[Loki]

I think resentment has less to do with the actual socio economic status one finds oneself and more to do if you are on the ascendancy or decline.

This is very true. Our national mythology is premised on the notion of upward mobility. But that's not the experience of an increasing number of Americans.

A big part of resentment is happening when folks refuse to re calibrate to a lower standard of living

You're completely ignoring the complex of public policies that have encouraged the crushing of what Greer calls the wage class, though I prefer the old-fashioned term working class. The economic decline/stagnation of the working class isn't a matter of hard resource limits (yet). It's largely a matter of public policy. Free trade agreements, mass immigration, the government response to the financial crisis, tax policy, disinvestment in public education, etc., etc., etc.

Public policy has been overwhelmingly geared towards helping those who already have the means to help themselves, with the result (whether intentional or incidental) of creating a bifurcated class structure, one with a steep upward trajectory, the other circling the drain. People notice these things.

I'm not arguing that all the problems in working-class America are solely the result of public policy. There are deeper cultural problems, mostly related to the dissolution of the family and of local community, but I would argue that public policy has played a central role in the economic woes that plague working-class Americans.

I personally think most Americans are horribly spoiled about a set of expectations they feel they deserve. Too much expectation, entitlement, resentments and sense of deserving.

And here's where I have to resort to a logical fallacy, ad hominem. You preach, but you don't practice. It's easy for someone in your position to say other people should reduce their expectations and get used to being poor. But ain't no one gonna listen when you don't seem to believe it yourself.

Good Luck America! I hope Donald Trump helps you with your resentment problem! Ha ha ha ha ha

My primary hope for Trump is that he will precipitate crisis and chaos in both parties. The hogs have grown too fat and happy at the trough. The Washington consensus needs their Brexit moment.

[SeaGypsy]

If all the money disappeared overnight, planes quit flying etc Ibon is going to be poor in style from what I've seen.

[Quinny]

Ignorance fits better than resentment.

[Ibon]

If all the money disappeared overnight, planes quit flying etc Ibon is going to be poor in style from what I've seen.

Cows and coffee wont cut it without the cabins.

[Ibon]

A big part of resentment is happening when folks refuse to re calibrate to a lower standard of living

You're completely ignoring the complex of public policies that have encouraged the crushing of what Greer calls the wage class, though I prefer the old-fashioned term working class. The economic decline/stagnation of the working class isn't a matter of hard resource limits (yet). It's largely a matter of public policy. Free trade agreements, mass immigration, the government response to the financial crisis, tax policy, disinvestment in public education, etc., etc., etc.

Public policy has been overwhelmingly geared towards helping those who already have the means to help themselves, with the result (whether intentional or incidental) of creating a bifurcated class structure, one with a steep upward trajectory, the other circling the drain. People notice these things.

I'm not arguing that all the problems in working-class America are solely the result of public policy. There are deeper cultural problems, mostly related to the dissolution of the family and of local community, but I would argue that public policy has played a central role in the economic woes that plague working-class Americans.

I came up with an analogy years ago that might be fitting here. When leaves turn red in the fall they do not actually turn red. What happens is that the chlorophyll in the leaves breaks down and the green disappears revealing the red pigment that was present all along.

This is what is happening in our economic system. The green (money) wealth is receding and revealing the red that was there all along. During the ascendancy of Americas growth and progress of the past 100 years you had exploitative government , greedy corporations and a financial elite. Manipulation and control and greed have always ruled. This is the red pigment that was always there. Few fought against and few had resentment to this because there was enough wealth in the system (chlorophyll) to provide your average exploited consumer to still have a house and car and quite comfortable life style. Now that the green (wealth) is receding suddenly the elite, the government, the corporations, all the power structures are being revealed in their true colors. Everyone is now resentful of inequities, pissed off at Wall street, angry at corporations, banks wallstreet etc. Isn't it always the case that the red pigment, the power structure, always present, becomes exposed in the autumn before the winter of any civilization?

I have news for all of you that somehow imagine that chaos and breaking down the house of cards will somehow rid our system of these evil parasites, the elite we rally against, the big mad corporations. etc. They are not going to go away. During the entire history of human civilization humans organize themselves around a controlling hierarchy of self serving government, rich merchants and up until recently religious institutions that control.

For many many decades Americans left these controlling entities largely alone because the system was flush with green chlorophyll. Now that it is receding the red color is revealed. The selfish and greed of power, governments and corporations and all the rest.

