Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 5/29/23
"Red Alert! NATO Closing Borders, S-400 And Nukes
Are Mobile, Air Raids Now, Major Issue In Taiwan"
Comments here:
So, we rise from the rubble...
Monday, May 29, 2023
Musical Interlude, Melissa Venema (13 yo),"IIl Silenzio"
Full screen recommended.
Melissa Venema (13 yo),"IIl Silenzio"
"'Il Silencio' (The Silence) played by 13 year old Melissa Venema with André Rieu and his orchestra at the 'Vrijthof' in Maastricht. Melissa plays like an angel - a very skilled one, too. In this unique performance, the sound of the trumpet evokes harmony and heavenly peace. What a majestic interpretation! Il Silenzio' is an Italian instrumental piece written in 1965 by trumpet player Nini Rosso. It is a memorial piece commissioned by the Dutch and first played in 1965 on the 20th anniversary of the liberation of the Netherlands. Conductor André Rieu (born 1949) is a famous Dutch violinist, conductor, and composer."
Comments here:
"Greater love hath no man than this,
that a man lay down his life for his friends."
- John 15:13
"A Look to the Heavens With Chet Raymo"
“Reaching For The Stars”
by Chet Raymo
“Here is a spectacular detail of the Eagle Nebula, a gassy star-forming region of the Milky Way Galaxy, about 7,000 light-years away. The Eagle lies in the equatorial constellation Serpens. If you went out tonight and looked at this part of the sky – more or less midway between Arcturus and Antares – you might see nothing at all. The brightest star in Serpens is of the third magnitude, perhaps invisible in an urban environment. No part of the Eagle Nebula is available to unaided human vision. How big is the nebula in the sky? Hold a pinhead at arm’s length and it would just about cover the spire. I like to think about things not mentioned in the APOD descriptions.
If the Sun were at the bottom of the spire, Alpha centauri, our nearest stellar neighbor, would be about halfway up the column. Sirius, the brightest star in Earth’s sky, would be near the top. Let’s say you sent out a spacecraft from the bottom of the spire that travelled at the speed of the two Voyager craft that are now traversing the outer reaches of the Solar System. It would take more than 200,000 years to reach the top of the spire.
The Hubble Space Telescope cost a lot of money to build, deploy, and operate. It has done a lot of good science. But perhaps the biggest return on the investment is to turn on ordinary folks like you and me to the scale and complexity of the universe. The human brain evolved, biologically and culturally, in a universe conceived on the human scale. We resided at its center. The stars were just up there on the dome of night. The Sun and Moon attended our desires. “All the world’s a stage,” wrote Shakespeare, and he meant it literally; the cosmos was designed by a benevolent creator as a stage for the human drama. All of that has gone by the board. Now we can travel in our imagination for 200,000 years along a spire of glowing, star-birthing gas that is only the tiniest fragment of a nebula that is only the tiniest fragment of a galaxy that is but one of hundreds of billions of galaxies we can potentially see with our telescopes.
Most of us still live psychologically in the universe of Dante and Shakespeare. The biggest intellectual challenge of our times is how to bring our brains up to speed. How to shake our imaginations out of the slumber of centuries. How to learn to live purposefully in a universe that is apparently indifferent to the human drama. How to stretch the human story to match the light-years.”
"The Ukraine War is Over. Russia Won"
"The Ukraine War is Over. Russia Won"
Bob Moriarty
"I got to Vietnam in late July of 1968. Lots of American troops still believed we were winning the war. A year later most of our forces realized the war was a waste of time and not worth dying for. By 1970 no one wanted to be the last person to die for an illegal and meaningless war.
So when the troops ran into gung ho 2nd Lieutenants or other 90-day wonders they would explain the facts of life to them and encourage them to slow down and smell the roses. Those who didn’t got fragged. It’s a great way to off someone, just pull the pin, release the spoon and walk briskly away with a smile. Alternatively, in battle shooting a dumb leader right in front of you works as well. He’s closer to you than the enemy and a lot more dangerous to your longevity. No one wants to talk about it but it happens in all wars.
The number of racial violence incidents, fragging and people shooting themselves in the foot to get sent home rocketed higher in 1970. When that happens, the war is over. Those selected to fight it wake up to the fact that if you are going to die anyway, why not die for a reason? Like fragging the stupid son of a bitch ordering you to take a hill that isn’t worth taking. By 1970 the entire US military knew and understood the Vietnam War was over and we lost. It wasn’t worth dying for.
Now it seems the Ukrainian soldiers who have been sold out by Boris Johnson and Zelensky have figured out the same thing. When your soldiers learn that the penalty for shooting their own officers is no worse than their odds of surviving going into combat, the war is over and you lost.
The Ukrainian’s army has been destroyed. This incredibly stupid war should have been over in March of 2022 but Boris Johnson decided to end his career with a suggestion massive in its stupidity. When Zelensky was willing to call it a draw and start abiding by the Minsk II agreement, Johnson pointed out to him that he could rake a lot more loot off the top of all the weapons being handed to Ukraine. Several hundred thousand soldiers from Ukraine have been killed since then and their blood is on Johnson.
