Here’s What an American Economic Collapse Could Actually Look Like (And How It May Be a Lot Different Than Folks Expect)

by | Jan 14, 2019 | Headline News | 69 comments

Do you LOVE America?

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    This article was originally published by Daisy Luther at The Organic Prepper

    When we think of “economic collapse” our imaginations usually lead us immediately to the desperation we’ve witnessed in places like Venezuela or Greece. We think of starvation, a complete lack of medical care, and waves of suicide by people who simply can’t survive. We imagine an apocalyptic societal breakdown that is immediately visible.

    Here in America, I suspect the collapse is going to look a lot different than it has in these other countries…at least, at first. And in my description, it’s entirely likely you’ll see that many of these signs have been happening all around us for years.

    It will be gradual.

    The thing with collapses that we see in the media is that we are seeing the end results of events that have been slowly declining for years. Venezuela was one of the wealthiest countries in the world back until the mid-1980s, due to their rich oil reserves. Then oil prices collapsed and their fall began. It was actually several decades though before it was truly evident that the country was in trouble.

    Preparedness bloggers here have been sounding the warning bell since 2008 (at least) when our economy went into a recession. While the US managed to dig its way out of that to at least an illusion of renewed prosperity, it’s questionable how much of that return was real and how much of it was propaganda.

    It’s unlikely that we’ll see just one event that says clearly to everyone, “Hey, our economy has collapsed. The Great Depression 2.0 has arrived, today, January 14, 2019, due to X event.”

    Instead, we’ll continue to see signs like a lack of full-time jobs with benefits, growing student and consumer debt, more people who can’t afford rent and food, and more stores closing their doors forever in an ongoing retail apocalypse.

    Because of the ready availability of credit cards and loans, things don’t seem that bad. People are still shopping for frivolous things. They’re still spending billions on Christmas. They’re still eating out at restaurants.

    But just because that “money” is being spent does not mean that people are okay financially.

    It will seem like it’s just individual families having a hard time.

    The way things are going down in America, it doesn’t seem like we’re facing a national crisis. Consumers are consuming. People are working – just look at those “jobs” numbers. Folks are still having barbecues with the neighbors, hosting extravagant holiday get-togethers, and avidly following the football season.

    But the American dream isn’t actually that dreamy. Because beneath all the trappings of our pleasant lives, people are right on the verge of a crisis.

    40% of Americans could not handle an unexpected expense of only $400 without having to sell something they own. 78% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. That means that only one missed paycheck will be a financial disaster for the majority of Americans.

    And when that missed paycheck or unexpected expense comes, people will completely blame themselves. They’ll silently feel like failures and not realize that the entire system is crumbling all around them. They will believe it is only their family, due to their own bad decisions, that is suffering.

    Sure, we could all make better choices from time to time. We could skip those vacations or spend less on the kids at Christmas or go on the beans-and-rice-and-apples diet. We could eschew credit cards, live beneath our means, and go full-Spartan with our lifestyles.

    Sometimes the money problems are out of our hands.

    But even with the very best personal economic decisions, a lot of things are out of our hands. What if a family member becomes seriously ill, with heaven forbid, a heart attack or cancer? Even with health insurance (which a growing number of middle-class families, mine included, cannot afford), the out of pocket costs will be astronomical. And that’s not even factoring in the long-term loss of the sick person’s income. Total financial disaster and it’s not something that can be avoided.

    Or what if your vehicle is totaled by an uninsured driver? Even when your own insurance covers what you’ve paid off on your vehicle, what if you just break even and then can’t afford another vehicle? Then you can’t get to work…then you can’t pay your bills…then, again, a disaster not of your own making has struck.

    Any time you see a family suffering financially, you must understand that very few of us are immune to money problems. We all handle these financial catastrophes differently and we all use the skills and talents we have to deal with them. Some of us are more fortunate than others – we’re able to pick up second and third jobs. We’re able to slash our expenses more relentlessly. Maybe we live in areas that are ripe with employment opportunities, instead of economically depressed small towns. We may not have poor health or sick children who require 24-hour care and supervision.

    Heck – once you add in children at all, you’re paying for daycare every time you go to work. I know that when my kids were little and I was a single mom, I had to take a second job just to cover my daycare costs, which, in the summer, were as much as my rent. I worked seven days a week for years and lost so much time with my children that it broke my heart.

