The Abyss

[dummass]

Re: The Abyss

Those that share what they have are giving those in question a fish. This is a nice sentiment... but it feeds for a day.

Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day--Hustler Magazine

[raja]

Re: The Abyss

Yes it is hard to read. I know a lot of people out of work or at least very seriously under-employed.

I've been trying to help as much as I can( my business is off also). I've been having business cards made up for guys I know in the trades. Guys trying to scrounge up odd jobs to do. Its very cheap to do online, and I know these guys don't even have internet access, so I just had some made and started handing out the cards to my customers or neighbors.

I had my house painted about a year earlier than I planned to in order to give a painter buddy something to do last December in the dead of winter when he literally didn't have money to buy gas to get home. Now he's back on his feet and doing okay.

I think we can all reach out and try to help in our own little way. Sometimes people just need a little help and they'll be okay.

It's a good thing to help people . . . .

On the other hand, I think rather than use my money to help people in need, we should take the money from the people that caused the problem and distribute it to the needy. After all, our own President said, "We were on the verge of a complete financial meltdown, and the reason was that Wall Street took extraordinary risks with other people's money. They were peddling loans that they knew could never be repaid . . . and all of us are now paying the price. " Now the financial elite are raking in record bonuses, and 5% of the population controls almost 60% of the wealth.

Perhaps we will see roving bands of poor people throwing rocks through the house windows in rich neighborhoods . . . then maybe the real story would get some attention. Hell, I'd contribute to busing them out, because at least that is addressing the cause of the problems we are now experiencing. (Of course not all rich people are evil . . . but revolutions are messy.)

In addition to helping the poor directly, why not also give your congresspeople an earful, and demand that the Wall Street criminals be put in jail and their ill-gotten gains be distributed to the innocent who are now suffering as a result of that fraud.

[sunskyfan]

Re: The Abyss

"She's had at least a year and a half to figure out Plan B."

I have some sympathy for your view but there is a flaw: our economic/political system tries very hard not to inform people of any impact on them. Disinformation is at all levels of our lives. It is cheaper to contain and cover-up the facts than to deal with them. It is cheaper to lie to ourselves than to deal with our problems. Fundamentally that is what this economic collapse is about.

As soon as you use common money you are invested in the social contract. Trust me, I am one of the struggling self-employed and I don't want to see what I have go to keep somebody's house in Indiana but I don't think it is correct to deconstruct her fear. Use that energy to deconstruct Wall Street.

[Serge_Tomiko]

Re: The Abyss

I just looked at base metal prices, and I got a reality shock:

nickel closing-in toward $20,000 per tonne;
copper well over $6,000 per tonne, on the way to maybe $7,000 per tonne next;
zinc nearing $2,000 per tonne.

I can see the future in California and maybe elsewhere in America: The drug gangs might next expand out of drug-trafficing and move toward the industry of stripping wiring, pipes, metal sinks, etc. out of vacant and unsold homes.

While one might be thinking about what an old penny or nickel could be instrinsically worth in metal, the old drug gangs might be thinking about what a neighbourhood of vacant/unsold houses could be intrinsically worth. And then there are light-poles outside and bridge guard-rails, buried copper pipes to serve the neighbourhood; the opportunities are endless!

I would imagine even pharmaceutical morphine would be worth a lot more than $20,000 a ton. Probably more like several hundred thousand dollars per ton. Black market drugs are even more valuable. Very valuable.

[rjwjr]

Re: The Abyss

Think there's many libertarians in Zimbabwe? How about Haiti? Palestine?

Not enough, and there lies the problem.

But where in this country is this promised land where an unskilled worker would have a decent likelihood of finding a new job?

I wonder how many unskilled workers decided to pick-up a skill during the good times of 2002 to 2007 by going to a trade school or night school? I mean, after all, we had just come from a recession in 2000-2001. That must have shook them up enough to make sure they could weather another recession? Nope. Instead, the majority remain as "unskilled" as they were 7 years ago, and this time around they are even deeper in debt.

Apparently nobody taught them to fish last time either. Or, maybe they just don't give a rats ass.

I'm happy to take care of my immediate family, I'll do what I can to assist some relatives and close friends, but when it comes to strangers in Indiana, I'm afraid I'm the one that doesn't give a rat's ass. I don't wish them any ill will, and I wish for them that their circumstances were better, but I'm not going to force you to teach them or pay for extending their benefits any further, and I don't expect you "do- gooders" to tell me that I have to do anything to help them.

