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Old 11-10-2015, 15:25   #121
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Re: Cruising and the Coming Storm ~ Recession, Depression, Climate Change, Peak Oil

Decline and collapse of a civilisation happens on a time scale well in excess of a single generation. Rome took some 500 years.
There are many parallels between the fall of Rome and today's western industrialized nations (read USA), and plenty of commentators see the US in an irreversible decline, but it will take longer than my lifetime or yours. Thus anyone living through any given moment will perceive things to be "normal" and it will only be historians in a few hundred years who will argue over when the collapse happened.
Also collapse happens a t different times at different places for different people. An American sitting in his cockpit sipping a sundowner in the Bahamas may wonder what all the fuss is about. A schoolteacher who has lost his job due to funding cuts and lost his house and family and is living in a tent outside of a major US city might just think it is all over.
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Old 11-10-2015, 19:02   #122
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Re: Cruising and the Coming Storm ~ Recession, Depression, Climate Change, Peak Oil

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dana_tenacity said: Decline and collapse of a civilisation happens on a time scale well in excess of a single generation. Rome took some 500 years.
I think you mean Empire, not civilization. I think like everything that 500 years has been shortened. America in her death throes will be an exceptionally dangerous beast and she may just take humanity down with her.
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Old 11-10-2015, 19:42   #123
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Re: Cruising and the Coming Storm ~ Recession, Depression, Climate Change, Peak Oil

Center for Disease Control is government run. The government and LEO's are the same people with armed security guards all around them, as they tell you, "You do not need firearms to be safe or protected."

The requirements to get CCW permit include classes on how many ways, you can be prosecuted for defending yourself and your family. So, why do you think law abiding citizens hesitate in these situations. Hesitation kills. Just review your driver's training manual.

Be prepared or be resigned to putting the period on the last page of your life's story.
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Old 11-10-2015, 20:27   #124
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Re: Cruising and the Coming Storm ~ Recession, Depression, Climate Change, Peak Oil

What I find amazing is how clearly our founding fathers understood the inevitable behavior of our own government.
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Old 11-10-2015, 21:24   #125
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Re: Cruising and the Coming Storm ~ Recession, Depression, Climate Change, Peak Oil

Wow. When I was a kid, it was the early 1960's and we built bomb shelters for what was viewed as a likely nuclear war with the Soviet Union. It was a terrifying time. I'm very worried about climate change today - but nuclear winter would have been much worse.

Compared to 1961 in the US life expectancy is about 8 years longer. The percent in poverty is much lower. We are much healthier and wealthier in our old age. Income tax rates are a fraction of the 90% back then. The dollar is very strong. Interest rates are lower. The deficit as a percent of GDP about the same. The unemployment rate was over 6% in 1961 compared to 5.1% today. The government won't lock you up for what you say or owning a gun.

What hasn't changed much is the US Federal government. We still have the same three branches who sit at the same desks - and two major parties who scheme against each other. The number of idiots, rogues, and rascals who somehow get elected appears about the same. JFK was so hated in Texas that many told him not to make that trip to Dallas. Churchill was probably right when he said "Democracy is the worst form of government, except all the other forms that have been tried from time to time"

And to get back to the topic, sailboats are much, much better than the early 1960's. Those were cramped, leaked from both below and above, and were powered by unreliable gasoline engines. No refrigeration, hot water, air conditioning or AC power. No furling headsails. And a monohull was your only choice.

Frankly, I like our chances.
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Old 11-10-2015, 21:45   #126
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Re: Cruising and the Coming Storm ~ Recession, Depression, Climate Change, Peak Oil

Everything you say is true Carl, however we now have something called the Patriot Act in place which changed everything...and I mean everything.
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Old 11-10-2015, 22:26   #127
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Re: Cruising and the Coming Storm ~ Recession, Depression, Climate Change, Peak Oil

So I was c urious and went to Wikipedia to look at poverty in the US today. (Must have been really bad in the 60's if this is an ikmprovement)

Poverty in the United States
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Poverty is a state of deprivation, or a lack of the usual or socially acceptable amount of money or material possessions.[1] The most common measure of poverty in the U.S. is the "poverty threshold" set by the U.S. government. This measure recognizes poverty as a lack of those goods and services commonly taken for granted by members of mainstream society.[2] The official threshold is adjusted for inflation using the consumer price index. The government's definition of poverty is based on total income received and does not include non-cash supplements such as food stamps or public housing.[3] For example, the poverty level for 2014 was set at $23,850 (total yearly income) for a family of four.[4]