We will witness this century a chaos, look back to the French Revolution when chaos ruled once the heads of aristocracy fell into the baskets below the guillotine.

But will anything really change? No. And this time around I am going to guess that besides some turbulence and social outcry we really wont see the heads rolling. A few scapegoats will be displayed on the alter of justice but our global system is just too complex and interwoven and the powers to be are not going to break down allowing chaos to rule. This is a narrative that many of us wish for but I don't see it happening.

When I say that Americans will need to learn to re calibrate I mean just that. No amount of screaming over political incompetence or social injustice or rich elites or wall street bankers or evil corporations are going to result in wealth being re distributed to members of the declining middle class. No, sorry folks this is not how it will play out. What will happen is that eventually our population will re calibrate to a lower standard of living. That is just how it is going to be. You can start today already focusing on the required frugality, getting by with less, escaping the golden cage of high mortgage, new car loans and all the rest. Start packing it in living with other family members.

The truth in the end of the day is that there is still plenty of chlorophyll around for Americans to enjoy compared to their fellow global citizens.

There are limits. In times of constraints the greatest liability in our modern civilization are a high consuming middle class.

THe greatest negative environmental impact on the planet today are the hgh consuming middle class. They are the most vulnerable sector of our society. The very wealthy and those in control will not be affected.

Think about something. I will compare two American families

The first is a blue collar worker from the rust belt who lost his job and has become a meth addict and will rot in the corner of his delapitdated home while his kids are eating mac and cheese for the next 10 years. .

The second is a silicon valley exec who flies his well educated family to Panama to visit Mount Totumas in order to watch birds and see howler monkeys

Which of these two American families has the greater impact on the planets dwindling resources?

Which sector of our global society will experience the greatest contraction in the decades ahead?. It will be further declines of the middle class, the largest consuming sector of society.

Most Americans need to learn to re calibrate. Refusing to do so will put such constraints on the little freedom remaining that you risk the fate of the meth addict.

These are truthful words but not inspiring.

The proof will be in the pudding.... Let's assume that Donald Trump does win. All of this populism and harnessed rage of disenfranchised Americans.......what happens afterwards when the promised prosperity fails to return? When all those enraged Americans feel shafted by Donald's Art of the Deal?

And here's where I have to resort to a logical fallacy, ad hominem. You preach, but you don't practice. It's easy for someone in your position to say other people should reduce their expectations and get used to being poor. But ain't no one gonna listen when you don't seem to believe it yourself.

I don't preach. And I dont care if anyone listens or not. I am only stating whats going down here. I withdrew and went chameleon 10 years ago when I sold my business. I am in an insignificant corner of the globe in a country that is not really on the radar. It is my choice with the resources I have to have removed myself from the American landscape. It offers me a perspective standing outside looking in.

And yes I can afford to perch a bit above the fray and watch. I could have decided to buy a bigger house, a bigger car, I could have gotten myself deep into debt chasing the American dream. I didn't, I withdrew and took with me a little bag of gold. Those were conscious choices I made. And I also know I am not above the fray. As Sea Gypsy mentioned my little house of cards after all depends on those silicon valley execs wanting to provide their children with educational travel.

Quite a pickle I find myself in, living off the dwindling discretionary excesses of a doomed middle class. My perch is pretty wobbly.

[KaiserJeep]

Well said, Ibon, except it's "fray" (a noisy brawl) rather than "frey" (not a word, other than the name of the Norse god of peace).

I value your perspective of an American outside of America. I'll be retiring inside the country if (sigh) the wife ever gets tired of working. She just put in six hours on Sunday, saying only "making up time for the two weeks off we just took in Wisconsin". Which was actually a good time, other than the first two days which were the services and funeral of my Father's second wife, who fought off cancer for years, and still survived for two weeks after she gave up eating. She was a tough lady, and I'll miss her, as will her 56 grandchildren and great grandchildren.

I saw several very nice properties, and we'll either be able to buy one very nice house or two average ones based on the incredible amounts of money being paid for homes here in Silicon Valley.

If left to myself I might find a remote locale as you have done, but after 41 years married to her I can't really do anything except agree to live within driving distance to the daughter and grandchildren, in a beach house which I have come to understand represents "success and happiness" to her (a former Nantucket resident, who now only has a home there in the forest 1/4 mile from the beach). Only fair, she relocated three times for the sake of my high tech career.