The Ukrainian army is now a shell of what it was eighteen months ago. All of the reporting from the Main Stream Media in the West is a total lie. The sooner NATO and the EU wake up, the sooner the dying will stop. Russia didn’t start this war but they will end it. The US on the other hand is an Empire in a rapid state of decline led by fools and other idiots. The US lacks the good sense to admit when they have lost one more useless war."
o
Full screen recommended.
Hindustan Times, 5/29/23
"Russian Forces Obliterate NATO Weapons In Ukraine"
Comments here:
o
"America Is In Free Fall, Economic And Social Collapse Around The Corner"
Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, 5/29/23
"America Is In Free Fall,
Economic And Social Collapse Around The Corner"
Comments here:
"We Are Circling The Drain"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly 5/29/23
"We Are Circling The Drain"
"Today we have a special guest. The one and only Economic Ninja. We discuss it all. The economy, interest rates, real estate, and where everything is going."
Comments here:
Bill Bonner, "The Misery Olympics"
(A giant US dollar bill with the face of Argentine congressman Javier Milei is seen before the presentation of his book "El fin de la inflación" (The end of inflation) at the Buenos Aires International Book Fair, on May 14, 2023. Photo by Luis ROBAYO / AFP) (Photo by LUIS ROBAYO/AFP via Getty Images)
"The Misery Olympics"
America falls a few notches as inflation bites and living standards slip...
By Bill Bonner
Youghal, Ireland - Today is a holiday in America. But here at the Irish headquarters of Bonner Private Research work goes on. Connecting the dots…cogitating…investigating – just trying to understand what’s going on. In Friday’s news was this update from CNBC: "Inflation rose 0.4% in April and 4.7% from a year ago, according to key gauge for the Fed.
Inflation stayed stubbornly high in April, potentially reinforcing the chances that interest rates could stay higher for longer, according to a gauge released Friday that the Federal Reserve follows closely. The personal consumption expenditures price index, which measures a variety of goods and services and adjusts for changes in consumer behavior, rose 0.4% for the month excluding food and energy costs, higher than the 0.3% Dow Jones estimate. On an annual basis, the gauge increased 4.7%, 0.1 percentage point higher than expected, the Commerce Department reported." Inflation is going up, not down!
The Misery Olympics: Many years ago, economist Arthur Okun came up with a Misery Index by combining inflation with unemployment. Alone, each is a nuisance. Together, they are, well, misery. Since then, other economists have added their fillips – connecting interest rates and GDP growth to the index. And then, Steve Hanke, at Johns Hopkins, computed the index for the rest of the world, as well as the US. This gives us another measure to answer Ed Koch’s old question: how are we doin?
Ten years ago, the US was in the 18th position…trailing nations in the Far East and Scandinavia. Ireland was in the middle of the pack, at #45 from the top (out of 89 nations.) In the latest version, the US has slipped down a few notches…but not catastrophically. It is still in respectable company – along with France, Russia, Portugal and Austria, neither good nor bad.
Ireland has moved much higher up. It is now one of the least-miserable nations in the world – along with Switzerland, Japan and the Nordic countries. We have indices of life-span, GDP/capita, earnings, fatness, and so forth. By most of these measures, maybe all of them, Ireland has gone up…while the US has been failing for many years.
Of course, these numbers are just averages – and are frequently misleading. In a big country such as the US, it’s hard to generalize. The quality of life is very different in the hills and hollows of East Tennessee than it is in the canyons of Manhattan. And put Warren Buffett in a poor neighborhood and average earnings will shoot up. Statistically, everyone will be rich.
Silent Battles: In Baltimore many people lead lives that appear to be as miserable as any on the planet. They have very low incomes – based either on government handouts, petty crime or menial labor. Neighborhoods are ugly…trashy…and dilapidated. There are no sidewalk cafes. No restaurants. No shops. No artisans. And the schools are horrible.
Five people were shot in Baltimore on Friday. This has prompted the mayor to institute a curfew on teens for this long, Memorial Day weekend. Statistically, especially on a holiday, you’re much more likely to get shot in West Baltimore than in the Ukraine. But it’s always much easier to solve other peoples’ problems than your own. The war in the Ukraine is a major feature of the nightly news; it attracts billions in weapons and financial aid. Baltimore’s battle is largely ignored.
Down at the bottom of the Misery Index are the countries you’d expect to see there – Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Lebanon, Argentina. What they have in common is persistent high inflation. Inflation is not like a heat wave that comes and goes. It is government policy. Once the feds begin to use it, like a cellphone, it is very hard to give it up. And once inflation becomes persistent, it corrupts the economy, the society and political system too.
