[Ibon]

We may get complacent and lazy at times but when TSHTF we get moving.

How's that for projecting my internal dialog

I agree. Complacency and taking things for granted goes out the window. Everyone rallies when things tighten up. Actually, depression will also decline. All the slovenly indulgences stop. Life becomes more uncertain and more cherished. All that good stuff. Your stuff starts being cherished. Energy too ... What does this all mean? Only that we bite down and become more resilient DUE to the constraints.

Many feel that constraints and climate change and peak oil will cause collapse. I predict pretty much the opposite.

We actually are in sore need of limits.. After all, we became the species we are evolving with them. That is our default position. Not the anomaly of excess we have had the last hundred years or so.

[Ibon]

Kaiser is right about the oil and in general about the gross inequality related to resources and income. "Social & Economic Injustice
Socially and economically, we have created great disparities of wealth. A minority of the world's population (17%) consume most of the world's resources (80%), leaving almost 5 billion people to live on the remaining 20%."

http://worldcentric.org/conscious-livin ... -injustice

Here again this info proves my point. Those 5 billion are like some of my employees here earning $ 14 a day. Working a 10 hour day 6 days a week they earn $1.40 an hour. They are healthy, they laugh, they are strong. Remember I said that we have a flawed system but it is still very resilient. The inequity is a flaw but the very fact that 5 billion are persevering quite well is living proof that we can fall way down the energy curve and we will still be just fine.

[Newfie]

Ibon,
I tend to look on this subject in terms of 200-300 years.

As I’ve said elsewhere I do expect a general collapse; a slow general decline with bumps and jerks. How long it will take to reach our lower pulsation limit is extremely speculative.

On a shorter term basis of 50-100 years I kind of agree with your assessment. After that I think it is more bleak.

I do think there are some events that could cause a quicker decline of 10% to 20% in a few years. Bumps in the road down hill. I think we are due for a general financial collapse that could be of this magnitude. Perhaps an aggressive wheat rust or some such thing. Some sort of plague. These are vulnerabilities unique to our current situation.

Yes we can adapt, we here in the west live extravagent lifestyles and can comfortably with far less. But much of the world lives on our wheat and corn. And there is a fair bit of the world who has zero excess to whom even a moderate downturn will prove fatal. How the food distribution system is handled is critical, even if we continue to have excess there is no reason to think it will be distributed fairly.

Just way too many variables to be certain of much.

Except that our resources are finite. At some point, no matter how carefully we husband our resources some critical element will run out. We will be forced to live sustainable or not live at all.

But I think you know all this and I’m just rambling now.

Have a nice evening, enjoy. We are renting a car to tour Guadeloupe the next two days.

[dohboi]

Ibon "5 billion are persevering quite well"

Not if you count the bottom 2 billion or so in there.

WHO: 2.1 billion people lack safe drinking water...
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/rel ... ygiene/en/

Nearly a billion of are malnourished/going hungry

https://www.worldhunger.org/2015-world- ... tatistics/

http://www.fao.org/state-of-food-security-nutrition/en/

I could go on, but...

[dohboi]

KJ, it was vt who first brought up the WoP, so take it up with him. I agree that it fell far short of its stated goals, but that doesn't mean it had no effect at all.

[Cid_Yama]

No, KJ is wrong. Before LBJ, there was no Food Stamps, no Medicaid. The impact of those 2 programs was tremendous.

Imagine the world before. I saw both. Americans, especially American children, walking around, skin over bones. Mothers selling themselves just to feed their children.

There is a WWII movie with John Wayne that shows exactly that. (Except the mother didn't reflect the reality of someone going without food for the sake of their children.)

America is better than that.

People these days don't get that. People making clothes out of burlap sacks. Living in places that were like you see in the slums of Mexico City.

You have a choice. Stand up, or let them turn America back into that.

It's already started. Take a train across the south. You will see places you couldn't imagine existed in the US.

[Cid_Yama]

Yes, this was America. And it wasn't because of the Great Depression. It just brought attention to it. These people were living like this before and after.

Don't let them take us back there.

[vtsnowedin]

Mostly...what Newf and baha said...

vt, yes, 50 years ago LBJ's War on Poverty helped move things in the right direction, and many of those gains are still with us. More recent trends are not looking as promising, especially how things are shaping up under the current administration. It's also not particularly surprising that a government report would declare that the gov is doing a great job!

Compared to every other industrial society and many others we are not doing very well on most of these fronts.

Well yes a government report will tend to make the government look good so you have to take it with a large pinch of salt and read between the lines.
Of course that is the most recent thing published as the time lag between events and reports is considerable so it is looking at the status at the end of the Obama presidency. So far in the Trump presidency unemployment has gone down which should make all these statistics look better but with things like trade wars up in the air that might not last long.
My point is that the safety net is still quite strong not shredded as many keep asserting.
When you look at the numbers still in poverty and compare them with the numbers of Americans that abuse drugs to excess you can see a causal effect there for many of the poor. One parent on drugs will create a single parent family and impoverish all of them or in other words for every drug addict you end up with five poor people dependent on the government.