That's the spirit of Liberterianism in my opinion...you help them if you like, I won't help them if I choose not to. Bleeding heart liberalism is when you tell me that I will be forced to help them. It's likely at that point that a Liberterian starts talking about guns again.

[flintlock]

Re: The Abyss

"She's had at least a year and a half to figure out Plan B."

I have some sympathy for your view but there is a flaw: our economic/political system tries very hard not to inform people of any impact on them. Disinformation is at all levels of our lives. It is cheaper to contain and cover-up the facts than to deal with them. It is cheaper to lie to ourselves than to deal with our problems. Fundamentally that is what this economic collapse is about.

As soon as you use common money you are invested in the social contract. Trust me, I am one of the struggling self-employed and I don't want to see what I have go to keep somebody's house in Indiana but I don't think it is correct to deconstruct her fear. Use that energy to deconstruct Wall Street.

Yes, I think they want us to turn on each other rather than the real culprits.

That said, Americans have gotten out of the habit of looking out for themselves. We've made it too easy to fail. Perhaps one good that comes out of all this is that people will wake up a bit and get serious about providing for themselves and taking a long term approach to planning their lives out. I'm not saying everyone who is unemployed deserved it, just that you can't become complacent in the good times, you have to stay ahead of the game.

[Starving Steve]

Re: The Abyss

Part of understanding the abyss that we are all in is that even if you save or have saved, you get ZERO interest rates on your savings. So, you have to dip into principal each month just to live because the bills keep coming in. And if your savings are in gold, you have to dip into gold each month to pay the cost of living. (That means selling a gold coin each month, just like Pippy Longstocking did in the old childhood story.)

Oh, you could have rental real estate to-day to off-set your cost of living. But with the drug gangs, grow-ops, and metal-stripping gangs, all I can say is, "good luck".

Naturally, the best way to survive is to invest outside America, maybe to invest in China or India. But unless you live in a country and know the "ins-and-outs" and "who's-who" in the market, I would think you would be taking a big risk to make investments in a foreign stock market. In other words, you would be a sucker, the proverbial "bare-foot pilgrim".

Thus it has been said, "The markets are an expensive place to learn investing lessons in."

[hayekvindicated]

Re: The Abyss

I just looked at base metal prices, and I got a reality shock:

nickel closing-in toward $20,000 per tonne;
copper well over $6,000 per tonne, on the way to maybe $7,000 per tonne next;
zinc nearing $2,000 per tonne.

I can see the future in California and maybe elsewhere in America: The drug gangs might next expand out of drug-trafficing and move toward the industry of stripping wiring, pipes, metal sinks, etc. out of vacant and unsold homes.

While one might be thinking about what an old penny or nickel could be instrinsically worth in metal, the old drug gangs might be thinking about what a neighbourhood of vacant/unsold houses could be intrinsically worth. And then there are light-poles outside and bridge guard-rails, buried copper pipes to serve the neighbourhood; the opportunities are endless!

That is what happens during a deflationary spiral. The prices go through the roof and then some. This deflation has barely started. By the end of it, the prices will seem unreal.

To all deflationists out there: what has the country done to deserve such deflation? One terrible deflation in the 1930s and now another one. Mike Shedlock (or that genius Ambrose Evans Pritchard) must have some answers to that question.

Addendum: this is what has happened to prices when the money multiplier is still very low. What will happen when the money multiplier starts increasing? Where will prices be then? It really boggles the mind.

[bpr]

Re: The Abyss

Well, maybe they should just stay where they are, where there are no jobs and no prospects, and expect the government to provide for them. That's what made this country great, right?

Believe me, I am not unsympathetic to the plight of the people who are in such dire straits.

Yes, you are. Don't make yourself feel better by lying to yourself in front of us.

If you're a cold-hearted creep, so be it. Face up to it and cut the pansy "I'm a nice guy" routine. I'm sure you're a nice guy over martinis after a round of golf.

But at some point, it's on them.

Karen Inbody has just about three weeks to figure out Plan B.
The 58-year-old divorcee has been getting by on unemployment compensation since her layoff in early 2008, but she’s nearly reached the end of her benefits.

