Prepping for a Lower Income (1 of 2)

We dig in to a number of macro trends that are beginning to support a case for a “slow crash of lifestyles” globally.
In part one today, we go into the drivers of the trend. 

In part two, this coming Wednesday, we will explore a familiar topic:  Voluntary lifestyle reduction and how to play that angle.
Along with charts and a few news headlines, but gotta tell you, the news flow is terrible – so far – this weekend.

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50 thoughts on “Prepping for a Lower Income (1 of 2)”

  1. During the week, while sitting on the back porch in the darkness of the night, I heard 2 animal sounds in the wooded area behind the house that I have never heard before and have not heard again since that time. An OWL & a CHIMPANZEE. I thought it was wierd but didn’t think much of it until I was listening to a radio talk show that had on as a guest a man who researches OWLS & ALIENS.

    Has anyone ever had a similar experience?

    • No but go out until you yard put the chair there if you have animals watch them and you’ll discover how the world works.

      I have a dog that went out and hunted down small deer and brought them back for her babies her babies are grown grown and are gone except for one now this dog I will keep because she will bring back she’s a hunter she’ll bring back there and I can take parts of that deer and put in my crockpot and sustain myself

    • One night, in Arlington, Texas about 2 months ago at 1:30 a.m., I heard the most unusual owl hoot. It hooted, then 10 minutes later it hooted again, then seconds later I heard a high-pitched squeak. I figured it got dinner, but what an incredible sound. Where do you live and what program talked about aliens and owls???

      • I heard it on the Dark Matter Digital Network on the internet. You can also Google “Owls & Aliens”.It is the site Keith Rowland built for Art Bell’s comeback but was shortened by people shooting at Art’s house to make him retire. Heather Wade took over for Art.

        darkmatterdigitalnetwork.com

        I am in Raleigh, NC.

  2. I remember the days when many seniors kept their $100,000 in bank CD’s at 7% & used the $7,000 income to supplement their SS. At 1% interest that income has disappeared.

    During the 7% days, our firm sold to seniors Fixed Annuities & Fixed Index Annuities with 4% minimum interest rate guarantees to help eliminate interest rate risk & protect principle. We had many happy clients especially the ones invested in fixed indexed annuities invested in a mix of stock & bond funds.

    Remember, no one is more concerned about your money than you.

  3. I’ll believe a nork deal when it’s sugned and delivered – I can’t imagine China agreeing to such a thing I don’t see how it serves their interests. Syria is about a pipeline and nork is about rare earth minerals – why is China going to allow us in on that?

    • Because the NK nuke facility in the mountain has collapsed & formed a hole in the top of the mountain which is leaking radiation right into China.

      His nuke program collapsed by the force of the explosions. NK doesn’t have the billions necessary to rebuild their Nuke facility. Rocket Man has an opportunity to make a deal & feed the people since he no longer has a nuke program.

      • PS: Don’t forget to send a thank you note to President Trump & congratulations on the future winning of the Nobel Peace Prize.

    • Why would you believe it then? I’m pretty sure Mr. Trump won’t, unless he negotiates access to every square foot of North Korea for US, UK, or Aussie inspectors.

    • China may not want to give up their near monopoly on rare earth metals, but the likely disaster caused by the most recent excessive nuke shattering the NK facility and potentially spreading radiation to Liaoning and other nearby provinces is a game changer. It could even affect Beijing!

      China will want to be in a command position if that situation becomes dangerous.

  4. gu,after reading your prepping for the lower income i find out amazon prime is going up 20 bucks !119.00 what can people who are on fixed income do ????

    • GU wrote a book…

      https://www.amazon.com/Broken-Web-Coming-Collapse-Internet-ebook/dp/B009FLCJ8G

      we got a notice that cable is going up as well.. in the same token we found out that the big company that bought out several hundred facilities throughout the country is not making their bills.. they have already cut the management staff and maintenance staff and lost most of their suppliers. ( grew to fast ) without any plans in place on future actions on how to save their company.( how would you like to have that one on your professional resume.. you drove a billion dollar plus company to ruins out of sheer greed LOL.. good thing is he will still be able to sack groceries the sad thing is the thousands of employees are in sheer trouble us included ).. and many of the employees haven’t been getting their pay..
      Leaves us cutting services as well. It is like a domino set up in a series.. the big thing is people just don’t get it.. there isn’t any blue sky these companies keep raising prices. the problem is how many people like myself have to cut that service because of price.

