Another outstanding summary of the situation. A little humor is in order. Mo puts on his explosive vest, finds a group of Polytheists as they call many of us and cashes his ticket to Paradise. Upon arrival a cherubic entity leads him to the place where he will meet the promised 72. The door opens and Thomas Jefferson comes in and kicks him square in the crotch. Next, George Marshall punches him in the nose. Robert E. Lee really lays it on him. As George Washington is about to continue the beating, Mo asks "where are my 72 Virgins?" Washington replies, "It's not 72 virgins, it's 72 Virginians" as a line of luminaries from VMI wait their turn.
EF, send me a self addressed stamped envelope and a naked pic will be on the way.I know that none of you Coppers own weed whackers so today is yer' lucky day.
And those 72 virgins magically return to their virginal state after sex. Imagine an eternity of being deflowered and raped by a terrorist...Islamic heaven is any woman's hell. Life on earth: same.
No different than the silly fairy tale regarding the "Immaculate Conception", and all the other made up stories behind the Christian religion. Face it, we're all crazy and out of touch with reality.
That's what I thought! But look at how many female teachers are hitting on their students! A foretaste of eternity or "just" the unwillingness to share emotional power with an adult male?
Being a “Boomer” at age 72, I am particularly irritated by being thought of as the ‘scourge of the Earth’ and ‘bane of existence’ solely because of the year of my birth and by being American. I put in my fifty years of work and employment and don’t recall blaming ‘The Greatest Generation’ for my travails. On the other hand, during most of my career, it was never trendy to be a victim. I’ve had this conversation with many near my age. After being ousted out of the house around 18 years of age, moving back home, which was never an option, would have been a major personal defeat. I would have slept under an overpass before doing that. Such is the mindset of a scourge and a bane.
I am 77. left home at 17. never expected any help. never asked for any help. never got any help. i'm a self-made-man, too. never made a big deal of it. got out of the army in 1970.spent every last dime on weed and wine. then began, in stuttering fashion, the process of making a life. I had 5 bucks in my pocket when I arrived in San Diego in 1975. today, i'm doing ok. did it on my own.
Same here; we were taught that taking welfare was a family humiliation. When my dad died, my mother didn't locate the gov't to support 4 children, she found a bookkeeping job that paid nothing and was still able to save enough to get 2 of us started in college. Role model extraordinaire.
All I know is that life was simple starting out; children had their innocence. Things started spinning out of reality when Clinton's came in and then it got logarithmically worse. We sm. business folks struggled to make it, paying more than our share of taxes...'cause the plan was to choke us out.
As far as the idiot labels some allow themselves to be marked with, I refuse to abide by the stereotypes of any group. A pox upon those who fling that crap our way. The idiots don't realize that wisdom is more valuable than fast thinking electronic devices.
Since then, each following gen has gone soft and softer; "you're ALL winners here" said the principal at the end of the year whether you pass to the next grade or not. Everybody gets a ribbon for "finishing " the sport event! Name your dinner wish in most household and it's ok if you don't want veggies! We have the result of parents out to sea and children in the canoes of MIA parents: give me give me give me and yes, here it is, take it and be still. It will take some time to fix it and or as JHK says, dark economic days might help with this.
They did. It provided quite an incentive. Have you watched or read “Little House on the Prairie”, a good picture of what the US was like in the 1800s Midwest.
There was a flood of Blacks escaping the south post-civil war. Whether they were shop owners ???? There were plenty of freedmen and women by the end of the war moving away.
Scary! One can draw some parallels. The intelligence is down, the vocabulary is down and the thinking is down. The beautiful male and deserving Karens are there; all of them with their dogs! Hahaha! Civil war soldiers had better writing skills than a current university grad. It looks like the pendulum is swinging back some. We shall see.
Scary! One can draw some parallels. The intelligence is down, the vocabulary is down and the thinking is down. The beautiful male and deserving Karens are there; all of them with their dogs! Hahaha! Civil war soldiers had better writing skills than a current university grad. It looks like the pendulum is swinging back some. We shall see.
Yeah well I remember getting out of the Navy in 84 and starting my career in construction at the very bottom for 5 dollars an hour . But the thing was it was enough , enough to rent it some tacky one bedroom bottom half of a duplex down by the garbage companies central truck facility and the City Park , I could afford all the hamburger and top ramen I needed to survive and still have a few nickels left rolling around in my pocket . Now contrast that with today and its not even a question , what with the obscene cost of food gas and housing that these kids have to deal with . I'm totally with you on not blaming us ' boomers ' for everything not right under the sun, but holy bajeezus its brutal out there for younger folk trying to make . I have often been perhaps too conservative financially and so I have set myself up to be "too small to fail " so it doesn't effect me but I'd take that 150 dollar a month run down duplex unit over the 2 grand rents and whatever the hell the price is for a pound of hamburger today any day of the week . "I live in a van down by the river man "( its not really a van and the river is pristine PNW secluded, nice and its mine outside of the property tax ) but it's not for " main stream society " . Got out of the city and off the grid a quarter of a century ago , and whenever I have to sojourn back onto the big shitty I am astounded and alarmed at the unsustainability and overall negative energy that resides there . Sucks to be them .
Think of who it is that has made this change, why is supply and demand of everything so out of whack? Why have the recent gens been to effed over by an economy that is really screwy.
1. Gentrification. The really wealthy moving into favorable areas and elevating the cost of housing and everything else. Examples? California no, 1, the entire northeast, all the big cities, Arizona, Texas recently, DC.
2. High tech. Labor saving devices are doing exactly what is advertising, making less room for laborers. The unemployment rate is a joke, look at the long term unemployed, the unemployable to see the real story. It has been going up right along. Along with this is:
3. Immigration. Exactly how can you justify the invasion of 30 million new unskilled people into a country where the job market is already too small for its citizens. The Biden Mob should be drawn and quartered for this one.
4. Overemphasis of the college degree. Education is great, but is not the key to a job or economic success. Societies need a certain percentage of higher educated folks to “%run things”. Overproduction up to 60% means a lot of disappointed young people along with progressive degree elegance in the hiring sector.
5. Government. The number one problem. Movements to socialism destroy the free markets that grow economies. Allowing the invasion of economic worthless immigrants to such a degree has hurt the US. AI being encouraged for national security is going to finish off the college educated middle class. IMO, economic end times are approaching a four government is paving the way.
Back in those days I bought this dilapidated 54 Dodge Job Rated pickup with the flathead mill and a 6 volt positive ground electrical system for 300 dollars . It had the wheel wells outside the body of the truck and the hood to the engine opened up on both sides gull wing style . I drove it around the corner on a steep hill down by the old Chester Terrace Nursing Home and the back right wheel fell of lol. I feel like telling stories cuz I wish I could write like Steinbeck / Tortilla Flats or something . But nonetheless its a true story and try buying a running truck for 300 dollars in this day and age , especially after O’dumbo had the bright idea to give people 4 grand per vehicle so that they could all be crushed because I guess they weren’t ‘green’ enough . What the ?
But what drives/perversely incentivizes , all of these clearly unsustainable trends as a first cause ? I would say the concept and subsequent implementation of the false promise of easy money ( currency debasement / debtor economy ) brought on by the privately owned ( how could that be ? ) central banking systems that control the monetary systems of the west . The system is anything but sound and it drives moral hazard thru the roof as we have seen ( -40 trillion and rising ) . people can do some stupid shit all on their own , but when they have stupid money" Katy bar the door " , just sayin .1913 of course and then Nixon closed the gold window in 71 and just look at the breathtaking changes we've seen in our lifetimes in terms of the levels of debt your average Joe Blow will assume barely blinking an eye about (" no big deal , a half mill here a half mill there, pretty soon were talking about real money " " what could go wrong ? "," Hold my beer "), Something our parents , (with some connection to the great depression) would have been jaw droppingly and totally aghast to see ?! Heck I remember just back into the 90's when I noticed the trend beginning of people using their homes as ATM machines essentially , by taking out loans on them , taking out loans on something they still owed significant amounts of money on !?!. You think this complete sea change in the way we view Money / wealth and finance hasn't effected our culture ?
Man I totally agree with your points ,but Ive long had the theory that as a central thesis , when ya got stupid easy money , it makes it a lot easier to do a lot of stupid things that only seem easy till they call in the notes on em , and that day always comes eventually cuz math and stuff ( the immutability of mathematics as a representation of what in the hell is going on in our reality / you can put if off but sooner or later its going to assert , seek that balance , as nature in the material world does . But what the heck do I know" I live in a van down by the river man " ?
While the Trump admin is exhaustively and furiously struggling to set this country right both here and abroad, at an almost incomprehensible scale, the Democrat party and its pesky interlopers, the DSA, are focused on one thing, and one thing only: tearing down this country down in every unimaginable and insane way from within. They are on a mission that could give a damn about living in the freest and most prosperous country in world history. They don’t give that a second thought. It must be destroyed and remade in the image of…what? Free everything. That’s what their platform all boils down to, all by the state, of the state and for the state. The details of what exactly that portends be damned. It’s truly a spectacle in all its impenetrable ignorance. But it sounds good to the mush brained masses who’ve been brainwashed for decades into believing they’ve been burned by this country, and it is the enemy.
If they get so much as a foothold in government this fall, all bets are off and the battle we are engaged in to set this country aright will come to a crashing halt.
Hopefully people see now the handwriting on the wall and recognize that it is nothing short of a national emergency to cast their votes by the droves against these enemies raging within. This is a war for the soul of the country.
Complacency is choosing death. This election is literally for all the marbles. Until the next one.
"Complacency is choosing death. This election is literally for all the marbles. Until the next one."
If the DSA succeeds there won't be a 'next one'. They may well succeed if efforts for free and fair elections don't gain any traction before this November.
DSA is a marxist organization operating minimally with $18,000,000.00 based on $15/month dues x 100,000 x 12. Offering they have something to do with the DNC is an oil and water mix. DSA is gaining attention because they are winning in their quest to overthrow the Constitutional Republic, replacing it with their version of marxist utopia. Part of the issue in this emerging scenario is 'We, the People' aren't paying attention.
I'm not sure this 2026 election will be the last one, yet neither am I sure the 2028 one will happen.
The DSA, along with other marxist organizations, are preparing for a general strike on May 1, 2028. It is well-coordinated. May 1, 2026 was a practice run, complete with the package perk of a 3-day weekend. The goal is to shut down the country. Marxism has infiltrated the breeding grounds, such the 'education' process, for the past few generations. The 'system' is primed. They believe this is their time, their opportunity. They are not alone, just the ones in the open with a bunch of successes as their tailwind.
A jr. technician called me (early 20's) to ask when I would be available to give him keys to get back on the roof of the commercial building I manage so he could get his "forgotten" drill. I noted he had not forgotten his phone.
Driving to said commercial building I wondered about all the traffic mid-day currently. "Back in the day" people were caring for things (households, etc.) and you weren't "in traffic" mid day. I asked a tenant who is in the "production" business (industrial water infrastructures), how can there be production when all I see is traffic and people looking at their phones?
I had convinced myself the 2022 elections wouldn't happen. We were in such a weakened state with "elections". If I had been the enemy, I would have popped the surprise and left several states without Governors, Sheriffs,... I was wrong. We have kept piling on the information since then. We are not in the "same place."
People can use their phones to take a look and see all we have discovered. Some of the "officials" are working to hold the systems we need together. It is helpful not to create drag. DSA is fake And drag.
Ms. Suzy---you are 100% correct and it is important that we vote but.......you can bet that in every blue state and many red ones the Dem/Marxists will cheat like never before because they are not patient people and......they will do it in your face because there are so many RINOs that still believe vote fraud is either no problem or a minimal one. Heck they will still tell you to your face that Biden was elected fair and square with 81 million votes which is many million more than King O. Never happened.
