financial straws

Americans are going broke- in fact, most of them are broke, but rotating lines of credit allows them to still spend.

The only reason we have not faced the 1929 style crash are those ubiquitous credit cards. Meanwhile, we are still working 3 jobs just to pay the interest on those credit cards. How long will it take to break the vicious cycle of spending?
Spending makes us feel good and accomplished. We spend to hide the fact that we work ourselves to the bones just to sustain our lives and make the very few very rich.

Right now, healthcare/health insurance are major financial bloodsuckers. But most of us sally on, even though in the back of our minds we are wondering if we are going to pay the dentist or the pharmacist.

But yet the retail market is as strong as its been in 30 years.

What straw is going to break the camel's back? For many it has already been broken.

I suspect rising gas prices will impact us... but yet as oil prices rise, solar and wind and other renewables prices are dropping. So if you have the cash to switch over, it ends up being to your advantage.

Interesting puzzle . . .

Any insights?

Children have become a luxury.

Children have become a luxury.

Instead of new cars, I have kids.
Instead of a fancy house, I have kids.
Instead of touring Europe, I have kids.
Instead of ATVs, camper, boats and other toys, I have kids.
Instead of jewels, designer clothes, or the newest iPhone, I have kids.

With birth control easily available and cheap, compared to a pregnancy, I have chosen to have each of the children I had. The last several I very specifically remember asking for. They are the jewels, the work, and glory of my life.

They are my focus, my entertainment, my joy and my hope for the future.

The birthrates in the US have fallen to an average of 1.77 children per women. That is sad. "Why don't people want babies?" is easy to ask, but most of it has to do with economic reality and not desire. Many people would also buy that fancier house/car or iPhone if they could afford it. However, most women still carve out space, time and money, for at least one of the cute little mini-mes in their lives, often at older ages than ever before.

Are children now status symbols? if so it is an ironic one. 

The one that almost precludes all others. For if you choose to have kids, you choose to have your walls colored on, you choose to stay up all night with inconsolable infants, you choose to wear sweatpants and forget to brush your hair some weeks. You choose to stretch your belly out of any recognizable form. You choose to spend your evenings at little league games and PTA meetings, weekends camping with Boy Scouts.  You choose to have your names scratched into your car's paint by a kid who just learned to spell. You choose to have the iPhone thrown in the toilet. And you choose to love them, again and again, no matter what they did to your stuff. You learn that the things that make you the happiest are not things at all, but are the relationships and growth of those around you.

Perhaps, kids are a status of your state of mind, one where it not only points to your economic status, but to your priorities.

Creative Commons and the Sharing Economy

Have you heard about Creative Commons? It is a sharing economy's way of maintaining credit for your work while allowing people to use it and share it and add to it. There are similar platforms for Live Open Science, instantly shared and connected science works. The creators of that were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2013. The developed software for that has been superseded with a more advanced platform called Open Hab (although this may not be the right name, as I  can not find evidence of it).

Anyways, back to Creative Commons. There are many different levels you may copyright your work at, depending upon how open you want to be with how others can share or add to it. And they have a multi layered tag attached that is instantly read by computer and humans. It is a cool interaction between the human creativity and the computer technology.

I really like concepts related to building a sharing economy and realizations that as robots/tech can replace a lot of our daily work what will we have left except our humanity/creativity? Therefore I would suggest that part of the change towards the sharing economy that we should consider is the concept of Universal Income or Basic Income. I know experiments are being tried in Finland and Norway and Washington state.

I wonder how much of a golden age we could enter as a world society if everyone had their basic needs met and were left to their creativity, especially if they were up to sharing it all?

Wow- insightful

Read this article on social change

We’re currently at the very edge of an abundant future, and the pace of change isn’t going to slow down. As Ismail put it, “…[civilization] is heading into a trough. I think it’s about a 20- or 30-year period. We need to get to abundance on the other side by creating new leaders, new projects, and new institutions.”

