A good letter

 

Kudos to CDR Salamander for sharing a letter from Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll in preparation for the holiday season.  Mr. Driscoll addresses a long-standing problem, and offers hope.  Click the image below for a larger, more readable view.

I had some experience of that sort of stress during my own military service, decades ago.  Back in 2011, I wrote in these pages about a friend.

I remember Gavin, who was a member of a patrol that found a baby, too young to walk, sitting in the middle of a dirt road in a township, crying. As the point man and a couple of others walked up to see why the baby was just sitting there, the terrorists waiting in ambush blew up the landmine they'd buried beneath her, killing the point man and savagely mutilating the other two soldiers. Bits of flesh and blood from the soldiers, and the baby, splattered all over Gavin . . . across his face . . . in his eyes, nose and mouth.

For years, Gavin would start awake in the small hours at night, a scream of horror on his lips. "They blew up a baby! A baby!" Gavin's wife eventually left him, because she couldn't handle the strain of living with his nightmares. Psychiatric treatment couldn't break the cycle; nor could alcohol, or drugs (legal and illegal). Gavin took his own life at last, too tormented by what he'd seen to endure any longer, in the small hours every night, the parade of images across his closed eyelids. He was a hero in my book . . . and I'll always remember him as such.

There's more at the link.

There are too many like Gavin who never receive the help they need - not just combat stress and trauma, but the quiet accumulation of too many incidents, too much angst, too few friends.  I hope Secretary Driscoll's letter will help to reach them before it's too late.

Peter

A new twist on personal security and defense of your property

 

Big Country Expat is experimenting with a couple of low-cost entry-level quadcopter drones.  He suggests it's a good idea for everyone to get to know at least the basics of how to operate them.

The Scout is a good practice drone, and small enough to get in and around the interior of the house (or any house for that matter) for recon pretty well.

The problem is that it’s so lightweight, ANY and ALL breezes affect its flight. One time I was working on going room-to-room in the house, and the Central Air Conditioning kicked on, and the bird ‘lurched’ across the room in the draft of the AC blowing out of the vent.

So I’m not sure of the utility of it outside in real crosswinds.

This is a standard problem for the cheap ‘practice’ drones if you will. No real weight. One of my early $30 Amazon Chinesium drones I actually lost when practicing outside with the Redhead Nukular Gran. If you recall while I was flying it, I had a BIG gust of wind show up unexpectedly, and grab it, and last I saw of it, it was headed due south towards the Publix a quarter mile away…

Never did find out what happened to that ‘un LOL.

It literally faded to a teeny-tiny dot and then >poof<

So tonight, I tried to to fly this new quad inside BUT had a minor issue. Or maybe not minor per se…

The doggos.

Chili AND Stella both seem to think that the quadcopter is something they need to ‘fetch’ out of the air… I tried to get them to leave it alone, but nope. They weren’t listening at all. In fact Stella got too close while lunging at it, and the rotor blade caught her on the nose. She yelped pretty loudly as it must have hurt, but did that stop her?

She’s a ****ing rockheaded Pittie…

What do you think?

Riiiiiiiight.

Now it’s a challenge apparently.

Must. Snatch. The. Flying. Thing.

So this means in the future, I’ll have to either practice in the bedroom for the initial ‘tuning’ of it and getting a feel for the flight characteristics, or take it down to the park at the elementary school we used to take the Grans to after school or on a Saturday and give it a try there.

When I say ‘tuning’ I mean that the controls and servos need to be dialed in for accuracy, otherwise it might have drift already in the settings, and I need to make sure that it does a steady hover, and do some other things, to include getting the 4k Cameras ‘dialed in’ as well.

Seeing that drones are the future and at least trying to learn how to use them is a good and necessary thing. Better to learn on the short $$$ models than to spend a grand on a nice DJI Drone like the Ivans and Krainians use and have that get wrecked?

I’d rather burn through a half a dozen ‘practice drones’ learning how to ‘fly’ a drone rather than buying a $$$$$Mondo-Expensivo$$$$$ one and wasting/crashing/destroying it by accident.