I have come to believe that the "oil crash" will be ever-so-slow and that my grandkids will be the ones coping. Known oil reserves are 58 years at present rates of consumption - and with two major variables like currency inflation and EROEI (due to advancing recovery tech) I hesitate to call it any closer than 30-60 years before the effective end of the oil. There is room for unbridled optimism - I have lived longer than that, and I remember all of the jet age and all of the space age. The chance that the humans will perish on this planet is so vanishingly small that I no longer even care to have that particular debate.

Keep those comments coming from Mount Totumas Cloud Forest.

[onlooker]

"If you're a Republican and not a member of the Leisure class or at the very least Executive corporate, you're on the wrong deck sonny, and need to get back down to Steerage where you belong." So true, and it shows the degree of mental manipulation Americans have been subjected to. In carefully crafted messages mainly white religious folk have been lured to think the GOP is with them and they are with the GOP. Every last bit of the appeal of the GOP is about exclusion, how some who were more privileged have the right to stay so. Thus, no taxes, no cooperation, what is mine is mine period. Even while the real Republican party truly only caters to the super rich and Corporations. Thus excluding most Americans. I also like this quote " I am a US citizen as well of course. I am being somewhat flippant with this post and am setting a bit of a tone here to help folks see how much of this resentment is petty whining by an over spoiled society. ". How few Americans and how little Americans understand what lies beyond its borders. Wretched Abject Grinding poverty of the kind NO American has to endure. Destitute beyond what we care even to imagine. No Social Safety Net, no clean water, no health care, no job, no decent shelter. That is what we are talking about. So yes we are spoiled brats and have no right to be resentful.

[Plantagenet]

"If you're a Republican and not a member of the Leisure class or at the very least Executive corporate, you're on the wrong deck sonny, and need to get back down to Steerage where you belong." So true, and it shows the degree of mental manipulation Americans have been subjected to. In carefully crafted messages mainly white religious folk have been lured to think the GOP is with them and they are with the GOP. Every last bit of the appeal of the GOP is about exclusion, how some who were more privileged have the right to stay so. Thus, no taxes, no cooperation, what is mine is mine period. Even while the real Republican party truly only caters to the super rich and Corporations. Thus excluding most Americans. I also like this quote " I am a US citizen as well of course. I am being somewhat flippant with this post and am setting a bit of a tone here to help folks see how much of this resentment is petty whining by an over spoiled society. ". How few Americans and how little Americans understand what lies beyond its borders. Wretched Abject Grinding poverty of the kind NO American has to endure. Destitute beyond what we care even to imagine. No Social Safety Net, no clean water, no health care, no job, no decent shelter. That is what we are talking about. So yes we are spoiled brats and have no right to be resentful.

[Plantagenet]

I have come to believe that the "oil crash" will be ever-so-slow and that my grandkids will be the ones coping. Known oil reserves are 58 years at present rates of consumption - and with two major variables like currency inflation and EROEI (due to advancing recovery tech) I hesitate to call it any closer than 30-60 years before the effective end of the oil. There is room for unbridled optimism -

The idea of peak oil is currently waaaaay out of style, even here at peak oil.com. Still, I must say something in defense of the peak oil theory.

You are right about the known oil reserves. However, thats not the key issue in peak oil. The key issue is production rates. Once the production rate is less then the consumption rate, the current oil glut will end, and we'll mostly likely be off to the races again towards peak oil. The known huge conventional fields are going to peak one by one, and be hard to replace. Ghawar in KSA, just for an example, puts out 6 million bbls per day. If Ghawar peaks tomorrow, that oil production will quickly disappear, and the world will be in world of hurt. Take away a few more conventional fields, and we'll be at peak oil, no matter how much shale gets drilled. Ghawar and other legacy fields are likely to peak one after another in the next several years. I hope, like you, that peak oil doesn't happen for 30-60 more years. But I wouldn't count on it.

Cheers!

[Ibon]

Well said, Ibon, except it's "fray" (a noisy brawl) rather than "frey" (not a word, other than the name of the Norse god of peace).

Never to old to improve your spelling. thanks

I value your perspective of an American outside of America. I'll be retiring inside the country if (sigh) the wife ever gets tired of working. She just put in six hours on Sunday, saying only "making up time for the two weeks off we just took in Wisconsin". Which was actually a good time, other than the first two days which were the services and funeral of my Father's second wife, who fought off cancer for years, and still survived for two weeks after she gave up eating. She was a tough lady, and I'll miss her, as will her 56 grandchildren and great grandchildren.