Not asking a lot is it?

unprofitable servant

I work for my mother, She's a rich exec, who sold 1 business and is dabbling in building another. Because I had a baby and the need to get out of the house, I offered her my talents before offering them to the wider community. She snatched me up to be her assistant.

In her employment I have done/been  many things:
1. A personal shopper
2. An event organizer
3.  A caterer
4. A cook/ kitchen prep
5. Accounting assistant
6. Genealogist
7. Researcher, scientific, social and misc.
8. Pet sitter
9. Writer, technical and other
10. Gardener, indoor and out.
11. Talk writer

I have help set up many things, websites, plant water filters, slide shows, events.

But  mostly, I bring her grandbaby over.

However much I do for her and "earn. (she pays me enough to keep from looking for any other employment)" She always manages to turn around and just for fun buy me things, that I, with out her could never afford.

Overall, I feel like an unprofitable servant. I can never giver her more then she gives me, (Besides financial, I also get all sorts of sanity saving and emotional support, encouragement to continue pursuance of my dreams and just plain intellectual stimulation.) Add on that the normal mothering she has given me (like life and raising to adulthood, college ...ect). Gee, I guess I can never repay her for all. But I can keep trying.

Soul Sucking

It is always fun, in a soul sucking way, to  meet with our financial advisers. Part of the fun is the fact that we have spent (and continue to spend) the vast majority of our time and energies raising our children. Among our 7 beautiful additions to this world are 3 that have special needs. Yes, we deal with autism, ODD, spinal bifida, mood disorders, the terrible twos and the dreaded teenagers on a daily basis.

 They suggest we hire outside help for the children so we can go and get a career. (Even if we don't break even on costs of career income minus a tutor for our children). Le Sigh... Of course that often seems to be kin to a major sin to refuse to perpetuate a broken system that values your contributions out of your home more then the contributions within your home.  Of course, when you make your money out of the stock and bonds system, anything that grow the economy is good for you. So if I get a job, and have to hire my job out and then drive through on the way hone because I am too tired to cook. It all adds to the economy (as it is counted), but subtracts from what matters most to me, my family. It just doesn't seem logical to do so. When I consider this scenario, I hear a life sucking sound, where all my efforts go to building someone else's coffers and not the one things that truly matter.

Everything we do is for our children. I just wish it could make a difference in the longevity of the world. Sometimes, other times I kinda look towards heaven and wish the end of the world to hurry up. But maybe that should be part of my equation. What good is a career and investments in financial markets when the world ends?

With what time we may or may not have left on the planet, should I not also consider that the economy as we know it perpetuates the destruction of the world? Without the desires for increased wealth would we not have made better decisions as a country or world? Would we not have possibly considered that we can't breathe soot or drink liquid coal and put tons of CO2 into the atmosphere with no consequences?

Seriously folks... you are worried about my retirement plan, instead of if there will be a world to retire on?

PS- I don't plan on retiring, I plan on working and building and learning and teaching and creating as much positive in the world as I can all the days of my life. I plan to prepare for the changes ahead and to ride through them with my family.

Recession may be over?

This article says the recession may be over Just in time for holiday shopping!

Seriously who are they kidding? ( the article is well thought out, but the idea of the recession ending seems ludicrous)IMHO it is their way of saying spend and spend for Christmas shopping is upon us.

I would venture to guess that most Americans who were scrapping by and lost their jobs ate up all their available credit before they were willing to go on state aid. And for those those who were not able to find another job.... and even for those who were, They have nothing left to spend on frivolous stuff this Christmas.

And although this may be bad for the economy it is very good for us. Imagine having the opportunity of learning that life does not suck just because you can't by everything- in fact life can be even more fun when you don't buy things. We have our houses so full of stuff that with a little ingenuity we can make do and find out that it is actually fun to make do, to find out how resourceful you can be- and you know what? It builds you self worth when you find ways to make do. It builds your self worth to have industry happening in your home, to be smart and useful once more as a human being should be and not just an unfortunate unemployed cog in a broken military industrial complex that has become our nation's lack of economy.