Zimbabwe probably set a new record when its inflation rate rose to 79 billion percent – per month – in November of 2008. The country fell to pieces. Robert Mugabe, its aging crackpot dictator, was shown the door. People switched to US dollars. There were signs of recovery. But then, in 2019, the authorities sought to regain control of the nation’s money. They re-introduced a Zimbabwean dollar. The inflation rate promptly soared again. Scarcely a year later it was over 700%.
Dollar Blues: In Argentina, the inflation rate is over 100%...and rising. After decades of price increases, hyperinflation, depression, and debt defaults the Argentine politicians cling tightly to inflation. And by the misery measure, they’ve gone from among the best to among the worst in the space of 70 years. It was a sad show. But the gauchos may not be in the mood for a sequel. A surprising, and unlikely politician – Javier Milei – is rising in the polls.
In troubled times, politicians look for someone to blame – enemies. Trump pointed the finger at foreigners. He told the nation that it could be great again if it would only stop allowing Mexicans to work in the US…and stop the Chinese from sending us cheaper goods. Joe Biden looks to the Russians, the Chinese…and sinister Republican ‘White Supremacists’…for his enemies.
The Argentines may be ready for a better explanation. Javier Milei, a former rock and roll singer, now an economist and radio host, tells voters that it is the ‘political caste’ itself that is to blame. They are the ones who control the government budget and the currency. They spend too much money on corrupt projects and vote-buying giveaways. The system is rigged, he says, in favor of the political elite. Milei proposes to remove the temptation to inflate by taking Argentina’s money out of their control. He would do away with the peso completely and replace it with the US dollar. That would be good news for Argentines. US inflation is only around 5%. It would be good news for the US, too; it could inflate Argentina’s economy as well as its own."
"Massive Shrinkflation At Dollar Tree! Empty Shelves Everywhere!"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 5/29/23
"Massive Shrinkflation At Dollar Tree!
Empty Shelves Everywhere!"
"In today's vlog, we are at Dollar Tree and are seeing a lot of grocery items that have shrunk in size. With empty shelves everywhere in this store, we also notice they are adding a lot of higher priced items, which I'm not sure will do well here."
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Travelling With Russell, 5/29/23
Travelling With Russell, 5/29/23
"Russian Typical Hard Discount Supermarket Tour: Svetofor"
Take a look inside a Russian typical hard discount supermarket in Moscow, Russia. What are some of the products on offer, and how are the prices compared to other typical Russian supermarkets?"
Comments here:
“The Last Night of the World”
“The Last Night of the World”
Originally published in the February 1951 issue of Esquire.
by Ray Bradbury
“What would you do if you knew this was the last night of the world?”
“What would I do; you mean, seriously?”
“Yes, seriously.”
“I don’t know – I hadn’t thought.” She turned the handle of the silver coffeepot toward him and placed the two cups in their saucers. He poured some coffee. In the background, the two small girls were playing blocks on the parlor rug in the light of the green hurricane lamps. There was an easy, clean aroma of brewed coffee in the evening air.
“Well, better start thinking about it,” he said.
“You don’t mean it?” said his wife.
He nodded.
“A war?”
He shook his head.
“Not the hydrogen or atom bomb?”
“No.”
“Or germ warfare?”
“None of those at all,” he said, stirring his coffee slowly and staring into its black depths. “But just the closing of a book, let’s say.”
“I don’t think I understand.”
“No, nor do I really. It’s jut a feeling; sometimes it frightens me, sometimes I’m not frightened at all – but peaceful.” He glanced in at the girls and their yellow hair shining in the bright lamplight, and lowered his voice. “I didn’t say anything to you. It first happened about four nights ago.”
“What?”
“A dream I had. I dreamt that it was all going to be over and a voice said it was; not any kind of voice I can remember, but a voice anyway, and it said things would stop here on Earth. I didn’t think too much about it when I awoke the next morning, but then I went to work and the feeling as with me all day. I caught Stan Willis looking out the window in the middle of the afternoon and I said, ‘Penny for your thoughts, Stan,’ and he said, ‘I had a dream last night,’ and before he even told me the dream, I knew what it was. I could have told him, but he told me and I listened to him.”
“It was the same dream?”
“Yes. I told Stan I had dreamed it, too. He didn’t seem surprised. He relaxed, in fact. Then we started walking through offices, for the hell of it. It wasn’t planned. We didn’t say, let’s walk around. We just walked on our own, and everywhere we saw people looking at their desks or their hands or out the windows and not seeing what was in front of their eyes. I talked to a few of them; so did Stan.”
“And all of them had dreamed?”
“All of them. The same dream, with no difference.”
“Do you believe in the dream?”
“Yes. I’ve never been more certain.”
“And when will it stop? The world, I mean.”
“Sometime during the night for us, and then, as the night goes on around the world, those advancing portions will go, too. It’ll take twenty-four hours for it all to go.”
They sat awhile not touching their coffee. Then they lifted it slowly and drank, looking at each other.
“Do we deserve this?” she said.
