a fork in the road

[MorkandMindy]

we have the technology and the understanding of human nature and needs to all have fulfilling interesting productive lives,

each productive in the way we find the most fulfilling.

Yet up against this fantastic opportunity, we also have the rich and powerful taking a huge share of wealth and power and wanting more, to the point of producing misery and war. Demented and unimaginative they are, but they are a reality we will have to deal with somehow to get to where we want to be.

It seemed to be summarised by a statement made by someone in the Thatcher era when Universities were still expanding: 'what is the point in being rich if everyone else is rich?' My thought was the opposite: 'what is the point in being rich if so many are poor, they will be envious and steal? I'd be happier surrounded by equals.'

That is the fork, between sufficient renewable energy available in sufficient supply for each person and opportunities to meet with others and work toward goals, or a 1984 scenario for the masses ruled over by a very corrupt powerful few.

Which do you think will happen?
What can be done to get the better option?

 

[MorkandMindy]

People usually like to hear the bad news first, so here it is:

There have been a lot of sensational predictions about the collapse of the US dollar and World War 3. Yes there is may be a connection.

The favourite version going around is that China is now almost as powerful as Russia and is the workshop of the World, pretty much, so to continue to feed it's own overfed population, the US destroys Russia after producing some response from Russia to justify it, and then sells the oil and other assets of Russia to China thereby fixing our trade deficit.

I find this idea repugnant and believe we would be happier producing our own goods and leaving the rest of the World alone but there is an infrastructure for causing trouble that needs to be fed so they will most likely take their own prefered action. A million of us sitting in the Lotus position meditating or on knees praying can not stop a minority from pushing the button so to speak. We are powerless. Maybe Bernie could do something.

But this is a pretty extreme situation, I'm not sure that now that the plan is out in the open that WW3 is all that viable an option. They only got away with WW2 because the public had no idea what was going on, same with WW1.

As you may have noticed there is a variant rumour going on that we start WW3 a lot sooner.

Anyway that's the baddest possible immediate future.

 

[MorkandMindy]

A more plausible one is the US pubic instead of getting the pillage of war as happened at the end of WW2, that there isn't a war and the public suffer a huge drop in the standard of living, down to where most countries are.

The first reason this would happen is US pay rates for the middle class are totally out of line with everywhere else in terms of pay for skill level. The high pay rates and low taxes are both subsidised by running up debts and liabilities.

It was the Reagan administration which first struck out into the land which G H Bush described as 'voodoo economics'. Whatever you think of G H Bush he did have the sense to realise that cutting taxes and increasing government expenditure was going to leave a rising national debt. It could be claimed that this is the way out of a depression, but of course once the depression is over it is necessary to put the money back, but it never was repaid, just kicked down the road for the next generation.

Once the habit of overspending had been established the public were not going to want to stop it. We have a huge National Debt we are just rolling over again and again and it is growing, it is now 10% of the total worth of the USA, exactly as big as a percentage of GDP as the humongous British National Debt, and the bad news is most of our debt is owned by other countries.

 

[MorkandMindy]

Equally alarming for the immediate time frame is the money our banks have been pushing out on projects in other countries. A lot of those projects have been very unwise and will never pay for themselves. Our banks pushed the loans on the countries to get the huge amount of interest, and the longer they were unable to repay them the better. But if they default then their credit rating will suffer badly and any loans they do find they would benefit from will cost more.

Until now. China has a lot of money and is willing to assess each project rationally and will lend money on the basis of sound economic reasons.

So expect a lot of defaults.

 

[MorkandMindy]

And there are a lot of dollars out there because the US dollar is still the main World reserve currency. Breton Woods is over though the terms and conditions of World Bank etc. loans is to continue using dollars for trade. Col. Gaddafi was promoting a gold-backed Libyan Dinar for use in Africa which would have reduced the amount of dollars held abroad, but his capital city got bombed and he was killed so it didn't happen. Over a decade ago Iraq had started selling it's oil in Euros but again the country had a mishap. But what if China starts something similar? Given the continual decline of the US dollar I find it hard to believe the five nation bank BRICA won't do it.

 

[MorkandMindy]

What is the best way out?

1. As in post 1 develop our abundant renewable resources.
2. Get 'our' government back. It is run by everyone except the public. There are actually about 100,000 lobbyists, that's a lot per congressman, and tax breaks and incentives go out for fossil fuels, grain feed for cattle, munitions manufacturing (ever wonder why we drop so many tons of bombs and shoot so many million bullets?), F-35, hugely expensive drug industry, and absurdly expensive medical 'system'.
3. Stop making enemies.
4. Let our teachers to a good job and help them to engage the children better with actual reality and move from way down the table in science and maths and up toward the top. Learn from Hungary which has long had a fantastic system for teaching maths. Stop this 'we are the best' attitude, we aren't and we should wake up and start seeing good things around us and learning from everyone even people who are not US citizens.
5. Why do our cars run on gasoline instead of diesel which is less carcinogenic, less flammable and more efficient?

(add 20 of your own to the list, we have to improve our efficiency asap).

 

[MorkandMindy]

What does this have do with Britain?

Pretty much the same goes for Britain. The differences are that Britain is less militarised though it still makes an effort now and then to get back a bit of the empire and waste some money making some enemies. The reserve currency problem is still a problem for Britain and the risky loans to other countries.

But there is also the long term problem of having sold nearly all the big engineering industries to Germany. And the class war. And this silly boast to the wealth of the house owners by creating a housing bubble. It can't burst without producing a lot of defaults and bringing down banks and building societies so my guess is the debt will be devalued in step with the assets, basically the currency will be devalued. So the rich will still be rich, though somewhat less so, and the poor will lose a bit as well.

Sorry about that, I did forget I was posting in the UK section, still I hope it is useful.

 

[theFijian]