What I am trying to say is that it is time we realized that we need to revamp our personal economies and industry and worry less about the national one.

Tax rates and universal health care.

We are currently earning $14/hour- not really enough to scrape by- that bring in about $1792/month of which $110 goes to social security and other taxes.
We have good health insurance- that costs our employer about $1495 per month (not counting dental).

If the US government has a single payer, universal health care then our business could pay us that $1495 per month more in wages. Our take home pay would be $3287/month.

Sounds great doesn't it? Well in most countries with single payer health care the taxes are high- 30-50 percent of wages. At 30 percent of wages that would be $986.10 going to taxes and a take home pay of $2300.90. That is $500 more in my pocket and it doesn't even count the savings of out of pocket medical expenses.

At 50 percent tax rate our take home pay becomes $1643.50 which is $38.50 less then what we are earning now- but our current medical bills (even with good insurance) comes to more then that from just 1 doctor's visit- so we would still be doing better then what we are doing now.

Great article about America's Financial issues

Wow- of you want to understand the banking/ financial issues in America right now- this is a great article.-

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200905/imf-advice

here are some highlights:

At the root of the banks’ problems are the large losses they have undoubtedly taken on their securities and loan portfolios. But they don’t want to recognize the full extent of their losses, because that would likely expose them as insolvent. So they talk down the problem, and ask for handouts that aren’t enough to make them healthy (again, they can’t reveal the size of the handouts that would be necessary for that), but are enough to keep them upright a little longer. This behavior is corrosive: unhealthy banks either don’t lend (hoarding money to shore up reserves) or they make desperate gambles on high-risk loans and investments that could pay off big, but probably won’t pay off at all. In either case, the economy suffers further, and as it does, bank assets themselves continue to deteriorate—creating a highly destructive vicious cycle.

To break this cycle, the government must force the banks to acknowledge the scale of their problems. As the IMF understands (and as the U.S. government itself has insisted to multiple emerging-market countries in the past), the most direct way to do this is nationalization. Instead, Treasury is trying to negotiate bailouts bank by bank, and behaving as if the banks hold all the cards—contorting the terms of each deal to minimize government ownership while forswearing government influence over bank strategy or operations. Under these conditions, cleaning up bank balance sheets is impossible.

Nationalization would not imply permanent state ownership. The IMF’s advice would be, essentially: scale up the standard Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation process. An FDIC “intervention” is basically a government-managed bankruptcy procedure for banks. It would allow the government to wipe out bank shareholders, replace failed management, clean up the balance sheets, and then sell the banks back to the private sector. The main advantage is immediate recognition of the problem so that it can be solved before it grows worse.

.... To those who say this would drive financial activities to other countries, we can now safely say: fine.

The second scenario begins more bleakly, and might end that way too. But it does provide at least some hope that we’ll be shaken out of our torpor. It goes like this: the global economy continues to deteriorate, the banking system in east-central Europe collapses, and—because eastern Europe’s banks are mostly owned by western European banks—justifiable fears of government insolvency spread throughout the Continent. Creditors take further hits and confidence falls further. The Asian economies that export manufactured goods are devastated, and the commodity producers in Latin America and Africa are not much better off. A dramatic worsening of the global environment forces the U.S. economy, already staggering, down onto both knees. The baseline growth rates used in the administration’s current budget are increasingly seen as unrealistic, and the rosy “stress scenario” that the U.S. Treasury is currently using to evaluate banks’ balance sheets becomes a source of great embarrassment.

The conventional wisdom among the elite is still that the current slump “cannot be as bad as the Great Depression.” This view is wrong. What we face now could, in fact, be worse than the Great Depression—because the world is now so much more interconnected and because the banking sector is now so big. We face a synchronized downturn in almost all countries, a weakening of confidence among individuals and firms, and major problems for government finances. If our leadership wakes up to the potential consequences, we may yet see dramatic action on the banking system and a breaking of the old elite. Let us hope it is not then too late.