“It’s not a matter of deserving, it’s just that things didn’t work out. I notice you didn’t even argue about this. Why not?”
“I guess I have a reason,” she said.
“The same reason everyone at the office had?”
She nodded. “I didn’t want to say anything. It happened last night. And the women on the block are talking about it, just among themselves.” She picked up the evening paper and held it toward him. “There’s nothing in the news about it.”
“No, everyone knows, so what’s the need?” He took the paper and sat back in his chair, looking at the girls and then at her. “Are you afraid?”
“No. Not even for the children. I always thought I would be frightened to death, but I’m not.”
“Where’s that spirit of self-preservation the scientists talk about so much?”
“I don’t know. You don’t get too excited when you feel things are logical. This is logical. Nothing else but this could have happened from the way we’ve lived.”
“We haven’t been too bad, have we?”
“No, nor enormously good. I suppose that’s the trouble. We haven’t been very much of anything except us, while a big part of the world was busy being lots of quite awful things.”
The girls were laughing in the parlor as they waved their hands and tumbled down their house of blocks.
“I always imagined people would be screaming in the streets at a time like this.”
“I guess not. You don’t scream about the real thing.”
“Do you know, I won’t miss anything but you and the girls. I never liked cities or autos or factories or my work or anything except you three. I won’t miss a thing except my family and perhaps the change in the weather and a glass of cool water when the weather’s hot, or the luxury of sleeping. Just little things, really. How can we sit here and talk this way?”
“Because there’s nothing else to do.”
“That’s it, of course, for if there were, we’d be doing it. I suppose this is the first time in the history of the world that everyone has really known just what they were going to be doing during the last night.”
“I wonder what everyone else will do now, this evening, for the next few hours.”
“Go to a show, listen to the radio, watch the TV, play cards, put the children to bed, get to bed themselves, like always.”
“In a way that’s something to be proud of – like always.”
“We’re not all bad.”
They sat a moment and then he poured more coffee. “Why do you suppose it’s tonight?”
“Because.”
“Why not some night in the past ten years of in the last century, or five centuries ago or ten?”
“Maybe it’s because it was never February 30, 1951, ever before in history, and now it is and that’s it, because this date means more than any other date ever meant and because it’s the year when things are as they are all over the world and that’s why it’s the end.”
“There are bombers on their course both ways across the ocean tonight that’ll never see land again.”
“That’s part of the reason why.”
“Well,” he said. “What shall it be? Wash the dishes?”
They washed the dishes carefully and stacked them away with especial neatness. At eight-thirty the girls were put to bed and kissed good night and the little lights by their beds turned on and the door left a trifle open.
“I wonder,” said the husband, coming out and looking back, standing there with his pipe for a moment.”
“What?”
“If the door should be shut all the way or if it should be left just a little ajar so we can hear them if they call.”
“I wonder if the children know – if anyone mentioned anything to them?”
“No, of course not. They’d have asked us about it.”
They sat and read the papers and talked and listened to some radio music and then sat together by the fireplace looking at the charcoal embers as the clock struck ten-thirty and eleven and eleven-thirty. They thought of all the other people in the world who had spent their evening, each in their own special way.
“Well,” he said at last. He kissed his wife for a long time.
“We’ve been good for each other, anyway.”
“Do you want to cry?” he asked.
“I don’t think so.”
They went through the house and turned out the lights and locked the doors, and went into the bedroom and stood in the night cool darkness undressing. She took the spread from the bed and folded it carefully over a chair, as always, and pushed back the covers. “The sheets are so cool and clean and nice,” she said.
“I’m tired.”
“We’re both tired.”
They got into bed and lay back.
“Wait a moment,” she said.
He heard her get up and go out into the back of the house, and then he heard the soft shuffling of a swinging door. A moment later she was back. “I left the water running in the kitchen,” she said. “I turned the faucet off.”
Something about this was so funny that he had to laugh. She laughed with him, knowing what it was that she had done that was so funny. They stopped laughing at last and lay in their cool night bed, their hands clasped, their heads together.
“Good night,” he said, after a moment.
“Good night,” she said, adding softly, “dear…”
John Wilder, "Memorial Day, 2023"
"Memorial Day, 2023"
By John Wilder
“If words cannot repay the debt we owe these men, surely with our actions we must strive to keep faith with them and with the vision that led them to battle and to final sacrifice.”
- Ronald Reagan
AA gun at Corregidor.
Last year when The Mrs. was putting flowers on the graves of her relatives, my job was to drive the car while she located the locations. It was her first year when she actively did that for all of her relatives. Her mother had done that previously, but since my mother-in-law passed, that duty of remembering the family had fallen to The Mrs.
I saw one gravesite in particular, and I decided to research it. It stuck out, because it was the grave of a United States Army officer who died in May of 1942. I was curious. Thankfully, there was at least some information about this officer online. He had been born elsewhere, but went to high school here in Modern Mayberry. His particulars weren’t all that unusual for a young man in the 1930s: he loved baseball, he graduated, went to college, got a degree, got a job, and got married.