What else to do for us aging baby boomers but to retrench in rural off the radar places. I chose Panama because my career was over 20 years in Latin America. This has become somewhat my turf. I can negotiate these days better here then say Wisconsin where most folks would see me as a freak since I smell of internationalism which in rural America isn't all that popular. An American who speaks foreign languages and left to live overseas is somehow a non patriot for most Americans. This is where uneducated patriotism gets you. I am not complaining. It is what it is.

I think somewhere around Madison Wisconsin in some rural location would be a great place to retreat.

I also agree that this crash is going real slow motion. We wont see much in our lifetimes. Our children will adapt to a more pinched economy. Their children are going to hit the worst of this rough patch. Of course there is always the possibility of environmental feedbacks like pandemics or climate change accelerating to punctuate this slow attrition and speed things up but you cant really predict this.

[Ibon]

And here's where I have to resort to a logical fallacy, ad hominem. You preach, but you don't practice. It's easy for someone in your position to say other people should reduce their expectations and get used to being poor. But ain't no one gonna listen when you don't seem to believe it yourself.

Loki, your younger. Listen to KJ, retreating to Wisconsin. Pops, who withdrew his particpation on this board and is retreating into his own private retirement world. Listen to what I am writing, an aging obsolete hypocrite baby boomer milking dollars from the very sector of society I see as doomed.

Our generation was complicit in aggravating human overshoot. Our generation is doing nothing in their older age but retreating in whatever peaceful haven ones resources can provide.

John Michael Greet is doing nothing more or less than this as well.

There is no wise sage among the aging who can provide any clues as to our civilizations pathway moving forward through the correction back down through carrying capacity in the next several generations.

This journey will be undertaken by each succeeding generation in their ability to adapt to ever tightening constraints.

One of the deeper levels of maturity one can reach in adapting to increasing instability is to stop completely this orientation of trying to figure things out. Just move with the times and have the courage to accept a future of less wealth.

The epitome of cowardice is to live in fear. To buy into the message that government is out to get you. To buy ammunition and guns. To dig a hole and hunker down like some rodent (Cog is this boards mascot of this).

I see so much of that shit happening in the collective it makes me laugh and feel sad at the level of cowardice I see in the American population at large. It is mostly what I call The Posturing of the Fearful. There is really very little spine behind all the noise.

Get out there and live your life, stop complaining about a corrupt system and find peace and balance in your lifes personal journey.

What else is there?

[Ibon]

There are very few Latin Americans living like fearful rodents even though they have been socialized with more poverty and less economic opportunity. It is exactly because of this that they are perhaps more adaptive to a future of less stability.

Hey Americans, think about it!

[Tanada]

There are very few Latin Americans living like fearful rodents even though they have been socialized with more poverty and less economic opportunity. It is exactly because of this that they are perhaps more adaptive to a future of less stability.

Hey Americans, think about it!

What the poor lack for in material resources they make up for in a cold hard facts kind of world view that is sorely lacking in the wealthier classes of people. To quote an old truism, "Not knowing where or when you will get your next meal has a way of focusing the mind on the now."

[Ibon]

There are very few Latin Americans living like fearful rodents even though they have been socialized with more poverty and less economic opportunity. It is exactly because of this that they are perhaps more adaptive to a future of less stability.

Hey Americans, think about it!

What the poor lack for in material resources they make up for in a cold hard facts kind of world view that is sorely lacking in the wealthier classes of people. To quote an old truism, "Not knowing where or when you will get your next meal has a way of focusing the mind on the now."

\\

I am pretty convinced that the rise of popularity of Donald is because of a deep fear among many Americans that outside our borders is a global population that is hungry, determined, ambitious, rapacious, hard working, and aggressive to advance and progress. The very Americans embracing Donald's message are uneducated and this is no coincidence. It is not because they are to dumb to see through Donald's false promises. It is more because they know they live in a world where outside our borders there are folks who are smarter and more driven. This is the foreign component they fear.

There is a domestic component as well. For a significant sector of the US population there is the sentiment that inside our borders there are recent immigrants hungry and ambitious and on the rise, people of color demanding more access to privilege, undocumented hordes clambering for rights of citizenship and legal residency. A significant sector of the US population recognizes that these folks are ambitious and demanding and willing and able to progress and advance. It really at the end of the day has less to do about racism and nationalism and more to do about feeling intimidated by "others" who are honed and driven with more ambition and resiliency.