The Non- Economic Plan

And for those people who have yet to hear about the details of the Geithener's plan to bring American Financial Stability to it's own funeral- here is my rendition of it.

The 3 part plan is as follows:

PART 1. Gov't + Biz back (bad) loans so that we can purchase toxic bank assets with what is left of our 401Ks.

PART 2, TALF makes loans to investors to purchase junk consumer debt (making it easier for us to purchase the toxic bank assets.

PART 3, The FDIC (yep, the people you trust to back your money in the bank)makes loans to purchase Toxic bank assets.

Theoretically these 3 pieces are supposed to assure the banks get good money to sell off their bad assets.

And who is the bottom line consumers of these toxic assets? We are- 95% of them coming from our hard earned income tax and 5% coming from what is left of our 401Ks.

The 95% really bothers me- the 5% will lead some crazy investment people to invest and say it was "Good" because the loans are backed by the Gov't. Meanwhile the Gov't is throwing in the 95% by printing more money (that are backed by the toxic assets) and leading down a fun road of hyper inflation.

The bottom line is : Bank's bad assets to US (the US taxpayers)
It also will equal a nice little small latte for $100 a cup.

I think I will invest in something that inflation won't rip apart- like maybe food storage and a garden.

wow- good article

It's called "Getting prepared"

Here are some excerpts:

But let's take it apart. Starting from the very general, what are the current macroeconomic objectives, if you listen to the hot air coming out of Washington at the moment? First: growth, of course! Getting the economy going. We learned nothing from the last huge spike in commodity prices, so let's just try it again. That calls for economic stimulus, a.k.a. printing money. Let's see how high the prices go up this time. Maybe this time around we will achieve hyperinflation. Second: Stabilizing financial institutions: getting banks lending ¬ that's important too. You see, we are just not in enough debt yet, that's our problem. We need more debt, and quickly! Third: jobs! We need to create jobs. Low-wage jobs, of course, to replace all the high-wage manufacturing jobs we've been shedding for decades now, and replacing them with low-wage service sector jobs, mainly ones without any job security or benefits. Right now, a lot of people could slow down the rate at which they are sinking further into debt if they quit their jobs. That is, their job is a net loss for them as individuals as well as for the economy as a whole. But, of course, we need much more of that, and quickly!

So that's what we have now. The ship is on the rocks, water is rising, and the captain is shouting "Full steam ahead! We are sailing to Afghanistan!" Do you listen to Ahab up on the bridge, or do you desert your post in the engine room and go help deploy the lifeboats? If you thought that the previous episode of uncontrolled debt expansion, globalized Ponzi schemes, and economic hollowing-out was silly, then I predict that you will find this next episode of feckless grasping at macroeconomic straws even sillier. Except that it won't be funny: what is crashing now is our life support system: all the systems and institutions that are keeping us alive. And so I don't recommend passively standing around and watching the show ¬ unless you happen to have a death wish.

Right now the Washington economic stimulus team is putting on their Scuba gear and diving down to the engine room to try to invent a way to get a diesel engine to run on seawater. They spoke of change, but in reality they are terrified of change and want to cling with all their might to the status quo. But this game will soon be over, and they don't have any idea what to do next.

So, what is there for them to do? Forget "growth," forget "jobs," forget "financial stability." What should their realistic new objectives be? Well, here they are: food, shelter, transportation, and security. Their task is to find a way to provide all of these necessities on an emergency basis, in absence of a functioning economy, with commerce at a standstill, with little or no access to imports, and to make them available to a population that is largely penniless. If successful, society will remain largely intact, and will be able to begin a slow and painful process of cultural transition, and eventually develop a new economy, a gradually de-industrializing economy, at a much lower level of resource expenditure, characterized by a quite a lot of austerity and even poverty, but in conditions that are safe, decent, and dignified. If unsuccessful, society will be gradually destroyed in a series of convulsions that will leave a defunct nation composed of many wretched little fiefdoms. Given its largely depleted resource base, a dysfunctional, collapsing infrastructure, and its history of unresolved social conflicts, the territory of the Former United States will undergo a process of steady degeneration punctuated by natural and man-made cataclysms.