    It’s really easy to look down on others who are having a hard time with money but always remember that just one crisis could put each of us in that place. We’re living in a system that is designed to put us in that place.

    The divide will get bigger.

    In the United States, we’re watching a disappearing act that unfortunately is no illusion. We’re watching the middle class vanish. Remember when it was common for just about everyone to have trappings like houses, two cars in the driveway, and kids who play baseball in the summer and take gymnastics lessons in the winter? Lifestyles that used to put us firmly right in the middle class are harder and harder to achieve. And it isn’t just that Americans are lazy and addicted to spending money they don’t have.

    The biggest blow I can think of to the middle class was the inappropriately named Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).  While that helped a lot of people who couldn’t afford any healthcare at all, with subsidies and low-to-no deductibles, for the rest of us who had a reasonable plan before, it was financially apocalyptic. There was story after story of families paying thousands of dollars per month for shoddy care that didn’t kick in until $10,000 had been spent out of pocket. This took formerly middle-class families and pushed them into the poverty level. But because their ridiculous monthly insurance payments weren’t write-offs, they couldn’t get subsidized. Talk about irony – the ACA impoverished people and then wouldn’t cover their healthcare.

    When I talk about the divide, I’m not referring to so-called “income inequality.” That will always exist because we all have different skills, and different skills are worth differing amounts of money.

    I’m talking about a divide in lifestyle. I’m talking about how people who work often two and three jobs can barely manage to survive. It’s a real problem when all we do is work and we can’t spend time raising our children to be good and productive members of society.

    Don’t get me wrong – rich folks can spend their money however they want. But at some point, their glaring frivolity is going to paint a Marie-Antoinette-style target on their backs. Regular people who could pay for a year of living comfortably with one of the Birkin bags in their collections of $20,000 purses are getting increasingly ticked off of the way things are going in this country.

    Eventually, things that are normal will become luxuries.

    While things are tough, even some of our poorest citizens still have it better than 2/3 of the world’s population. Most of us have roofs over our heads, heat in the winter, running water, food, and electricity to run our refrigerators.

    But that could change.

    As our economy plummets and our national debt soars, we could see the things that we all take for granted today could become luxuries tomorrow. Imagine if the ordinary trappings that we’ve always had became as out of reach for most of us as a Lamborghini in the driveway.

    What if only rich people could afford electricity? What about heat? What about running water?  What if that divide between the rich and the poor could be delineated by who had the ability to turn on a light at the flick of a switch and who did not?

    Many people worry about an event like a solar flare that would wipe out electrical power, casting us back about 200 years.  We’d have no refrigeration, no transportation, no climate control, and no lights. But in that situation, we’d all be in the same boat. No matter how wealthy you are, any unprotected electrical items would still be useless.

    What if that’s what the economic collapse looks like?

    What if the real threat was simply that no one could afford to pay the electric bill?  What if prices escalated to the point that it was a choice between food and electricity?  What if, home by home, the lights went out across America?

    And what about running water? A few years back, in Jefferson County, Alabama, the price of water quadrupled, making monthly water bills over $300.

    Jefferson County in Alabama is the state’s most populous county and also its poorest. One of the poorest of those poor areas is Birmingham, Jefferson County’s largest city. Here water and sewerage bills have quadrupled in the last 15 years and with combined sewerage and water bills coming in at around $300 a month, this leaves the same amount out of the average social security cheque of $600 a month to cover everything else, food, clothing, and all other utilities. Low paid workers, of which there are many fare no better.

    Many people have opted to buy drums of water from petrol stations rather than pay their ever increasing bills. They use these drums of water for drinking, washing and in their portable toilets which can be seen dotting back yards across the area, the modern version of the outhouse. They pay a fee to a sanitation company to remove the waste. It’s cheaper than letting the city take care of it. (source)

    So imagine if this kind of thing became even more widespread. What if you had to be rich to have electricity and running water?

    This is how it could happen.

    What if it’s just an incremental crumbling of our way of life, one household at a time?

    No bank runs. No government confiscation of resources. No dramatic event that we can all point to and say, “This is how the American economy was destroyed on (pick a date).”

    Instead, it becomes harder and harder to pay your necessary bills. You go deeper and deeper into debt trying to pay for things like medical bills and food. Your job, if you keep it, doesn’t provide increases in pay to match the increases in the costs of living because the person running the business is just trying to survive too.

