Spanish or the French.
George Washington got his land surveying for the aristocratic squatters, and implementing the 99-year lease, paying tenant squatters to run off subsequent squatters. America was founded on speculative land booms and busts.
Idle land as property, separate from labor, the people it could support, was specifically introduced to finance war back in Europe, giving the land away to begin the inflation cycle of density, and then encapsulating it to maximize rent. Money is generated to impoverish accordingly, and now that America has reached critical density, the whole system is imploding.
“Religion and profit jump together.”
So, Iowa, and everyone else, is going global, at exactly the wrong time, with artificial empire products, the incipient healthcare insurance racket primary among them. Insurance eliminates price discovery, growing derivatives and gatekeepers at the cost of natural male employment, by design. Warren Buffet is shooting fish in a barrel, nice work, if you can get it.
Government is just another religious culture that thinks it has a superior mythology. Its public education confirms the social pecking order of squatters, taxing each other cumulatively in layers, compiling the credit gradient in the FILO bankruptcy queue, distilling out labor to control the means of production, which makes the multiplexer circuit, which is why the critters tend to hysteria, in a sh-show broadcasting corporation, DNA churn pool, or Archimedes Screw, depending upon perspective.
Your world is what you choose to make of the noise, and you learn by doing. You only want to spend 10% of your time in gravity, because you need momentum to make the circuit. We have the resources you need, but don’t bother asking us to change the channel for you. It’s your world.
Dad’s got the car coasting downhill. Find the gear and learn to downshift before you head uphill, or learn from a dead stop, which is a much longer process. All that clutch does is disengage the engine speed from the driveline speed, and the high end of each gear overlaps the low end of the next. Learn to change gears without the clutch, in case the need arrives. Mom has to learn once, to trust her husband, if she wants to raise productive children, preferably before dad runs out of diapers and has to pull out the hammer.
Like anything else, you need the correct speed, traction and momentum, which is going to change. Make a couple of passes to survey the mountain before you start in earnest. If you don’t have 10, 4 and 90, go practice on smaller hills. Fred, Wilma and GPS, all with the wrong point of origin, isn’t going to get you there. Let them all take off, in the wrong direction.
The critters chose to marry their mortgages, because that’s what ‘everyone’ else did, imprisoning themselves in jobs with the required credit rating. That’ll happen. No matter how many consumers the religious agendas collect, they can only grow debt, exponentially if you get out of the way. Let them bid against themselves, while you discount.
25 years?
What a waste.
Guess they hooked a live one.
First of all.
Before you do anything else.
You have to define exactly what growth is.
Because today, growth is growth in debt. Increasing leverage.
ahmmm... what else kind if growth is there...? You srely don't mean non inflationary growth financed from savings do you ? T%hat kind of thinking could get you arrested for insurrection.
You will take your diseased Central American Hispanics, and will like your diseased Central American hispanics. And STFU about all the illegal Mexicans robbing your house when you are work. They are doing jobs that white Americans won't do.
as long as the elite can use multiculturalist propaganda to generate white-guilt and thereby cram millions of third world immigrants into america, then growth WILL happen.
Not GOOD growth, as far as the american working class is concerned, but growth, nonetheless.
Aka the "population ponzi".
So the 'emperor' is a demonic gene splice between David Rockefeller and George Soros wearing absolutely nothing fist raping an equally naked Warren Buffett on a merry-go-round of baphomets. Got it.
Unfortunately, the neocons are not done bleeding America of blood and treasuire for Ersatz Israel...
Neoconservatism: A Treacherous Guild of Jewish Imperialists*
* a 'must read' as to the Straussians/neocons, along with this.
If you can make it through both - how amazing does this exchange become?? Not only is it forbidden to speak certan obvious truths, and only certain ones, but even a {liberal} Jew, a very well respected journalist and writer, will be 'corrected' [told he may not say X, with the insinuation that X is untrue, which is false] by a fearful, blinking goy.
This denial you refer to is more a mask for a large fraction of the population; a mask for the secret admiration by that fraction for the cutthroats and bandits most people refer to as the 1%; which, by the way, would be utterly impotent without an army of useful idiots to carry out assassinations and general plunders mandated/directed by that 1%.
By this “army of useful idiots”, I mean, soldiers, bureaucrats, professors, editors, pastors and a host of other underlings who would barely qualify for water carrier in the un-strangled market; and who, without the smiles of the 1%, would not be able to maintain their half-million $ mortgages, payments on their SUVs and motorhomes; and would not be looking forward to retirement checks of $4000/month for grunt bureaucrats or $15,000-$20,000/month for department heads – all made possible by property stolen from American serfs.
When you try to speak truth to them, and their eyes glaze over, they are trying to tell you something: you’re wasting your time. If you manage to overthrow one of their fictions/lies, they’ll invent ten more in the meantime.
Don’t waste your time.
Instead, devote your efforts to those who prefer liberty or justice; and, most of all, learn lessons of American Founders, and then use them to assure your survival (an intro).