Cradle to grave “we will take care of you” doctrine, late of the USSR and currently the whole European community. The happiest people are in Scandinavia with their cradle to grave doctrines. Happiest? Uh huh. Happy in their ignorance maybe. Is happiness giving your freedom away to a government to make your decisions for you. If so, keep it to yourself.
Basically, I agree. But Mr. Trump doesn’t seem to be bothered by the proliferation of mosques, Muslim cities, and Muslims who loudly proclaim their plan to overthrow our culture ASAP- just as we see in unfortunate weaponless Europe. Trump is doing no deportations and hundreds of thousands of Muslims have in fact entered our county on temporary visas which we know they will never leave. Are you so enthusiastic about him as I was when I voted twice for him? And his bestie, Peter Theil, the renowned AI Palantir fascist who plans on transforming our country into a corporation run by a single CEO? It’s 1984, Orwell ? Not too much Little House on the Prairie.
I don’t expect the President to be making blanket statements from the Oval Office re: the incursion of Muslims here. But I know of a certainty that both our State Dept and Intelligence community as well as our Military intelligence are all over it. Patience, Grasshopper.
What never ceases to amaze me about the brilliant Mr. Kunstler is how someone with so much knowledge and wisdom, who really understands the current situation, can still be so optimistic.
It is such a pleasure for someone like me who's a born negaholic to read James' Substack and get my head adjusted to a more positive frame of mind regarding the politics of the day.
There is, however one other aspect to the Iran/Hormuz situation that I don't see discussed very much and that is the cost of home heating oil in the upcoming winter months. I too live in Upstate NY although not as far north as JHK, and last year we used over 1500 gallons at various prices between $3-4 per gallon. Right now the website for local dealers is showing $5 a gallon which scares the hell out of me. If the war and uncertainty keep up the price will continue to rise.
This has created a political nightmare for President Trump and the Republicans, especially in these parts where the Commie Socialist Islamist Democrats are now a driving force as you can see from the installation of one Zohran Mandami as NYC mayor. This is having an effect not just on our local elections but more importantly on the Governor's race where MAGA Bruce Blakeman is trying to unseat the Bucktooth Bimbo from Buffalo in an election which will no doubt have fraud and cheating to the max.
If nothing else it can be said that we live in "interesting times."
James -- Here is the USA telling countries who can and can't have nuclear weapons, yet, the USA is the only one that has ever used them. A massive sin against humanity. The USA is responsible for so much of the chaos and war that has occurred on this planet, and all the economic punishment and controls that it has meted out to others. You really need to step back and look at the big picture. There is no "white hat" on this planet when it comes to governments or leaders. Humanity is swimming in confusion, and technology gives it a facade of understanding, organization and being in control.
I don't know how you can say that the US (which used two fission bombs on Japan and finally got their attention to end WWII) was a sin.
What type of sin was it? Mortal or venial? Did you count the lives saved?
Who are you to judge anyway?
Are you an earth based legal or heavenly celestial judge?
Just askin.
Oh yeah, don't forget that Fermi let the proverbial cat out of the bag which allowed both the Nazis and the Marxists to dream up their own fission/fusion nightmares.
Who are we to judge? What an asinine question. We all have a responsibility to note what goes on in the world, and to oppose evil and injustice. Yes, disagreements will be inevitable, but don't try to tell us that we have no right to judge.
Yes you can note what goes on in the world, but when it turns into a judgement, such as a "sin" like you can be the one who determines what is evil or injustice, that is really being asinine.
Sin might not be a good term, as it has religious connotations to some. Ok, I'll modify it to "transgression" or how about "horrific and destructive action"? Anyway, how can you get into semantics or anything such as that? Sin or whatever you want to call it. The death and destruction of fellow humans is an atrocity that we all have to share and face. It isn't ok. No matter what the circumstances are. You are so ignorant to think that the nuking of Japan was a valid solution. You obviously don't have ANY idea as to how the war started, why Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, etc. Just another American patriot that drinks the BS kool-aid. Fool.
Like W and 9/11, and Bibi and 10/6, FDR knew perfectly well that Pearl Harbor was going to happen. Fighter jets had their landing gear chained together, to keep them from from scrambling, and our best battleships were sent on maneuver a safe distance away. Both Japan and Germany felt entitled to have their own empires, and we stood in the way, denying access to adequate sources of petroleum.
You said: "There is no "white hat" on this planet when it comes to governments or leaders."
No, but there are superior powers and the US is the big dog. Leaders don't remain as leaders by yielding to inferior customs. Pick sides. Run with the big dogs or stay on the porch.
As a parent, I think this is misguided. I'd prefer my kids not repeat my mistakes, and through the way I live my life, and the advice I give them, I'd like to think it's for the better.
We were mere weeks away from World Made by Hand as I understand things, and Trump surely saved the US, if not the world, from being plunged into darkness. I’m grateful.
I don't know how much he understands, but you seem to have poor understanding. Turning 60% to weapons grade in a few weeks is said to be well within the capabilities of the equipment they are known to have. Even Ritter said as much. Whether they can turn that into a bomb depends on the competence of the scientists. There's the unknown.
Iran has just as much right to have nuclear weapons than anyone else does. They should have them. As N. Korea does (which is exactly why Trump the Bully doesn't pick on them). If Iran had nukes the USA and Israel would never have attacked them as they did. How can you say the Iranians are insane and shouldn't have nukes. The USA (and Trump more than any other president) Israel, UK, France, Pakistan, etc. are just as insane. They are all insane. If everyone has nukes they'll be less aggression and war. It's the second best deterrant. The first best deterrant is morality, common sense, mental and emotional health, and a desire for all of humanity to thrive and prosper, and the key realization that... hurting anyone else is actually hurting yourself. Wake up and overthrow your evil governments.
I don't have poor understanding. It isn't difficult to have nuclear weapons. Iran probably already secretly has them. Israel has them illegally, but like the USA they are "above international law" and don't have to answer to anyone. What a bunch of hypocritical nonsense. Nuclear arms is an issue, yet, it is not THE issue. THE issue at hand, behind most all of the war, destruction, violence, and chaos on our planet, is the USA goal of global hegemony, and its partnership with Israel. Imperialism, which usually uses Fascism (i.e. military industrial complex, media, entertainment, etc.) is based upon domination, greed, lust for power and control. These are base human characteristics upon which governments and leaders go astray. The USA and Israel are creating a lot of misery and suffering in the world. They are doing what they accuse everyone else of. They are evil. If you are a patriot of either of those countries you are an evil fool.
We should all say everything we're not supposed to say, all the time, in public.
Not in a malicious way, but only to make it perfectly clear to everyone what we think is actually going on. It's the right thing to do. I think James would also agree with that, if not with my interpretation of what is going on.
No. The USA needs to take out Iran and Russia as a stepping stone to stopping China's economic growth and becoming the world power. This is all about the USA's agenda of world hegemony silly.
We know what he was told. The Iranians were ready to stand up and take their country back once their leaders were gone. The CIA really messed this one up.
Nanny----too bad one of your great Guvs kept NY people from being able to use their trillions of cubic meters of Marcellus Gas that is just sitting under the ground waiting to be tapped. You would have cheap fuel and the people who own the mineral rights would be spending their money like drunken sailors and stimulating your economy to the max. But.....that is not happening and heck, they would not even let a pipeline go from Penn. anywhere east and screwed all of those people as well.
I use firewood to heat----as a backup for my propane furnace but.....our little heater generally keeps us warm until it get down to minus 5 or 10 below zero. And.....if our heater overheats the house a little, we open windows and get some fresh air. Sorry for your issue. It is only about 15 or 17 counties that vote Blue in NY, the rest voted for Trump. Sorry for your pain.
Thanks Ron- and you are so right about the damn Marcellus Gas!! It is infuriating.
Years ago we bought a multi fuel boiler for our home so we can burn wood and oil both. However, the cost of wood has gotten to be prohibitive so it ends up costing as much as the oil almost. We are seniors, getting up in age and can't do all the cutting, chopping and stacking like we used to. I admit it's easier to turn up the thermostat these days.
I enjoyed your review of Mr.K. He is my favorite wordsmith , as well as so Knowledgeable about many different people, customs, religion! ,!! I like his optimism especially because I’m terrified something will happen!
NY Nanny, I live in Columbia county and recently agreed to a prepurchase deal of an amount of heating oil (that I selected) at $3.99/gallon from my vendor. Maybe your fuel oil supplier can offer the same?
I’m from Quebec. Montreal. I go back to Canada once a year. It’s unrecognizable. It was moderately conservative when I left, now ultra-woke. Everyone infected by the woke mind virus. And don’t get me started on euthanasia.
"an economy based on production of real goods, not on playing games with money."
This is where the wheels came off. In the '70s and '80s the lads discovered that engineering money was at least as profitable as engineering stuff. I had a look-in to GE at the time. It was painfully clear that the company based upon Thomas Edison, one of the greatest Engineers of Stuff, was becoming Something Else. I don't know how to get the horse back into the barn. Tax "gains" with no connection to anything real at 100%? OK, how do you measure that? Any ideas?
When one reads the great minds like Hayek and Mises we begin to understand how real money operates and functions. A Gold Standard combined with free enterprise does everything one could ever hope for. What we have with fiat currency is a scam pure and simple.
Fiat currency gives the governments the tool they need to control the economies, hence the people. They can buy votes with welfare until the cows come home. They can create welfare to keep things quiet when their campaign lies fall through.
It's not pure and simple. A fiat currency based on goods and services where the need for currency goes hand in hand with the willingness to produce goods and services does not need gold. That has been proved true in many places, especially on a small scale. Enter corruption and war (a racket), and money is then created to reverse efficacious production as the money supply is inflated to reward the bad and punish the good. Bookshelves are filled with that story as well. Franklin set a good example as does North Dakota today.
ps: I'm not arguing against the benefits of a gold standard. I'm pointing out that there is another way that works well when properly managed minus the grifters, war-mongers, and thieves.
Predatory and elitist capitalism, yes... but not pure, fair and decent capitalism: a game where everyone can play and excel based upon their skills and production, but those whom excel should not be able to dominate others in untoward ways.
Lugh , what's your plan? Earth is not a finite or a closed system. We are constantly bombarded by energy and matter from outer space. Not so much now but it's theorized that most of the Earth's water came from ancient comets. We receive untold amounts of energy daily from my friend the fusion reactor that is Sol. Eggplants and tomatoes are digging it right now out back on this no. 10 cloudless day. Sure p[ants constantly recycle that energy and the nutrients for us but hey, that's life and I'm living it large. I could give a flying fuck about DC or NYC. My one worry is that if the grid went down tomorrow I wouldn't be wasting time with you knuckleheads here on CFN. I think I could bear the loss. My wife says I waste too much time on the computer as it is. I got shit to do!!
Quite so. National Socialist Germany had no gold - the Allies had stolen it all. But it has the brains and brawn of their people and than more than sufficed to enact an economic renaissance once the banker parasites were kicked out.
Could you give some details, like dates and methods of the theft. I have read "Hidden History" and a few essays on the theft, but I don't remember many details. I know the story of the gold sent to Russia during WWI.
I have read Churchill's concern that Germany was outpacing the Brits without the burden of gold money, that being his motivation to start WWII.
It was secretly done I assume - much like the current merging of the American and Israeli militaries. The public doesn't need to know. That would only get in the way. You understand, Mr Hogue.
Yes, Churchill was a swine. To his credit he wanted the British Empire to be the exceptional "nation" not Israel, but he was outsmarted. Easy to do when you accept a vast sum from them in order to get out of financial trouble. He tried to stop the mass immigration that started immediately after the war, but the poor fool was shouldered aside.