While in college, he was in ROTC, so he graduated as a 1st Lieutenant in the Army Reserve. I think even in the mid-1930s people could see the writing on the wall that there was the real possibility of war, so I imagine a core group of people with officer training was just what they wanted on the shelf.
His life was, I imagine, the same as millions of lives in that quasi-Depressionary era. He and his wife welcomed a baby into the world 1940, but by early 1941 the young officer had been drafted back into the Army. He was sent, half a world away, to Manila. I’m sure he told his wife as they shipped him off that his job, thankfully, was to be in the rear with the gear. It would be other people that would really be in the crosshairs of the enemy. Besides, it would be crazy of the Japanese to make a strike at Manilla. That would mean war!
He was at the airfield in Manilla on December 8, 1941, when the Japanese attacked. The planes he was supposed to serve hadn’t arrived. The troops that were supposed to protect the airfield hadn’t arrived. Yet his Company had. On Christmas Eve, 1941, his group was given the task of demolishing the airstrip and leaving nothing the Japanese could make use of. This is generally not a good sign. Then, every man in his Company was given a rifle and told they were now members of the Provisional Air Corps Infantry. This is an even worse sign.
Our young officer and his troops were then ordered to join the defense of Bataan. Bataan is a peninsula that forms the northern part of the entrance to Manila Harbor. To really control Manila and use it as a base, you have to control Bataan. The original allied plans had called for falling back to Bataan and holding out, but MacArthur had thought that defeatist, and planned on a more active defense.
When the Japanese attacked, there weren’t enough supplies for MacArthur’s plan, so they fell back to Bataan, where there also weren’t enough supplies for the defense of Bataan because they stopped shipping those because MacArthur had changed his mind.
The Japanese general who would later be fired because it took him too long to defeat the combined American-Filipino army at Bataan also noted that the Americans had numerical superiority, and in his opinion, could have retaken Manila. I’m not sure that going through this exercise made me think more highly of MacArthur...
If you’re not familiar with the Battle of Bataan, it took over three months, and ended up the largest U.S. Army surrender since the Civil War. Over 76,000 troops were captured.
To my knowledge, there is no written record of the Provisional Air Corps Infantry during the Battle of Bataan, though there is a record that on March 4, the 1st Lieutenant was promoted to Captain, just before MacArthur high-tailed it out of the Philippines to safety in Australia. The fact was that the troops at Bataan were officially surrendered on April 9, 1941. But in this case, the Provisional Air Corps Infantry was not part of the surrender, and was ordered to the island of Corregidor. Over 20% of the men of the Company had already been lost.
Corregidor was an island that resembled a battleship – at the time of the Japanese invasion, it was bristling with coastal defense guns, mortars, anti-aircraft guns, and minefields. Now that Bataan was taken, the last thing required to control Manilla Bay was that the island forts fall. Corregidor was, by far, the biggest of these.
The Navy ran the guns, but the defense of the beach was the responsibility of the 4th Marine Regiment, along with a ragtag group of other orphan units, including at least one Company from the Provisional Air Corps Infantry and a young Captain from Modern Mayberry, who were sent into the foxholes with the Marines to guard the beaches since they had combat experience from Bataan.
Sometime in early May, the young Captain was in one of those foxholes with several Marines, and a Japanese artillery shell hit, killing them all. Even the very date this happened isn’t clear, and his family wouldn’t even hear of his death until a year later.
I don’t know what this young officer from Modern Mayberry did during his time in battle on Bataan and Corregidor – it’s nearly certain that no one alive does.
His wife later remarried, half a decade after finding out her husband was dead. His son still bears the name of a father he never knew, if he’s still living.
There is a white cross in a field in Manilla, surrounded by green grass that is regularly cut, where it is said, his body lies. The marker here in Modern Mayberry is only for remembrance, to let people like me know he lived.
And, I saw it, and learned his story, and every year around this time, I tell a few people from Modern Mayberry who haven’t heard about him. The Mrs. plans to put some flowers out for him, but even if she doesn’t, I’ll spend some time thinking about him."
"15 Things The American Middle Class Can't Afford Anymore"
"15 Things The American Middle Class
Can't Afford Anymore"
By Finance Today
"The American middle class is suffering financially, and in today's video, we'll discuss a number of things that middle-class employees can no longer purchase. Americans' purchasing power is eroding at an astounding rate as a result of the most severe cost of living crisis in history. Even people who once felt some measure of financial stability now face tough decisions and must decide between putting food on their tables, paying their energy bills, and getting medical care. Middle-class people now do not enjoy the same level of financial security as their parents did in the past. While real income growth is stagnant, they are still having trouble keeping up with the rising cost of groceries, entertainment, electricity, and other basic necessities. Living conditions for this group keep becoming worse every month.