    Then you re-evaluate what necessities are. You think about what you can work around. Which is more important? Medicine or childcare? Running water or electricity? Rent or food?

    This is the future for which we should be preparing.

    Stop expecting some huge event and look at the decline that’s already happening all around you. Think about your options in a world where only rich people can afford electricity and running water and food all at the same time.

    Maybe the epic disaster everyone has been preparing for is slowing happening right now. It isn’t really that farfetched, is it?

    Maybe the disaster is the crumbling of our First World lifestyle due to unsustainable debt and consumerism. Maybe it’s how they roll out the socialist utopia that control freaks all seem to desire. If everyone is desperate to survive or to regain their former luxuries, how hard would it be to manipulate them into a comfortable control grid?

    If you want to maintain your independence, then self-reliance is survival.

    What do you think?

    How could you see an economic collapse in the United States of America actually going down? Is this something you’d like to see more articles (or even a book) about?

    The Pantry Primer

    Please feel free to share any information from this article in part or in full, giving credit to the author and including a link to The Organic Prepper and the following bio.

    Daisy is a coffee-swigging, gun-toting, homeschooling blogger who writes about current events, preparedness, frugality, and the pursuit of liberty on her websites, The Organic Prepper and DaisyLuther.com She is the author of 4 books and the co-founder of Preppers University, where she teaches intensive preparedness courses in a live online classroom setting. You can follow her on Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter,.

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      69 Comments

      1. People have had it too good too long. People are already on the edge and it will not take much of nothing to get the ball rolling one thing leads to another and spiral out of control quickly. Entitled people ,hungry and out of antidepressants no hope and full of despiration . Unfortunately a little help wont be enough for them anarchy and insanity will be the new norm. Melinnials,snow flakes, and princesses and worse of all feelings….

        • lack of full-time jobs with benefits

          I taught at the local community college. We were only allowed to work 19.5 hours a week. I taught 39 hour sessions, but i had to work thursday friday, monday tuesday because Obamacare required employers to provide health insurance for employees working more than 19.5 hours a week.

          I know a lot of people that have 3 jobs because they are all part time.

      2. Outstanding article Daisy! Thanks again for all you do for the prepping community. I’m sorry for not supporting you by buying your book already, but I will remedy that.

      3. Why do you think they are putting January and February funds on the peoples snap food stamp cards early….

        • I wouldn’t be surprised if a compromise is reached before March. Just in time for March EBT payments to go out.

          • “let ’em eat cake!”.

      4. Gotta keep the masses pacified a little longer.

        • Yep, they don’t want the freeloaders burning down the cities.

      5. test

        • it aint werkin’.

      6. Yep…. Iceland is looking better all the time….

        • Only 1% of Iceland is suitable for agriculture…but the ladies are very pretty there.

          • Have you considered Nova Scotia?
            ht tps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_Nova_Scotia

            • htt ps://www.novascotiabusiness.com/articles/nova-scotia-mines-rich-future
              …including peat moss which used to be burned all the time as well as being a soil ammenity. There is plenty to mine there as well like coal, salt, gypsum, and GOLD. Hint hint.

              • Yep, beautiful place too, (Canada’s Ocean Playground), rich in history. Mostly rural, economically depressed but land is reasonable. Most people are friendly but treat
                Halifax as you would any large city, especially the ‘Darkmouth’ side.

                Though I live in NB, I was born in NS and have visited many times, favorite area is the South Shore, (Oak Island! Arrr!)

      7. I agree with the article. However My local electric Coop uses coal fired generation. They stated If Hellery had got her way and was successful in the (War on Coal) and they had to shut down the coal fired plants. The average electric bill would be over $1,000. But even if you could afford that amount you still wouldn’t have electric. Because so few members can pay that much that the income wouldn’t be enough to keep the Coop open. So everyone rich and poor would be without power.

        • Old Guy, fossil fuels are at least part of the basis for our economy. Do away with natural gas, coal, and oil and see what happens then.

          • Well, Ocasio (NY-D) is pushing her Green New Deal which includes everything going to solar, wind, and other natural sources of energy. Do you want to fly in a solar powered airplane?

            • Yahooie, the ‘green technologies’ have not yet been proven, except for solar but solar does have its limits.

      8. There are three main problems.
        Lawyers, Insurance, Bankers.

        Lawyers do the red tape for the Bankers who are the true rulers, and insurance is like a tax, just another scam that steals from the masses to keep a small gang of criminal satanists in power and luxury while everyone else just barely gets by.