In the United States, the agricultural system is heavily industrialized, and relies on inputs such as diesel, chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and, perhaps most importantly, financing. In the current financial climate, the farmers' access to financing is not at all assured. This agricultural system is efficient, but only if you regard fossil fuel energy as free. In fact, it is a way to transform fossil fuel energy into food with a bit of help from sunlight, to the tune of 10 calories of fossil fuel energy being embodied in each calorie that is consumed as food. The food distribution system makes heavy use of refrigerated diesel trucks, transforming food over hundreds of miles to resupply supermarkets. The food pipeline is long and thin, and it takes only a couple of days of interruptions for supermarket shelves to be stripped bare. Many people live in places that are not within walking distance of stores, not served by public transportation, and will be cut off from food sources once they are no longer able to drive.


An even simpler approach has been successfully used in Cuba: converting urban parking lots and other empty bits of land to raised-bed agriculture. Instead of continually trucking in vegetables and other food, it is much easier to truck in soil, compost, and mulch just once a season. Raised highways can be closed to traffic (since there is unlikely to be much traffic in any case) and used to catch rainwater for irrigation. Rooftops and balconies can be used for hothouses, henhouses, and a variety of other agricultural uses.


Another category of real estate that is likely to go unused and that can be repurposed for new communities is college campuses. The American 4-year college is an institution of dubious merit. It exists because American public schools fail to teach in 12 years what Russian public schools manage to teach in 8. As fewer and fewer people become able to afford college, which is likely to happen, because meager career prospects after graduation will make them bad risks for student loans, perhaps this will provide the impetus to do something about the public education system. One idea would be to scrap it, then start small, but eventually build something a bit more on par with world standards.

College campuses make perfect community centers: there are dormitories for newcomers, fraternities and sororities for the more settled residents, and plenty of grand public buildings that can be put to a variety of uses. A college campus normally contains the usual wasteland of mowed turf that can be repurposed to grow food, or, at the very least, hay, and to graze cattle. Perhaps some enlightened administrators, trustees and faculty members will fall upon this idea once they see admissions flat-lining and endowments dropping to zero, without any need for government involvement. So here we have a ray of hope, don't we.


Of course, cars and trucks will not disappear entirely. Here, again, some reasonable adaptations can be brought to bear. In my book, I advocated banning the sale of new cars, as was done in the US during World War II. The benefits are numerous. First, older cars are overall more energy-efficient than new cars, because the massive amount of energy that went into manufacturing them is more highly amortized. Second, large energy savings accrue from the shutdown of an entire industry devoted to designing, building, marketing, and financing new cars. Third, older cars require more maintenance, reinvigorating the local economy at the expense of mainly foreign car manufacturers, and helping reduce the trade deficit. Fourth, this will create a shortage of cars, translating automatically into fewer, shorter car trips, higher passenger occupancy per trip, and more bicycling and use of public transportation, saving even more energy. Lastly, this would allow the car to be made obsolete on the about the same time scale as the oil industry that made it possible. We will run out of cars just as we run out of gas.


I've covered what I think are basics, based on what I saw work and what I think might work reasonably well here. I assume that a lot of you are thinking that this is all quite far into the future, if in fact it ever gets that bad. You should certainly feel free to think that way. The danger there is that you will miss the opportunity to adapt to the new reality ahead of time, and then you will get trapped. As I see it, there is a choice to be made: you can accept the failure of the system now and change your course accordingly, or you can decide that you must try to stay the course, and then you will probably have to accept your own individual failure later.

build a better cart

I just saw an advertisement for a building a better cart game. I was hoping it was actually advertising a better on-line shopping cart system, but it was just a game.

So instead of sharing my desires for a better cart with the game people- I will share it with you.