      • this starts the chain of domino’s.. first one.. right here there are two.. that isn’t going to make or break a company.. but it will short them capital.. a few years ago we went a year without any income.. found out we owned a car and couldn’t qualify for any of these give away programs that everyone hears about but really doesn’t know anyone on. in a five block area there were five more in the same boat. the local company was telling me that their boss was upset because they were twenty five grand short in sales. I said to them.. you know it should be more than that.. we spent six hundred a month in here.. with six people in the same boat and we aren’t spending any money.. assuming the other five spent an average of five here per month then you should be down minimum of thirty grand not twenty five. they in turn reduce purchases etc.. the domino falls. to start a bank run only takes one big ticket person to draw his money out of the bank in cash

      • Those programs are designed for the illegals, refugees, and generational deadbeats, okay, and the elderly. They are not available for working class because they use last year’s and last month’s income against you, plus if you have a car and $2,000.00 + in the bank. It is the big screw job on the American citizen in temporary need.

  5. The monkey is probably a snipe, they make a monkey sound…. at least I think that it is the snipe.

      • I think I live in a prehistoric Jungle some days, with the Herons, Sandhill Cranes, Snipes and myriad of other critters.

  6. By your seeds all of them as many as you can Sprout them if you have no other resources your dog will enjoy the sprouts and of course they will find some meet just like your cat will are you ready to go out and eat some rats are you ready to go out and eat some worms surviving with animals keep as many different variety animals as you can that way you will survive because they all bring something to the table even when they die

    • chickens go nuts over sprouts to.. I read an old old wagon train manual on homesteading once.. where it said to sprout oats and mix with cracked corn and oats.. my god I had chickens fighting to get to them..

      • And if you ate the chicken you were regular, lol? (Oatmeal joke, sorry, couldn’t help it…)

  7. “But wouldn’t it be a very interesting movie plot to have leaders of the world sending out small (deniable) teams to wreak havoc in opposing countries?”

    Telefon. Charles Bronson. One of his better movies.

  8. The China numbers are an incomplete extrapolation. Comparing apples, the 2017 Chinese GDP was 13.11tln USD, give or take a case of lo-mein. The Chinese total debt was 34.44tln USD, making their D/GDP roughly 2.63:1, or 263% (numbers based on Bloomberg estimates…)

    Also from Bloomberg:

    In 2008, China’s total debt was about 141 percent of its gross domestic product. By mid-2017 that number had risen to 256 percent. Countries that take on such a large amount of debt in such a short period typically face a hard landing. That’s why everyone—academics, private banks, the International Monetary Fund, the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, the Bank for International Settlements, and People’s Bank of China Governor Zhou Xiaochuan—is sounding the alarm…

    Perhaps the biggest support to the deleveraging agenda comes from what’s happening on growth. Measured in current prices, China’s GDP growth has accelerated to 11 percent year on year in the fourth quarter of 2017, up from a nadir of 6.4 percent at the end of 2015. Higher nominal growth means higher profits and more tax revenue—useful for paying down debt. Bloomberg Economics’ base case is that by 2022, China could face a debt-to-GDP ratio close to 330 percent, second only to Japan among major economies. If high nominal growth can be sustained, debt could stabilize at about 290 percent of GDP.

    • Remember….and this was my point…we are not talking total debt. Only government debt and the US would look worse if we included nongovernment debt…

      • And let’s not forget off books/black budget debt.

        Was there ever an explanation for the missing 2.3 trillion announced by Rumsfeld on Sept 10, 2001?

      • NM MIKE… unfortunately what I have heard is the accounting area that had the statistics to locate where the missing funds went was destroyed During the 911 attack.

    • ‘Thing is, China is a communist/socialist nation. Inasmuch as the gummint “technically” owns everything, I’m not sure the two can be considered separate entities.