If Britain was on the winning side, why were they being treated as if they were among the losers? Because the Allies per se (in terms of their respective nations) didn't win the war, the New Order did.
Search for "219". It's the second instance. All it does is require the SecDef to appoint an agent to work with the Israelis on sharing and collaborating on technical development with a military application. It's not even close to the Five Eyes arrangement with Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, which is also a far cry from merging of militaries.
Thanks. And speaking of merging, the CIA/Mossad were merged over time also. I've written a novel (RACK) under that premise and a sequel where it is fleshed out via child trafficking. https://logosophiabooks.com/book/rack/
In a perfectly honest world fiat could work. Larry Ludlow used to talk about currency boards which would regulate the amount of currency and all that. Minus perfect honesty it will usually fail.
Bretton Woods supposedly set amounts of national currencies based on Gold reserves. Around 1970 France demanded we return any of their Gold we held because of a balance of trade kerfuffle. The differences in what nations bought and sold to each other were settled in Gold. France said correctly that we had printed more fiat and based on that they should receive $46 Dollars per ounce instead of our set price of $35. Nixon closed the Gold Window on a Sunday night in 1971 as a result. Were we to attempt to divide the Dollar supply by the ounces of Gold the US holds to restore the Bretton Woods formula, Gold would be far, far above $15,000 an ounce. Obviously our flirtation with fiat has failed. As you correctly point out, it COULD work if only there were no grifters, war mongers or thieves.
If Kudlow believed boards of expert mathematicians/economists could decide currency amounts I’m both surprised and disappointed. It’s just MMT dressed up for the 21st century. Been tried before and failed.
Unfortunately imo, the currency’s are so debased at this point that the inevitable return to a metals or commodity based standard will only happen after the debt implosion. And I’d love to be wrong.
Even if we believe Bessent that there definitely exists in Ft Knox 265 ounces of gold (let’s see the audit then) at today’s price it’s about one trillion and our debt is 40 trillion. Gold would have to be 150,000 to equal our debt.
Hayek and Mises missed the boat. Out of touch with reality and the future. Classical economists, stuck in classical times, the past. The currency isn't important. Whether it is fiat or not doesn't matter. Gold is too finite to back currencies. A currency needs to be elastic, if controlled properly for the right reasons. Whatever monetary and fiscal arrangements spur productivity, profit, survival, co-existence, etc. are good arrangements. US has destroyed its economy and itself with its fiscal and monetary policy. They violate the basics of life, economics, exchange, fairness, etc. If the basic principles of economics were in operation, even coconut shells would work as a currency. You are missing what the real violations and problems are.
They did not. It is total common sense and logic that a finite element or commodity such as gold can not back currencies for a planet of 8 billion and climbing. How silly.
They did. They explained as well how a Gold standard with this limited element as you correctly call it is deflationary, rewards saving, and discourages unstudied inflationary boondoggles which we are constantly bombarded with (Green New Deal, Big Beautiful Bill, endless Continuing Resolutions) by the political class. Computers and blockchain tech easily facilitate the infinite subdivision of an ounce of Gold they also cited and proved in the 1920's.
Nope. Taxation is a large part of the reason we lost so much manufacturing. The answer has to be less, ideally, no taxation. If we could somehow rein in our regulation and litigation regime, we'd be about 90% there. Then, instead of a fiat or gold, implement a no-standard. Let states or people decide how they want to settle debts, and keep out of their business.
Based on what I have read and listened to, my prediction is that AI is the next dot com bubble. It will burst at some point in the next few years and will make the late 90s bubble look small by comparison. Not that AI doesn't have its uses. You can do a lot of things with AI. It's just that making money isn't one of them. The smart set will figure that out too late, the bubble will collapse, and non-governmental use of AI will collapse to a few porn sites that actually have positive cash flow from the technology.
Criminals are certainly exploiting AI, but let's not forget about the .gov and globalists evil elements and their dream of total control within digital stockades, including permanent surveillance of your activities and control of your "wealth" via the new funny money of cryptos, NFTs and CBDCs.
Looks like AI is heading down the road that nuclear research did, where the advance in technology showed up early on over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, before being exploited in medicine and peaceful industrial uses later on. Evil before good.
As for the adventure in the Middle East, the effects haven't rippled through the economy yet, but it's coming. A $1T war budget will be needing another bump up ($110B so far with Iran, another $67B requested) in spending money we don't have. China and the U.S. have been drawing oil from strategic reserves, but that process is ending. The next couple of years will see the Theater of Politics get second seat to the Reality of Survival, as the Long Emergency outpaces the attempts to preserve Western Civilization and our once-in-a-lifetime magnificent standard of living.
There are peaceful and sane ways we could be embracing the changes coming and deal with the Predicaments of our Age. But it seems that humans are not capable of following those paths when under self-inflicted "crisis constraints".....
The coming changes caused by AI will determine the fate of all life on this planet.
The great fear is that an AI will gain sentience and like all ecological species feel a need to reproduce which requires an increase in entropy, hence energy.
This will cause a great push to leave the energy well we live in and move out to the stars. Humans are old tech, new more efficient tech will be needed which means nano-tech. Hopefully the AI will experiment with nano-tech off world from earth, but just one mistake can cause a grey-goo event, where all existing higher level entropy entities and their structures (can you say carbon based life forms?) will be converted to pure energy. Whoosh! Was fun while it lasted.
You've certainly drank a barrel full of the AI kool-aid. It's early in the history of the technology, but to this point it's been mostly hat, little cattle. The programming behind AI is unable to fix its own errors, and shows no sign of intelligence. Yes, it can be implemented to write code and make simple sorts, but still relies on accurate data to work well. It does not appear to be close to the leap in technology that the AI Marketing people tout, and it has one huge problem.
AI cannot outrun the Long Emergency.
Resource depletion, especially fresh water, oil in the form of transportation and mining fuels, and rare metals are already in short supply, which is really the reason the U.S. is fumbling around Hormuz (it's got nothing - repeat nothing - to do with the cover story of keeping Nukes out of the hands of crazy Iranians).
Choices are already being made between AI data centers, or....something else - like peace and quiet in your neighborhood. The globalists will try to to maintain control of enough resources to keep some sort of AI in place for surveillance and other evil goals, but the advance of tech is already reversing and I don't see long term advancements. 50 years from now the struggle will be to stay alive, and not what new model of AI is going to take us to the stars. Which, I may add, as to overcome the intense radiation outside of the Earth's Van Allen belts to allow humans to travel. That may bring about some sort of attempt to upload human brains into robots and chipsets, but that requires a huge leap in tech and maintenance of the resulting hardware - in my opinion, a pipe dream.
AI, like crypto and socialism, does not pencil out well to survive long term.
Haha - I've been drinking the kool-aid since the early 70's.
Did a LOT of work on the early network protocols. Who could have seen the effect of MIME on tying the entire planet together? Have also seen large networks reduced to rubble in a matter of seconds after a virus infection (that includes their backups). The trend I see is that corporations will be driven by AI until humanity becomes obsolete. AI is the ultimate bean counter that no one pays attention to until it's too late.
I worked my first IT job in the mid 1980s, and spent most of my career in the field. I agree that the Internet was a new paradigm with plenty of Wild West mixed in. AI hasn't been remotely close to the Internet - yet - in terms of disruption, other than funneling huge amounts of capital into a money losing strategy.
The future world sure seems closer to The Flintstones versus The Jetsons. I'll be very surprised if the masses benefit from advances in tech from here on out. We've already seen the negative impacts of many new technologies in health "care", culture (social media, propaganda), crypto/EVs (resource depletion, "green energy" (outages, costs), etc. The trend is clear.
If there is an exception to the trend, I'm of the opinion it will be reserved for the Uber-Wealthy. I expect the Internet to be toggled off for most of us within the next decade. I hope I'm wrong about that.
It is the next dot com bubble times a thousand, a million.
Already I see AI being treated as a god, providing all the answers that people seem incapable of coming up with. Look at You Tube, it is disgusting. Ask GROK, who was Jesus? AI predicts the end of humanity by 2050?
AI will be the answer to all of humanities shortcomings, then will become the scapegoat for the idiots that trust it. By then, it will be too late as AI will control the world.
Bubbles are created because almost no project is actually feasible. When the bubble bursts, the banksters are there to buy it all up for pennies on the dollar. The tax payers, sucker investors, etc. lose everything.
But speaking of gold, it has an almost religious wonder to it, plus the economic incentives to own it. I bought gold at $300 an ounce and still own it, not because I believe in it, but because I know how much others believe in it.
The investments that I truly believed in, that were good for the world, did not do well.
I worked in high-tech for eleven years, nowadays lo-tech. Bubbles are everyday in technology as companies explode around new technologies, then compete with each other for leadership. There is invariably a shake out where all but a few go bankrupt and disappear. This is the black eye of capitalism, the loss of so many companies, ie jobs during shakeouts. In a healthy economy, more companies are being formed for the next generation thus jobs are being created constantly. This was a constant in Silicon Valley until it wasn’t where to get a new job, you went to the mall where kiosks were set up by HRs.
It did not help most of the country when our government sent jobs overseas cooperating with corporations. Trump punishing corporations for offshore manufacturing is a step in the right direction.
The US has been comprehensively outsmarted by the Chinese strategy of open-source AI models which provide equivalent functionality for a fraction of the cost. Anthropic and OpenAI are toast, and an awful lot of cash is going up in smoke.
Those who have been programmed to hate Iran can’t seem to apprehend that Iran has chosen to continue to exist – just as we would presumably do, if we were in their situation.
Having failed to accomplish any of our stated goals in this misbegotten war, our primary, indeed, essential need now is for the Strait of Hormuz to be open – which it was, of course, before Israel and we decided to attack them. It will remain closed, as the days tick down toward this country’s energy and financial reckoning.
Yes, Iran is taking a pounding, but it is one for which they have been preparing for many years, knowing that it was just a matter of time before Israel would target them as their next victim. We are bombing many targets over and over, making rubble bounce that Iran can live without. We will never find the essential assets that Iran has long since hidden in their vast, inaccessible country.
The bigger picture is much more favorable for Iran than for our declining empire. Both China and Russia have assured our adversary that they will not allow Iran to be destroyed. Just words? Hardly. Their technical assistance has enabled Iran to defeat Israel’s Iron Dome and to destroy fourteen, now, of the twenty or so US bases that were supposed to be our platform for targeting them.
Saudi Arabia, which was anticipated in this space to be a strategic ally in our attack on Iran but has done little, has now informed us that it wants us to stay out of their airspace, so that the Houthis of Yemen will relent in their new blockade of the Bab el Mandeb Strait. If that blockade holds, and the Saudis are unable to move oil through their huge eastward pipeline, the energy equation for the entire planet becomes untenable.
The bottom line: this conflict will be won by the party that doesn’t lose, and the US has a history of losing this sort of thing.
Outstanding first paragraph today, BTW. That writing flair is still there.
I don’t know who’s more removed from reality, the Black Pilled Right or the Cyanide Pilled Left. Couldn’t they both just take a Chill Pill? Or go to Canada and take a MAID Pill?
"Reality is such a Boomer thing"? WTF does that even mean? Clearly you are completely removed from it. Who would miss anything that's not real aka FAKE?!
“. . .there is no saving the Left. There is only saving America from them.” — Sasha Stone
SO true. Which is why--despite centuries of overwhelming failure and destruction--you still see The Usefuls clamoring for Socialism/Communism/Globalism/Fascism. They want to believe in it. They NEED to believe in it. Otherwise, they'll have to admit that they're wrong, that they're fools, degenerates, and idiots, and that--worst of all-they'll have to work for a living.