[Newfie]

There is a certain segment of the population who will look like that no matter what you do. I grew up in a very rural, backward, part of NJ. Few folks we’re poorer than us. But we had electricity and clean cloths even if the meals sometimes consisted of rice, just plain rice.

However there were folks on our street with no electricity, a well and an out house. And there was one down the road likewise. And one a mile beyond that. And a guy who live behind the pig farm who lived on bottle deposits. And a nice guy who would go on a wild bender about once a month. And a real fat guy who was a recluse in what seemed to be an abandoned house. Etc.

Food stamps and head start and the rest of the Great Society programs tried to do great things and they have real value. Yet there is just a certain segment of the population you can not reach. Downtown Philly has waves of young folks come through. All ratty looking in a their dirt. Relatively healthy young folks. Maybe they are doing drugs. Then there are the hard core street folks who just don’t want to engage society in the “normal” way.

[vtsnowedin]

There is a certain segment of the population who will look like that no matter what you do. I grew up in a very rural, backward, part of NJ. Few folks we’re poorer than us. But we had electricity and clean cloths even if the meals sometimes consisted of rice, just plain rice.

However there were folks on our street with no electricity, a well and an out house. And there was one down the road likewise. And one a mile beyond that. And a guy who live behind the pig farm who lived on bottle deposits. And a nice guy who would go on a wild bender about once a month. And a real fat guy who was a recluse in what seemed to be an abandoned house. Etc.

Food stamps and head start and the rest of the Great Society programs tried to do great things and they have real value. Yet there is just a certain segment of the population you can not reach. Downtown Philly has waves of young folks come through. All ratty looking in a their dirt. Relatively healthy young folks. Maybe they are doing drugs. Then there are the hard core street folks who just don’t want to engage society in the “normal” way.

You have neighborhoods whose residents are primarily the children of people who left the farms when machinery made them redundant to work on the assembly lines building cars or packing meat etc., that have now been made redundant again by robots on the line or the line moved to China. The primary employer in these communities is the government and the bulk of the income coming into the neighborhood is government checks of all kinds.Everybody lives off the benefit checks directly or indirectly by providing services to those who receive the checks. Unfortunately the liqueur stores and the drug dealers end up with the lions share of the money.

[Ibon]

Ibon "5 billion are persevering quite well"

Not if you count the bottom 2 billion or so in there.

WHO: 2.1 billion people lack safe drinking water...
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/rel ... ygiene/en/

Nearly a billion of are malnourished/going hungry

https://www.worldhunger.org/2015-world- ... tatistics/

http://www.fao.org/state-of-food-security-nutrition/en/

I could go on, but...

My line of argument here is one that you have also often made. None of this is evidence of human overshoot. It is evidence of a flawed system. Something as I said you often point out. We could all stop eating meat etc. etc. I am pointing out in these last posts that our modern civilization, with all its flaws, is resilient and will continue to be so regardless of climate change or peak oil. there will be constraints , the system will be flawed and not equitable. Will not be just. Even if 2 billion starve out of 9 or 10 billion in the future the glass would still be full of 8 billion well fed. That is not a die-off in my point of view.

[GHung]

Nefie wrote; "..... Then there are the hard core street folks who just don’t want to engage society in the “normal” way."

Maybe they don't see the point.

vtsnowedin wrote; ".... Everybody lives off the benefit checks directly or indirectly by providing services to those who receive the checks. Unfortunately the liqueur stores and the drug dealers end up with the lions share of the money."

Any citations for this; that the "lion's share" of government assistance goes to drugs and liquor stores? Any at all? Or is this just another case of personal bias against those on government assistance?

[vtsnowedin]

Nefie wrote; "..... Then there are the hard core street folks who just don’t want to engage society in the “normal” way."

Maybe they don't see the point.

vtsnowedin wrote; ".... Everybody lives off the benefit checks directly or indirectly by providing services to those who receive the checks. Unfortunately the liqueur stores and the drug dealers end up with the lions share of the money."

Any citations for this; that the "lion's share" of government assistance goes to drugs and liquor stores? Any at all? Or is this just another case of personal bias against those on government assistance?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3897210/
https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/disparities ... /index.htm
Not much data on the drug dealers as they tend not to confess what they are doing.
But look at it this way. Single mom with two kids has live in boyfriend that seldom has work. One of the adults smokes a pack a day and drinks enough beer or hard liqueur to make the beer and smokes budget $20 a day not counting any weed ,crack or lottery tickets. That's $600 a month. How much do you think is left for the kids sneakers?

[GHung]

Nefie wrote; "..... Then there are the hard core street folks who just don’t want to engage society in the “normal” way."

Maybe they don't see the point.

vtsnowedin wrote; ".... Everybody lives off the benefit checks directly or indirectly by providing services to those who receive the checks. Unfortunately the liqueur stores and the drug dealers end up with the lions share of the money."