For a better shopping cart- it needs integrated inventory control and tracking. And of course management's ability to go and change any details in it by hand. It needs to be able to print a nice packing slip- right from the cart system. IT should track sales of items per month and groups of items per month. It needs to be web based- and not housed on individual computers that may crash at any time. IT should ask customers if they would like to join our e-mailing list and then create an easy to use emailing system for alerting customers to current sales and promotions.

It should be integrated easy into website- probably and HTML code cut and paste ability. And when new inventory comes in it should alert customers who have looked at similar things in the paste.

I had doubling the work load- so the inventory imputing should be able to feed directly into my quick books files for up to date accounting with a quick download.
It should also download all sales and returns at the same time.

It would also suggest items at check out- like chocolates or candy at the cash registrar. And the customer can come back any time to the cart, just as they left it. The cart will notify the customer if prices or availability changed.

ok- I will revisit this idea some more, but had to write these thoughts down before they are forgotten.

SuperMom never made any money

The realities of come to bare themselves in my mind and life that 5 kids is a lot of work, and throw in a few special needs kids and it becomes a ton of work.

And so after the birth of baby five, I have come to realize that i have reached the limit of my abilities. I have learned that any more balls to juggle will cause some to be dropped, and so I have decided to carry the most important balls first and slowly and carefully put the other ones down and walk away. That is the real reason Round Belly must close. That and the fact that it can't pay me for the work I do, therefore it is not logical to allow more important balls to drop in it's name.

My sister refers to 5 kids as the 5 K marathon, one which she did not train for, but she is now trying to run. And I have slowly built up to it, but when you are running the full 5 K marathon, there is not time for devoted attention to go elsewhere, or you end up running into a tree or something. Near misses is as close as I like to get to trees- especially at my current pace.

As the dollars ability to stretch decreases I find that I have to spend more time on the basics of life. More time cleaning and cooking and growing food. It takes lots of hours in the kitchen to make enough from scratch (ie grind the wheat, then make the bread) to fill all the bellies of my growing boys. Yet I know this is the direction we need to keep heading to maintain our family's food security in the coming years- and health now.

Overall, I find it rather amazing that there is a limit to my time and resources. Most of my life I could always do more. I often carried 21 credits in college and still spent time coloring pictures to avoid boredom. I have spent months at a time working 60 hours a week- at nights and evenings- while being a mom during the day while my husband went to school. And over the last 5 years devoted to growing a business only to find out that the larger business structure drove me nuts, so I changed tactics and brought it back home,,, which was doable for a while, but this year has been enough of a challenge already that the most precious (and new) egg in my basket deserves more then just glancing enjoyment. She deserves my devoted attention, and the other, older eggs do too. Family relationships are eternal. Money will all turn to dust.

Basically I am the sole mommy figure to 5 people and a devoted wife figure the the 6th. I do cathing and enemas, I read bedtime stories and chase after kids having autistic fits. I bake from scratch and love to create things from fabric. I spend weeks every year at the Mayo clinic and yet seldom see a doctor for myself. All day there is some one calling "Mom" and desiring my attention.

I have learned that my time is now valuable. Many people value it and almost all desire it. And yet I still like to give it away in droves to all who ask. That's what mommies do.

SuperMoms are those who can keep running their 5 K marathons because they have learned to pace themselves- and watch out for trees.

rant

Hi,
I really need you all to get on over to my website and prove to me that there are ecologically minded people in this world.

Because when people write a post like this http://autismbitestheblog.blogspot.com/
I just want to barf. Apparently they haven't read this http://cbs11tv.com/health/autism.coal.power.2.712702.html

and put two and two together- which in their case equals 6 autistic children. Of course the need to have something now, obviously must outweigh the need to protect our future generations from the same, or worse, things then we are suffering through.

Of course if gas were to drop down to $1/ gallon again I would probably give up hope that there would be future generations- at least of anything other then cockroaches and a few very adaptable weeds. But hey, the need for me to drive a lot in a big SUV outweighs those considerations. But of course, we all know that if we destroy this planet, the Lord is sure to give us a new one. (please notice this line IS dripping with sarcasm)

And while we are on that topic I have come to understand that all the nasty stuff talked about in revelations- all the end times wars, famines, plagues and what not- that we have/ are bringing those on ourselves. The Lord is not sending them. He was just warning us. It is our actions as citizens of this planet that have/are making those happen. Can I say that again? It is our actions as citizens of this planet that have/are making those happen.