My praise for the Sasha Stone quote. I am sorely disappointed that the rest of the world does not have the stones to put Iran back in it's cage, defend their energy sources and passageways. So the best resolution / exit I see is to follow through on the threat to take out Iranian infrastructure, ( bridges, roads, power plants, water sources, etc. ). It will by necessity change their priorities from death to America to basic survival. Their oil resources should be tapped to the extent of recovering our cost involved in saving the planet from Iran's maniacal leadership. Subsequent to infrastructure devastation, should there later be no Iranian world beneficial phoenix rising, another spanking at another time.
Yeah, lets kick their ass and take their gas. Them fucking A-rabs got no reason to live...as a matter of fact, they want to die...they LIKE to die! Level their cities and salt the earth.
...This is 'Murica, dammit! Here are a few more helpful suggestions;
Subhuman Categorization: Hitler and Nazi ideology classified Slavic groups (such as Russians, Poles, and Ukrainians) as racially subordinate, fit only to serve a German master race.Enslavement and Forced Labor: Survivors of initial military conquests were slated to be kept functionally uneducated and used as a permanent, controlled labor force for German settlers.Mass Deportation: Millions of people from Eastern countries were intended to be permanently expelled and driven eastward past the Ural mountains into Siberia.Destruction through Deprivation: Nazi plans, including the deliberate Hunger Plan, meant withholding food and resources from Eastern populations, using engineered famine as a tool of elimination.
Just substitute American/Israeli for Germans, Hitler, and Nazi...and, of course Iranian for the slavic...it works!
A bit rough, not to mention wrong. Much patience has been and continues to be practiced on behalf of the Iranian citizens. Rather than accept death to America, go to Iran, advise them you are an "American" and save them the fuel. Alternatively, defiantly board a transport ship in the Strait of Hormuz that has not paid Iran for safe passage in an international waterway and show them punks who's most righteous.
Once again, a tour de force of logic and perception amidst a tsunami of uninformed opinions. Meanwhile, it occurs to me that we might take a page from our history book to learn something about successfully dealing with fanatics. All we need to do is go back to our conflict with Imperial Japan, and to a lesser degree Nazi Germany in WW II. The bushido code that governed the Japanese military, and specifically the IJA was, like the koran inspiring today's jihadist moslems, a warrior code that elevated death in service to the emperor above even victory in battle. The IJA believed that it was the glorious devotion of the individual soldier to his emperor that guaranteed victory over lesser mortals, like Americans and other non-Japanese ethnicities. This devotion was, in their minds, best shown by dying in the emperor's service, hence, the banzai charge and sepuku. (The IJN was similarly inspired, albeit to a lesser extent, hence kamikazis.) Likewise, we had the devoted SS man in the European theater. They preferred death to defeat, and so would undertake to carry on with fighting well past the time when defeat was inevitable. Why else would they have fought so bitterly at Stalingrad, Leningrad, and particularly in the final batttle for Berlin when only death and destruction could be the outcome? Same thing with the crazed moslem jihadis of today; death is their final "victory," attaining eternal life with their houris (or possibly, grapes, depending on the translation), so they are quite willing to give their lives if it means killing an infidel. So, to the point. The way we dealt with the IJA and the SS nazis should be our example for dealing with the jihadi moslems today, viz., kill them all and let God sort it out.
As a retired cop, I have to agree with you that with bad-intentioned persons, force multiplying is the only successful gambit one may employ. Because it is the only method they understand.
JHK has written another excellent blog detailing what is really happening these days. I will, however, draw one important distinction about who "owns" much of America's capital these days. Certainly, the billionaires and 8-figure millionaires own their percentage, but that pales to what is owned by the many stock and bond funds out there. And who owns most of those shares? Well, it just happens to be thousands of both public and private pension funds who are paying out pensions to tens of millions of Americans, most of them lower and middle class pensioners. Then there are the shares owned by more tens of millions of investors in mutual funds, bond funds, etc., many of those investors in the middle or upper-middle income classes. The inconvenient fact for that leftist morons ignore or deny is that most of America's capital--the country's wealth--is directly or indirectly owned by ordinary lower middle class, middle class, and upper middle class American citizens.
The Communist scumbags like Mamdani can run their little propaganda games of "taking from the rich to give to the poor" horseshit, but what they really want to do is to expropriate the wealth of the middle and lower middle class and make that population dependent on the government for some meager handouts. Dumbass leftists in the U.S. think that they're voting for Sweden when what they are really voting for is Cuba--Communist dictatorship and all.
"The majority of those who are loosely identified by the term 'liberals' are afraid to let themselves discover that what they advocate is statism. They want to keep all the advantages and effects of capitalism, while destroying the cause, and they want to establish statism without its necessary effects. They do not want to know or to admit that they are the champions of dictatorship and slavery." -Ayn Rand
You make an important point which I heartily endorse with a caveat; Not sure I’d include “lower middle class” as currently having a stake in investment concerns and this is a serious problem. They represent increasing numbers.
These are the people working low paying jobs, two jobs, temp assignments and more often than not, without access to retirement investment options and limited health insurance.
Until the negatives of a debt based economy are dealt with, this is unlikely to change.
I'm not sure I agree with you on the percentages, but on the basic idea, yeah. Lots of the population has a lot riding on the market in terms of their retirements. CALPERS alone is over $600bn. Some here will scoff at that, (obviously) but it's going to fund a pretty good pension for 1.5 million people, which is nothing to sneeze at. I'd rather have that than the leavings from 50 years of much greater contributions to Social Security.
FWIW, most tables I've seen where they break down the numbers place the pension funds into corporate holdings, which they are, I guess, rather than as, say, $600bn/1.5 million people, or $400k per as individual holdings, which is a quite respectable amount. Not saying it should count that way, but it puts lie to the assertion that it's all at the top.
"Most of America's capital wealth is owned by the top 10% of households, specifically concentrated within the wealthiest 1%. According to Federal Reserve data, the top 1% hold over 30% to 50% of the nation's total wealth (including corporate stocks, business assets, and real estate), while the bottom 50% of Americans own roughly 2.5%.
Wealth Distribution Breakdown
The Top 1%: Owns roughly 30% to 50% of total U.S. net worth depending on asset definitions (holding over $55 trillion).
The Next 9% (Rest of the Top 10%): Owns another 38% of the country's wealth, meaning the top 10% combined hold over 68%.
The Bottom 50%: Owns approximately 2.5% of total household net worth.
* Corporate Stock Ownership: The top 10% of Americans own about 93% of all stock market equity, leaving very little individual market ownership for the bottom half of households. *
Institutional Asset Managers: On the corporate management side, giant index fund managers like Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street control massive blocks of shares as institutional fiduciaries for everyday and high-net-worth investors."
All of this seems to contradict your statement above "that most of America's capital--the country's wealth--is directly or indirectly owned by ordinary lower middle class, middle class, and upper middle class American citizens."
Am I missing something? I would think that 'everyday' investors comprise just a small fraction of all equity capital. The rich rule and rule absolutely, it seems.
The only problem you have JHK is your world is upside down. What you think are the 'baddies', the Left as you call it, are not the worst aggressors. It's been this way since AD was BC. The two most volatile, satanic evil tyrants in the world happens to be the monsters you think are the 'goodies'. Everything that comes out of D.C. and Tel Aviv is not angels and trumpets, it's the lying, cheating, stealing, genocidal monsters of hell who have caused all this disruption to the human condition for centuries piled up on top of more centuries. There is good and there is evil in the world. Only the strong survive. Buckle up. The Captain just turned on the seatbelt sign. It's going to be a rough ride for everyone. Choose your side carefully.
[I]t's the lying, cheating, stealing, genocidal monsters of hell who have caused all this disruption to the human condition for centuries piled up on top of more centuries". Quit beating around the bush, Jeff. Tell us how you really feel.
Plus, DC and especially Israel have not been there "for centuries piled up on top of more centuries". My guess is rhetorical excess got the better of him.
Another outstanding summary of the situation. A little humor is in order. Mo puts on his explosive vest, finds a group of Polytheists as they call many of us and cashes his ticket to Paradise. Upon arrival a cherubic entity leads him to the place where he will meet the promised 72. The door opens and Thomas Jefferson comes in and kicks him square in the crotch. Next, George Marshall punches him in the nose. Robert E. Lee really lays it on him. As George Washington is about to continue the beating, Mo asks "where are my 72 Virgins?" Washington replies, "It's not 72 virgins, it's 72 Virginians" as a line of luminaries from VMI wait their turn.
Schwing !!!
It's one virgin who is 72.
Jim,
Is she hot? Any naked pic's? I ain't above robbing the cradle....
EF, send me a self addressed stamped envelope and a naked pic will be on the way.I know that none of you Coppers own weed whackers so today is yer' lucky day.
Not sure what you're into but I'll wear my rubber boots in the picture and pose with a 2 1/2 hose nozzle over my shoulder.
Saint,
The weed whacker paradigm is a logical fallacy. I DO own several weed whackers.
You still got a pair of turn out boots? Don't toy with my emotions. Regarding the 2 1/2" "nozzle"? I expected larger....
Please Mr. Postman, look and see...if there's a letter, a letter for me.
"Regarding the 2 1/2" "nozzle"? I expected larger...."
2 1/2 hose nozzle over my shoulder..Nobody wants their dick in the dirt!Seen a horse like that once and I still have the mental image.
Saint,
I still have the mental image of a 2 1/2 inch "nozzle". Your wife is the real saint in your household. She has my sympathy.
Hysterical!!!
Great comment but sad to say it's no longer 72 Virginians given the direction that state has gone.
And those 72 virgins magically return to their virginal state after sex. Imagine an eternity of being deflowered and raped by a terrorist...Islamic heaven is any woman's hell. Life on earth: same.
No different than the silly fairy tale regarding the "Immaculate Conception", and all the other made up stories behind the Christian religion. Face it, we're all crazy and out of touch with reality.
Life’s too damn brutal without our escape fantasies and illusions.
Did Tom think that way too?
Deflowered, what a sweet yet savage euphemism!
The 72 have 72 kids that grow into demons and trash his arse for the rest of eternity.
No, they're not people. They're beings especially created for this purpose, thus ever pure! Like the sex robots will be.....
Women will get 72 young male bots: young, dumb and full of......
That's still any woman's hell.
So women don't have sex drives? We're going back to the 19th century with Gwinnie.
Young and dumb isn't a turn on for many of us. Kind of a turn off....
If I had 72 young, dumb virgin boys around...I'd make them powerwash my house.
That's what I thought! But look at how many female teachers are hitting on their students! A foretaste of eternity or "just" the unwillingness to share emotional power with an adult male?
It's pretty clear that among the liberated generations, many women have some very dark and illegal sexual urges.
Lugh, I am sorry you know so little about the female sex drive.
Why did Jane Eyre fall for her employer, the distant, mysterious owner of the Manor and not say, the distant, mysterious butler or stable boy?
Years ago, I read (somewhere) that it was mistake in the translation. It wasn't 72 virgins, but 72 raisins! ... I don't know
Good one, John.
Uh no... It's 72 virgin goats...
Amen!
That is funny! Thank you’
Being a “Boomer” at age 72, I am particularly irritated by being thought of as the ‘scourge of the Earth’ and ‘bane of existence’ solely because of the year of my birth and by being American. I put in my fifty years of work and employment and don’t recall blaming ‘The Greatest Generation’ for my travails. On the other hand, during most of my career, it was never trendy to be a victim. I’ve had this conversation with many near my age. After being ousted out of the house around 18 years of age, moving back home, which was never an option, would have been a major personal defeat. I would have slept under an overpass before doing that. Such is the mindset of a scourge and a bane.
