[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mcgowanjm', '
')With a 6.4% depletion rate, the Bottom 95% have to become
energy starved within months.

[mcgowanjm]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mcgowanjm', '
')With a 6.4% depletion rate, the Bottom 95% have to become
energy starved within months.

[americandream]

As repeated attempts to resuscitate the private with the social (socialising private losses in other words; the gradual exhaustion of surplus by deflationary pressures as capitalists race to the bottom in a bid to expand on increasingly saturated markets; leakage brought on by excess; commodity stresses; the emergence of what were previously environmental invisibles; and a raft of other issues) increasingly overwhelm economic libertarianism (as a matter of objective fact), political discourse will (as a matter of fact) evolve beyond simplistic economic libertarianism to adjust to the new realities. We will, in other words, evolve into a new thought and speak dynamic as we unerringly adjust to the new realities, complied with ironically, by those who, on the one hand presume to preside over a private market, but are driven, like cattle, to socialise it.

Clearly a tipping point will be arrived at in this process where the final step into a fully socialised global technology will fluidly transition. These processes will appear abundantly natural in the transitioning but looking as we do from the present, will appear utter "polysyllabic diarrhea", and quite rightly so, unless one stands back and considers contemporary events.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('americandream', 'U')mmm. Think less about what we shall endeavour to do, by virtue of choice or nostalgia, in the count down to capitalism's twilight, and what we are being compelled to do, in the here and now.

[americandream]

Well put EB.


$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('eastbay', 'A')s a life long communist I've never been able to make proper heads or tails of the term, 'dialectical materialism'. I've tried hard too, searching patiently through my dozens of volumes of The Collected Works of Karl Marx (printed in Moscow, 1978, hard cover, anyone interested? I own the complete set), but just when I believed I was getting close to understanding this 'concept' I found I had work to do. I decided long ago to leave the intellectual struggles to the book worms and focus on the class struggle instead.

[TWilliam]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '&')quot;Post-reproductive longevity is a robust feature of human life and not only a recent phenomenon caused by improvements in sanitation, public health, and medical advances. We argue for an adaptive life span of 68-78 years for modern Homo sapiens based on our analysis of mortality profiles obtained from small-scale hunter-gatherer and horticultural populations from around the world. We compare patterns of survivorship across the life span, rates of senescence, modal ages at adult death, and causes of death. We attempt to reconcile our results with those derived from paleodemographic studies that characterize prehistoric human lives as "nasty, brutish, and short," and with observations of recent acculturation among contemporary subsistence populations. We integrate information on age-specific dependency and resource production to help explain the adaptive utility of longevity in humans from an evolutionary perspective."

[eastbay]

Thanks.... like my darlin' wife used to say, "He's not very smart or good looking, but he's a really hard worker and very good at picking up heavy things. So I'll keep him."


$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('americandream', ':')lol: Well put EB.


$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('eastbay', 'A')s a life long communist I've never been able to make proper heads or tails of the term, 'dialectical materialism'. I've tried hard too, searching patiently through my dozens of volumes of The Collected Works of Karl Marx (printed in Moscow, 1978, hard cover, anyone interested? I own the complete set), but just when I believed I was getting close to understanding this 'concept' I found I had work to do. I decided long ago to leave the intellectual struggles to the book worms and focus on the class struggle instead.

[deMolay]

Calls Obama Just a Social Worker. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIDP6U-JzSs

[Ludi]

Seen it before.

"He based the forecast on classified data supplied to him by FAPSI analysts, he says. He predicts that economic, financial and demographic trends will provoke a political and social crisis in the U.S. When the going gets tough, he says, wealthier states will withhold funds from the federal government and effectively secede from the union. Social unrest up to and including a civil war will follow. The U.S. will then split along ethnic lines, and foreign powers will move in.

California will form the nucleus of what he calls "The Californian Republic," and will be part of China or under Chinese influence. Texas will be the heart of "The Texas Republic," a cluster of states that will go to Mexico or fall under Mexican influence. Washington, D.C., and New York will be part of an "Atlantic America" that may join the European Union. Canada will grab a group of Northern states Prof. Panarin calls "The Central North American Republic." Hawaii, he suggests, will be a protectorate of Japan or China, and Alaska will be subsumed into Russia."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123051100709638419.html

I'd say there's already a big "Mexican influence" in Texas.

<<<<<sometimes visits San Antonio

[truecougarblue]

Texans under Mexican influence. (ten minutes of gut splitting laughter) This professor needs to lay off the acid.

[gollum]

Being the doomer I am, yes the USA will collapse, but not along the lines the professor suggests, and certianlly not by the end of the year, that's only thirty days. These trends take years to come to frutiation.