        .

        • Bankers and Insurance is the same thing. All major banks have an insurance arm…and you are right. It is designed to milk you of your wealth and transfer it back to the banks.

      9. I should apologize for being as jumpy as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. But recent events have prompted me to take steps that I haven’t done since 2007.

        For example, about a year ago I cancelled cable and internet (for 6 months) and a few other expenses so that I could increase my prepping budget. That allowed me to stock up on Canned Chicken, Spam and Stagg Chilly (my favorite).

        This past month I started stocking up on regular canned goods. Especially canned potatoes. I did a recent test on cans that were almost 6 years past expiration and they were great. Consequently, I’m stocking up heavily on canned potatoes (where I can find them…National shortage apparently on No. 10 cans).

        The article states, “Eventually, things that are normal will become luxuries”. I lived through the 70’s and Coffee, Sugar, and meat were luxuries!

        “While things are tough, even some of our poorest citizens still have it better than 2/3 of the world’s population. Most of us have roofs over our heads, heat in the winter, running water, food, and electricity to run our refrigerators.”

        If I manage to keep Shelter, Heat, Running Water, Food, and Some Electricity though this Greatest Depression I will be extremely fortunate.

        Thanks Daisy and SHTF posters for keeping me focused.

        • Justice, I’m of the thinking that focusing on the necessities is most important. I don’t know if you read my reply on a previous post but try a local food distributor for the #10 canned items.

          • Panther, I spoke with the managers at 3 different grocery stores and they checked and DON’T carry No. 10 cans of Potatoes. Plus, I checked Walmart, Costco and Sam’s Club. I’m hoping that this is a temporary situation because a few months ago I was able to order them from the Walmart Website.

            Also, I totally agree that now is the time to focus on necessities. Every dollar is really precious at this point. I am all about food.

            • If you have an ALDI grocery store nearby we bought the smaller cans of potatoes @ .69 a can Great place to stock up on all kinds of things.

              • Arby5, I don’t want to brag but I finally got my cases of 15oz sliced potatoes from Walmart for .44 a can (the grocery stores wanted .80 per can). I was thinking that they would never come in. First time I went to pick them up, only one case came in. She had to re-order, but finally the others showed up. It was an important reminder that ANYONE WHO WAITS TO THE LAST SECOND TO STOCK UP WILL BE HURTING.

                My plan is from here on out (now that I have a good base) to try and pick up a case every time I go. Plus, stock up on SALE ITEMS! However, it’s so hard to stock up when most stores only have a few of the items on the shelf.

                IMPORTANT NOTE: All the stores and Walmart asked me WHY I wanted so many? I told the I wanted them for my Church. They accepted this answer.

                • Justice, Do you live near a Sysco or other kind of food dist that services restaurants, schools, hospitals, nursing homes. I used to work for Sysco many years ago and they did sell to the public.

                  • i HOPE you are shopping the sale-ads every week, and buying only the best-priced things, several cases at a time….some of my faves are
                    chilli(dennisons)
                    peanut butter
                    fruit
                    canned soups you can stretch by adding beans, rice, or macaroni to.
                    cherry pie filling from 99c store this time of year
                    dried milk
                    canned veggies
                    spam
                    beef/chicken bullion

                    pinto beans
                    macaroni
                    rice
                    pinto beans
                    canned fruit like peaches, fruit cocktail, pears, apricots
                    peanut butter
                    tomatoes and tomatoe sauce
                    cornmeal
                    flour
                    sugar, brown sugar
                    tabasco sauce
                    oats
                    BBQ sauce
                    popcorn and seasoning
                    olives, black
                    canned chilli
                    canned soups…my favorite, cream of mushroom
                    milk, dried, evaporated, and condensed
                    cake mix, 7up or sprite, and canned fruit…to make cobbler, apple or cherry is MY faves(google that)
                    canned veggies
                    honey
                    syrup
                    vinegar
                    shortening/corn oil
                    soy sauce…teriyake
                    beef/chicken bullion
                    baking soda, baking powder, yeast
                    salt
                    pepper, garlic salt, chilli powder, italian seasoning, cinnamon, ketchup, mustard mayo.
                    instant coffee, tea..creamer
                    hard candy, chocolate
                    tuna, spam(don’t stack it very high)
                    powdered eggs

                • Justice, normally I HATE wallyworld but I do go there on occasion to stock up on certain items myself. I’ve ALWAYS been about food, LOL. On sale items, if it’s something I can use, damn right I stock up all I can.