That means that we have the power to change it. But first we got to change ourselves.

He who is prepared shall not fear.

Ok,
I fully expect gas to reach $5/ gallon this next winter. After all, have we ever seen it climb higher or faster then we have in the last 2 years? And knowing that the factors making it climb are only going to keep pushing it higher.

Our heating bills last winter already topped $1000/month (it was a cold winter). So, while the temperature is just beginning to get decent outside, I got to ask myself the question... how are we going to prepare to survive this next winter?

I wonder what it would take to get our arc built in time?

world grain production has fallen short of consumption in
seven of the last eight years....

Just when it seemed that things could not get much worse,
the United States, the world’s breadbasket, is planning to double
the share of its grain harvest going to fuel ethanol—from 16
percent of the 2006 crop to 30 percent or so of the 2008 crop.
With this enormous growth in the U.S. capacity to convert grain
into fuel, the world price of grain is moving up toward its oil equivalent
value. This ill-conceived U.S. effort to reduce its oil
insecurity has helped drive world grain prices to all-time highs,

Although attention commonly focuses on energy use on the
farm, agriculture accounts for only one fifth of the energy used
in the U.S. food system. Transport, processing, packaging, marketing,
and kitchen preparation of food are responsible for the
rest. The U.S. food economy uses as much energy as the entire
economy of the United Kingdom.30

The 14 percent of energy used in the food system to move
goods from farmer to consumer is equal to two thirds of the
energy used to produce the food. And an estimated 16 percent
of food system energy use is devoted to canning, freezing, and
drying food—everything from frozen orange juice concentrate
to canned peas.3

The most energy-intensive segment of the food chain is the
kitchen. Much more energy is used to refrigerate and prepare
food in the home than is used to produce it in the first place. The
big energy user in the food system is the kitchen refrigerator, not
the farm tractor. While oil dominates the production end of the
food system, electricity dominates the consumption end. With
higher energy prices, the modern food system that evolved when
oil was cheap will not survive as it is now structured.36

From an agricultural vantage point, the world’s appetite for
crop-based fuels is insatiable. The grain required to fill an SUV’s
25-gallon tank with ethanol just once will feed one person for a
whole year. If the entire U.S. grain harvest were to be converted
to ethanol, it would satisfy at most 18 percent of U.S. automotive
fuel needs.57

The price of grain is now keyed to the price of oil.

Although there are no alternatives to food for people, there
are alternatives to using food-based fuels. For example, the 4
percent of U.S. automotive fuel currently supplied from ethanol
could be achieved several times over—and at a fraction of the
cost—simply by raising auto fuel-efficiency standards by 20
percent

predictions or history?

as the world oil crisis deepens
and the property values of suburban homes plummet.”71
The food sector will be affected in two ways. Food will
become more costly as higher oil prices drive up production and
transport costs.

As oil costs rise, diets will be altered as people
move down the food chain and as they consume more local, seasonally
produced food. Diets will thus become more closely
attuned to local products and more seasonal in nature.

Air transport, both passenger travel and freight, will suffer
as jet fuel prices climb, simply because fuel is the biggest airline
operating expense. Although industry projections show air passenger
travel growing by some 5 percent a year for the next
decade, this seems highly unlikely. Cheap airfares may soon
become history.7

The overriding challenge for our generation is to build a new
economy—one that is powered largely by renewable sources of
energy, that has a much more diversified transport system, and
that reuses and recycles everything. We have the technology to
build this new economy, an economy that will allow us to sustain
economic progress. Can we build it fast enough to avoid a
breakdown of social systems?