There's more at the link, including pictures.

I think he makes a very good point.  While cheap entry-level quadcopters are still freely available, I think it's an excellent idea to learn to use them.  They may not be Predator- or Reaper-class weaponized drones, but one can use them to fly around one's property, or up and down the street, and see what's going on in the neighborhood.  If there are reports of rioting or unrest nearby, one can keep an eye on the situation, and if one sees "undesirables" heading in one's direction, one can be proactive in responding to them, either by "getting out of Dodge" before they arrive, or getting together with neighbors to greet them, in full readiness to protect one's loved ones and property, when they arrive.

I think I have a new project for the next few weeks . . .  Finding a low-cost drone that can cope with North Texas winds might be a challenge, but I'll do my best.  If anyone sees a drone heading for the wild blue yonder, coming from my general direction, let me know, will you, please?

Peter

Another perspective on the job market

 

Mike Rowe, who's spent much of his life trying to revive interest in the skilled trades and related jobs, spoke with Ford's CEO the other day.  In the light of our discussion about jobs yesterday, I've taken the liberty of reproducing most of his interview here.

I just had a great conversation with Jim Farley, the CEO of Ford Motor Company, which will air Sunday night at 10pm on One Nation. (That’s Kilmeade’s show on Fox.) Jim told me that as of yesterday morning, Ford Service Departments around the country had 6,000 empty bays. Not because people’s cars and trucks didn’t need fixing, but because the shortage of technicians has become that profound.

Ford isn’t alone. Every single automotive company in America is struggling to hire technicians, and the problem – (in spite of what you’ll likely read in the comments,) has nothing to do with the pay, the benefits, or the working conditions. These jobs offer a clear path to a six-figure career, with little to no college debt. In part, the problem is mathematical – this year, 37,000 new techs were hired across the country. Unfortunately, 76,000 retired. That’s a 2:1 ration, which is actually pretty good, compared to the 5:2 ratio in most of the construction trades. But along with a lack of warm bodies, there’s a lack of interest in the work itself. A will gap, in other words, combined with a skill gap. Happily, I think that’s about to change. Unfortunately, at the expense of a colossal upheaval.

I know I’m a broken record on this, but I think our workforce is about to undergo a truly seismic change. Amazon is eliminating 14,000 corporate roles, citing both economic concerns and the impact of artificial intelligence on how the company operates. Some say the actual number will be closer to 30,000. UPS is cutting 34,000 operations roles, driven by automation. Target, Intel, Paramount, American Airlines, Starbucks…every week, another big corporation lays off thousands of people whose particular skill sets are no longer relevant. And yet, not a week goes by when some industry leader like Jim Farley doesn’t tell me about the extraordinary, unprecedented difficulty of getting skilled workers into the pipeline, and onto the jobsite.

I’ve never seen it like this. I’ve spent seventeen years trying to reinvigorate the skilled trades, by making a more persuasive case for the opportunities at hand. Typically, I’ve focused my efforts on young men and women starting their careers by offering scholarships to trade schools, and this year, I’ll redouble my efforts in that regard. But as of today, I’ll also be thinking about the hundreds of thousands of white-collar workers who are either going to retire prematurely, or hit the reset button, and learn a skill that’s in demand. Because many of those people simply don’t understand the other side of the workforce, and the myriad opportunities that exist today.

Last month, for instance, in Plano, Texas, I toured a Data Center. It was overwhelming, and in some ways, a little unsettling. But I met with a few electricians while I was there, who told me they’d all been poached from different companies at least three times in the last two years. These guys were all under 30, and all making well over $200K a year. They constantly get offers from the competition for ever-increasing salaries, because the need for electricians is acute, and their jobs are not threatened by robots or AI. (Not yet, anyway. And probably not in our lifetimes.) The same is true of welders, HVAC techs, plumbers, and so forth.