                • Justice: make sure you rotate I use a sharpie marker to date top of can mo and yr.

              • Arby’s, I like Aldi too. It may cost a little more than onlin shopping, the good thing is you can pick out the cans you want to fill a case, and leave the dented ones behind. Aldi canned goods taste as good as brand name IMHO. But when you’re really hungry, who the hell cares?

        • During the time of the ranchhands/cowboys, they all but demanded coffee to ease their hardship. Similarly during the Civil War people griped about just drinking chicory(versus adding a little chichory to their coffee).

          It wasn’t just the headaches but a lack of something to wake when working all day every day and getting snatches of sleep.

          Same thing with sugar.

        • Have you thought about dehydrating? I invested in a dehydrator last summer, and whenever something is in season, I buy and dehydrate as much as I can. A 5 lb bag of potatoes will fit into the large 2qt canning jar.

          • As long as you have a well, even a shallow point (which is NOT a longbterm solution), dehydrating is the least expensive way to go and save shelf space.

            But you cannot dehydrate anything that contains fat very well. It goes rancid. Fat does not store for long periods either. It’s problematic to can items with high fat content and have them last more than a year.

            I don’t know why food scientists have not studied this issue better as yeah…that canned ancient c ration is edible butis it nutritious??? Probably not.

      10. Yes great article – And yes it pays to watch the time lapse of the economy.
        I however, believe our and the world economies will implode on themselves.
        Its just basic math – No way in hell will our or the worlds debt be ever paid.
        So What will happen eventually? The pide pip-per will be a callin.
        A world economic do over but only after years of agony and depression and wars

      11. The slow spiral downward has been going on for some time, there are exponential crisis’ that could converge and speed up the decline rapidly. We should be prepared.

      12. 30 years ago, 2.5 million worked in ordinary blue collar manufacturing jobs. They made $35,000-45,000. They bought things and invested. And thus fifty others benefited by being employed and servicing them. They built them homes. They received money from them for charitable purposes. They sold the tires. They owned restaurants where these blue collar folks ate.

        Now there are few jobs like that due to Free Trade and Inflationdue to Deficit Spending. Even if someone has a job paying $35,000 to 45,000, it is worth half as much.

        This isn’t rocket science. Politicians killed the golden goose. They themselves made China rich and America poor.

        • Maranatha: And this will soon happen since Trump is slacking on the wall which could be funded out of assets (houses, cars, boats, bank accts) seized from Fed. arrests (drug gangs,cartels, etc) to the tune of 14 Bill.$ Is Trump a cg agent? Why hasn’t he drained the swamp 100% and got the uN out of the US then?? People are starting to Q his ties to Soros, incl his son in law.

          • The guy has only been there two years for crying out loud and against ENORMOUS odds with a hostility I have NEVER seen. Not even Nixon faced this assault by the 95% of the news media and Demoncrats. Plus hostile RINOs who sabotage him and backstab him.

            Look at what Trump has accomplished in such a short time.

            And he doesn’t even take a salary but donates it!

            What would you do? Would you put up with it? I wouldn’t.

            • I agree, I’m still giving him the benefit of the doubt just because of the way the “news media” treats him. I figure when he keeps them pissed off, he must be doing something right. Two years and he’s done a lot to piss off the Powers that Be. I’m really surprised he hasn’t been killed yet. God Forbid. So much more needs to be done, but I almost get the feeling that it is him alone against everyone else, Dems, and Republicans. If he has any allies they are few and far between. I actually feel sorry for him sometimes but I think he actually enjoys the fight, right or wrong. And he sure beats the crap out of the alternative, Hillary.

            • I am crying out loud. But I think it’s only because I suffer from the Dunning-Kruger effect.

          • laura ann, Most here will not agree with you but I’ve been watching what he does more than what he says and I agree with your insightful post.

          • Laura Ann–apparently you’d like a Trump dictatorship. That’s the only way he could fill your little wish list.

          • laura ann:

            “…the wall which could be funded out of assets (houses, cars, boats, bank accts) seized from Fed. arrests (drug gangs,cartels, etc) to the tune of 14 Bill.$”

            Careful there L.A…..Most of that Civil Asset Forfeiture is Pirated Money/Property by Federal Goon Pirates with absolutely NO CONVICTIONS associated with it.

