InTheRockies said:
Well, it's not just the stove shops that are hurting. There's an interesting article in today's NY Times about the precipitous plunge in consumer spending in October. Almost all retailers reported significant drops in consumer spending--we're talking double digit percentages. Consumer confidence is tapped out due to multiple factors that we're all too painfully familiar with--the impact of high inflation on food and energy prices (OPEC and commodities markets bear blame--OPEC wrongly assumed that a failing US economy wouldn't impact the world economy, ignoring the fact that booming Asian markets were mainly selling goods to US consumers since the EU import laws aren't quit as open as ours), the deflating housing bubble; very high job losses. I think there's a real chance we're going to see another phenomenon that we haven't experienced since the oil embargo of the 70's--stagflation, where you have the presence of inflation (I'm talking real inflation that factors in energy and food prices, not the term "core inflation" that was developed by the Nixon administration to artificially keep the calculation of the CPI low so annual cost-of-living increases to entitlement programs could be reigned in), high unemployment, and slow economic growth. I worry that OPEC's influence will expand, not contract. Russia is clearly making overtures to march in lock step with respect to quotas. Clearly, economic woes will reduce demand and have an impact on oil producers' efforts to control the market, but they can keep inflation too high. I wish Americans would give some thought to the national security implications of the fact that 75% of our GDP is now comprised of consumer spending. It reflects a reality that politicians from both sides of the isle don't want to admit--that over the past several decades they have catered to the wishes of multi-national corporations and have allowed them to move our manufacturing base (and more importantly, well-paying jobs) overseas. God help us if there's another big war, especially one involving China. We don't have the cash (and might not have the time) to build new factories.
wow- you hit the nail on the head and drove it in, in a single blow, with some of those observations!
Virtually everyone seems to agree that we are on the cusp of an economic downturn the likes of which has not been seen since the Great Depression. My dad, who lived through the Depression, confirmed that he's never seen trends like this since then. And we're ALL still guessing where the bottom will be.
And in the Great Depression, the US still had an immense, if somewhat idled, manufacturing base, and a largely rural population with a fairly broad and deep reservoir of skills at self-sufficiency. We've lost most of those things in the decades since, especially the last few, based on false promises of instant gratification and cheap trendy disposable crap.
Don't forget that the economic turmoil of the Great Depression led to huge political turmoil in many countries, which had no small role in WWII.
at this point, if the global political scene went unstable, and we had tensions with China, to whom we have an immense national credit card bill for our various consumer and government spending sprees, we'd be begging our opponents to build us our arms... or at least critical sub-components... and that isn't a pretty thought to contemplate (as an aside, I am a peace-oriented person in general, but not a gun-banner (in fact, a firearms enthusiast)
please note that I mean NO aspersions on ANY race or ethnicity;
I am talking about the power structures in the various locations, and China's government, as much as it has let commerce run free, still seems to keep a pretty tight hold on political power and free speech, in ways that most of us would not be too comfortable living under. Remember Tiannemen?
So, I don't care whether oil is going up or down on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.
I am just looking forward to getting off the rollercoaster and being able to supply my single largest domestic energy demand from a source that I can harvest myself within virtual spitting distance. I've burned wood for years, but with old tech devices and a day job, it's been a matter of either letting the oil burner run some during the day, or coming home to a house in which I can seee my breath. I am really looking forward to local, self-harvested wood become my main, and hopefully sole, source of domestic heat and DHW.
Kinda like the Y2k crisis hype almost 10 years ago when I openly grinned to have a house so utterly obsolete (gravity fed water from a 180 year old spring, a wood cookstove, and gravity warm air wood furnace) that it was "100% Y2K compliant"
who was it that said that luck is when preparation meets opportunity?
I think it was a revered ancient figure from China
I am not trying to sound extremist- just trying to make the point that it does not take a rocket scientist to figure that, regardless of daily and monthly cost trends- which will always vary- if there is any way any of us can become less depdendent upon distant and unpredictable sources of things that we need for daily living, we're not too likely to regret it in the long run.