Apologies, if I sound glib. I can only imagine how scary it is for a middle-manager in a white-collar job, or a paralegal, or a coder, or a stock broker, or a graphic artist, to be told it’s time to “hit the reset button.” I know how absurd it might sound to a person in that position to be told that the ship building industry has 200,000 openings, or the energy industry has 300,000 openings, or the construction industry has 250,000 openings, or that Ford has 6,000 empty bays as of this morning.

But that’s where we are. Your jobs are not being eliminated; your industries are being eliminated. That doesn’t mean your only option is to learn a skilled trade. But the option is there, nevertheless.

I admire Mike Rowe for his tireless efforts to improve the image of skilled trades in the eyes of the average American, and highlight how critically important they are to our economy as a whole.  If I were starting over, I'd look very hard at a trade instead of the usual university-to-white-collar route that I followed.  I think I'd have a lot more fun, and I'd probably make more money, too.

Trouble is, so many First World economies have de-emphasized skilled trades as a career path that it's hard to find good training and education in the field.  In South Africa, we had so-called "technikons" as a parallel education path to universities.  One could study for a "technical degree" as easily as an "academic degree", and go all the way to a doctorate in many fields (somewhat similar to the German system of technical education, culminating in the "Dr. Ing." qualification).  Unfortunately, as part of the reorganization of South African institutions that followed the advent of democracy in 1994, the technical universities were folded into the academic system, so that today one can no longer choose which "stream" to follow.  I thought at the time that was a mistake, and I've seen nothing to make me change my mind.

Mike Rowe is doing an outstanding jobs with his Foundation to encourage and sponsor technical training.  More power to him!

Peter

No, this wasn't self-defense

 

I note the ongoing argument over whether a Michigan resident was defending himself, or acting recklessly, when he fired at intruders.

Sivan Wilson, 17, was with six other mainly teenagers when the group broke into Dayton Knapton’s garage in White Lake shortly after 1 a.m. July 8, authorities said.

Knapton, 24, got an alert from his home security system, grabbed a .9mm gun, ran outside and fired two shots into the garage through a windowless door, striking Wilson, according to prosecutors and cops.

As the group fled, Knapton fired five more shots before going back into his house, reloading his gun and returning outside, according to a statement by the Oakland County Prosecutor’s Office.

Another teenager in the group also was shot in the leg.

. . .

“This defendant crossed the line by firing outside his home at fleeing persons,” prosecutor Karen McDonald said of Knapton. “His actions not only took a life but potentially endangered the surrounding community by firing his weapon into the night.”

There's more at the link.

Laws differ in the 50 States, but legally there's one principle that generally has to be clearly visible before a shooting can be ruled self-defense:  namely, that there has to be a clear, imminent and otherwise unavoidable danger of death or serious injury to the person defending himself.  In this case, it's immediately obvious that this did not exist, because:

1. The shooter could not actually see the people at whom he was shooting.  He fired through a closed door without any windows.  He could not have known whether his targets were armed, or whether they intended to pose any physical threat to him at all.
2. The shooter went on to fire at fleeing people - their backs to him, running away as fast as they could, presumably with their hands clearly visible.  They could not have posed a threat to him under those circumstances.

Mr. Knapton may have been angry at having been repeatedly burgled in the past, and may have been afraid or upset at finding it happening again:  but there's no evidence at all that he was actually threatened, or faced any real danger of assault, injury or death.  Under the circumstances, I don't see how a claim of self-defense can be made to stick.

Some states (for example, Texas) allow one to use lethal force in defense of one's property, not just one's life, under certain circumstances.  However, one has to be very careful not to take that as a carte blanche to do whatever one wishes with intruders, whether they're accidental or deliberate.  If there is no physical threat, one has every chance of being indicted for using more force than necessary to remove them.  Frankly, I think that's the way it should be.  Our response should be proportionate to the threat.  Tragedies occur every year when a homeowner's response is not proportionate, such as this case in Indiana or this one in Texas.  One has to draw a line, and in most cases our laws do just that.  We can't use a firearm when our lives are not in danger (for example, to stop a fleeing thief who's not a threat, and is only trying to get away).

Those of us who espouse the right to self-defense, and the right to keep and bear arms, need to think about this often.  Our actions and reactions may provide ammunition to those wanting to take away those rights.