[Revi]

If it does happen I hope Maine can become a wholly owned subsidiary of the Irving Corporation. We can meet in truck stops and decide what we can do to help the company out. We'll all be issued insulated coveralls with the Irving logo, and live on bigstop sandwiches.

It won't be that bad. That would solve our budget woes.

The collapse better hurry up if it's going to happen before the end of 2009.

[Novus]

Just because the wealthier states broke away from the USSR does not mean the US collapse will follow the same trend. Many of the so called wealthier US states such as California are actually parasites that take more than pay back out in taxes. The system is indeed broken and will collapse in time. The US dollar is showing signs of collapse and may be going into hyper inflation by the end of the year but that alone will not destroy the US. Obama is sending more troops to Iraq and I don't think it is a coincidence. The end is near but America will not go quietly.

[truecougarblue]

Not so fast there junior.

According to this blog:

http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2004/09/red_states_feed.html

Cali only gets back $0.81 for each dollar sent to the feds 42nd overall.

You could make the case that if Cali sent no money to the feds they would no longer have a deficit problem, but who are we kidding. The legislature is full of lobbyist chasing whores who sell their vote for top dollar. Cali goes nowhere but down from here.

[copious.abundance]

So, only 30 days to go.

I'll be waiting.

[coyote]

Amusing. I just today saw a huge truck with a Texas plate on the highway, and it had a bumper sticker with a big old star and in all-caps the word "SECEDE." I half-expected to see a shotgun hanging in the rear window.

Hey, if they go we go. But I doubt California will fall to Mexico. Not all of us have forgotten that we were our very own republic for twenty six glorious days. Mebbe again someday... but nah, not anytime soon.

[Tyler_JC]

The donor state/receiver state thing can be partly explained by the cost of living differences in states and the rigidity of the tax code.

Imagine that people in California earn $100,000 a year and people in Texas earn $50,000. If the cost of living is twice as high in California as it is in Texas, both parties have an equal standard of living.

However, the tax code doesn't care where you live. The Californian will pay much higher federal income taxes than the Texas because of the graduated tax rate system.

The Californian will actually be worse off than the Texas despite earning a much higher salary.

California will also pay more to the Treasury on a relative basis than Texas, again, despite having the same real standard of living. People will tend to move out of California and to Texas in order to improve their standard of living. Eventually the whole thing balances out.

It's a grossly simplified model but it does help to understand the donor state/receiver state problem.

[thylacine]

Presumably the Bostonians will be having another Tea Party - but this time with cups, saucers and maybe some nice cakes and biscuits - to welcome back the British Empire?

At least we don't have long to wait to see if this prediction come true!

[Tanada]

The Prof's predictions are not feasible. Tell me, which USSR states were subsumed into following territories? Even tiny ones like Georgia are basically independent states with strong economic ties to their former USSR neighbors.

Also if the USA becomes a failed state at some point I am fairly certain Mexico would have the same dissolution, and Canada while in better shape than we would be would not be in a position to recruit new provinces out of the Northern Tier of states. If Alaska joined anyone it would be much more likely to join Canada than Russia.

[rangerone314]

Texas MIGHT succumb to a Mexican influence by way of massive immigration, but I don't see that happening suddenly but over maybe two centuries, and I don't necessarily see a single powerful country of Texas OR Texas being part of a larger Mexico... mostly likely BOTH would fracture.

Alaska would probably be independent or join Canada... Russia will have problems of their own with Chinese immigration into Siberia to get further overextended into Alaska. Overextension would be one reason why Russians gave up centuries ago on California and Alaska.

Hawaii would likely become an independent state.

The northeast (Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York etc) it is hard to see joining Europe... that is impractical and the Europeans are having trouble integrating with continental European countries, to say nothing of Britain. It IS possible that the northeast, Great Lakes states & New England and maybe Oregon & Washington & Northern California might form a super-state in northern North America, but I'm not sure that would be "joining Canada" since all those states combined would have a much larger population than Canada.

Given that Mexico will collapse and immigration to the US, espec the southern & southwestern US will increase, it is likely that those regions AND Mexico would have collapsed into numerous smaller Spanish-speaking countries, in such a way that a map from southern California to Florida to Panama would be a lot like the way everything in between Mexico and Venezuela is now...

I'm inclined to think that the land-locked middle of the country (Kansas, Missouri, Colorado, etc) might end up trying to be trade route from the west coast to the east coast. With peak oil, railroads might prove to be the new "Silk Road" of the future. I would suggest Kansas City as the likely future hub of a central North American country...

[deMolay]

Quote Revi. $this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')f it does happen I hope Maine can become a wholly owned subsidiary of the Irving Corporation. We can meet in truck stops and decide what we can do to help the company out. We'll all be issued insulated coveralls with the Irving logo, and live on bigstop sandwiches.