    • My understanding is the Japans debt is held internal and any net foreign debt is balanced by US bonds. Thus no interest for the banksters. (fucoshema ??)

  9. As far as the unfundeds go: I believe localities will bump taxes to cover shortfalls, until they discover there’s not enough taxes, AND CONFISCABLE ASSETS COMBINED, to fund the [bribes which past politicians used to buy votes], er, I mean “employee pensions…” When the Federal government steps in, which it’ll have to do, somebody in D.C. will run the numbers and discover IT TOO can’t cover those past vote purchases.

    • Rather than have 100mln hungry, really po’d, gray-haired VOTERS storming the streets, the Fed will step in and quietly inflate the heck out of the money supply. This is why I’ve said for years that no government entity will EVER default on a pension payment. When you get that $2000, or $6000, or $10000 check, it may only buy a loaf of bread and a half-tank of petrol, but you will absolutely get that check. If CoL increases are built into pension payouts, we go quickly from emulating Venezuela, to a replay of Wiemar, as the Fed is forced to not only increase the money supply monthly, but increase the rate of the increase monthly, so it can function by living in the float.

      • Why doesn’t the fed buy the worthless social security bonds issued by congress and monetize them into the stock market. Winners all around!

      • Ray, much doom and gloom about the stock market and economy tanking, esp on this blog, but I contend it is in the best interest of our govt to assure civility and status quo is maintained. And as you say, inflation may occur but obligations will be met. The last thing any government wants is a full on rebellion. We saw how the fed took control after the 2008-2009 banking crisis and pumped money wherever it was needed. I have to believe a similar remedy will occur the next downturn happens. I also believe crypto currency will somehow become part of the next solution to the next financial-economic crisis. We’ll see, huh.

      • Robert, the Keynesians hope to “manage” us out of our crisis. Unfortunately, they’ve only succeeded in managing us into it and deepening the abyss. At this point in time, they remind me of the beat-cop in the parade scene from the movie “Animal House” (or the purser from “5th Element”) who stands up and says: “Remain calm. Everything is under control…” until he is mowed down by the panicking crowd.

        Washington has been whining for 25 years that “we need a balanced budget amendment.” I’ve been saying for 25 years: That is not a solution. We don’t need a balanced budget, we need a “surplus” budget, so the budget surplus can be applied to pay down the debt. THEN CONgress needs to stop spending money on stupid stuff, and actually pay the debt down. Gingrich did a wonderful job of giving Mr. Clinton a budget surplus, then discovered that given a surplus, the “damn Republicans” would spend as much like drunken sailors as the “damn Democrats.”

        We have a debt crisis. At this point in time, there are only two likely solutions to that debt crisis:

        1. Repudiation
        2. Hyperinflation

        Mr. Trump has a background in economics & finance and knows this very well — actually tossed it into mediaspace during one of his lesser-publicized campaign speeches and caught considerable flack for “saying such horrible things” (he never mentioned it again…)

      • JDN, “Social Security” is a tax. When FDR initiated the program, the Republicans sued on the basis of its constitutionality. The USSC ruled in 1936 or ’37 (I saw the overview many years ago, but can’t remember which) that a “compulsory retirement fund” was unconstitutional, but that a “tax” which returned an “insurance-like dividend” was not. This is why survivors don’t get their ancestors’ FICA principal returned when they die (and BTW was also the basis for the USSC ruling on the ACA.)

        There never was an actual “lock box” or a “Social Security Fund.” FICA has always (at least since 1937) gone into the General Fund, for spending and disbursal as any other tax. The “lock box” is, and has ever been, just a ledger entry. i.e. there’s nothing to invest or sell to the Fed, or to anyone else…

  10. Gallup puts the homosexual population of the U.S. at 4.2%. I personally think this is a bit low, because homosexuality worldwide has been at essentially a fixed level of 6.0% for the past 7000 years. While mainstreaming the sexual ideology of the homosexual “community” may make its practice more-acceptable to muddle-headed youth, I don’t personally believe it would “suck converts into the fold” of homosexuality, as if it were a religion. Its practitioners have been at a static 6% throughout known history for a reason.