Peter

Faith (sort of) and life

Stephan Pastis does it again.  Click the image to be taken to a larger view at the "Pearls Before Swine" Web page.

Any experienced pastor will tell you never to ask questions like that.  The answers might surprise you - particularly from children!

Peter

Jobs: the irresistible force meets the immovable object

 

The big challenge everyone's talking about today is how to get the millions of unemployed Americans back to work - create enough jobs that they can fill, and ensure that they have the necessary training to do those jobs.

However, that ignores the fact that all over the world, more and more people - particularly younger people - are desperate for jobs, but they aren't there to be found.  The US economy is no more than a microcosm of a much greater conundrum.  That same oversupply of job-seekers is fueling international illegal migration.  When young people face economic ruin at home, they've got nothing to lose by trying to move to a country where more jobs are available, even though the journey may be very dangerous and they may not be welcome at their intended destinations.

First, there's the supply of workers and potential workers.  I'll use Africa as an example, because that's my continent of origin and I'm more familiar with its situation.  Bloomberg recently reported:

Africa’s population has doubled in three decades and it’s now home to about 1.5 billion people, a figure that’s predicted to grow to 4 billion by the turn of the century. This growth has been driven by improved access to medical care, plummeting infant mortality since 1990, and persistently high birth rates. Already about 60% of people south of the Sahara desert are younger than 25, compared with one-third in the US, according to the United Nations.

The expected number of annual births in Congo is more than 800,000 greater than across the US or the European Union’s 27 member states. So while the developed world worries about getting old, Africa is getting younger.

. . .

Success will depend on both shrinking the existing rate of population increase, and also creating the economic opportunities — jobs are a key driver of growth in the early stages of development — for young people entering the labor market. Getting it wrong could fuel poverty, trigger more conflict and potentially spark mass emigration.

. . .

Sub-Saharan Africa will see 1 billion people enter the labor force between now and the end of the century, according to Bloomberg Economics analysis of UN Population Division data. Annual job demand is projected to peak at approximately 18 million in 2048.

Most countries on the continent already struggle to provide sufficient jobs. For every two people that joined Congo’s working-age population between 2005 and 2020, only one job was created on average, a pattern repeated across Nigeria, Ethiopia and other large states, according to Bloomberg Economics analysis of International Labor Organisation data.

. . .

In a worst-case scenario, that scenario could translate into the continent sliding ever deeper into poverty and political and civil strife, and encouraging mass emigration, with the reverberations felt across the world.

“Labor migration is an inevitable consequence of being educated,” says Charlie Robertson, the author of The Time Travelling Economist who has been monitoring developments in Africa for the past 15 years. “This is the most educated the continent’s ever been, but with insufficient savings to utilize that education there will be demographic pressure to emigrate.”

There's more at the link.

That demographic pressure is driving the wave upon wave of African illegal immigrants overwhelming European countries right now.  Along with similar pressures in South America and Asia, it's what was behind the surge in illegal alien migration to the USA under the Biden administration - and that administration's refusal to do anything to stop it has left us with enormous socio-political problems that will take more than one Presidential term to sort out.  It may take decades.  I personally view it as treasonable behavior by the Biden administration, but it's not my job to adjudicate that - perhaps fortunately . . .  President Trump has already shown that swift, vigorous law enforcement action can stop such mass immigration in its tracks, and even reverse it.  One can only hope and pray that his successors in office will continue such policies.

Be that as it may, we have the "irresistible force" of mass immigration from the over-populated, economically under-developed Third World threatening the First World.  However, the climate for such immigrants is likely to become even less welcoming once the reality of modern economics takes hold.

“It’s the most humbling thing I’ve ever seen,” said Ford’s chief executive about his recent trip to China.

After visiting a string of factories, Jim Farley was left astonished by the technical innovations being packed into Chinese cars – from self-driving software to facial recognition.

“Their cost and the quality of their vehicles is far superior to what I see in the West,” Farley warned in July.

. . .

