US / World Economy in Trouble

This isn't an article but I just had to comment somewhere....


Yesterday I was in the grocery store and overheard a guy, couldn't be younger than 18 or 19, ask another lady who said something about losing her retirement...."Whats wrong with the stock market?". :roulette:

 

Seems I was on the forward end of a current trend. :icon_scratch:


Hope you all got your seed orders in....I did. :thumbsup:


Dollars from dirt: Economy spurs home garden boom

 

...no doubt...


...Here's a fact...


I went to order some tomato seeds from a company called Totally Tomatoes...out of Wisconsin. They mailed me a catalog this year without a prompt or request by me. They happened to have a coupla strains that I had been searchin' for...namely the Super Souix and the Goliath. Also they had Chocolate Habaneros and Peach Habanero seeds so I ordered up those too...


Here's where I tie in with Herbsparky's theme in his last post there...I called my order in on a week day before noon...I was on hold for right at 30 minutes...I generally speakin' never hold that long on hold for anything...however, I really wanted to get these seeds ordered so I patiently (emphasis on patience) waited for the operator to pick-up my line...well when she did, she immediately apologized for my lengthy hold pattern...and said that she has never in the 5+ years she has worked for this seed company seen the phones ringing off the hook like they have, in fact, she said she was so busy this particular morning that she hadn't even had a chance to take a much needed bathroom break, or so she claimed...I think I believe her...


And I think we all realize that this is a small but good example of what Herb's splaining 'bout here...


I can only be thankful that my ability to grow food and the such(nudge nudge wink wink lol) has turned out to be a feather in my hat. I am sure the days will come where people like you and I folks, us cultivators, will be the go to people for hope and a full stomach...mark my words...or plant them...like a seed...


...Like a seed...


...DC...:XXsunsmile::new_scatter:

 

It's already happening for me Daze. Since getting chickens we've started to sell the eggs that we don't consume ourselves. We now have orders for 6 dozen a week and I've got people on a waiting list for when we have more. Our hope is to have the means to supply people with things they may not have in trade for what we may not have, and it's already taking shape. I've got heirloom seeds that one day I'll be able to trade or sell. I've got three pregnant goats that will give me more goats to trade or sell, I've got something like 64 tree cuttings from 100 year old trees that I can continue to trade or sell....etc etc etc. In short...I'm finding ways to survive thru means I have on hand. The fact that I'm feeding my family is just the tip of the iceburg.

 

We are better equiped than many even here may realize. There are only two or three foods on earth that man can live on alone. Hemp seed is one of them. Hemp seeds contain more digestable protein than meat, contain not merely the 8-10 amino acids that the body needs to synthesize the others but actually contain all 20 amino acids known to exist. They contain healthy fats (including more omega 3 than fish oil) and contain them in the 3-1/4-1 ratios that nutritionists believe is the perfect consumption ratio for humans.


You could switch to an all hemp seed and water diet and your nutritional needs would probably be better met than they are now. You'd be on a vegan/raw food diet to boot even if you don't do it for moral reasons. You can even make milk and cheese from hemp seeds! Plus they contain lots of dietary fiber so a hemp seed eater won't have to worry about diverticulitis (enflamed pockets and holes in the colon, extremely painful and potentially fatal, 60% of all people over 65 have this condition).


It'd break my heart to let my girls go to seed but it wouldn't take much to grow enough seeds to live on and the other parts of the plant can be used for making rope, cloth, paper, etc.


If you are really going to grow to provide food to hungry people in your neighborhood it isn't tomatoes we should be growing my friends. We are better equipped to farm food that is nutritious than that. Hemp seed is even legal, its supposed to be sterilized and below a certain THC content but if you are carrying around a bag with 5lbs of seeds from your own plants I doubt anyone will bother sending them to a lab to check em when people are hungry and the damn things can be ordered from canada.

 

Sounds like you are all prepared for when the revolution comes. In the mean time, I think the key to surviving the downturn in the economy is to diversify your income. On top of building houses, I have 2 rent houses, I build furniture, do an occasional re-model, "share" MJ and hash with a few close friends, photoshop and edit photos, buy and sell on e-bay plus bring in money from MMA fights. My wife works full time as a photo-lab tecnician, works weekends photographing weddings, senior pics and families and puts on 2 karaoke/guitar hero shows at a local bar each week. We're always busy as hell, but we don't want for anything, our savings are getting fat, and we have extra money to travel and have a few hobbies. Not trying to brag....we work VERY hard for what we have, and we've earned everything we have. I'm always thinking of other ways to bring in money, and to keep that money working for me. My parents never had money, but they taught me a good work ethic, and that's all I'll ever need to get by.