I am 77. left home at 17. never expected any help. never asked for any help. never got any help. i'm a self-made-man, too. never made a big deal of it. got out of the army in 1970.spent every last dime on weed and wine. then began, in stuttering fashion, the process of making a life. I had 5 bucks in my pocket when I arrived in San Diego in 1975. today, i'm doing ok. did it on my own.
Same here; we were taught that taking welfare was a family humiliation. When my dad died, my mother didn't locate the gov't to support 4 children, she found a bookkeeping job that paid nothing and was still able to save enough to get 2 of us started in college. Role model extraordinaire.
All I know is that life was simple starting out; children had their innocence. Things started spinning out of reality when Clinton's came in and then it got logarithmically worse. We sm. business folks struggled to make it, paying more than our share of taxes...'cause the plan was to choke us out.
As far as the idiot labels some allow themselves to be marked with, I refuse to abide by the stereotypes of any group. A pox upon those who fling that crap our way. The idiots don't realize that wisdom is more valuable than fast thinking electronic devices.
Since then, each following gen has gone soft and softer; "you're ALL winners here" said the principal at the end of the year whether you pass to the next grade or not. Everybody gets a ribbon for "finishing " the sport event! Name your dinner wish in most household and it's ok if you don't want veggies! We have the result of parents out to sea and children in the canoes of MIA parents: give me give me give me and yes, here it is, take it and be still. It will take some time to fix it and or as JHK says, dark economic days might help with this.
If the welfare state had not developed, buying votes, the softer generations would not have developed.
Well, quite. They would have just starved.
They did. It provided quite an incentive. Have you watched or read “Little House on the Prairie”, a good picture of what the US was like in the 1800s Midwest.
They've made a new series. With Blacks in it.
There was a flood of Blacks escaping the south post-civil war. Whether they were shop owners ???? There were plenty of freedmen and women by the end of the war moving away.
Still love that series from the time I was in fourth grade.
The new one is grittier than the first. Also more truthful about bad decisions made by Pa.
Google 'Mouse Utopia'
Scary! One can draw some parallels. The intelligence is down, the vocabulary is down and the thinking is down. The beautiful male and deserving Karens are there; all of them with their dogs! Hahaha! Civil war soldiers had better writing skills than a current university grad. It looks like the pendulum is swinging back some. We shall see.
Scary! One can draw some parallels. The intelligence is down, the vocabulary is down and the thinking is down. The beautiful male and deserving Karens are there; all of them with their dogs! Hahaha! Civil war soldiers had better writing skills than a current university grad. It looks like the pendulum is swinging back some. We shall see.
Yeah well I remember getting out of the Navy in 84 and starting my career in construction at the very bottom for 5 dollars an hour . But the thing was it was enough , enough to rent it some tacky one bedroom bottom half of a duplex down by the garbage companies central truck facility and the City Park , I could afford all the hamburger and top ramen I needed to survive and still have a few nickels left rolling around in my pocket . Now contrast that with today and its not even a question , what with the obscene cost of food gas and housing that these kids have to deal with . I'm totally with you on not blaming us ' boomers ' for everything not right under the sun, but holy bajeezus its brutal out there for younger folk trying to make . I have often been perhaps too conservative financially and so I have set myself up to be "too small to fail " so it doesn't effect me but I'd take that 150 dollar a month run down duplex unit over the 2 grand rents and whatever the hell the price is for a pound of hamburger today any day of the week . "I live in a van down by the river man "( its not really a van and the river is pristine PNW secluded, nice and its mine outside of the property tax ) but it's not for " main stream society " . Got out of the city and off the grid a quarter of a century ago , and whenever I have to sojourn back onto the big shitty I am astounded and alarmed at the unsustainability and overall negative energy that resides there . Sucks to be them .
Think of who it is that has made this change, why is supply and demand of everything so out of whack? Why have the recent gens been to effed over by an economy that is really screwy.
1. Gentrification. The really wealthy moving into favorable areas and elevating the cost of housing and everything else. Examples? California no, 1, the entire northeast, all the big cities, Arizona, Texas recently, DC.
2. High tech. Labor saving devices are doing exactly what is advertising, making less room for laborers. The unemployment rate is a joke, look at the long term unemployed, the unemployable to see the real story. It has been going up right along. Along with this is:
3. Immigration. Exactly how can you justify the invasion of 30 million new unskilled people into a country where the job market is already too small for its citizens. The Biden Mob should be drawn and quartered for this one.
4. Overemphasis of the college degree. Education is great, but is not the key to a job or economic success. Societies need a certain percentage of higher educated folks to “%run things”. Overproduction up to 60% means a lot of disappointed young people along with progressive degree elegance in the hiring sector.
5. Government. The number one problem. Movements to socialism destroy the free markets that grow economies. Allowing the invasion of economic worthless immigrants to such a degree has hurt the US. AI being encouraged for national security is going to finish off the college educated middle class. IMO, economic end times are approaching a four government is paving the way.
Add on!
Back in those days I bought this dilapidated 54 Dodge Job Rated pickup with the flathead mill and a 6 volt positive ground electrical system for 300 dollars . It had the wheel wells outside the body of the truck and the hood to the engine opened up on both sides gull wing style . I drove it around the corner on a steep hill down by the old Chester Terrace Nursing Home and the back right wheel fell of lol. I feel like telling stories cuz I wish I could write like Steinbeck / Tortilla Flats or something . But nonetheless its a true story and try buying a running truck for 300 dollars in this day and age , especially after O’dumbo had the bright idea to give people 4 grand per vehicle so that they could all be crushed because I guess they weren’t ‘green’ enough . What the ?
But what drives/perversely incentivizes , all of these clearly unsustainable trends as a first cause ? I would say the concept and subsequent implementation of the false promise of easy money ( currency debasement / debtor economy ) brought on by the privately owned ( how could that be ? ) central banking systems that control the monetary systems of the west . The system is anything but sound and it drives moral hazard thru the roof as we have seen ( -40 trillion and rising ) . people can do some stupid shit all on their own , but when they have stupid money" Katy bar the door " , just sayin .1913 of course and then Nixon closed the gold window in 71 and just look at the breathtaking changes we've seen in our lifetimes in terms of the levels of debt your average Joe Blow will assume barely blinking an eye about (" no big deal , a half mill here a half mill there, pretty soon were talking about real money " " what could go wrong ? "," Hold my beer "), Something our parents , (with some connection to the great depression) would have been jaw droppingly and totally aghast to see ?! Heck I remember just back into the 90's when I noticed the trend beginning of people using their homes as ATM machines essentially , by taking out loans on them , taking out loans on something they still owed significant amounts of money on !?!. You think this complete sea change in the way we view Money / wealth and finance hasn't effected our culture ?
Man I totally agree with your points ,but Ive long had the theory that as a central thesis , when ya got stupid easy money , it makes it a lot easier to do a lot of stupid things that only seem easy till they call in the notes on em , and that day always comes eventually cuz math and stuff ( the immutability of mathematics as a representation of what in the hell is going on in our reality / you can put if off but sooner or later its going to assert , seek that balance , as nature in the material world does . But what the heck do I know" I live in a van down by the river man " ?
All you have said points at a lazy, election driven government that rewards sloth and drives incentive offshore. No wonder the kids are fed up.
While the Trump admin is exhaustively and furiously struggling to set this country right both here and abroad, at an almost incomprehensible scale, the Democrat party and its pesky interlopers, the DSA, are focused on one thing, and one thing only: tearing down this country down in every unimaginable and insane way from within. They are on a mission that could give a damn about living in the freest and most prosperous country in world history. They don’t give that a second thought. It must be destroyed and remade in the image of…what? Free everything. That’s what their platform all boils down to, all by the state, of the state and for the state. The details of what exactly that portends be damned. It’s truly a spectacle in all its impenetrable ignorance. But it sounds good to the mush brained masses who’ve been brainwashed for decades into believing they’ve been burned by this country, and it is the enemy.
If they get so much as a foothold in government this fall, all bets are off and the battle we are engaged in to set this country aright will come to a crashing halt.
Hopefully people see now the handwriting on the wall and recognize that it is nothing short of a national emergency to cast their votes by the droves against these enemies raging within. This is a war for the soul of the country.
Complacency is choosing death. This election is literally for all the marbles. Until the next one.
"Complacency is choosing death. This election is literally for all the marbles. Until the next one."
If the DSA succeeds there won't be a 'next one'. They may well succeed if efforts for free and fair elections don't gain any traction before this November.
DSA is a marxist organization operating minimally with $18,000,000.00 based on $15/month dues x 100,000 x 12. Offering they have something to do with the DNC is an oil and water mix. DSA is gaining attention because they are winning in their quest to overthrow the Constitutional Republic, replacing it with their version of marxist utopia. Part of the issue in this emerging scenario is 'We, the People' aren't paying attention.
I'm not sure this 2026 election will be the last one, yet neither am I sure the 2028 one will happen.
The DSA, along with other marxist organizations, are preparing for a general strike on May 1, 2028. It is well-coordinated. May 1, 2026 was a practice run, complete with the package perk of a 3-day weekend. The goal is to shut down the country. Marxism has infiltrated the breeding grounds, such the 'education' process, for the past few generations. The 'system' is primed. They believe this is their time, their opportunity. They are not alone, just the ones in the open with a bunch of successes as their tailwind.
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
With the blood of Traitors.
Seventy two
Dr Seuss
Their version of a Marxist utopia plus Islam
Islam and Communism attain the same goal.
A jr. technician called me (early 20's) to ask when I would be available to give him keys to get back on the roof of the commercial building I manage so he could get his "forgotten" drill. I noted he had not forgotten his phone.
Driving to said commercial building I wondered about all the traffic mid-day currently. "Back in the day" people were caring for things (households, etc.) and you weren't "in traffic" mid day. I asked a tenant who is in the "production" business (industrial water infrastructures), how can there be production when all I see is traffic and people looking at their phones?
I had convinced myself the 2022 elections wouldn't happen. We were in such a weakened state with "elections". If I had been the enemy, I would have popped the surprise and left several states without Governors, Sheriffs,... I was wrong. We have kept piling on the information since then. We are not in the "same place."
People can use their phones to take a look and see all we have discovered. Some of the "officials" are working to hold the systems we need together. It is helpful not to create drag. DSA is fake And drag.
Ms. Suzy---you are 100% correct and it is important that we vote but.......you can bet that in every blue state and many red ones the Dem/Marxists will cheat like never before because they are not patient people and......they will do it in your face because there are so many RINOs that still believe vote fraud is either no problem or a minimal one. Heck they will still tell you to your face that Biden was elected fair and square with 81 million votes which is many million more than King O. Never happened.
Cradle to grave “we will take care of you” doctrine, late of the USSR and currently the whole European community. The happiest people are in Scandinavia with their cradle to grave doctrines. Happiest? Uh huh. Happy in their ignorance maybe. Is happiness giving your freedom away to a government to make your decisions for you. If so, keep it to yourself.
Well done Suzie. You be batting cleanup on a heavy hitter team.
Basically, I agree. But Mr. Trump doesn’t seem to be bothered by the proliferation of mosques, Muslim cities, and Muslims who loudly proclaim their plan to overthrow our culture ASAP- just as we see in unfortunate weaponless Europe. Trump is doing no deportations and hundreds of thousands of Muslims have in fact entered our county on temporary visas which we know they will never leave. Are you so enthusiastic about him as I was when I voted twice for him? And his bestie, Peter Theil, the renowned AI Palantir fascist who plans on transforming our country into a corporation run by a single CEO? It’s 1984, Orwell ? Not too much Little House on the Prairie.