When a country is young and rising one embraces competition whole heartedly. When a country is satiated with privilege the primary sentiment is defensive and insecurity rises. Donald has tapped into this.

The paradox is that Americans who feel intimidated by this movement of an ambitious world demanding the same access to privilege see these new arrivals, whether they be foreign or domestic, as somehow un American when in fact what is driving this desire for access is actually very American.

I also believe that Donald will fail and that he doesn't really want the job. He is at the end of the day a product of the decadent privilege. He doesn't want to wake up at 5am and work until late into the night. He doesn't want to serve America as president. He is far too spoiled. He is designing his own exit.

I am wondering the psychological impact on those supporters of Donald when he sees Donald exposed as nothing more than a big hot air balloon of cowardice ? ?

[SeaGypsy]

Yep Ibon, to all that. Great summary of why we are going to be seeing Hillary mouthing off & propping up the status quo of the NWO & agenda 21 for the next 2 terms, great...

You didn't say, but could have, the Donald isn't probably too keen on his final TV moment resembling JFKs.

[Newfie]

Ibon,

I'm not so sure he will fail.

I agree he doesn't want to be a TRADITIONAL President, but rather a new kind of President. He wants to set the tone, to be the PR man, to make the grand gesture. The polar opposite of Hillary.

While I agree both resentment and downward trajectory play a role that is not all. Hillary represents status quo, and lots of folks just hate the status quo even if they do well. They don't trust it and are scared of it. They might do anything to escape four more years of Obama.

[Ibon]

I am not discussing Hillary because I am staying on the topic of this thread. She is of course Donald's best chance of somehow making it as Newfie mentions.

Hillary as president will be a battle won but the war lost eventually. She is pumping a false dream as much as Donald.

And this opens up another interesting topic. Events, external human agency, human overshoot, a hungry world of rapacious humans, the physical consequences that their appetite reaps on the planet, Is the big macro picture playing out. One of the most interesting consequences of this is the ability of real physical phenomena to break existing polarities.

The political polarity in America today will not hold as both parties drive themselves into irrelevancy. We can watch this happen increasingly in the immediate short to mid term.

Keep the big macro picture intact in your mind. It is a shadow driving things, don't get too caught up in the personalities of the moment.

I am preaching to the choir with many of you, some of you need to hear this though

[KaiserJeep]

Just for the record: We have HAD eight years of Democrat nonsense already. Hillary will not change this, as she absolutely stands for open borders, wealth redistribution, the coddling of incompetent teachers, the caving in to foreign interests, and the continued destruction of our Healthcare systems.

Donald Trump is running on the resentment of all these Democrat policies. It has nothing to do with anybody outside this country. Closing our borders to an uncontrolled, unlimited, and ever growing stream of illegal immigrants - even illegal criminal immigrants - is what this is about, but only as a first step. Then we resume legal immigration but with Biometric ID, full DNA records, criminal background checks, and everybody gets an SSN.

I have sat on enough juries here in San Jose to understand what the problem of violence is in our streets. I remember the first almost 30 years ago, when a fine upstanding illegal immigrant Asian murdered three people with a baseball bat and a 9mm pistol. I remember the one last year when a fine illegal immigrant from Sinaloa was rudely interrupted by the police as he was carving up his girlfriend. They were living in subsidized low income housing, on the dole, and both were supposedly studying English and getting job training, while they waited for Green Cards.

California has great climate and lousy politics that build resentment. Donald Trump is the anti-Democrat, and that is enough to win the election IMHO. Maybe the rest of you don't live in a place awash with easy money that attracts a criminal class, which divvies up territories. Here in San Jose we have Chinese gangs, Vietnamese gangs, Filipino gangs, Armenian gangs, and at least six varieties of Latino gangs, all at war all the time. Then you have the "white" suburbs, actually the refuge for anybody of any skin color who wants to live in peace.

Maybe it's not so apparent in other parts of the USA. But we have had decades of Democrats running California. Just as in Chicago, the murder capital of the USA, and Barack Obama's hometown. Or in Philidelphia, Watts, Harlem, Oakland, Washington DC, East St. Louis, New Orleans, etc. etc.

All Democratic administrations of long standing. All hellholes of racial violence.