Andrew Forrest, the Australian billionaire behind mining giant Fortescue – which is investing massively in green energy – says his trips to China convinced him to abandon his company’s attempts to manufacture electric vehicle powertrains in-house.

“I can take you to factories [in China] now, where you’ll basically be alongside a big conveyor and the machines come out of the floor and begin to assemble parts,” he says.

“And you’re walking alongside this conveyor, and after about 800, 900 metres, a truck drives out. There are no people – everything is robotic.”

Other executives describe vast, “dark factories” where robots do so much of the work alone that there is no need to even leave the lights on for humans.

“We visited a dark factory producing some astronomical number of mobile phones,” recalls Greg Jackson, the boss of British energy supplier Octopus.

“The process was so heavily automated that there were no workers on the manufacturing side, just a small number who were there to ensure the plant was working.

“You get this sense of a change, where China’s competitiveness has gone from being about government subsidies and low wages to a tremendous number of highly skilled, educated engineers who are innovating like mad.”

. . .

Between 2014 and 2024, the number of industrial robots deployed in [China] rocketed from 189,000 to more than two million.

These can typically include everything from robot arms used for welding, assembly and loading, spider robots used for high-speed “pick and place” movements and overhead gantry robots for precision tasks such as 3D printing.

The overall number of robots added in China last year was 295,000, compared to 27,000 in Germany, 34,000 in the US and just 2,500 in the UK.

And while it would be easy to put this disparity down to population size alone, China also blows its western rivals out of the water when it comes to robot density. It now boasts 567 robots for every 10,000 manufacturing workers, compared to 449 for Germany, 307 for the US and 104 in the UK.

. . .

Rian Whitton, an expert at Bismarck Analysis, says increased automation is also an attempt to mitigate the impact of [China's] ageing population.

“China has quite a notable demographic problem but its manufacturing is, generally, quite labour-intensive,” he says.

“So in a pre-emptive fashion, they want to automate it as much as possible, not because they expect they’ll be able to get higher margins – that is usually the idea in the West – but to compensate for this population decline and to get a competitive advantage.”

Again, more at the link.  (Article may be behind a paywall.)

Admittedly, the article above addresses the manufacturing economy:  but that underpins all other economic sectors, when push comes to shove.  Just as China is striving to maximize automation and minimize actual human workers, so US manufacturers are striving to catch up with that country and re-engineer their local assembly lines.  The same can be said of many service industries.  Did you notice, during the dockworker strikes over the past couple of years, that one of the constant demands from the labor unions was that ports and harbors should not introduce any more automation, or robotics, or labor-saving technology?  The unions are trying desperately to protect their members' jobs . . . and they're doomed to failure.  When it costs far too much to employ human workers compared to an automated solution, eventually the time will come when employers will say "Enough!" and make it stick.

For US workers in several industries, this is already bad news.  Without retraining and a deep-rooted change in their attitudes, they're going to end up in the economic dumpster.  However, it's worse for those heading for this country from places like Africa, in an attempt to find work here that they can't find at home.  Initially, they'll find at least something, through being willing to work for lower wages and/or in more dangerous, less desirable conditions than American workers will tolerate.  However, that won't last for long.  The list of industries already implementing technological solutions to their labor problems is already very long, and growing longer.  Manufacturing, fast food, farming, assembly operations, customer support, corporate administration, banking . . . the list of places where you'll find automated assistants and AI systems instead of a human being is growing by the day.  New jobs are not part of that equation.

It's equally bad news for the US education system.  Right now, a school-leaver is woefully ill-equipped to become part of our economy.  He's got far too much learning still to do - hands-on, productive learning - and too much touchy-feely politically-correct baggage to learn to discard, once he realizes that it's all been a lie.  Commerce and industry function on facts and reality.  If they don't, they go out of business.  Our education system currently does not teach facts and reality, and doesn't prepare its students to deal with them.  That may be an even bigger problem for us that China's current lead in automation.