The failure of the "Free market"

The market is in many ways an incredible institution. It allocates resources with an efficiency that no central planning body can match and it easily balances supply and demand. The market
has some fundamental weaknesses, however. It does not incorporate into prices the indirect costs of producing goods. It does not value nature’s services properly. And it does not respect
the sustainable yield thresholds of natural systems. It also favors the near term over the long term, showing little concern for future generations.

One of the best examples of this massive market failure can be seen in the United States, where the gasoline pump price in mid-2007 was $3 per gallon. But this price reflects only the cost
of discovering the oil, pumping it to the surface, refining it into gasoline, and delivering the gas to service stations. It overlooks the costs of climate change as well as the costs of tax subsidies
to the oil industry (such as the oil depletion allowance), the burgeoning military costs of protecting access to oil in the politically unstable Middle East, and the health care costs for treating respiratory illnesses from breathing polluted air.16 Based on a study by the International Center for Technology Assessment, these costs now total nearly $12 per gallon ($3.17 per liter) of gasoline burned in the United States. If these were added to the $3 cost of the gasoline itself, motorists would pay $15 a gallon for gas at the pump. In reality, burning gasoline is very costly, but the market tells us it is cheap, thus grossly distorting the structure of the economy. The challenge facing governments is to restructure tax systems by systematically
incorporating indirect costs as a tax to make sure the price of products reflects their full costs to society and by offsetting this with a reduction in income taxes.

-Lester Brown- Plan B 3.0

Republicans vote = good for thier pocket books

Yesterday was my birthday, but instead of spending a nice quiet evening at home and eating cake and ice cream, I went to the county caucuses and got the Republicans of Pine River to vote in an environmental initiative.

Of course, they resolves all the usual stuff of pro family, anti abortion, keep government out of health care. And so forth, but at the last minute I figured out how to word a a green proposition to the good people of Pine River.

"Be it resolved that we move towards renewable energy so as to provide an alternative to the inevitable rise of gas prices and other fossil fuels."

Most people read this as "good for their pocket books"
I read it as the only way to avoid disaster in an economy and infrastructure based on fossil fuels.

We need to move towards sustainable and renewable energy sources, and we need to do so quickly. Or the resulting economic and political crash will weed out all those who have not foreseen and prepared.

I had a dream last night that this crash was coming very fast- in my dream it was about 6months. Now, how much weight you put on a pregnant woman's lucid dreams is up to you. but as for me; I am working on that preparation.

art work

I am on the verge of creating a new art work. I am going to need several yards of brown, blue, green and yellow fabric.

I started Dandelion Wine tonight by Ray Bradburry. It is full of beautiful pose and childhood memories brought to life as only a true writer can do.

Good authors always make me want to write, good painters always make me want to paint. and yet in the business I chose to pursue it was the lack of good that pressed me forward. And yet, even in my own company it is something I am still fighting against. The lack of good. The marginal is not acceptable. The unlearning is not acceptable. Nothing should be prepared for sale unless it is beautiful, useful, and nearly exceptional.

What is it that drives us to do better? Is it merely to one up someone? I don't think so. I believe it is our destiny, to become perfect. To strive towards perfect. To create something to honor the perfectness in the world around as- nature is perfect. Can we honor her in mere capitalism? No, we must honor her with art, with love, with mimicking her perfect systems and learning how to become one with them.

And yet one must wonder when we look at the wal marts of the world, if they understood the purpose of business.

The real purpose of business is not to create a profit. It is to create a prophet- to do something so well that people can't help but want to (and do) throw money your dirrection.

Consumerism has yet to understand this. It is the theory of buying 1 good one, and skipping the 99. Of filling our lives with things that will work well- for many years and not bothering with the rest. Again, it is to honor what nature gives us and not to take unnecessarily.

It is also the theroy of doing for ourselves, instead of hiring (or paying) others to do for us. For when we do not kneed our own bread we loose something. When we do not raise our own children, we lose a lot. When we let money stop us from doing the daily life affirming rituals that have long bound us to the earth, we have lost our understanding, our connection with the life giver.