    I suspect Mr. Putin, rather than caring about the Russians’ sexual proclivities, simply doesn’t want to invite or have to deal with the social discord and upheaval the public display of nontrad sexual lifestyles would bring. I guarantee he’s read Sun Tzu, and knows the best way to win a battle is to not fight that battle…

    • Chemicals (gender disruptions) from flame retardants,fax and cash register receipts is sending rate > 50% for the young.

      • It may be that relaxed standards of sexuality expectations are showing bisexuality is more common than thought and exclusively homosexual or heterosexual are the much smaller exception.

        The older generations are maintaining their more rigid views but the younger generations just may be more open to it.

        Ive always contended the natural occurrence of homosexuality was natures birth control but social and religious taboos changed the balance of natural inclinations because wars and armies(that were often identified by religious affiliations) needed more people and particularly men to show off a nations-religions strength, hence the taboo on homosexual relationships throughout the centuries of warring nations.

        The whole transgender issue is the condition that is less than half a percent, but it seems to be having the biggest impact on rewriting the social views and norms not to mention, standards of modesty. Gays and lesbians from the initial days of the gay rights movement don’t like being lumped in with transgenders as the whole gay rights movement was spawned by the disgust that gays and lesbians secretly wanted to be the other sex and that wasnt true…it was the old stereotype of homosexuals. Now the transgenders are lumped in with the lesbians and gays and many in that community dont like it. Its the antithesis of what began the whole gay rights movement from the early 50s to Stonewall to now.

      • Endocrine disruptors at work… The fish downstream of the waste water treatment plant in Boulder, CO has extremely high female fish populations with many dual genders… They know when school is in session as it disrupts nature in the river, with the all the birth control.

  11. I don’t much believe in “coincidence.” That said, once is an incident, twice MIGHT be coincident. If it happens again, it is, well, y’all be the judge…

    “Sex” and “violent death” sells… EBM.

    Does the HH-4 data take into consideration the huge difference between married households then and now? If it doesn’t differentiate, then ISTM the numbers for household size would be skewed by the much greater number (by percentage) of married households in 1961…

  12. So I had a dream about some group trying to disrupt the transportation infrastructure the 25th and did not know anything about the refinery fires.

  13. Hi George,
    I love reading your work and especially enjoy your amazingly sharp wit! I’m sure many don’t catch it, but I get every snip!! Keep up the great work. I also follow Coast to Coast AM, and never miss your occasional appearances.
    You’re very excellent, all around, but I know you already realize that. Simply confirmation.
    Keep up the tremendous work George!!
    FYI, in case you didn’t see this.
    Follows suit of what you’ve been saying all along.

    All the Best! and Cheers!!

    John Kiehlbauch

    https://www.democracynow.org/2017/12/20/broadcast_exclusive_jill_stein_says_senate

  14. President Trump, a self proclaimed germophobe, still gave the French Prsident a double kiss because he cares about others feelings more than his own. Does that sound like the actions of a racist? NO, as Kanye West will confirm.

    • ???!

      No, in my mind he’s an opportunist – beware the man who has no value system other than what makes himself ‘feel good’.

      • Please re-read original post. His life is a business model, & based on over a year of trying to hang Pesident Trump, the swampites have found nothing. He conducted his business morally & ethically untarnished over many years. What would you look like if they investigated you for 1 1/2 years?

      • A year and a half? Is that an eternity, or does it just feel like that?

        Personally, I’m a bit dull, stubborn, and believe that you have to try, and succeed in honoring the humanity of others. If you have the resources of Donald Trump, just think of the great things one could do. Instead, pfftt!

        If you think that ‘New York real estate values’ should be held in high esteem – go for it – just don’t expect most people to agree.

  15. Talking about $$$ and pensions…why not allow Socialist Bernie to bring in his $ 15 per hour wage..and Start with ALL federal employees including CONgress to be paid THAT …civil service $ 15 per hour and the only raise you get is tied to inflation just like Social Security…One class of workers at the federal level and ….you are on your own in the ‘private sector’…since NO lobbyist would be around to ‘sweeten the federal pot’ for themselves….this would be a start….and maybe the ‘swamp of millionaires’ would LEAVE DC on their own since the ‘swill of the trough’ would be dry

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