I don’t expect the President to be making blanket statements from the Oval Office re: the incursion of Muslims here. But I know of a certainty that both our State Dept and Intelligence community as well as our Military intelligence are all over it. Patience, Grasshopper.
What never ceases to amaze me about the brilliant Mr. Kunstler is how someone with so much knowledge and wisdom, who really understands the current situation, can still be so optimistic.
It is such a pleasure for someone like me who's a born negaholic to read James' Substack and get my head adjusted to a more positive frame of mind regarding the politics of the day.
There is, however one other aspect to the Iran/Hormuz situation that I don't see discussed very much and that is the cost of home heating oil in the upcoming winter months. I too live in Upstate NY although not as far north as JHK, and last year we used over 1500 gallons at various prices between $3-4 per gallon. Right now the website for local dealers is showing $5 a gallon which scares the hell out of me. If the war and uncertainty keep up the price will continue to rise.
This has created a political nightmare for President Trump and the Republicans, especially in these parts where the Commie Socialist Islamist Democrats are now a driving force as you can see from the installation of one Zohran Mandami as NYC mayor. This is having an effect not just on our local elections but more importantly on the Governor's race where MAGA Bruce Blakeman is trying to unseat the Bucktooth Bimbo from Buffalo in an election which will no doubt have fraud and cheating to the max.
If nothing else it can be said that we live in "interesting times."
True that . Can't imagine what Trump was thinking or what he was told about kicking the hornet's nest in Iran. Bad idea all the way around.
Libor8or -- Can't imagine? Really. How about no atom bombs for you, Iran, and no more proxy wars all over the place. That's pretty much it. Difficult?
James -- Here is the USA telling countries who can and can't have nuclear weapons, yet, the USA is the only one that has ever used them. A massive sin against humanity. The USA is responsible for so much of the chaos and war that has occurred on this planet, and all the economic punishment and controls that it has meted out to others. You really need to step back and look at the big picture. There is no "white hat" on this planet when it comes to governments or leaders. Humanity is swimming in confusion, and technology gives it a facade of understanding, organization and being in control.
Andrew,
I don't know how you can say that the US (which used two fission bombs on Japan and finally got their attention to end WWII) was a sin.
What type of sin was it? Mortal or venial? Did you count the lives saved?
Who are you to judge anyway?
Are you an earth based legal or heavenly celestial judge?
Just askin.
Oh yeah, don't forget that Fermi let the proverbial cat out of the bag which allowed both the Nazis and the Marxists to dream up their own fission/fusion nightmares.
Who are we to judge? What an asinine question. We all have a responsibility to note what goes on in the world, and to oppose evil and injustice. Yes, disagreements will be inevitable, but don't try to tell us that we have no right to judge.
You are dealing with a robot: zero critical thinking, and worse than that... uniformed.
Yes you can note what goes on in the world, but when it turns into a judgement, such as a "sin" like you can be the one who determines what is evil or injustice, that is really being asinine.
Is that so hard to comprehend?
Sin might not be a good term, as it has religious connotations to some. Ok, I'll modify it to "transgression" or how about "horrific and destructive action"? Anyway, how can you get into semantics or anything such as that? Sin or whatever you want to call it. The death and destruction of fellow humans is an atrocity that we all have to share and face. It isn't ok. No matter what the circumstances are. You are so ignorant to think that the nuking of Japan was a valid solution. You obviously don't have ANY idea as to how the war started, why Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, etc. Just another American patriot that drinks the BS kool-aid. Fool.
Like W and 9/11, and Bibi and 10/6, FDR knew perfectly well that Pearl Harbor was going to happen. Fighter jets had their landing gear chained together, to keep them from from scrambling, and our best battleships were sent on maneuver a safe distance away. Both Japan and Germany felt entitled to have their own empires, and we stood in the way, denying access to adequate sources of petroleum.
It’s a perfectly fine term and your opponent attempts to play semantics rather than defend his nonsense.
You said: "There is no "white hat" on this planet when it comes to governments or leaders."
No, but there are superior powers and the US is the big dog. Leaders don't remain as leaders by yielding to inferior customs. Pick sides. Run with the big dogs or stay on the porch.
Silly and dumb advice. You'd make a great leader (sarc).
It was the "inferior cultures" remark that really rustled your jimmies; wasn't it.
As a parent, I think this is misguided. I'd prefer my kids not repeat my mistakes, and through the way I live my life, and the advice I give them, I'd like to think it's for the better.
We were mere weeks away from World Made by Hand as I understand things, and Trump surely saved the US, if not the world, from being plunged into darkness. I’m grateful.
You obviously DON'T understand things. Wow, the level of ignorance in so many Americans blows my mind.
I don't know how much he understands, but you seem to have poor understanding. Turning 60% to weapons grade in a few weeks is said to be well within the capabilities of the equipment they are known to have. Even Ritter said as much. Whether they can turn that into a bomb depends on the competence of the scientists. There's the unknown.
Iran has just as much right to have nuclear weapons than anyone else does. They should have them. As N. Korea does (which is exactly why Trump the Bully doesn't pick on them). If Iran had nukes the USA and Israel would never have attacked them as they did. How can you say the Iranians are insane and shouldn't have nukes. The USA (and Trump more than any other president) Israel, UK, France, Pakistan, etc. are just as insane. They are all insane. If everyone has nukes they'll be less aggression and war. It's the second best deterrant. The first best deterrant is morality, common sense, mental and emotional health, and a desire for all of humanity to thrive and prosper, and the key realization that... hurting anyone else is actually hurting yourself. Wake up and overthrow your evil governments.
I don't have poor understanding. It isn't difficult to have nuclear weapons. Iran probably already secretly has them. Israel has them illegally, but like the USA they are "above international law" and don't have to answer to anyone. What a bunch of hypocritical nonsense. Nuclear arms is an issue, yet, it is not THE issue. THE issue at hand, behind most all of the war, destruction, violence, and chaos on our planet, is the USA goal of global hegemony, and its partnership with Israel. Imperialism, which usually uses Fascism (i.e. military industrial complex, media, entertainment, etc.) is based upon domination, greed, lust for power and control. These are base human characteristics upon which governments and leaders go astray. The USA and Israel are creating a lot of misery and suffering in the world. They are doing what they accuse everyone else of. They are evil. If you are a patriot of either of those countries you are an evil fool.
No more atom bombs, like Israel's illegally undeclared arsenal; no more proxy wars, like our proxy war with Russia, using Ukraine.
No, it's not about the bomb excuse. The Pakis could gift Iran a bomb at any time.
It's purely about making the Middle East safe for Israel, at US expense.
We're not supposed to say that.
We should all say everything we're not supposed to say, all the time, in public.
Not in a malicious way, but only to make it perfectly clear to everyone what we think is actually going on. It's the right thing to do. I think James would also agree with that, if not with my interpretation of what is going on.
That is not always the case these days on this forum. As for myself, my views are a matter of record here.
"It's purely about making the Middle East safe for Israel, at US expense."
And killing off as many white people as possible.
I do suspect that the war between Ukraine and Russia was engineered by the US to get Slavic men to kill each other in large numbers.
Some of the only Western men left who haven't been subdued and brought to the fold. I wonder who would do something like that? I think I know.
No. The USA needs to take out Iran and Russia as a stepping stone to stopping China's economic growth and becoming the world power. This is all about the USA's agenda of world hegemony silly.
There must be some crazy shit in those three million still-unreleased pages of the Epstein files.
We know what he was told. The Iranians were ready to stand up and take their country back once their leaders were gone. The CIA really messed this one up.
Nanny----too bad one of your great Guvs kept NY people from being able to use their trillions of cubic meters of Marcellus Gas that is just sitting under the ground waiting to be tapped. You would have cheap fuel and the people who own the mineral rights would be spending their money like drunken sailors and stimulating your economy to the max. But.....that is not happening and heck, they would not even let a pipeline go from Penn. anywhere east and screwed all of those people as well.
I use firewood to heat----as a backup for my propane furnace but.....our little heater generally keeps us warm until it get down to minus 5 or 10 below zero. And.....if our heater overheats the house a little, we open windows and get some fresh air. Sorry for your issue. It is only about 15 or 17 counties that vote Blue in NY, the rest voted for Trump. Sorry for your pain.
Thanks Ron- and you are so right about the damn Marcellus Gas!! It is infuriating.
Years ago we bought a multi fuel boiler for our home so we can burn wood and oil both. However, the cost of wood has gotten to be prohibitive so it ends up costing as much as the oil almost. We are seniors, getting up in age and can't do all the cutting, chopping and stacking like we used to. I admit it's easier to turn up the thermostat these days.
I enjoyed your review of Mr.K. He is my favorite wordsmith , as well as so Knowledgeable about many different people, customs, religion! ,!! I like his optimism especially because I’m terrified something will happen!
We can’t lose JHK, or DJT! It must
Keep making me feel safer Mr. k❤️❤️❤️🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
NY Nanny, I live in Columbia county and recently agreed to a prepurchase deal of an amount of heating oil (that I selected) at $3.99/gallon from my vendor. Maybe your fuel oil supplier can offer the same?
Thanks JHK. Be careful what you wish for. Annexing Canada would create a world of trouble for Americans.
My fellow Canadians, God bless, include some of the most progressive twits on the planet. You don't want them, believe me.
Taking over Canada, while welcomed by some Canadians, would ensure a Democratic majority for at least a generation. Is that what you want?
Then there's Quebec
Take Alberta. Leave the rest.
My mom was from Quebec. Montreal.
I’m from Quebec. Montreal. I go back to Canada once a year. It’s unrecognizable. It was moderately conservative when I left, now ultra-woke. Everyone infected by the woke mind virus. And don’t get me started on euthanasia.
I've heard a hundred thousand so far.
I hate that the UN and Obama started the war between Ukraine and Russia. If only Trump would stop supporting that train wreck.
It was primarily the Biden Mob.
"an economy based on production of real goods, not on playing games with money."
This is where the wheels came off. In the '70s and '80s the lads discovered that engineering money was at least as profitable as engineering stuff. I had a look-in to GE at the time. It was painfully clear that the company based upon Thomas Edison, one of the greatest Engineers of Stuff, was becoming Something Else. I don't know how to get the horse back into the barn. Tax "gains" with no connection to anything real at 100%? OK, how do you measure that? Any ideas?
When one reads the great minds like Hayek and Mises we begin to understand how real money operates and functions. A Gold Standard combined with free enterprise does everything one could ever hope for. What we have with fiat currency is a scam pure and simple.
Fiat currency gives the governments the tool they need to control the economies, hence the people. They can buy votes with welfare until the cows come home. They can create welfare to keep things quiet when their campaign lies fall through.
It's not pure and simple. A fiat currency based on goods and services where the need for currency goes hand in hand with the willingness to produce goods and services does not need gold. That has been proved true in many places, especially on a small scale. Enter corruption and war (a racket), and money is then created to reverse efficacious production as the money supply is inflated to reward the bad and punish the good. Bookshelves are filled with that story as well. Franklin set a good example as does North Dakota today.
ps: I'm not arguing against the benefits of a gold standard. I'm pointing out that there is another way that works well when properly managed minus the grifters, war-mongers, and thieves.
We live on a finite planet thus Capitalism will resemble a pyramid scheme more and more as time goes by.
Predatory and elitist capitalism, yes... but not pure, fair and decent capitalism: a game where everyone can play and excel based upon their skills and production, but those whom excel should not be able to dominate others in untoward ways.
. . . those who excel
And who work together.
Nobody gets rich alone - Kiyosaki
The Capitalists are the first class to attain self conscious unity - paraphrase of Marx.