Wrong. She's had at least a year and a half to figure out Plan B. Plus, prior to getting laid off, she should have been putting away money for such a contingency. While getting unemployment, she should have set her sights beyond Elkhart.

We're talking about folks on the low-end of the income scale here (her former wages weren't mentioned, but her mortgage is $600 a month, hardly a palace, I'm sure). The article mentions another fellow that made $10/hr, about $20k a year, so I'll use that to illustrate (if I used the statistical 7:10 ratio of women's pay to men, it would be even worse, so let's keep it simple).

From personal experience, I can tell you that $10/hr means a take-home pay of around $300 a week. This is the working poor (not a great read, and quite elitist in its own right, but a noble effort IMHO).

Assume a modest car payment of $100 a month (in fact it's more likely an under $5k used car put on a credit card five years ago that still isn't paid off), and that leaves $500/month (under $17/day) for utilities and food.

Monthly averages in the 20s and 30s means high heating bills in Elkhart IN, particularly in the sub-par efficiency of what is likely a 70-year old (or older, in the historic district) house. She's probably on a monthly-installment plan, which spreads the pain out over the summer months, at interest.

So, how much would you suggest this 58-year old woman should have saved?

I don't have a solution to this problem, but it's a big one.

A large percentage of those working in the U.S. are in similar situations to the hypothetical one I pose here. It's more than 40 hours of weekly work for hand-to-mouth living. They're not all $70k auto line employees. Or $100k camera operators with $600k houses.

When these people are bumped off the payroll, it's ludicrous to suggest that they move to greener pastures, which will likely mean incurring more debt, where there may be no jobs anyway.

It is unsympathetic and uninformed to suggest that they should have saved money while they were earning $10/hr.

Also, don't you think those greener pastures will have higher costs of living than, say, $600/month? Where's she going to go on that budget, Dubuque? She won't make it in San Francisco or Singapore on that wage.

Again, unsympathetic and uninformed.

I'm not asking that you consider all of the difficulties of every individual that undergoes transformation during this transition. It's hard enough to manage one's own affairs during these times. But if you say something that is cold and calculating, don't lie about what a good guy you are.

[bpr]

Re: The Abyss

And what is it that is best taught?

1. How to read. (Although with Youtube even this is almost unnecessary).
2. That there is free access to the internet at the public library .
3. That the internet now has videos and instructions on how to do anything published for free. And that Google can find it.
4. The motivation and vision to accomplish their dreams.

"I see here on your resume that you learned how to operate a backhoe on Youtube, Riley. Very impressive."
:eek:

[flintlock]

Re: The Abyss

I learned how to strip my AK-74 on youtube. Youtube is awesome.

[touchring]

Re: The Abyss

I just looked at base metal prices, and I got a reality shock:

nickel closing-in toward $20,000 per tonne;
copper well over $6,000 per tonne, on the way to maybe $7,000 per tonne next;
zinc nearing $2,000 per tonne.

I can see the future in California and maybe elsewhere in America: The drug gangs might next expand out of drug-trafficing and move toward the industry of stripping wiring, pipes, metal sinks, etc. out of vacant and unsold homes.

While one might be thinking about what an old penny or nickel could be instrinsically worth in metal, the old drug gangs might be thinking about what a neighbourhood of vacant/unsold houses could be intrinsically worth. And then there are light-poles outside and bridge guard-rails, buried copper pipes to serve the neighbourhood; the opportunities are endless!

This is already happening outside of america, gangs stealing public copper pipes and wires. In Singapore, after professional thieves stole copper wires from high voltage transformers and electric substations, they installed remotely monitored video cameras.

[bpr]

Re: The Abyss

Not enough, and there lies the problem.

A tangential question, but how do you feel about Israel's healthcare plan? The question you are answering mentioned Palestinians, so I just want to know... Your tax dollars are going to Israel, which provides healthcare for every citizen.

Yet American citizens go uncovered.

Hm. Do we agree on that, at least? Cut off the parasite states, such as Israel, Turkey and Egypt, unless they relinquish their healthcare systems?

I wonder how many unskilled workers decided to pick-up a skill during the good times of 2002 to 2007 by going to a trade school or night school? I mean, after all, we had just come from a recession in 2000-2001. That must have shook them up enough to make sure they could weather another recession? Nope. Instead, the majority remain as "unskilled" as they were 7 years ago, and this time around they are even deeper in debt.

