[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote(' ', ' ')America's roads, highways, bridges and transit systems are falling apart....

[Outcast_Searcher]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote(' ', ' ')America's roads, highways, bridges and transit systems are falling apart....

[Keith_McClary]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Outcast_Searcher', 'N')o, he wasted a lot on bailing out failed messes like GM.

[Keith_McClary]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('swingbolder', 'T')he road leading to the dam cannot accommodate the torrent of tourists

[Pops]

What is interesting to me (it certainly isn't the continual partisan rants that are really starting to be irritating) is how we've seemed to improve the efficiency and engineering of everything except infrastructure.

Is that because what passes for improvement in other products - say, talking fuel gauges in cars or more cycles on washing machines or higher resolution images on telephones aren't really improvements at all? Or engineering that makes consumer items and even infrastructure cheap isn't necessarily the best investment?

I can't remember the article but I read recently that we're reaching the end of the expected 100 year life of some infrastructure from the 1800's like water piping, the 50 year lifespan of some 50's facilities and the 30 year life of some 70's installations - anyone notice the trend?

What this tells me is very simple, if you intend to be around for any length of time you should start thinking about building your own infrastructure.

[Cloud9]

It costs about $500 to sink a two inch well in the sugar sand state. For those of you with that option. You might consider it while things are still up and running.

[Fiddlerdave]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('swingbolder', '
')
The road leading to the dam cannot accommodate the torrent of tourists and spills them into the overwhelmed little town of Boulder City. Nevada lawmakers are trying to find a private company to build a $400 million bypass because the state can't afford it.

[Ibon]

In light of this thread check out the main story on the news feed here at peakoil.com

http://peakoil.com/publicpolicy/a-marsh ... -in-china/

To all you students out there consider majoring in electrical engineering with a minor in chinese language and I can assure you will have a job when you graduate.

[rangerone314]

America's done, stick a fork in it.

The future belongs to China... a future of maybe 10 or 20 years, and then THEY will most likely implode too, along with the rest of Industrial Civilization.

[Outcast_Searcher]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', 'W')hat is interesting to me (it certainly isn't the continual partisan rants that are really starting to be irritating) is how we've seemed to improve the efficiency and engineering of everything except infrastructure.

Is that because what passes for improvement in other products - say, talking fuel gauges in cars or more cycles on washing machines or higher resolution images on telephones aren't really improvements at all? Or engineering that makes consumer items and even infrastructure cheap isn't necessarily the best investment?

[Loki]

An interesting piece by Paul Craig Roberts on the third worldization of America.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he United States has collapsed economically, socially, politically, legally, constitutionally, and environmentally. The country that exists today is not even a shell of the country into which I was born....

Economically, America has descended into poverty. As Peter Edelman says, “Low-wage work is pandemic.” Today in “freedom and democracy” America, “the world’s only superpower,” one fourth of the work force is employed in jobs that pay less than $22,000, the poverty line for a family of four. ...

In my opinion as an economist, the official poverty line is long out of date. The prospect of three people living on $19,000 per year is farfetched. Considering the prices of rent, electricity, water, bread and fast food, one person cannot live in the US on $6,333.33 per year. In Thailand, perhaps, until the dollar collapses, it might be done, but not in the US.

As Dan Ariely (Duke University) and Mike Norton (Harvard University) have shown empirically, 40% of the US population, the 40% less well off, own 0.3%, that is, three-tenths of one percent, of America’s personal wealth. Who owns the other 99.7%? The top 20% have 84% of the country’s wealth. Those Americans in the third and fourth quintiles–essentially America’s middle class–have only 15.7% of the nation’s wealth. Such an unequal distribution of income is unprecedented in the economically developed world.

In my day, confronted with such disparity in the distribution of income and wealth, a disparity that obviously poses a dramatic problem for economic policy, political stability, and the macro management of the economy, Democrats would have demanded corrections, and Republicans would have reluctantly agreed.

But not today. Both political parties whore for money....