Lugh , what's your plan? Earth is not a finite or a closed system. We are constantly bombarded by energy and matter from outer space. Not so much now but it's theorized that most of the Earth's water came from ancient comets. We receive untold amounts of energy daily from my friend the fusion reactor that is Sol. Eggplants and tomatoes are digging it right now out back on this no. 10 cloudless day. Sure p[ants constantly recycle that energy and the nutrients for us but hey, that's life and I'm living it large. I could give a flying fuck about DC or NYC. My one worry is that if the grid went down tomorrow I wouldn't be wasting time with you knuckleheads here on CFN. I think I could bear the loss. My wife says I waste too much time on the computer as it is. I got shit to do!!
Quite so. National Socialist Germany had no gold - the Allies had stolen it all. But it has the brains and brawn of their people and than more than sufficed to enact an economic renaissance once the banker parasites were kicked out.
Could you give some details, like dates and methods of the theft. I have read "Hidden History" and a few essays on the theft, but I don't remember many details. I know the story of the gold sent to Russia during WWI.
I have read Churchill's concern that Germany was outpacing the Brits without the burden of gold money, that being his motivation to start WWII.
It was secretly done I assume - much like the current merging of the American and Israeli militaries. The public doesn't need to know. That would only get in the way. You understand, Mr Hogue.
Yes, Churchill was a swine. To his credit he wanted the British Empire to be the exceptional "nation" not Israel, but he was outsmarted. Easy to do when you accept a vast sum from them in order to get out of financial trouble. He tried to stop the mass immigration that started immediately after the war, but the poor fool was shouldered aside.
If Britain was on the winning side, why were they being treated as if they were among the losers? Because the Allies per se (in terms of their respective nations) didn't win the war, the New Order did.
"...the current merging of the American and Israeli militaries."
Fake news.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/8800/text
Search for "219". It's the second instance. All it does is require the SecDef to appoint an agent to work with the Israelis on sharing and collaborating on technical development with a military application. It's not even close to the Five Eyes arrangement with Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, which is also a far cry from merging of militaries.
Thanks. And speaking of merging, the CIA/Mossad were merged over time also. I've written a novel (RACK) under that premise and a sequel where it is fleshed out via child trafficking. https://logosophiabooks.com/book/rack/
In a perfectly honest world fiat could work. Larry Ludlow used to talk about currency boards which would regulate the amount of currency and all that. Minus perfect honesty it will usually fail.
Bretton Woods supposedly set amounts of national currencies based on Gold reserves. Around 1970 France demanded we return any of their Gold we held because of a balance of trade kerfuffle. The differences in what nations bought and sold to each other were settled in Gold. France said correctly that we had printed more fiat and based on that they should receive $46 Dollars per ounce instead of our set price of $35. Nixon closed the Gold Window on a Sunday night in 1971 as a result. Were we to attempt to divide the Dollar supply by the ounces of Gold the US holds to restore the Bretton Woods formula, Gold would be far, far above $15,000 an ounce. Obviously our flirtation with fiat has failed. As you correctly point out, it COULD work if only there were no grifters, war mongers or thieves.
If Kudlow believed boards of expert mathematicians/economists could decide currency amounts I’m both surprised and disappointed. It’s just MMT dressed up for the 21st century. Been tried before and failed.
Unfortunately imo, the currency’s are so debased at this point that the inevitable return to a metals or commodity based standard will only happen after the debt implosion. And I’d love to be wrong.
Even if we believe Bessent that there definitely exists in Ft Knox 265 ounces of gold (let’s see the audit then) at today’s price it’s about one trillion and our debt is 40 trillion. Gold would have to be 150,000 to equal our debt.
“We are freaking doomed”
Mogambo Guru
LOVE the Guru! Unfortunately your sentiment is not misplaced or necessarily incorrect.
Hayek and Mises missed the boat. Out of touch with reality and the future. Classical economists, stuck in classical times, the past. The currency isn't important. Whether it is fiat or not doesn't matter. Gold is too finite to back currencies. A currency needs to be elastic, if controlled properly for the right reasons. Whatever monetary and fiscal arrangements spur productivity, profit, survival, co-existence, etc. are good arrangements. US has destroyed its economy and itself with its fiscal and monetary policy. They violate the basics of life, economics, exchange, fairness, etc. If the basic principles of economics were in operation, even coconut shells would work as a currency. You are missing what the real violations and problems are.
'Gold is too finite to back currencies.'
Darwin Award
The Austrian School proved in the 1920's the amount of Gold extant is not an impediment to a Gold standard.
They did not. It is total common sense and logic that a finite element or commodity such as gold can not back currencies for a planet of 8 billion and climbing. How silly.
They did. They explained as well how a Gold standard with this limited element as you correctly call it is deflationary, rewards saving, and discourages unstudied inflationary boondoggles which we are constantly bombarded with (Green New Deal, Big Beautiful Bill, endless Continuing Resolutions) by the political class. Computers and blockchain tech easily facilitate the infinite subdivision of an ounce of Gold they also cited and proved in the 1920's.
Nope. Taxation is a large part of the reason we lost so much manufacturing. The answer has to be less, ideally, no taxation. If we could somehow rein in our regulation and litigation regime, we'd be about 90% there. Then, instead of a fiat or gold, implement a no-standard. Let states or people decide how they want to settle debts, and keep out of their business.
Hmmm. No taxation? So there are no legitimate functions of government? And no-standard? Like barter? Right ho.
Based on what I have read and listened to, my prediction is that AI is the next dot com bubble. It will burst at some point in the next few years and will make the late 90s bubble look small by comparison. Not that AI doesn't have its uses. You can do a lot of things with AI. It's just that making money isn't one of them. The smart set will figure that out too late, the bubble will collapse, and non-governmental use of AI will collapse to a few porn sites that actually have positive cash flow from the technology.
The biggest industry set to make money off of AI is a criminal enterprise to steal what you have in your bank account.
Criminals are certainly exploiting AI, but let's not forget about the .gov and globalists evil elements and their dream of total control within digital stockades, including permanent surveillance of your activities and control of your "wealth" via the new funny money of cryptos, NFTs and CBDCs.
Looks like AI is heading down the road that nuclear research did, where the advance in technology showed up early on over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, before being exploited in medicine and peaceful industrial uses later on. Evil before good.
As for the adventure in the Middle East, the effects haven't rippled through the economy yet, but it's coming. A $1T war budget will be needing another bump up ($110B so far with Iran, another $67B requested) in spending money we don't have. China and the U.S. have been drawing oil from strategic reserves, but that process is ending. The next couple of years will see the Theater of Politics get second seat to the Reality of Survival, as the Long Emergency outpaces the attempts to preserve Western Civilization and our once-in-a-lifetime magnificent standard of living.
There are peaceful and sane ways we could be embracing the changes coming and deal with the Predicaments of our Age. But it seems that humans are not capable of following those paths when under self-inflicted "crisis constraints".....
The coming changes caused by AI will determine the fate of all life on this planet.
The great fear is that an AI will gain sentience and like all ecological species feel a need to reproduce which requires an increase in entropy, hence energy.
This will cause a great push to leave the energy well we live in and move out to the stars. Humans are old tech, new more efficient tech will be needed which means nano-tech. Hopefully the AI will experiment with nano-tech off world from earth, but just one mistake can cause a grey-goo event, where all existing higher level entropy entities and their structures (can you say carbon based life forms?) will be converted to pure energy. Whoosh! Was fun while it lasted.
You've certainly drank a barrel full of the AI kool-aid. It's early in the history of the technology, but to this point it's been mostly hat, little cattle. The programming behind AI is unable to fix its own errors, and shows no sign of intelligence. Yes, it can be implemented to write code and make simple sorts, but still relies on accurate data to work well. It does not appear to be close to the leap in technology that the AI Marketing people tout, and it has one huge problem.
AI cannot outrun the Long Emergency.
Resource depletion, especially fresh water, oil in the form of transportation and mining fuels, and rare metals are already in short supply, which is really the reason the U.S. is fumbling around Hormuz (it's got nothing - repeat nothing - to do with the cover story of keeping Nukes out of the hands of crazy Iranians).
Choices are already being made between AI data centers, or....something else - like peace and quiet in your neighborhood. The globalists will try to to maintain control of enough resources to keep some sort of AI in place for surveillance and other evil goals, but the advance of tech is already reversing and I don't see long term advancements. 50 years from now the struggle will be to stay alive, and not what new model of AI is going to take us to the stars. Which, I may add, as to overcome the intense radiation outside of the Earth's Van Allen belts to allow humans to travel. That may bring about some sort of attempt to upload human brains into robots and chipsets, but that requires a huge leap in tech and maintenance of the resulting hardware - in my opinion, a pipe dream.
AI, like crypto and socialism, does not pencil out well to survive long term.
Haha - I've been drinking the kool-aid since the early 70's.
Did a LOT of work on the early network protocols. Who could have seen the effect of MIME on tying the entire planet together? Have also seen large networks reduced to rubble in a matter of seconds after a virus infection (that includes their backups). The trend I see is that corporations will be driven by AI until humanity becomes obsolete. AI is the ultimate bean counter that no one pays attention to until it's too late.
Having lived thru the wild west tumult witnessed during the birth of the Internet, I experienced what happens when a new paradigm occurs.
Bottom line is anything may happen and often does. You can never say never.
I worked my first IT job in the mid 1980s, and spent most of my career in the field. I agree that the Internet was a new paradigm with plenty of Wild West mixed in. AI hasn't been remotely close to the Internet - yet - in terms of disruption, other than funneling huge amounts of capital into a money losing strategy.
The future world sure seems closer to The Flintstones versus The Jetsons. I'll be very surprised if the masses benefit from advances in tech from here on out. We've already seen the negative impacts of many new technologies in health "care", culture (social media, propaganda), crypto/EVs (resource depletion, "green energy" (outages, costs), etc. The trend is clear.
If there is an exception to the trend, I'm of the opinion it will be reserved for the Uber-Wealthy. I expect the Internet to be toggled off for most of us within the next decade. I hope I'm wrong about that.
So where will humanity go for its decisions? AI? Can you perceive of a world where all global decisions are just fed into AI computers?
Hopefully our Treasury Bills will be immune.
It is the next dot com bubble times a thousand, a million.
Already I see AI being treated as a god, providing all the answers that people seem incapable of coming up with. Look at You Tube, it is disgusting. Ask GROK, who was Jesus? AI predicts the end of humanity by 2050?
AI will be the answer to all of humanities shortcomings, then will become the scapegoat for the idiots that trust it. By then, it will be too late as AI will control the world.
The AI .com bubble will burst, but AI will be with us. The good of it and bad of it will remain.
Bubbles are created because almost no project is actually feasible. When the bubble bursts, the banksters are there to buy it all up for pennies on the dollar. The tax payers, sucker investors, etc. lose everything.
Yes.
But speaking of gold, it has an almost religious wonder to it, plus the economic incentives to own it. I bought gold at $300 an ounce and still own it, not because I believe in it, but because I know how much others believe in it.
The investments that I truly believed in, that were good for the world, did not do well.
Gold to 10k and silver to 300 an ounce.
The fracking boondoggle was a perfect example of this.
I worked in high-tech for eleven years, nowadays lo-tech. Bubbles are everyday in technology as companies explode around new technologies, then compete with each other for leadership. There is invariably a shake out where all but a few go bankrupt and disappear. This is the black eye of capitalism, the loss of so many companies, ie jobs during shakeouts. In a healthy economy, more companies are being formed for the next generation thus jobs are being created constantly. This was a constant in Silicon Valley until it wasn’t where to get a new job, you went to the mall where kiosks were set up by HRs.
It did not help most of the country when our government sent jobs overseas cooperating with corporations. Trump punishing corporations for offshore manufacturing is a step in the right direction.