Apparently nobody taught them to fish last time either. Or, maybe they just don't give a rats ass.

I don't think you have an idea of how hard it is to live at the lower spectrum of the income brackets. There is no extra money for schooling which may or may not pay off. Or, maybe you're unaware of the inflated cost of education even at trade schools in recent years.

Something isn't clicking here.

[bpr]

Re: The Abyss

I have to admit my first reaction was also that they should leave Elkhart.

If only you knew how hard that is.

I live in a town that's similar to Elkhart*, so I can understand the ties its people have to its history.

At one time, Elkhart was a manufacturing hub that supplied the instruments of deception that changed America.

Ever heard of Sidney Bechet?

How about Paul Desmond?

Johnny Hodges?

Charlie Parker?

All these players as well as the entire Lawrence Welk sax section played horns made in Elkhart, Indiana, home Of the Buescher True Tone Saxophone, and the Buescher Aristocrat Sax, until Selmer bought them out in the mid-1960s.

The loss of the horn business was more than covered by the increase in trailer manufacturing in the 1950s and 1960s until recent decades, when even that declined.

These were companies that mattered to people, and to their families. Their grandparents worked on the production lines for instruments that travelled the world and vehicles that covered every grain of sand in North America.

Some line workers left the larger RV manufacturers and built their own businesses, building a small number of high-amenity vehicles, so these were an entreprenurial people (they don't only exist in California).

I'm sure they were proud of their product, and that kind of pride passes from generation to generation.

You don't make saxes for a living and not show the grandkids those pictures of Bird playing an Aristocrat.

This is a side note — a tangent — but imagine yourself growing up in this. Knowing that your father built horns that travelled the world, speaking a new revolutionary race-defying language of jazz; or RVs that covered the states with families in a way that no family could do before.

To move where?

Arizona? Florida? Las Vegas?

Areas with less than a hundred years of history that were, frankly, a desert, a swamp, and a desert less than a hundred years ago?

(I'm being charitable here.... EIGHTY year ago these areas were a desert, a swamp and a desert).

Elkhart was inhabited, and working hard, and beating its European counterparts.

I bet that if the journalist did his research he'd have asked, anyone in your family work for Buescher? And she would have said "yeah..." and told the story.

But Elkhart is just a headline now. Obama called it "ground zero," and he's been there twice, so that's its claim to fame now. Send the journalist and get them to talk to some people right now.

Let alone the music machines that came off of its lines that were on par with the best in the world, as good as France could manufacture (so good, in fact, that France's Selmer had to buy them out) and better than any town in North America...

The only reason I know this is because, months before I lost my job I decided that I'd learn how to play the sax if I ever did (lose my job). Turns out, these Elkhart horns from the 20s to 50s are of a far higher quality than their counterparts from the last four decades, when Selmer took manufacturing elsewhere, and professionals stopped using Elkhart horns.

I have faith in Elkhart, and hope for its recovery. Those folks come from people that produced the greatest tools of dissent the right-thinking world ever saw right alongside the folks from Nazareth, PA (home of Martin Guitars), and I trust they'll do it again.

*I just want to point out that I've never been to Elkhart, I only know what it's like to live in a town that's repeatedly dragged out as an example of economic depravity. No, it's not Elkhart, but it might as well be; you've heard it before, and you've pitied it before.

EDIT: This whole post is highly sentimental, but what you see here in Elkhart is the broken heart of America. This is no story of take benefits as they come and bleed the gub'mint, it's "holy crap, what I've been doing for the past thirty years is now irrelevant; what my parents did for the previous thirty years is irrelevant; now what do I do?" Manufacturing is no longer existent, but its story is. My kin dug the slate that built New York City: Kingston, NY; My kin built the rails that everything West of Cleveland rode on: Johnstown, PA; My kin built the instruments that fueled the Chicago Jazz scene, until the owners sold out to the Frenchies... It's not likely that any of you will understand, but I hope that those of you that are business owners take note of the geographical identity that you may be luck enough to have. People that take pride in their work will work for far less than those of us that are mercenaries, and far under market.

[Thailandnotes]

Re: The Abyss

bright moments