Any citations for this; that the "lion's share" of government assistance goes to drugs and liquor stores? Any at all? Or is this just another case of personal bias against those on government assistance?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3897210/
https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/disparities ... /index.htm
Not much data on the drug dealers as they tend not to confess what they are doing.
But look at it this way. Single mom with two kids has live in boyfriend that seldom has work. One of the adults smokes a pack a day and drinks enough beer or hard liqueur to make the beer and smokes budget $20 a day not counting any weed ,crack or lottery tickets. That's $600 a month. How much do you think is left for the kids sneakers?

So, no, you don't have any citations to support your claims. Got it.

[Plantagenet]

...Single mom with two kids has live in boyfriend that seldom has work. One of the adults smokes a pack a day and drinks enough beer or hard liqueur to make the beer and smokes budget $20 a day not counting any weed ,crack or lottery tickets. That's $600 a month. How much do you think is left for the kids sneakers?

Thats a good reason to stop government assistance programs sending checks to poor people and instead have them send boxes of wholesome, healthy food to those in need.

We should do it for the children.

Cheers!

[vtsnowedin]

...Single mom with two kids has live in boyfriend that seldom has work. One of the adults smokes a pack a day and drinks enough beer or hard liqueur to make the beer and smokes budget $20 a day not counting any weed ,crack or lottery tickets. That's $600 a month. How much do you think is left for the kids sneakers?

Thats a good reason to stop government assistance programs sending checks to poor people and instead have them send boxes of wholesome, healthy food to those in need.

We should do it for the children.
Cheers!

It's hard to wear a box of food to school.

[dohboi]

P wrote: "good reason to stop ... sending checks to poor people"

On the other hand:

Give the poor money

https://www.economist.com/node/16693323

These schemes give stipends and food to the poorest if they meet certain conditions, such as that their children attend school, or their babies are vaccinated...

...The programmes have spread because they work. They cut poverty. They improve income distribution. And they do so cheaply.

But note that distributing cash and providing food and other services are not mutually exclusive. But most studies find that, in spite of certain widespread memes to the contrary, nearly all the time the poor know the best thing to use money on, but it is good to match these programs with other services and some conditions.

[Newfie]

There is a certain segment of the population who will look like that no matter what you do. I grew up in a very rural, backward, part of NJ. Few folks we’re poorer than us. But we had electricity and clean cloths even if the meals sometimes consisted of rice, just plain rice.

However there were folks on our street with no electricity, a well and an out house. And there was one down the road likewise. And one a mile beyond that. And a guy who live behind the pig farm who lived on bottle deposits. And a nice guy who would go on a wild bender about once a month. And a real fat guy who was a recluse in what seemed to be an abandoned house. Etc.

Food stamps and head start and the rest of the Great Society programs tried to do great things and they have real value. Yet there is just a certain segment of the population you can not reach. Downtown Philly has waves of young folks come through. All ratty looking in a their dirt. Relatively healthy young folks. Maybe they are doing drugs. Then there are the hard core street folks who just don’t want to engage society in the “normal” way.

You have neighborhoods whose residents are primarily the children of people who left the farms when machinery made them redundant to work on the assembly lines building cars or packing meat etc., that have now been made redundant again by robots on the line or the line moved to China. The primary employer in these communities is the government and the bulk of the income coming into the neighborhood is government checks of all kinds.Everybody lives off the benefit checks directly or indirectly by providing services to those who receive the checks. Unfortunately the liqueur stores and the drug dealers end up with the lions share of the money.

VT,
There wasn’t a farm within 20 miles of us. These folks had lived this way since God knows when. You really have no idea of what my area was like.

[vtsnowedin]

There is a certain segment of the population who will look like that no matter what you do. I grew up in a very rural, backward, part of NJ. Few folks we’re poorer than us. But we had electricity and clean cloths even if the meals sometimes consisted of rice, just plain rice.

However there were folks on our street with no electricity, a well and an out house. And there was one down the road likewise. And one a mile beyond that. And a guy who live behind the pig farm who lived on bottle deposits. And a nice guy who would go on a wild bender about once a month. And a real fat guy who was a recluse in what seemed to be an abandoned house. Etc.

Food stamps and head start and the rest of the Great Society programs tried to do great things and they have real value. Yet there is just a certain segment of the population you can not reach. Downtown Philly has waves of young folks come through. All ratty looking in a their dirt. Relatively healthy young folks. Maybe they are doing drugs. Then there are the hard core street folks who just don’t want to engage society in the “normal” way.

You have neighborhoods whose residents are primarily the children of people who left the farms when machinery made them redundant to work on the assembly lines building cars or packing meat etc., that have now been made redundant again by robots on the line or the line moved to China. The primary employer in these communities is the government and the bulk of the income coming into the neighborhood is government checks of all kinds.Everybody lives off the benefit checks directly or indirectly by providing services to those who receive the checks. Unfortunately the liqueur stores and the drug dealers end up with the lions share of the money.

VT,
There wasn’t a farm within 20 miles of us. These folks had lived this way since God knows when. You really have no idea of what my area was like.

What about the pig farm the guy lived behind?
What did everybody else do for a living including your folks?
I've shoveled my share of horse and cow manure so know a thing or two about growing up poor. It wasn't the pine barons of New Jersey but then you didn't have forty below zero or six feet of snow on the ground.