Most Americans will spend at least one year below the poverty line at some point between ages 25 and 75.[5] Poverty rates are persistently higher in rural and inner city parts of the country as compared to suburban areas.[6][7]

In November 2013 the U.S. Census Bureau said more than 16% of the population lived in poverty.[8][9] up from 14.3% (approximately 43.6 million) in 2009 and to its highest level since 1993. In 2008, 13.2% (39.8 million) Americans lived in poverty.[10] Starting in the 1980s, relative poverty rates have consistently exceeded those of other wealthy nations.[11] California has a poverty rate of 23.8%, the highest of any state in the country.[8] This is updated from the November 2012 estimate of 23.6.[12]

In 2009 the number of people who were in poverty was approaching 1960s levels that led to the national War on Poverty.[13] In 2011 extreme poverty in the United States, meaning households living on less than $2 per day before government benefits, was double 1996 levels at 1.5 million households, including 2.8 million children.[14]

In 2012 the percentage of seniors living in poverty was 14% while 18% of children were.[8] The addition of Social Security benefits contributed more to reduce poverty than any other factor.[9]

Recent census data shows that half the population qualifies as poor or low income,[15] with one in five Millennials living in poverty.[16] Academic contributors to The Routledge Handbook of Poverty in the United States postulate that new and extreme forms of poverty have emerged in the U.S. as a result of neoliberal structural adjustment policies and globalization, which have rendered economically marginalized communities as destitute "surplus populations" in need of control and punishment.[17]

In 2011, child poverty reached record high levels, with 16.7 million children living in food insecure households, about 35% more than 2007 levels.[18] A 2013 UNICEF report ranked the U.S. as having the second highest relative child poverty rates in the developed world.[19]

There were about 643,000 sheltered and unsheltered homeless people nationwide in January 2009. Almost two-thirds stayed in an emergency shelter or transitional housing program and the other third were living on the street, in an abandoned building, or another place not meant for human habitation. About 1.56 million people, or about 0.5% of the U.S. population, used an emergency shelter or a transitional housing program between October 1, 2008 and September 30, 2009.[20] Around 44% of homeless people are employed.[21]
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Old 11-10-2015, 22:41   #128
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Re: Cruising and the Coming Storm ~ Recession, Depression, Climate Change, Peak Oil

Then I found this:

The U.S. ranks 46th in freedom of the press
The U.S. ranks 26th in child well-being
The U.S. ranks 24th in literacy
The U.S. ranks 14th in education
The U.S. ranks 44th in health care efficiency
The U.S. ranks 2nd in ignorance
The U.S. ranks 19th in perceived honesty
he U.S. ranks 27th in leisure and personal care
The U.S. ranks 134th in prevalence of slavery
The U.S. ranks 99th in peacefulness
The U.S. ranks 1st in locking people up
The U.S. ranks 24th in freedom from corruption
The U.S. ranks 15th in perceived press freedom
The U.S. ranks 10th in economic freedom
The U.S. ranks 10th in purchasing power of minimum wage
The U.S. ranks 125th in GDP growth per capita
The U.S. ranks 43rd in homicide rates
The U.S. ranks 17th in educational performance
The U.S. ranks 1st in death by violence
The U.S. ranks 1st in breast augmentation

https://rankingamerica.wordpress.com/page/2/

So does that describe a society in decline?
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Old 11-10-2015, 23:15   #129
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Re: Cruising and the Coming Storm ~ Recession, Depression, Climate Change, Peak Oil

Poverty: "usual or socially acceptable"


So in other words it's a moving target base on the average. Kind of like grading on a curve, it will always exist by their definition. To get a real estimate, you have to look at consistent comparisons. How about:
- What percentage of the population lives without air/con?
- What percentage have a TV?
- What percentage have a reliable vehicle?
- What percentage have access to information (ie: internet vs library encyclopedia)?


When you start looking at it without the sliding scale, even our poverty stricken have it better than most middle class families from the 1950's.