Currently, millions of Americans still struggle to maintain a minimal middle-class lifestyle. According to a survey released on Thursday by the United Way ALICE Project, nearly 51 million households do not make enough money each month to cover their monthly expenses for things like housing, food, child care, health care, transportation, and a cell phone. According to Primerica, the proportion of middle-class Americans who claim that their incomes aren't keeping up with their cost of living has increased by 16 percentage points since December 2020, reaching 75% in June 2022. Middle-class households are being forced to spend less on name-brand goods due to constrained budgets. Retail sales figures for just July reveal a 28% decrease in brand-name purchases as middle-class consumers struggle to pay for basic necessities.
Workers in the middle class struggle to make ends meet each month as a result of the debt load growing much more quickly than their salaries. In 1980, the consumer debt per person was $1,540, or 7.3% of the average family income of $21,100, according to a Money-Zine research. Consumer debt increased to $58,604 per person in 2022, which was close to 60% of the $97,026 average household income. In other words, from 1980 to 2022, debt grew by roughly 500% faster than income. Economic security depends on having a safety net, but as living expenses rise, fewer middle-class workers can afford to set away any money for unexpected expenses. Only one in seven middle-class households, according to a Bankrate poll, have enough money set aside for emergencies for at least six months. The remaining households have small to moderate amounts of savings, but not enough to cover six months' worth of expenses, and more than 25% of them have no emergency savings at all.
Theoretically, middle-class earners are different from low-income earners in that they do not depend entirely on their paychecks. But in reality, 157 million adult Americans, or more than 60% of the country's population, are currently struggling to make ends meet. In other words, the financial burden on middle-class Americans is equal to that on low-income Americans, with around two-thirds, or 67%, unable to afford an unforeseen $400 bill. According to recent estimates, almost a quarter of Americans currently spend more than 10% of their net income on energy. According to experts, those from families that are beyond this 10% threshold are classified as being in the "energy poor" category. Less than 10% of the population experienced energy poverty in 2016. However, the percentage of energy deprived people has increased by more than 15% in the last 12 months. Economists note that increased energy costs now affect all households, not just those with low incomes. There are many middle-class families out there who are going to experience a really harsh winter. Numerous segments of our society are already experiencing severe financial hardship. The worst is probably still to come, though, as events throughout the world continue to pick up speed."
Video and comments here:
Sunday, May 28, 2023
"The Greatest Retirement Crisis In US History Is A Looming Catastrophe For 47 Million Americans"
"The Greatest Retirement Crisis In US History Is
A Looming Catastrophe For 47 Million Americans"
By Epic Economist
"The greatest retirement crisis in U.S. history has already begun, and official agencies are warning about the looming catastrophe that is about to hit older Americans. Without enough savings or assets, 80% of households with older adults are at risk of falling into economic insecurity as they age. But don’t be mistaken - the impact on younger generations will be just as disastrous, they say. With seniors staying longer in the workforce to be able to make ends meet, younger workers are losing precious opportunities to advance their careers and start saving for retirement, too. A new analysis by Fidelity Investments exposes that this snowballing crisis is going to lower everyone’s standard of living over the next few years and continue to widen the inequality gap that is leaving each generation a little poorer than the one before.
According to Ronald P. O'Hanley, the firm’s president of asset management and corporate services, millions of older Americans are now headed for destitute financial futures and old ages spent in poverty. "I'm not sure what would be worse," he continued, "millions of elderly unable to house and feed themselves, or the intergenerational strife that surely would erupt if young people are forced to lower their standard of living to pay for our failure to act in a timely manner to avert this crisis."
Fidelity data shows that today, 40% of retiree households do not have sufficient income to cover their monthly expenses, O'Hanley said. "Well over half of all Americans have less than $25,000 in total savings, not counting the value of their primary residence or pension plans. And 28 percent have put aside less than $1,000."
A recent survey from the American Advisors Group detailed that 47% of seniors rated the conditions of their retirement savings as poor and 44% said they had not saved enough to retire comfortably. At the same time, 62% of adult children are worried that the cost of living crisis is impacting their parent's retirement savings, with many (35%) worried they'll have to help their senior parents financially.
Amid this anxiety over whether their parents will have enough retirement savings, a growing number of adults are planning about using their parents' home equity as a financial solution, the survey said. However, only 18% of those 62 and older would benefit from using their home equity to pay for long-term care and other expenses, should the need arise. The remaining 82% may actually not have enough home equity to cover these costs due to the ongoing correction in housing prices and the economic recession that is upon us.
For that very reason, about a third of Americans over traditional retirement age, between 65 and 74, are expected to be still working in 2030. The increase in older workers staying on their jobs is causing concerns amongst business owners, too because employers have been expecting their expensive older workers to retire which would open senior-level jobs for younger workers looking to advance their careers.
In other words, the current retirement crisis is reaching such alarming proportions that other generations are missing key opportunities to become financially independent, debt-free, and able to build wealth to afford their own retirements when the time arrives. This is going to create major distortions in our economy and continue to impoverish younger Americans, who may never enjoy the same standard of living their parents and grandparents once had. At the end of the day, this crisis is going to impact each and every one of us as it erodes our quality of life and delays our collective growth."
