Here is what I see happening in this economy

[KCIndy]

Nothing will change the fact that we are a nation of 300+ million people, most of whom are literate and educated, living on a massive chunk of land that is filled with natural resources, beautiful vacation and entertainment locations, cultural hotspots and an infrastructure to pull them all together. In that regard, we are a peculiar country. At this time, there is no other country as large as us, with such a diverse geography, economy, and population.

Hmm. Sounds an awful lot like a description of the Roman Empire, circa 117 A.D.

[LibForestPaul]

Hmm. Sounds an awful lot like a description of the Roman Empire, circa 117 A.D.

Soviet union had more natural resources, people, and land. It is now gone.

[Henry Rogue]

A long grind does scare me more than a sudden crash. Maybe the young Generation can see hope in their future. I think older Generations staring retirement in the face and are unprepared, are looking at a stark reality. Some will make the best of it many will not.

[KCIndy]

Soviet union had more natural resources, people, and land. It is now gone.

Greece... Rome.... the Mongols... Britain... Russia/USSR...

History is littered with empires considered "too big to fail." There is absolutely no reason to claim the U.S. is any different.

[Carson]

Yes. Your one of us.

Kind of makes you wonder why they would continue on this path to destruction. Then you come across something like this on Fark and it all comes into focus.

During this global economic meltdown Ferrari have registered a) A record LOW number of sales in 2012 or b) A record HIGH?


The story leading to the Fark headline above;

http://www.shortlist.com/style/ferra...7318-car-sales


The fark comments;

http://www.fark.com/comments/7602479...-A-record-HIGH

[Carson]

I don't even think it will crumble. I think we'll endure periods of wealth transfers. I think we'll see other nations experience faster growth and more dramatic standard of living increases than we do, but I do not believe that we will regress. Nothing will change the fact that we are a nation of 300+ million people, most of whom are literate and educated, living on a massive chunk of land that is filled with natural resources, beautiful vacation and entertainment locations, cultural hotspots and an infrastructure to pull them all together. In that regard, we are a peculiar country. At this time, there is no other country as large as us, with such a diverse geography, economy, and population. Much as some want to denigrate our outlook as a nation, we have a uniquely stable foundation. We might not grow rapidly, but we'll advance, slowly but surely.

I suppose we'll do all right if we step aside and quietly let the corporations loot the resources with the aid of their illegal labor.

Speaking globally of course.

[pacelli]

That frog in the pot of warm water wasn't armed to the teeth. The former "middle class", however, are. They aren't buying guns and ammunition in record numbers so they can let the gov buy them back or confiscate.

Our enemy knows this.

I agree this depression is a work in progress. All the more reason it is important to draw a line.

[Tod]

The slower the downward grind, the less likely violence as people become accustomed to new lower standards of living.

There is every reason to believe that the government is preparing for a more rapid decline than preferable for reasons of peace, however, with the militarization of the police, the arming of gov't agents, the stockpiling of weapons, the urban military drills, the desensitizing against shooting previously mostly taboo persons such as the pregnant lady on the target, the calls for gun controls, etc.

Better to be prepared than not on our end too, and devise ways to opt out to the extent possible to retain independence. That doesn't mean we won't be called upon to defend ourselves, but it is always better to be fighting to maintain independence than to gain it when it has been lost entirely.

[devil21]

You're dead on about the collapse being a slow grind down.

Empires fall piece by piece.

Some pieces are bigger than others though. 2008 was a big piece. Right now it's smaller pieces as bubbles are furiously reinflated. The next big piece will fall soon enough. It'll just be on their schedule, not yours.

[cheapseats]

Hmm. Sounds an awful lot like a description of the Roman Empire, circa 117 A.D.

Excerpted from HOW THE IRISH SAVED CIVILIZATION, by Thomas Cahill:

pg. 11: "...On the last, cold day of December in the dying year we count as 406, the river Rhine froze solid, providing the natural bridge that hundreds of thousands of hungry men, women and children had been waiting for. They were the barbari--to the Romans an undistinguished, matted mass of Others, not terrifying, just troublemakers, annoyances, things one would rather not have to deal with--non-Romans. To themselves, they were, presumably, something more, but as the illiterate leave few records, we can only surmise their opinion of themselves.

Neither the weary, disciplined Roman soldiers, ranked along the west bank, nor the anxious, helter-skelter tribes amassing on the east bank could have been giving much thought to their place in history. But this moment of slack, this relative calm before the pandemonium to follow, gives us the chance to study the actors on both sides of the river and to look backward on what has been and forward to what will be.


pg. 26: "...By the fifth century, in the years before the complete collapse of Roman government, the imperial approach to taxation had produced a caste as hopeless as any in history. Their rapacious exactions, taken wherever and whenever they could, were the direct result of their desperation about their own increasingly unpayable tax bills. As these nerved-up outcasts commenced to prey on whoever was weaker than they, the rich became even richer. The great landowners ate up the little ones, the tax base shrank still further, and the middle classes, never encouraged by the Roman state, began to disappear from the face of the earth. Nor would they return till the appearance of the Italian mercantile families of the high Middle Ages..."

pg. 29: "...Though it is difficult to imagine the Pax Romana lasting as long as it did without the increasing militarization of the Imperium Romanum, the Romans themselves were never happy about their army. It suggested dictatorship, rather than those good old republican values, and they preferred to avert their eyes, keeping themselves carefully ignorant of the army's essential contribution to their well-being. With the moral decay of republican resolve, the army became more and more a reserve of non-Romans, half-Romanized barbarian mercenaries and servants sent in the stead of freemen who couldn't be bothered. In the last days of the empire, men commonly mutilated themselves to escape service, though such a crime was--in theory--punishable by torture and death. Military levies, sent to the great estates, met such resistance that influential landowners were allowed to send money, instead of men, to the army. In 409, faced with an increasingly undefended frontier, the emperor announced the impossible: henceforth, slaves would be permitted, even encouraged, to enlist, and for their service they would receive a bounty and their freedom. By this point, it was sometimes difficult to tell the Romans from the barbarians--at least along the frontier..."

pg. 29: "...There are, no doubt, lessons here for the contemporary reader. The changing character of the native population, brought about through unremarked pressures on porous borders; the creation of an increasingly unwieldy and rigid bureaucracy, whose own survival becomes its overriding goal; the despising of the military and the avoidance of service by established families, while its offices present unprecedented opportunity for marginal men to whom its ranks had once been closed; the lip service paid to values long dead; the pretense that we still are what we once were; the increasing concentrations of the populace into richer and poorer by way of a corrupt tax system, and the desperation that inevitably follows; the aggrandizement of executive power at the expense of the legislature; ineffectual legislation promulgated with great show; the moral vocation of the man at the top to maintain order at all costs, while growing blind to the cruel dilemmas of ordinary life--these are all themes with which our world is familiar, nor are they the God-given property of any party or political point of view, even though we often act as if they were. At least, the emperor could not heap his economic burdens on posterity by creating long-term public debt, for floating capital had not yet been conceptualized..."