Furthermore, consider what this immense level of automation means for countries that are struggling to establish their own industries and facilities.  They can't possibly afford to build a factory to assemble vehicles using their own labor force, when China (or, for that matter, similar factories in Europe or the USA) can deliver a finished vehicle, made to a much higher standard of quality, for less than a fifth of the cost of a vehicle manufactured locally (what with economies of scale, etc.).  In so many words, such hyper-automated production will destroy economies that can't compete at that level;  and those living in those economies will see that they have no future there, no way to earn a living, improve their situation in society, or hope for something better.  That being the case, they're going to leave for anywhere that appears to offer them a better opportunity.  The current immigration pressure on the First World is going to turn into an overwhelming flood.

We are literally creating this future as we speak.  All of the factors identified above are now in operation.  There's no way we can possibly turn aside from that future now, because just about the whole of the First World as it currently exists would cease to exist if we did.

What does this mean for us as individuals?  For someone like me, approaching the end of my life, I can only watch events unfold.  For younger people, who must find a way to support themselves and (hopefully) a family in due course, they're going to have to make some very blunt, realistic career decisions.  A degree in underwater basket-weaving or feminist studies may sound like a lot of fun, but it's going to fly like a lead balloon in an economy that will demand specific skills, attributes and attitudes.  Nations will no longer be able to afford those who contribute nothing to the economy and the needs of the country as a whole.  At best, those people will have to live on a minimal public dole, because governments won't be able to afford anything more.  Those willing to seek out jobs that will always be in demand, and are unlikely to be automated (e.g. the trades, technical fields that support automation, etc.) will do rather better.  Not sure how to get into them?  Talk to Mike Rowe.

Sound frightening?  It is.  Yet, that's the dilemma and the conundrum facing our politicians and business leaders today.  Go read the two articles I cited, and do your own search for more material on the subject.  We live in interesting times, no matter how much we may wish we didn't.

Peter

Lock them all up? Can we afford that?

 

Over the past few months I've been noting the number of calls from both sides of the political spectrum to lock up - i.e. imprison - those they don't like, or whom they think deserve it.  If all those calls were heeded, our prison population would be at least ten times higher than it is today - and, let's not forget, the USA imprisons a higher proportion of its population than any other First World nation.  When it comes to locking up people, we're the winners and still champions, by a very long way.

What people forget is the backstory to prisons.  They're a relatively modern phenomenon, in the sense of long-term incarceration.  Short-term detention (say, between arrest and trial, or trial and sentencing) has been with us for centuries, but long-term imprisonment as a punishment is only two to three centuries old.  The reason is simple:  it's expensive!  If the State imprisons a man for a period of months or years, it is responsible for his upkeep during that period.  It can't be any other way, because he has no means of supporting himself while incarcerated, and it's unlikely his family and/or friends will be able to do so.  Metrasens estimates:

The cost of incarcerating an inmate varies significantly by state, facility type, and inmate population. According to recent estimates:

• The median annual cost per prisoner in the U.S. is around $65,000.
• Some states exceed $100,000 per inmate per year, such as California, New York, and Massachusetts.
• The lowest-cost states (e.g., Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana) spend around $23,000-$30,000 per inmate per year.
• The Federal Bureau of Prisons reports an average cost of $36,300 per inmate annually.

There's more at the link.  Those figures cover accommodation, clothing, food, medical care and essential legal services (as ordered by the courts).  Incarcerating illegal aliens between their arrest and deportation is adding enormously to those costs right now.  It's been estimated (I don't know how authoritatively) that a single alien costs in excess of $5,000 per month to house, care for and provide security against escape.

Our problem at the moment is how to reduce expenditure on jails and prisons, because we can't afford the ones we've got!  As long as the drive to round up and deport illegal aliens persists, prison and jail costs will continue to soar out of reach of budget-cutters.  It's simple economics.  Increase the demand (for prison cells) and you force an increase in the supply (of money to build, maintain and operate them).  I entirely agree with deporting illegal aliens, but we have to face reality too.  That's why illegals who self-deport are being offered free flights to their home countries plus $1,000 apiece to go voluntarily.  It saves us a lot of money compared to doing it the hard way.