The concentration of wealth and power in the US today is far beyond anything my graduate economic professors could image in the 1960s. At four of the world’s best universities that I attended, the opinion was that competition in the free market would prevent great disparities in the distribution of income and wealth. As I was to learn, this belief was based on an ideology, not on reality.

Congress, acting on this erroneous belief in free market perfection, deregulated the US economy in order to create a free market. The immediate consequence was resort to every previous illegal action to monopolize, to commit financial and other fraud, to destroy the productive basis of American consumer incomes, and to redirect income and wealth to the one percent.

[JohnRM]

To be fair, when people no longer have the purchasing power to consume like they did, the effect will trickle up and many of these corporations will be out of business. That almost happened in 2009-10, but the government bailed them out. Can't do that forever. At some point, the wealth has to flow downward, again, or the economy will cease to function.

I personally have the purchasing power, as a member of the middle class, but I refuse to comply with the business-as-usual mentality and am instead investing in resilience to the next economic shock, which I cannot imagine is very far off, unless hiring picks up. Regardless, the best that you can hope for is economic stagnation/meager growth.

[dissident]

Aside from the banks the bailing out was of GM and not much more. The trick is that GM still relies on the US and European market but other corporations can live off the hundreds of millions of new consumers showing up in China, India and elsewhere in the developing world. So if they lose one American consumer for every two or three they gain globally they win. This is the global new world order and the corporate elites could care less about social stratification and shrinking of the middle class in the 1st world.

[EnergyUnlimited]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('JohnRM', 'A')t some point, the wealth has to flow downward, again, or the economy will cease to function.

[Pops]

After industrialization came unionization. But then came the first Red Scare - basically the 1% of the day were afraid of a revolution. The big inequality of the '20s followed by the depression and New Deal, which I think was not just a response to the depression also an attempt to placate the worker movements of the day and give greater standing to workers, agian to prevent revolt. Unionism boomed and the 1% shared the prosperity with the workers there for a while.
Taft Hartly was a major bill to limit labors influence in the 40s I think and then came the second red scare in the 50s featuring McCarthy. That really sealed the fate of unions in the US because it tied labor to commies and totalitarianism. The death knell of organized labor in the US was Reagan who championed union busting.

So, fast forward to today and our great inequality, where workers cheer the owners for avoiding taxes and begrudge any penny spent to help fellow workers, let alone acting the DFH to protest conditions like the OWS people - unless of course it is about paying taxes that is.

The going forward part is the scary part. Will the owners give up their self congratulatory, well deserved wealth and entitlement as the general economy slows and deflates or will they continue to claw until every morsel is under their table? After all they have finally hit on the perfect combination of strings to pull with the guns and bibles crowd to make them dance like marionettes to the booth to vote against their own interests.


We aren't there yet, but a couple more "business cycles" though, a relentless downward GDP and Energy Per Capita trendline and eventually enough workers will feel the real sting of hunger to stand up, I've no doubt of it.

[AgentR11]

Gotta say it again.
PowerDown. This is what it looks like in reality, divested from ideology and hippy-think. The 1% prosper, the 20% coalesce as an enclave buffer, and the remaining 80% are priced out of everything significant that takes energy to provide.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('article', 'D')emocrats would have demanded corrections, and Republicans would have reluctantly agreed.

[Oneaboveall]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dissident', '.')..other corporations can live off the hundreds of millions of new consumers showing up in China, India and elsewhere in the developing world. So if they lose one American consumer for every two or three they gain globally they win. This is the global new world order and the corporate elites could care less about social stratification and shrinking of the middle class in the 1st world.

[Serial_Worrier]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AgentR11', 'G')otta say it again.
PowerDown. This is what it looks like in reality, divested from ideology and hippy-think. The 1% prosper, the 20% coalesce as an enclave buffer, and the remaining 80% are priced out of everything significant that takes energy to provide.

[vtsnowedin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Serial_Worrier', '[')
Up until the 20th century, poverty was the condition of the 99%. If it's been reduced to 80% that's a victory.

[EnergyUnlimited]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('vtsnowedin', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Serial_Worrier', '[')
Up until the 20th century, poverty was the condition of the 99%. If it's been reduced to 80% that's a victory.