Ranking Countries:
- I can come up with any ranking you want. Just have to ask the question the right way.
- It's statistics, comparing tiny countries to huge countries is a poor measure. Much harder to keep a huge diverse country at the top of the list. The problem is the small countries tend to be scattered across the spectrum but the big ones revert to the average. When you take that into account, it's usually pretty impressive how well the USA does. The alternative is to group the major countries together (say, china, Russia, India, Brazil) and say where we rank....hmmm...
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Old 12-10-2015, 00:13   #130
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Re: Cruising and the Coming Storm ~ Recession, Depression, Climate Change, Peak Oil

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Poverty: "usual or socially acceptable"
When you take that into account, it's usually pretty impressive how well the USA does. The alternative is to group the major countries together (say, china, Russia, India, Brazil) and say where we rank....hmmm...
I agree completely with this statement. After living in many other countries around the world, and despite the down turns of the Constitutional intent, the US government operates like a well tuned machine compared to all others I have experienced.

However, it certainly has some enormous flaws which could be resolved very easily with term limits, real health care and tort reform.
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Old 12-10-2015, 01:15   #131
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Re: Cruising and the Coming Storm ~ Recession, Depression, Climate Change, Peak Oil

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Originally Posted by Trim50 View Post
I agree completely with this statement. After living in many other countries around the world, and despite the down turns of the Constitutional intent, the US government operates like a well tuned machine compared to all others I have experienced.

However, it certainly has some enormous flaws which could be resolved very easily with term limits, real health care and tort reform.
Certainly, I don't mean to imply that the USA is perfect by any stretch just balancing out the naysayers who would claim anything related to the USA is the worst.
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Old 12-10-2015, 03:22   #132
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Re: Cruising and the Coming Storm ~ Recession, Depression, Climate Change, Peak Oil

"Academic contributors to The Routledge Handbook of Poverty in the United States postulate that new and extreme forms of poverty have emerged in the U.S. as a result of neoliberal structural adjustment policies and globalization, which have rendered economically marginalized communities as destitute "surplus populations" in need of control and punishment."

And doesn't that just sum up the academia mindset!
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Old 12-10-2015, 04:01   #133
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Re: Cruising and the Coming Storm ~ Recession, Depression, Climate Change, Peak Oil

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" neoliberal structural adjustment policies and globalization

And doesn't that just sum up the academia mindset!
Now there is some word smithing!

In the line of Neoliberal thought, it is interesting to note that the United States spends more than twice (2X) on military than all other nations combined. That includes China, Russia and all others combined!

It is also interesting to note this figure is based on published budget information...it does not include black project spending. So if we have poverty in the US...
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Old 12-10-2015, 04:59   #134
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Re: Cruising and the Coming Storm ~ Recession, Depression, Climate Change, Peak Oil

My Tuppence worth (2 cents) is that we will most likely consume almost all of the easily available crude on the planet and a fair chunk of the tricky to get stuff (shale- tar sands etc) .

Which leaves 3 possible futures:-

1.
We move on to renewables and high density battery/energy storage - hydrogen fuel or the like or some other radical form of energy creation/storage.

2.
We will not make the transition, things will spiral out of control and we will fall back to victorian horse / cart technology over sewveral generations, disease, birth failures early deaths will bring the population slowly down to numbers sustainable with that technology.

3.
We do not make the transition, we have great wars over the few remaining fossil fuels /territory, famine, disease, knock the population so low that we end up back to near caveman style living.

(wild card. meteor, new ice age, great plague etc do the job before fossil fuel runs out)

The real issue for anyone trying to work things out is NUMBERS, accurate ones at that, no one publishes true numbers of remaining oils reserves, some theorise oil is not a fossil fuel and comes from either chemical or biological reactions, meaning it is actually a renewable but can only be extracted at a certain rate, The truth is out there, it just will probably never be public knowledge!

I worked out in the 90s peak oil would be around 2007-2015 given the numbers provided in the early 90s, taking todays published numbers pushes that to around 2042 ish. No huge discoveries in between, something is not right!

Personally I hope we move away from oil as soon as we can as the longer we leave it, we increase the likelyhood of the future being living in caves , rather than living in the stars.
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Old 12-10-2015, 05:18   #135
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Re: Cruising and the Coming Storm ~ Recession, Depression, Climate Change, Peak Oil

If you are truly interested in logical discussion of the future, visit Chris Rhodes at his blog ENERGY BALANCE Energy Balance

Chris does a fine job of presenting the numbers and calculations for logical conclusions to the questions being posted. Some good reading and learning and healthy discussion too.

Enjoy
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