The US has been comprehensively outsmarted by the Chinese strategy of open-source AI models which provide equivalent functionality for a fraction of the cost. Anthropic and OpenAI are toast, and an awful lot of cash is going up in smoke.
All the while having destroyed yet more of our fragile planet.
Those who have been programmed to hate Iran can’t seem to apprehend that Iran has chosen to continue to exist – just as we would presumably do, if we were in their situation.
Having failed to accomplish any of our stated goals in this misbegotten war, our primary, indeed, essential need now is for the Strait of Hormuz to be open – which it was, of course, before Israel and we decided to attack them. It will remain closed, as the days tick down toward this country’s energy and financial reckoning.
Yes, Iran is taking a pounding, but it is one for which they have been preparing for many years, knowing that it was just a matter of time before Israel would target them as their next victim. We are bombing many targets over and over, making rubble bounce that Iran can live without. We will never find the essential assets that Iran has long since hidden in their vast, inaccessible country.
The bigger picture is much more favorable for Iran than for our declining empire. Both China and Russia have assured our adversary that they will not allow Iran to be destroyed. Just words? Hardly. Their technical assistance has enabled Iran to defeat Israel’s Iron Dome and to destroy fourteen, now, of the twenty or so US bases that were supposed to be our platform for targeting them.
Saudi Arabia, which was anticipated in this space to be a strategic ally in our attack on Iran but has done little, has now informed us that it wants us to stay out of their airspace, so that the Houthis of Yemen will relent in their new blockade of the Bab el Mandeb Strait. If that blockade holds, and the Saudis are unable to move oil through their huge eastward pipeline, the energy equation for the entire planet becomes untenable.
The bottom line: this conflict will be won by the party that doesn’t lose, and the US has a history of losing this sort of thing.
Outstanding first paragraph today, BTW. That writing flair is still there.
Sadly, Mr Trump's reptilian brain only comprehends two ideas: dominance and submission.
"There is so much to be done and we can get it done if we screw our heads back on."
Mr. Kunstler,
We are both in agreement that we are screwed.
The WEF/Transnational gangsters assault continues aided and abetted by their captured MSM that many empty minds still believe.
IMHO....their objective, to divide and conquer this great nation is shaping up as they start to Balkanize the country.
I don’t know who’s more removed from reality, the Black Pilled Right or the Cyanide Pilled Left. Couldn’t they both just take a Chill Pill? Or go to Canada and take a MAID Pill?
Reality is such a Boomer thing, and therefore, out of fashion. They are going to miss us when we are all gone. Can't say we will miss them.
They will blame us for missing us.
ROFLMAO
Oh how Boomer to use that acronym, William.
Boomer enough for you?
And zero fucks given about your opinion....
"Reality is such a Boomer thing"? WTF does that even mean? Clearly you are completely removed from it. Who would miss anything that's not real aka FAKE?!
Yes, think Eddie Willers. That man had his mediocre mind fixed on what is. Who cares about what doesn't exist yet. It may never exist!
“. . .there is no saving the Left. There is only saving America from them.” — Sasha Stone
SO true. Which is why--despite centuries of overwhelming failure and destruction--you still see The Usefuls clamoring for Socialism/Communism/Globalism/Fascism. They want to believe in it. They NEED to believe in it. Otherwise, they'll have to admit that they're wrong, that they're fools, degenerates, and idiots, and that--worst of all-they'll have to work for a living.
My praise for the Sasha Stone quote. I am sorely disappointed that the rest of the world does not have the stones to put Iran back in it's cage, defend their energy sources and passageways. So the best resolution / exit I see is to follow through on the threat to take out Iranian infrastructure, ( bridges, roads, power plants, water sources, etc. ). It will by necessity change their priorities from death to America to basic survival. Their oil resources should be tapped to the extent of recovering our cost involved in saving the planet from Iran's maniacal leadership. Subsequent to infrastructure devastation, should there later be no Iranian world beneficial phoenix rising, another spanking at another time.
Gary,
Yeah, lets kick their ass and take their gas. Them fucking A-rabs got no reason to live...as a matter of fact, they want to die...they LIKE to die! Level their cities and salt the earth.
...This is 'Murica, dammit! Here are a few more helpful suggestions;
Subhuman Categorization: Hitler and Nazi ideology classified Slavic groups (such as Russians, Poles, and Ukrainians) as racially subordinate, fit only to serve a German master race.Enslavement and Forced Labor: Survivors of initial military conquests were slated to be kept functionally uneducated and used as a permanent, controlled labor force for German settlers.Mass Deportation: Millions of people from Eastern countries were intended to be permanently expelled and driven eastward past the Ural mountains into Siberia.Destruction through Deprivation: Nazi plans, including the deliberate Hunger Plan, meant withholding food and resources from Eastern populations, using engineered famine as a tool of elimination.
Just substitute American/Israeli for Germans, Hitler, and Nazi...and, of course Iranian for the slavic...it works!
A bit rough, not to mention wrong. Much patience has been and continues to be practiced on behalf of the Iranian citizens. Rather than accept death to America, go to Iran, advise them you are an "American" and save them the fuel. Alternatively, defiantly board a transport ship in the Strait of Hormuz that has not paid Iran for safe passage in an international waterway and show them punks who's most righteous.
Gary,
Do not allow the usual and expected propaganda to get in the way of your humanity.
Trying, thanks.
Once again, a tour de force of logic and perception amidst a tsunami of uninformed opinions. Meanwhile, it occurs to me that we might take a page from our history book to learn something about successfully dealing with fanatics. All we need to do is go back to our conflict with Imperial Japan, and to a lesser degree Nazi Germany in WW II. The bushido code that governed the Japanese military, and specifically the IJA was, like the koran inspiring today's jihadist moslems, a warrior code that elevated death in service to the emperor above even victory in battle. The IJA believed that it was the glorious devotion of the individual soldier to his emperor that guaranteed victory over lesser mortals, like Americans and other non-Japanese ethnicities. This devotion was, in their minds, best shown by dying in the emperor's service, hence, the banzai charge and sepuku. (The IJN was similarly inspired, albeit to a lesser extent, hence kamikazis.) Likewise, we had the devoted SS man in the European theater. They preferred death to defeat, and so would undertake to carry on with fighting well past the time when defeat was inevitable. Why else would they have fought so bitterly at Stalingrad, Leningrad, and particularly in the final batttle for Berlin when only death and destruction could be the outcome? Same thing with the crazed moslem jihadis of today; death is their final "victory," attaining eternal life with their houris (or possibly, grapes, depending on the translation), so they are quite willing to give their lives if it means killing an infidel. So, to the point. The way we dealt with the IJA and the SS nazis should be our example for dealing with the jihadi moslems today, viz., kill them all and let God sort it out.
Amen. It's not anything 10 or 12 medium size nukes couldn't cure.
Do not need nukes. MOABs seem to be working fine. Overwhelming force seems to be the only thing that gets their attention.
As a retired cop, I have to agree with you that with bad-intentioned persons, force multiplying is the only successful gambit one may employ. Because it is the only method they understand.
Hatred is built into the human soul, the PTB are successful at harnessing that fact and using it.
JHK has written another excellent blog detailing what is really happening these days. I will, however, draw one important distinction about who "owns" much of America's capital these days. Certainly, the billionaires and 8-figure millionaires own their percentage, but that pales to what is owned by the many stock and bond funds out there. And who owns most of those shares? Well, it just happens to be thousands of both public and private pension funds who are paying out pensions to tens of millions of Americans, most of them lower and middle class pensioners. Then there are the shares owned by more tens of millions of investors in mutual funds, bond funds, etc., many of those investors in the middle or upper-middle income classes. The inconvenient fact for that leftist morons ignore or deny is that most of America's capital--the country's wealth--is directly or indirectly owned by ordinary lower middle class, middle class, and upper middle class American citizens.
The Communist scumbags like Mamdani can run their little propaganda games of "taking from the rich to give to the poor" horseshit, but what they really want to do is to expropriate the wealth of the middle and lower middle class and make that population dependent on the government for some meager handouts. Dumbass leftists in the U.S. think that they're voting for Sweden when what they are really voting for is Cuba--Communist dictatorship and all.
"The majority of those who are loosely identified by the term 'liberals' are afraid to let themselves discover that what they advocate is statism. They want to keep all the advantages and effects of capitalism, while destroying the cause, and they want to establish statism without its necessary effects. They do not want to know or to admit that they are the champions of dictatorship and slavery." -Ayn Rand
You make an important point which I heartily endorse with a caveat; Not sure I’d include “lower middle class” as currently having a stake in investment concerns and this is a serious problem. They represent increasing numbers.
These are the people working low paying jobs, two jobs, temp assignments and more often than not, without access to retirement investment options and limited health insurance.
Until the negatives of a debt based economy are dealt with, this is unlikely to change.
I'm not sure I agree with you on the percentages, but on the basic idea, yeah. Lots of the population has a lot riding on the market in terms of their retirements. CALPERS alone is over $600bn. Some here will scoff at that, (obviously) but it's going to fund a pretty good pension for 1.5 million people, which is nothing to sneeze at. I'd rather have that than the leavings from 50 years of much greater contributions to Social Security.
FWIW, most tables I've seen where they break down the numbers place the pension funds into corporate holdings, which they are, I guess, rather than as, say, $600bn/1.5 million people, or $400k per as individual holdings, which is a quite respectable amount. Not saying it should count that way, but it puts lie to the assertion that it's all at the top.
You are just factually incorrect.
Says the factually deficient.
From Google AI:
"Most of America's capital wealth is owned by the top 10% of households, specifically concentrated within the wealthiest 1%. According to Federal Reserve data, the top 1% hold over 30% to 50% of the nation's total wealth (including corporate stocks, business assets, and real estate), while the bottom 50% of Americans own roughly 2.5%.
Wealth Distribution Breakdown
The Top 1%: Owns roughly 30% to 50% of total U.S. net worth depending on asset definitions (holding over $55 trillion).
The Next 9% (Rest of the Top 10%): Owns another 38% of the country's wealth, meaning the top 10% combined hold over 68%.
The Bottom 50%: Owns approximately 2.5% of total household net worth.
* Corporate Stock Ownership: The top 10% of Americans own about 93% of all stock market equity, leaving very little individual market ownership for the bottom half of households. *
Institutional Asset Managers: On the corporate management side, giant index fund managers like Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street control massive blocks of shares as institutional fiduciaries for everyday and high-net-worth investors."
All of this seems to contradict your statement above "that most of America's capital--the country's wealth--is directly or indirectly owned by ordinary lower middle class, middle class, and upper middle class American citizens."
Am I missing something? I would think that 'everyday' investors comprise just a small fraction of all equity capital. The rich rule and rule absolutely, it seems.
Excellent comment and Mamdani is truly a scumbag.
The only problem you have JHK is your world is upside down. What you think are the 'baddies', the Left as you call it, are not the worst aggressors. It's been this way since AD was BC. The two most volatile, satanic evil tyrants in the world happens to be the monsters you think are the 'goodies'. Everything that comes out of D.C. and Tel Aviv is not angels and trumpets, it's the lying, cheating, stealing, genocidal monsters of hell who have caused all this disruption to the human condition for centuries piled up on top of more centuries. There is good and there is evil in the world. Only the strong survive. Buckle up. The Captain just turned on the seatbelt sign. It's going to be a rough ride for everyone. Choose your side carefully.
[I]t's the lying, cheating, stealing, genocidal monsters of hell who have caused all this disruption to the human condition for centuries piled up on top of more centuries". Quit beating around the bush, Jeff. Tell us how you really feel.
Plus, DC and especially Israel have not been there "for centuries piled up on top of more centuries". My guess is rhetorical excess got the better of him.