Video and comments here:
Musical Interlude: "Deep Space, Ambient Meditation and Sleep Music.
Full screen recommended.
Peder B. Helland,
"Deep Space, Ambient Meditation and Sleep Music.
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Large galaxies and faint nebulae highlight this deep image of the M81 Group of galaxies. First and foremost in the wide-angle 12-hour exposure is the grand design spiral galaxy M81, the largest galaxy visible in the image. M81 is gravitationally interacting with M82 just below it, a big galaxy with an unusual halo of filamentary red-glowing gas.
Around the image many other galaxies from the M81 Group of galaxies can be seen. Together with other galaxy congregates including our Local Group of galaxies and the Virgo Cluster of galaxies, the M81 Group is part of the expansive Virgo Supercluster of Galaxies. This whole galaxy menagerie is seen through the faint glow of an Integrated Flux Nebula, a little studied complex of diffuse gas and dust clouds in our Milky Way Galaxy."
"We Are All Like Elephants"
"We Are All Like Elephants"
by Marc Chernoff
"In many ways, our past experiences have conditioned us to believe that we are less capable than we are. All too often we let the rejections of our past dictate every move we make. We literally do not know ourselves to be any better than what some opinionated person or narrow circumstance once told us was true. Of course, an old rejection doesn't mean we aren't good enough; it just means some person or circumstance from our past failed to align with what we had to offer at the time. But somehow we don't see it that way - we hit a mental barricade that stops us in our tracks.
This is one of the most common and damaging thought patterns we as human beings succumb to. Even though we intellectually know that we're gradually growing stronger than we were in the past, our subconscious mind often forgets that our capabilities have grown. Let me give you a quick metaphorical example.
Zookeepers typically strap a thin metal chain to a grown elephants leg and then attach the other end to a small wooden peg that's hammered into the ground. The 10-foot tall, 10,000-pound elephant could easily snap the chain, uproot the wooden peg and escape to freedom with minimal effort. But it doesn't. In fact the elephant never even tries. The worlds most powerful land animal, which can uproot a big tree as easily as you could break a toothpick, remains defeated by a small wooden peg and a flimsy chain.
Why? Because when the elephant was a baby, its trainers used the exact same methods to domesticate it. A thin chain was strapped around its leg and the other end of the chain was tied to a wooden peg in the ground. At the time, the chain and peg were strong enough to restrain the baby elephant. When it tried to break away, the metal chain would pull it back. Sometimes, tempted by the world it could see in the distance, the elephant would pull harder. But the chain would not budge, and soon the baby elephant realized trying to escape was not possible. So it stopped trying.
And now that the elephant is all grown up, it sees the chain and the peg and it remembers what it learned as a baby - the chain and peg are impossible to escape. Of course this is no longer true, but it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that the 200-pound baby is now a 10,000-pound powerhouse. The elephants self-limiting thoughts and beliefs prevail.
If you think about it, we are all like elephants. We all have incredible power inside us. And certainly, we have our own chains and pegs - the self-limiting thoughts and beliefs that hold us back. Sometimes it's a childhood experience or an old failure. Sometimes it's something we were told when we were a little younger. The key thing to realize here is this: We need to learn from the past, but be ready to update what we learned based on how our circumstances have changed (as they constantly do)."
"War..."
"Since the rise of the state some 5,000 years ago, military activity has occurred over much of the globe. The advent of gunpowder and the acceleration of technological advances led to modern warfare. According to Conway W. Henderson, "One source claims that 14,500 wars have taken place between 3500 BC and the late 20th century, costing 3.5 billion lives, leaving only 300 years of peace (Beer 1981: 20).] An unfavorable review of this estimate mentions the following regarding one of the proponents of this estimate: "In addition, perhaps feeling that the war casualties figure was improbably high, he changed 'approximately 3,640,000,000 human beings have been killed by war or the diseases produced by war' to 'approximately 1,240,000,000 human beings...&c.'" The lower figure is more plausible but could still be on the high side considering that the 100 deadliest acts of mass violence between 480 BC and 2002 AD (wars and other man-made disasters with at least 300,000 and up to 66 million victims) claimed about 455 million human lives in total."
○
"Societal Collapse "
"Societal Collapse "
by Hardscrabble Farmer
"Anyone interested in understanding the mechanics of human history must first and foremost understand the cycles of Nature and the nature of living things. There exists a balance in every closed system; creation and dissolution, growth and decay, life and death. There is no escape from this dynamic, no means by which one can exist without the other. Sometimes societies ascend, but eventually, over time, they collapse.
For a very long time America has benefited from exploiting the reserves of other nations their labor, their resources, and their environments in a form of cultural strip mining. It has given the appearance of a sustainable system that required no effort to store surpluses or to build reserves for the future. There has been a perpetual live for the moment feel to our experience that was based on such illusory systems as credit and fiat.