Peace

 

Some added thoughts


Many of us grow our hemp using various methods. What happens when we need to produce hundreds of pounds of hemp seed and the nutrient formulas and various tools we use now aren't available?


First of all, order yourself seeds from a nice outdoor strain on the sole basis of yield. If its a monster plant that yields monster buds then it will yield an ungodly amount of seed in those monster buds.


For light and odor control you'll have the sun, wind, and atmosphere. If people are hungry you won't have a hard time finding a place to grow outdoors. Nobody is going to be bothering with f choppers overhead and cutting down your grow at that point.


The nutrients are trickier, there are lots of things around but what and in what concentrations? Cannagirl provided me with the answer to this question. You can grow hydro plants using nothing but the water straight from a never cleaned aquarium. The answer is to draw your water from a fish pond. Then you know you've got the nutrients covered by the water.


Other than that we all know the concerns no matter what method we use, drainage, oxygenation of the roots, airflow, etc.

 

Nope. There will be arial drones for that. To insure the safety of the population, all food must be aquired at an approved government substation.


Glad I got my seed order in early. Got some sprouts going and no land, but figured "if you grow it, land will come."

 

I once believed that as well. its an easy belief to cling to when things go reasonably well for you. Unfortunately, in the real world working hard is something that everyone has to do and there are no shortage of hard working people who are going hungry.


As an example I'll use my Uncle. My family is from the midwest and has that hard working midwestern work ethic. My uncle worked hard as a boy, mowing lawns and doing other yard work so that when he turned 16 he was able to buy his own car outright. He continued to work while going through high school and paid his own way through college. After college he went immediately into the workforce as a claims adjuster for an insurance company. He worked hard and saved up until he was able to buy a house. At work he never took a sick day, always arrived 30-60mins early and stayed until the days work was done. On claims he always did what he felt was right but he took the companies lines about people trying to scam them to heart and investigated every claim with extreme care to find the 'con'.


Over the years he was promoted many times and recieved many raises. He used a company car and would buy old company cars for my aunt at auction for discounts. He has always been a careful spender and invested his money into a nicely diversified stock portfolio, heaviest in the nice safe stocks, the financials.


After 21 years with the company, still having never taken a sick day and even taking vacation days when his children were born, he was fired (about two weeks ago). At that point he was the highest paid claims supervisor in the company, his own superior took a retirement package. He had been offered a promotion to VP that would have required much more responsibility and wouldn't have really meant more money but turned it down because it didn't sound a good deal. Now he thinks they were trying to justify his salary and didn't want to put it in those terms.


My aunt worked for a cleaning company that was sometimes hired by insurance companies to clean up flood and fire damage. This included his insurance company so even though she no longer worked there when he was fired the company used this as an excuse to fire him. They are even fighting him on unemployment.


His pension is lost, his savings for retirement was lost when the stock market crashed. His car was a company car, his wife's car was a bargain vehicle with high mileage, thanks to the real estate market his house is upside down on the mortgage so he can't sell it.


Today the man is floating on what they had in the bank while he fights for unemployment and searches for work in a job market where companies are firing not hiring. A year ago this is probably the man I'd go to if I needed a personal loan, today I am trying to figure out how many pounds of hemp seeds it would take to feed his family in addition to mine.


Think about it. This is no downturn, this no recession, this is a depression. The housing market is a symptom not a cause and the stimulus package is a 700 billion dollar drop in the bucket compared to the problem. Optimism and happy thoughts are NOT going to fix this very real problem. Only drastic and immediate dismissal of failed economic theories that have become the basis for our entire economy would stop this downslide before it hits bottom and I don't expect that to happen anytime soon.


I wish you luck my friend. I hope you do well and weather the storm well. Just please understand that those who are unemployed are not the 'bad' employees or the extra weight. The people in trouble today are not merely the ones who made bad choices, spent recklessly, or were lazy and don't want to work.

 

You're proving my point though. Every story starts out with "He/She worked for the company for...."


Since I turned 16, I've never worked for anybody but MYSELF.

 

lol I'm not talking about 1984 bro, I'm talking about a year from now when the government is as broke as the rest of us.

 

Tell that to Rep. Rosa LeLauro (D-CT) and her husband (Monsanto). And the 39 co-sponsors of HR 875.


If you really believe the above quote, I've got a bridge to sell you in Illinois - after I'm fully fingerprinted and registered of course...