And rendering someone (your chidren, for example) slaves while simultaneously receiving the cash is known as human trafficking; some will end up as wage slaves, some sex slaves, and some as mere toys to be used and abused and cast away when broken.
And the worst of it all: Most Americans don't/can't understand the logical outcome; those of us who do can really do nothing substantial to change the result on a national level. The only solution would be a large-scale "disappearance" of those the debts are owed to...
Growth, decay, growth, decay... Growth isn't dead, we are in winter. In the dead of winter everything *appears* dead, but it isn't. The illusion is being propped along by the central banks, buying junk debt and keeping the failed business model of mega banks going on. 2008 was the year of the great freeze when the overgrown trees should have snapped under their own weight, thus making room for the real sources of growth and innovation. Instead, the old growth forest is now strung together with massive wires holding each debt-laden tree up against the weight of the other. Shumpeter's creative destruction was delayed, but it will not be denied. The biggest trees in the forest are rotting at the core, we all know this. They will topple and the crack-up-boom will be spectacular. Winter will not end until this happens, so until then it will appear growth is dead. It's not. There will be innovations, technologies, discoveries and exploration once again, the same as it ever was, unless, of course, we transition to a fully neo feudal state, in which case, spring may have to wait a few hundred years.
a winter's day...in a deep and dark December...
yeh sounds poetic... but reality is Western world will be lucky if all it is , is neo feudal. Shumpeter wuld argue that the creative destruction required would include at least 20MM passings in the US alone.
why doesn't obama just send the last 127 oz of gold we have left in fort knox to the imf for some sdr's??? the markets would SCREAM out of the gates!!!
snarkity snark snark
Here's a guy in some SERIOUS denial (just read it on afr.com):
Market is ‘overreacting’: UBS’s Donovan
UBS global economist Paul Donovan says investors should take a cool bath and stop overreacting to economic data. “We are not revising global growth numbers. No one in economic circles is particularly worried where global growth is going,” he says, adding that the IMF’s decision to downgrade growth projections shows “they are way out of date, they always are”.
Or is it sheer panic??
What is Paul "the human pee pee" making for $ at UBS? What would Paul de "pee pee" make for $ if he had to print the truth at ZH ?
That is why Paul is a "pee pee" and goes on the list of people that must pay the price when it all comes down.
To look on the other side of growth you'd have to look at degrowth. Not gonna happen.
I think Ilargi is merely seeing a illusion.
I now am convinced much of the basic physical shortage we see around us is a byproduct of the eurosystems "added value" production and consumption process.
This is the most demonic scarcity engine the world has ever seen.
Watching how the Industrial surplus was and is wasted in Ireland has been quite something and is most certainly a educational experience as I am just old enough to remember vastly different supply chains that actually registered capital input costs in one shape or another.
The Industrial process in Europe fails to registar such things - basic production simply shuts down rather then adjusts.
The global rise of the oil price is directly related to the euro construct. (1998 minimum)
The Chinese coal hockey stick - late 1990s (massive european capital export phase)
The total colllapse of now euro conduit internal supply chains in the 1980s.
It all comes back to the Euro.
A entrepot of european size cannot be supplied with enough raw materials.
But that does not mean we do not have enough stuff.
Just remember the standard of living of most euro roboten declined in the 1990s.
We have no seen a failure of Industrial concentration so much but how this concentration has been distributed.
A flawed distribution rises Industrial inputs to a point where Industry is priced out of the Industrial business.
Major causes as follows;
Baby boomers have created the need for products and services to feed the largest bulge of population the world has ever known.
As the Baby Boomers move out of their homes and into old age homes and die off, this will leave a huge glut of houses and other buildings on the market, and construction will almost cease, good thing for renovations.
The massive amounts of debt that has been accumulated over the last 35 years has paid for all the growth, It has all been borrowed money. Now that there is no way to borrow (due to no jobs), the system collapses upon it self. Do you really think it is a coincidence that the crash happens as the Baby Boomers start to retire in mass!
Greed; The offshoring of jobs for greater profits has killed the employee, ie the consumer the one that the corporations some how seemed to forget that they needed to purchase the products that they need to sell to have a prosperous growing corporation and economy.
The work ethic that has been handed done from modern parents to their children is non existent.
Here in Canada we are bringing in Mexicans to pick fruit, cause the little Canadian Mommy's boys say that it it's too much like work for them to do. (Mothers spoiling their kids, because they love them, now they don't want to work) You reap what you sow there Mommies.
Any foreigner will glady come here and work their guts out for half of the pay that we get.
There is some big changes coming, a drop in the standard of living the west has only had nightmares about.
Lets not leave out Taxes and Welfare, and how they will put a dent into the will to prosper, when the Gov will take from the producer and give to the non producing taker.
I have been talking for many years how when a Man who works in a 3rd world country earns approx $2/day but when he works in the west he can make 100 times that amount, eventually this will equalize and the people of the west will be the losers.
Hang on tight Denial will make this worse!
That place is probably worth over a $million now.