It's also worth noting that only relatively wealthy countries can afford large prison systems such as ours.  Most nations can't afford them, so they don't bother.  Anyone who's lived and worked in the Third World will be able to tell you horror stories of prisons crowded to three or four times their capacity, resulting in gang conflict and all-out riots (as, for example, in Ecuador and Brazil);  prisoners starving to death because the money to feed them was misappropriated by underpaid prison officials;  and families being forced to bring food and clothing to their loved ones every day, or see them gradually die of hunger.

Being a wealthy country with touchy-feely public morals (well, sometimes, anyway), we've chosen to build a prison system to house incarcerated persons in at least minimal comfort.  Trouble is, we (the taxpayers) don't like paying for it;  and it's going to get a lot more expensive as we increase the number of inmates, whether transient or otherwise.  Deporting illegal aliens comes with a hefty price tag.  The question is, do we want them gone badly enough to be willing to pay that price?

Peter

He's not wrong

 

Fellow blogger Divemedic brings a timely warning.

Alarm bells should be ringing with the news that the government sold $694 billion in Treasury securities spread over 9 auctions in only three days. Yeah, our national debt now stands at $38.2 trillion. The most alarming thing about this news is that T-bill yields are rising. The 10-year Treasury yield is now at 4.15%. At that rate, the interest on our debt will be more than $1.5 trillion per year. Since Americans only pay about $2.4 trillion in Federal taxes each year, we are edging closer to the point where our debt will begin to grow like a snowball rolling down a mountain.

The only way to keep the government solvent at that point would be to inflate the currency in order to pay it with lower valued money. At that point, inflation will be higher than interest rates, and it will no longer be financially possible to invest in government bonds. This will in turn cause higher rates, which will also create a need for higher inflation. In other words, hyperinflation is the only way out, but that will cause a complete collapse of the US dollar.

There's more at the link.

I can't disagree with anything he says.  We've spoken often about debt in these pages, whether government, business, or individual.  The inevitable result of too much debt is bankruptcy, in one form or another.  A government can't really go bankrupt in the classical sense of the term, because it has laws (and can pass more) to protect it:  but it will still not be able to afford the routine expenditure we expect from government.  (Even if it tried, savvy businesses would refuse to accept government checks or money orders if they weren't sure they'd be able to cash them.)  If you are reliant on government money to feed, house and clothe your family from month to month, you'd better be making plans for when that money is no longer available, and/or has been so (deliberately) inflated that it will no longer buy you all you need.

I also repeat our earlier warnings to get out of debt if at all possible.  Sometimes this can't be done, due to factors beyond our control:  but certainly don't take on any more debt, unless it's a matter of life or death (e.g. an emergency medical procedure), and don't neglect paying down (and hopefully paying off) debt you already owe.  Don't carry balances on your credit cards - pay them off in full every month.  Don't run accounts at stores - buy for cash, or do without.  Forget "payday loans" or other ultra-short-term loan options (including buy-now-pay-later schemes).  They're only designed to enrich the person or institution making the loan, not the one repaying it.

In particular, prepare now for what might hit us if the dollar does lose much of its remaining value.  Try to have one to three months' worth of food stockpiled and ready for the day you can't afford to buy more.  Try to have an emergency fund of at least one months' expenditure on normal bills, and three to six months if possible - and make sure that includes rent, electricity and other utilities.  There's no point in having food available if you have no electricity to keep it frozen or to cook it!

All these are basic measures, to be taken during good (or at least better) times in order to make it through the bad times.  Take as many of these step as you can afford, and plan ahead (and around) to deal with those you can't afford.

Peter

Memes that made me laugh 286

 

Gathered from around the Internet over the past week.  Click any image for a larger view.

(A quick note for readers:  Some weeks (as last week, and again today) I won't have many memes to post.  That's because I try to only select memes that really did make me smile or laugh.  Sometimes there are lots of them, but other times, I find they're mostly re-runs of older memes, or I simply don't find them very funny.  Other times, I may not have had time to do a lot of Web browsing that week.  So, during weeks like that, please bear with me.)