by jam 61 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
I mostly agree with sizemik. There may be some major economic upheavals in store (as there have been already), but such upheavals are often just as much the remedy as they are the problem. They are painful, but necessary. Hopefully, by the time the dust has settled, the world financial infrastructure will be more resilient against future instability - provided the lessons are learned.
If nothing else, it doesn't hurt to be positive.
Cedars
My thread four years ago:
http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/social/current/162053/1/Late-capitalism
I have suspected a systemic collapse may be on the cards for some time, however the system is proving more resilient than one might have expected a few years ago. Instead of revolution the rich have got richer and the poor poorer. Can it go on like that much longer though? Not easy to say at this point.
sbf - I've been watching for the past 20 years, and things are on schedule in my books.
So what happens next and how long will it take?
oy, well... more growth of the prison and war industries; increasing poverty for the wage slaves. Increasing mass medication. A growth in the police state.
I used to think it would lead to revolution, but now I'm not so sure. Either that, or the state will clamp down, and a system akin to feudalism will become more prevalent.
As to the timing, it's hard to say ... I've not thought about it in a while. Day-to-day survival has been my personal focus for the past couple of years.
Many signs hidden in plain view say the USA is on the edge of a precipice. It will take a miracle to pull back.
Just one is the $75 trillion liability on the federal balance sheet...
If 100% of federal revenue was directed toward neutralising this liability it would take 32 years! However federal expenses already exceed revenue by $1.3 trillion, thereby further inflating the liability.
Another is the increasingly expanding, untenable and unstable $1.2 quadrillion derivatives market...
However I believe the same forces that saved us from a nuclear world war are still hard at work to save us from ourselves once again...
Most people that ask such questions like to compare the times we live in now to the 1950's (like my wife). And the crux of their argument is usually that the times we are living in now is somehow "proof" that we are near the "end". I am not saying that is your intention.....I'm just making an observation. These same individuals like to cherry pick certain issues to use as "proof". They'll say "look at how many young couples live together instead of getting married. this is a moral breakdown of society". Well first.....such a person is holding "society" captive to their own religious ideas that the bible is from God and should be taken literally. And secondly, even if there is a God and he does want people to live their lives by biblical standards then who is he most pleased with? The young couple that "lives in sin" while volunteering every weekend to feed homeless people.....or the bible thumper from 1950 that would NEVER live with a woman he wasn't married to......but who abuses his wife and is racially prejudiced?
"In the 50's, women dressed more modestly"
OK. And in the 50's they HAD to because male dominated society treated them as sluts if they didn't conform to their conservative ideas
"In the 50's, there wasn't as much gang violence"
OK. And in the 50's it was perfectly acceptable for a white man to expect a tired, broken down black woman to give up her seat on a bus because he was more privileged than her.
It all comes down to the argument you want to make. If you want to view society as declining.....you can find indicators. If you want to view society as getting better.....you can find indicators
Yeah, what OSTS said... :)
Speaking of the "good ol' days", I remember the duck and cover drills in school, practice for the day a nuclear warhead arrived. People lived under a constant threat of REAL Armageddon, which also never came... I remember smog days when kids couldn't go outside to play, and my lungs HURTING at the end of the day, air quality was so poor. Today I see clear days in the same neighborhood where I grew up, with electric cars whizzing silently down the street.
People ignore those facts, and choose to see what they want to see, or worse, allow their personal tribulations overshadow the overall assessment they make: that's human nature.
PS China (the Nation whom holds much of our debt) could exert the option of not buying any more US bonds, etc, but that would ruin our economy, which would ruin theirs, destroying both. Hence we have an economic version of the ol' MAD Doctrine. Unlike private business, the US can continue to print out an endless supply of IOUs, and as long as other Nations are buying (as they do), all is well.... Anyone watching the .bond markets knows US is STILL perceived as "the tallest midget in the room", meaning investors STILL see the us dollar as the safest place to park their money in times of uncertainty. I've been struck at the resiliency of the PERCEPTION of safe harbor, and in business, perception is 99% of it.
I think the USA collapsed about 1979.
In my opinion, I have been living in a fallen society since then.
It is a matter of perspective and brain chemicals, serotonin, norepinephrine and dopamine,
jog and career availability.
And crunching and absorbing the numbers.
When I started driving about 1968 gas was 29cents a gallon.
When I started working in 72, there were jobs, factories and businesses in abundance.
In 1975 I was making 10$ an hour, gas was cheap, Health care for family of 3 was free from my employer,
full coverage. If I wanted to have my own business and buy my own health care for the family it was 100$
a month for full coverage.
For 100$ I could buy 2 grocery carts of steak, chops, beer all kinds of groceries.
Jam, I see reading your post that your were around the same time, I was.
But I started out in the North in the 50's.
I think the big economic changes have been occuring, its been going downhill thruout my working life. The past 60 years.
Maybe its time for things to start getting better.
Isnt america now part of the chinese world republic?? grin....