            The End (the wall) doesn’t justify the Means (civil asset forfeiture)

            I want a wall, but not that way even if they are scum who owned the stuff.

            They can do it YOU if they can get away with doing it them.

            END Civil Asset Forfeiture ! Un-Constitutional from the Jump !

            <bb

          • First… Civil asset forfeiture isn’t all about seizing money fromdrug dealers and the cartels.. They can’t take assets from anyone on some B.S. claim. Then good luck getting your stuff back.
            I also question why Trump hasn’t drained the swamp…. I think he realized that once he was president he didn’t have the power and is only a puppet. Once he stops doing what the Banksters/deep state folks tell him he’ll end up like JFK.

        • Mara,
          I just checked and I made $45,000 in 1988. That was before I got my degree. I was a computer/electronics Technician.
          That job is gone today as technology has virtually eliminated component level electronics repair. That is true of a good many mid level jobs. Technology has put a lot of people out of work and will continue to put people out of work, if they don’t train for new, much more challenging jobs.
          I would argue that a lot of the job losses in blue collar jobs was due to unions not allowing productivity improvements, Government over regulation, taxation, and getting involved in markets they have no business in. Couple this with Companies not investing in the long term in favor of short term profits, and you get what we have today, poorly trained, out of work, and poorly motivated people.
          I differ with you, in that I maintain that Democrat politicians
          have nearly killed the goose that laid the golden egg. The people that elected Democrats made China rich and America much poorer.

          • Yep, we have a similar background.

            I met techs who trained craftsmen who did marine automation and navigation controls using computers and smartscreens.

            Unions contributed, but companies were forced to make productivity improvements like crazy to stay competitive and remain open. This area had few union jobs in factories. The guys in the union were craftsmen who did installation work in factories and construction. They were contractors.

            What made workers angry was consistently they vastly improved productivity as did operators and craftsmen. I mean measurable increase in line output.

            It didn’t matter because China could make things so inexpensively due to serf labor rates and no benefits and they actually lived in worker dorms too! Imagine living on the factory grounds and being essentialy a prisoner entirely at the mercy of communist bosses. Note how many ended up committingsuicide in these Chinese factories.

            • Mara,
              You confuse me,which isn’t too hard these days.
              “The guys in the union were craftsmen who did installation work in factories and construction. They were contractors.”
              I’ve built boats in a factory.
              No union, but they had contract people install electronics, they told me where to do the wood work and they popped in the systems.
              I never met a union contractor.
              Are you talking about “Job shoppers”?
              The union hall sends workers out daily to what ever site needs
              a specific skill set?
              I’ve done this non-union, but know it as piecework, which is usually bid out on a per job basis.

              • In Western Kentucky and the surrounding Southern Indiana and Illinois, some businesses were BOOMING during the eighties and part of the nineties.

                Union contractors were always… ever single day coming into nonunion factories. They did installation work but never took trouble calls or did preventative maintenance.

                So in effect, these union craftsmen guys owed their employment to nonunion factories! It was weird.

                Typically after paying union dues, they made less than nonunion and hardly worked any overtime. Which means they often made a 1/3 less overall.

                I generally teased them, “why the heck are you in the union? I make more.”

                • Plus they would get perturbed often and strike in solidarity and so then, they made even LESS while I had steady work.

                  Then Hillary pushed NAFTA and it all started to disintergrate harming union amd nonunion in my region.

                • Mara,
                  In a round about way you answered my question.
                  You were dealing with “job shoppers”.
                  A non-union company MAY contract with the union to provide
                  labor. The individual workers are not contractors.

                  • Maybe where you are from, but the term here ie regionally is “union contractors”. I have never heard the term “job shoppers”. Good to know. They were great installers as it was all high quality work and uniform and always up to the electrical code.

      13. Ms. Luther,
        First, I salute your strength and your generosity in leading the charge, so to speak.
        Second, obviously from your commenters, a number of people “get it” but I am extremely pessimistic about the average American’s survivability. Man, woman and child, they are shallow thinkers, ill-educated, endangered by their own lifestyles and have none of the fortitude of the generation that dealt with the Great Depression. As neighbors, they are a liability. Putting together a potential survival community is extremely difficult. One last thing I think needs to be said: from my experience and from many comments to many blogs such as yours, the average wife is a real millstone around the neck of men who really do “get it” and want to make sacrifices to prep for hard times. Many, many of these men complain of having to work around their wives to get anything saved up or tucked away and I’m not talking about men toys.
        Again, thanks for what you are doing.