 

Yeah, me too. Hows the construction business where you are these days? Having good luck finding renters who are financially stable enough to pay regularly in those rental properties? What happens when the lease is up and they move somewhere cheaper? I'm sure everyone being broke isn't going to impact the ability to pay for extras that you can do without like tutoring.


I'm not trying to pick on your circumstances. I know my computer business is hurting. I have gotten 4 calls in the past MONTH. A year ago that would have been crazy for slow week. Two years ago that would have been a slow DAY for me. I've tried everything from adjusting rates to changing service terms. It doesn't matter. Hell at one point I offered all the local businesses an entirely free service call and they didn't bite.


Maybe things are going great there, I don't know. But when I look around here in the one of the top ten wealthiest counties in the nation here in Florida I see each day dozens of uncompleted construction projects that were halted because there is no money to finish them.


Yes, working for a company is for starters letting someone else take a piece of the profit from your labor and also putting all your employment eggs in one basket. I agree. With my own business there is no one company that can fire me. But it doesn't make much difference when nobody can afford my services. Even those who can afford them are tightening their belts and looking for solutions that cost them time rather than money.


That also ignores the fact that not everybody can have their own business. The reality of the world is that there are only so many resources to go around, if anyone is going to get the long stick (for merit or anything else) the fact is that someone else is going to get a short stick.


The ONLY reason I am even floating right now is that I've cut to absolutely minimal expenses and taken a part time job (a low paid retail job and that took a year to find!). I'm now working out of a home office and I can pay all the bills without my business making a profit.

 

My dad has worked for a major oil company for about 30 years. He's their top safety guy and in a high ranking management position (non-executive). This is a guy who spent literally about 10-15 years of his life on hunks of metal for these people.


Now he's on the list of possible layoffs. Though (having access to production numbers) he can see no reason why they would need to cut jobs, as they are doing rather well. The commands come from on high, decisions made by people who apparently know something that he doesn't...


assit:

 

That's why I believe in diversifying your sources of income. When housing slows down, I pick up re-models like crazy. I live in a college town, and we usually rent to a group of girls for 12 month leases. Cleanest tennants we've ever had, but if I had no renters, I still have the properties to borrow against or sell. I'm not saying that it's not tough out there, I know it is. I'm just saying people might be a little better off if they didn't rely on one main source for income. I started off cleaning horse stalls and brush-hogging, and I used that money to put myself through school and buy tons and tons of tools. I used the tools to start a trim company, and that evolved into a home building company. I'm only 26 and from a pretty poor family. If I can be own my own businesses, anybody can. I wish everybody the best, and I empathized with anybody suffering out there. Might think about moving to Oklahoma, it's one of the few places in the country with a thriving local economy. When I drive around, I'm in awe of how much construction is going on around here. Plus it helps that we have just about the lowest cost of living in the whole country. I'm not trying to offend anybody....I'll shut up now.

 

Pretty sound advice whether things are good or bad. It just sounded like you think this is a relatively short term and minor bump in the road. Things are harder than that and going to get much much worse than they are now. I hate to see anybody not prepared for that. I saw this thing coming before it happened and prepared for it and I see it getting a lot deeper than anyone is prepared for. But hey maybe I'm wrong. I hope so.

Hey no worries, we're just talkin. This is the politics section, everybody doesn't have to agree or have the same experience. And most definitely NOBODY should have to feel like they need to shut up or be gagged. I apologize if I made you feel that way. If nothing else its good to know that about OK. Don't suppose there are med laws there? assit:

 

That's most likely why you have what you have there....low cost of living. People tend to gravitate to areas where the cost of living is low when they have less money to work with. Here in Cali it's the shits to say the least. Cost of living is high and there are just too many laid off construction workers doing their own thing now to even hope about making a living doing the same thing. Too many people here are willing to work for next to nothing ( migrant workers) and it ends up cutting my throat.


That doesn't mean I give up though. I'm diversifying as you stated Carpenter. It's all about making lemonade from lemons, and if at first you don't succeed...try try again. :thumbsup:

 

Thought it might be time to bring this thread back to it's original intent.....to inform about the global crisis we now find ourselves in.


While it's true that some might find themselves in a protective bubble, there's still a lot going on out there that I feel people need to see. Again...I don't wish to scare people....just give them a chance to make plans for the future as best they can. Take the information I provide for what it is....the choice of how you use it is up to you.


Experts: Financial crisis threatens security

Britain showing signs of heading towards 1930s-style depression, says Bank

This one REALLY chaps my ass. They just keep trying to control every aspect of our lives.


HR 875: A Bill That Would Regulate The Small Family Farm Out Of Business

I'm sure you all will LOVE this one.


Florida legislator wants random drug tests for the unemployed