These things are not real. They are manifest realities, things that exist only because a critical mass of people agree to believe in them rather than what is reflected by actuality. When such time occurs that a large enough number of people abandon their participation in that system, reality rushes in to the void left behind.
A large part of what we are seeing - as described to us by experts or media -is occult in nature, hidden not by design or subterfuge, but due to the ignorance or stupidity of the mass of men. They no longer recognize that a large part of what is taking place on the streets of cities like Portland and Minneapolis is simply a mating ritual for a generation that was so atomized and dissolute that they had no opportunity to make real life connections with the opposite sex except through electronic devices. Living beings cannot - despite the assurances of the Musks and Weils - exist by proxy.
They must eat, sleep, perform some activity during their waking hours, seek companionship, etc. These drives can be sublimated or suppressed either by societal controls or chemical dependencies, but they cannot be removed from our core drive. This is what happens when humans are thwarted from fulfilling their animal destinies, the drives of their particular species. If you eliminate the family, you do not stop fornication. If you eradicate healthy foods and a connection to its production, you do not eliminate hunger. Thus the dramatic rise in obesity and the ubiquity of pornography.
Everything exists in context, there is no way to eliminate the void left behind in a fatherless home without a corresponding flow of the feminine. A mind that has no reason will seek to replace it with an equal measure of emotion.
The Western Cultural experience that gained prominence and near global hegemony over the past several centuries is in terminal decline, accelerated by the opportunistic interference of competing cultural spheres, but predominantly by its own senescence. We are, in short, spent. What we are seeing is not a political or ideological struggle - again, manifest realities - but the natural process of a cultural expiration. The West is dying and with it all of the ideals and symbols that were attached to its rise.
Just as an elderly family member in their last days makes a point to give away their possessions, America is passing its treasures on; freedom of speech, the iconic symbols of Manifest Destiny like the statues of its heroes, even its own birthright to the rising of a new cultural expression, one that is less concerned with things like honor, nobility, truth and justice. None of those things exist in Nature, but rather are created and used like iron tools to achieve an end. Now that its energy is spent they serve no purpose, especially to the multitudes of others who share a far more dynamic and exuberant expression of collective identity.
This is a natural event, no different from a forest fire, but one which applies to the human species specifically. This is how we clear the ground for whatever is to replace us and we will serve as its fertilizer. "
"The Next Big Thing is Here"
Dan, I Allegedly 5/28/23
"The Next Big Thing is Here"
"Sometimes something will happen in California that will affect the entire country. The next big thing is here. State farm will not be riding any new homeowners policies and this is going to affect a lot of people."
Video and comments here:
"Sometimes"
“‘Sometimes’: Poet and Philosopher David Whyte’s
Stunning Meditation on Walking into the Questions of Our Becoming”
by Maria Popova
“The role of the artist, James Baldwin believed, is “to make you realize the doom and glory of knowing who you are and what you are.” This, too, is the role of the forest, it occurs to me as I walk the ferned, mossed woods daily to lose my self and find myself between the trees; to “live the questions,” in Rilke’s lovely phrase – to let the rustling of the leaves beckon forth the stirrings and murmurings on the edge of the psyche, which we so often brush away in order to go on being the smaller version of ourselves we have grown accustomed to being out of the unfaced fear that the grandeur of life, the grandeur of our own untrammeled nature, might require of us more than we are ready to give.
Those disquieting, transformative stirrings are what the poet and philosopher David Whyte explores with surefooted subtlety in his poem “Sometimes,” found in his altogether life-enlarging collection “Everything Is Waiting for You” (public library) and read here by the poet himself as part of a wonderful short course of poem-driven practices for neuroscientist and philosopher Sam Harris’s “Waking Up” meditation toolkit (which I can’t recommend enough and which operates under an inspired, honorable model of granting free subscriptions to those who need this invaluable mental health aid but don’t have the means).
Full screen recommended.
“Sometimes”
“Sometimes
if you move carefully
through the forest,
breathing
like the ones
in the old stories,
who could cross
a shimmering bed of leaves
without a sound,
you come to a place
whose only task
is to trouble you
with tiny
but frightening requests,
conceived out of nowhere
but in this place
beginning to lead everywhere.
Requests to stop what
you are doing right now,
and
to stop what you
are becoming
while you do it,
questions
that can make
or unmake
a life,
questions
that have patiently
waited for you,
questions
that have no right
to go away.”
- David Whyte
"The Chief Obstacle..."
"The chief obstacle to the progress
of the human race is the human race."
- Don Marquis
"The Future Of Grocery Prices! Where Do We Go From Here?"
Adventures With Danno, 5/28/23
"The Future Of Grocery Prices! Where Do We Go From Here?
What We're Doing Today!"
In today's vlog, we are answering questions about the future of rising grocery prices and how we can save in the future. We also go over things we are doing over the holiday weekend.
Video and Comments here:
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)