      14. OK – Why the hell do my post s – not get posted???????????????

      15. This story is brought to you by Selco…umm i mean Daisy hahaha

      16. L6NhFO7PWRM
        Chris Matthews is a Labor Democrat and rarely criticizes the DNC but raked Hillary over the coals about NAFTA.

        She is the last person who should EVER be president. She is a destroyer and the whoreofBabylon wanting abortions up to giving birth!

        • Tim Russert was also a stalwart Mr Harcore Democrat and he despised Hillary due to NAFTA.

      17. There’s an official notiçe going around aimed at SNAP beneficiaries that on 1/19 they will receive extra credits to use for groceries.

        This means Congress has an extra month to solve the impasse. But of course other things could happen like shutting down air travel due to TSA union tactics with them calling in sick.

        Or food inspections compromising public health issues.Or if the H1N1/H3N2 flu situation grows worse.

      18. I lost a job at Honeywell in CA. when they m9ved production to Mexico. I’ve hated the Clintons since,and I don’t hate easily. Now as for the wall, what Trump needs to do is place a surcharge on all monies going to Mexico from all the illegals here. The wall would be paid off quicker than you can say booooooo.

        • Honeywell is very diverse, but regionally most factories in the eighties and nineties had Honeywell alarms which monitored security and fire systems. They were excellent and reliable and their techs were consistently high knowledgeable.

      19. Unions in the private sector are just a shadow of what they once were. It is the public sector unions that are still able to carry any real weight anymore and even that depends on what state you live in. I think the Organic Prepper is right, the country is in a slow decline that seems to be accelerating. People will wake up one day and wonder what happened unless they have been preparing for it. There is a dark shadow spreading over our once proud Republic and it grows ever darker.

      20. ht tp://www.wfmz.com/news/berks/giant-food-stores-to-use-in-store-robots-at-all-locations/975253313
        Here’s your future regarding employment. So when all the employees are replaced, how will these former employees buy food? Progress is wonderful, right?

      21. ht tps://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/01/for-first-time-ever-opioid-deaths-top-deaths-from-car-crashes-in-us-democrats-still-wont-pay-for-border-wall-video/
        Now Mexican drugs kills more than car accidents.

      22. htt ps://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/01/stunning-list-35-times-the-fbi-deviated-from-standard-practice-or-committed-crimes-in-efforts-to-exonerate-hilary-and-indict-trump/
        Face the facts that the Democrats are enemies of the American constitutional republic and historians will mark events like this as Civil War 2.0.

      23. As long as you have a well, even a shallow point (which is NOT a longbterm solution), dehydrating is the least expensive way to go and save shelf space.

        But you cannot dehydrate anything that contains fat very well. It goes rancid. Fat does not store for long periods either. It’s problematic to can items with high fat content and have them last more than a year.

        I don’t know why food scientists have not studied this issue better as yeah…that canned ancient c ration is edible butis it nutritious??? Probably not.

      24. In 1990, the US population was about 250 million. And those 2.5 million modest bluecollar workers had an enormous effect on the nation’s prosperity. That average ordinary $40,000 plus benefits changed hands, over and over, and life was very confortable.

        Those people were typically high school graduates.

        Now we have 330 million, and if just halted free trade and became isolationists, balanced the budget and it was LEAN, and mostly trade those dollars domestically, then as little as 3.3 million jobs might restore the country to prosperity.

        That is not insurmountable. It is NOT hopeless.

        If you think so,see Germany after WW1, and Germany and Japan after WW2. They were in far WORSE shape.

        An economy is built on an illusion of enforced OPTIMISM and reducing the direct threat of war as that siphons off resources and people.

      25. htt ps://halturnerradioshow.com/index.php/en/news-page/news-nation/section-8-ends-after-february-millions-could-be-left-homeless
        Section 8 will end after February.

        With no food and no housing, how long before urbanites flee?

      26. htt ps://halturnerradioshow.com/index.php/en/news-page/news-nation/two-more-migrant-caravans-begin-trek-to-u-s-border
        Two caravans headed to the southern border. How long before it’s overrun?

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