Looking Toward The Next High

[pbrower2a]

(05-31-2018, 10:57 PM)TheNomad Wrote:

(05-31-2018, 07:41 PM)Tim Randal Walker Wrote: Perhaps we are experiencing an unusually mild 4T?

I've been saying this a lot.  The events of the Crisis IMO have happened.  We had wars, we had the economic theft, we had massive upheaval with families and individuals losing everything and moving in with grandparents, etc.  Some can't accept that it was "enough" to be the actual crisis.  I say it was just about enough and if they want more, let them have it but leave me out

Oh and earlier I told a very personal story of ONE family who essentially mirrors Grapes of Wrath scenario of the Great Depression with an extended family in a loaded vehicle traveling to parts unknown just hoping to survive.  Whether that actually happened to anyone posting here, I do not know.  But it really happened to a lot of people.  I've not called it GDII because I didn't want to be severe.  But the early 21st century was truly a time of destitution, humiliation and national upheaval.  I think we do not know the magnitude because media does not cover it.  We know there is currently a homeless epidemic.  But we never hear from the news WHY these people are homeless.  Most of them lost everything in the crash and fell down hard.  But no one talks about that.  And there are homeless camps just as their were in GDI.  Except they are not concentrated on the Washington Mall but scattered throughout every major city in America.

If someone brought them all together, the Mall would be quite full.

Or, for that matter, places already known to be grossly unsatisfying. They might be cheap places to live, but that's about the only virtue. The hick hometown that lost its industry, and you might be able to get a job cleaning motel rooms or checking out videos. If things go bad enough there might be farm labor.

This began before Donald Trump, and some of it relates to the de-industrialization of American society. The halcyon time for America was when anyone with a good work ethic and a little integrity could get industrial work that allowed one a middle-class income. People who wanted a little more out of life than eight hours of drudgery in the plant could get a high-school diploma and become a clerk or a college degree and be some sort of professional. College was cheap -- less expensive than a hobby such as modifying cars to make them more racy.

Now that the industrial jobs have vanished, we have more people competing for what is left. We have college degrees expensively obtained -- for doing jobs that used to require only a high-school education. If you live in the fewer places that have the well-paying jobs, the boom-towns (or now, urban areas like Silicon Valley or greater Washington DC) you pay exorbitant rent. Unless you are at the top of your game, the rent is so high that you might live just as well doing agricultural labor in the Midwest. Something is wrong.

Of course, Big Business has found that profit comes not so much from efficiency (although it demands such from workers just to keep costs down) as it does from being able to gouge the customer. Rent is obvious enough, and Donald Trump exemplifies the landlord. We are also seeing spikes in highway tolls, fuel, utilities. medical costs, health insurance... monopoly and near-monopoly with a captive market is the optimum for profit so long as one is willing to dispense with competition and the public sector.

I am  finding that the very things that have made me human are detriments where I am in this time and place. What is left? Maybe I can simply wallow in a collection of electronic entertainments.

To get along with the new America it helps to be stupid. Then you can be happy. Entertainment, advertising, politics, and most work seems made for morons.