This is going to be a ramble, I’m way unfocused here
I think maybe I reached “Doom Saturation” and it turns out not to be very dangerous at all. Got to thinking about some hypothetical suburbanite sliding from the middle class into the lower class due to a job loss, a car repo or simply the the washing machine blowing up. The doom masters all tell us that societal collapse will occur when people’s “happy motoring utopia” ends and their house is foreclosed. Y’know what I’m thinking? They’ll all just move in with mom.
There’s about 9 trillion dollars of debt in this country, and everyone gets to play their part in losing some shit to make up for it. Yeah, that’s some Boob Economic Theory, I know, but it sort of puts a face on the slide. Upper middle class Joe Suburban looses his big money go go job and starts selling furniture. The House is foreclosed when the ARM resets, and the family rents a smaller house that needs paint. He’s solid middle class now. Mr Middle Middle gets the car repo’d. He can still feel Lower Middle Class if the one car left is less than 5 years old…
But once you start hauling laundry to Mom’s house you have left the middle class. Welcome to the low rent district. From here on out it’s mac-n-cheese instead of Dominoes Pizza. Thrift stores and garage sales update the wardrobe when necessary, and it’s not really necessary ‘cuz you stop caring how you look. But it is cool to score a new pair of sweatpants for a quarter! The slide from Upper to Mid-Lower class is pretty moot, but it does happen. A divorce usually does the trick. Mom works at Burger King and Dad’s disposable income is sucked away by the Child Support Monster. Add booze to the mix and Lower Lower is your game now.
However, the slide from Upper Middle to Lowersomething is measured in tens of thousands of dollars. How many of those guys does it take to equal the hit taken by one fat cat whose net worth plummets from 750 million to 1 1/2 million? If ten thousand guys lose a hundred million, there’s a trillion bucks taken care of. Wonder where the other 8 trillion is gonna come from… Like that many multi-millionaires exist anyway.
I figure money is going to get harder and harder to come by until it simply looses is meaning.
So where are the rioting masses going to come from? Is former Joe Six-pack going to walk out Mom’s door and take to the streets ‘cuz he’s out of beer? Urban Ghetto dwellers without electricity going to loot the Costco for a TV?. Full crash means the grocery stores get cleaned out and then they are abandoned for all time. But I’m pretty sure that there is a whole lot of downward adjustment to be had over the next few years, and the lower we all get, the less far there is to fall. Peak Oilers on the Doom end are touting a 12% reduction in available supply per year. Hell, a one year moratorium on cheap Chinese crap runs to Vole-Mart takes care of the first year. If your car gets repo’d and you take the fucking bus your covered for the next three or four. Kicking in on Mom’s gas bill heats your new quarters for a lot less than that big ol’ house you used to have. And so on.
I got an inheritance when I was 18. Partied it up pretty good in the beginning – even though I was still a cheap shit. As the bank balance got lower and lower, is played around less and less. That’s the dynamic I see on the horizon for us ‘mericans, a slow slide for the frugal, a few nasty jolts for the hogs. The retired will take in a relative or two, the retirement age crowd will postpone leaving the workforce for a few more years, and the middle class just eats more beans. Gov’t checks will keep feeding the poor and oh how the rich will suffer as their net worth slides to still astronomical figures. Bubba’s annual deer hunt will be focused on food, not just an excuse to tank it up with his pals. Those who can keep chickens, will. Spare rooms get plasticed off in the winter and the thermostat drops to 65. Window unit in the living room takes over from the central air system.
Smart guys like me (bwahaha) left the cities for the sticks. The locals around here are used to white trashness – meatless tuesdays won’t be a big deal. The chicken plant workers will all head home to Mexico and Central America taking a lot of pressure of the resources in the area. More and more of the well heeled are moving in to properties vacated by those heading to bigger towns looking for work or the foreclosure crowd moving in with Mom. Why does a 10% slowdown in the economy spell disaster when a collective 10% personal reduction is nothing more than shutting off the cable (low), doing your own nails (middle), or not buying a new car (upper)?
Perhaps next week I’ll be back to my old doom mongering self. But for now I’ll remind you that in most parts of the country you can still get in a crop of turnips or cowpeas before the first frost, hehehe…
