planning for the future.

Byebye 2012. Don't let the door smack your ass as you leave.

A few days ago, Jim Bliss posted  a video on facebook. This is an assessment of where we are and where we're going by a guy called Nate Hagens. (It's probably why Nina Hagen came to mind!)




More and more informed opinion is coming to the conclusion that we're in for a rough ride. Instead of vague predictions, Nate actually included a timescale.

Since 2008, the government has stepped in to keep growth going for just a little longer. That growth is not more materiél or energy or real wealth. It's debt. Borrowing from the future.

Hagens made the point that, in effect, the US is now a "socialist" country. Not in the sense of the workers owning the means of production or anything progressive like that, but really, the governmment IS the economy.

It could never last of course. Build as elaborate a castle as you like. Without foundations it's bound to fall. The quantitive easing and bailouts bought a couple of years, but increasingly, people in a position to understand what's going on are warning that the buffers are looming. Hagens claimed that we have perhaps five years, but probably less, before the shit really does hit the fan.

This, by the way, is not a party political thing. The economic, growth based system we use to order our affairs doesn't really work anymore. This is not necessarily a bad thing. If you're up to your neck in debt, it's hard to be happy.

So our problems are a miniature mirror of those of our society in general. This is not coincidental. If others have less money to spend, those that provide goods and services in exchange for that money will get less.

The solution. or at least one of the available solutions to those problems is the same for us in miniature too.

Simplify. Move to a smaller, more sustainable mode of living. Prioritise for a debt free, less materialistic lifestyle.

It also has to be said, I am unspeakably proud of my wife. She's the one with the courage and foresight to have put us on this path. left to myself, I'd have stuck my head in the sand and done nothing until the bailiffs and locksmiths arrived to take possession of the house.



"You don't need these weights around you. Let them go. Let them fall."

Indeed.

driving lessons in Wallasey? learn to drive in Wirral? driving instructor in Birkenhead?