The Basics of Living

Why are we on the brink of an economic crash? Is it because we need a reset? Ancient civilizations used to wipe all debts clean every 50-60 years. With all these economic crashes around the globe we should reconsider paying all this debt off. With many homeowners being upside down on their mortgages, over leveraged with credit card debt, and our youth having over a trillion in student debt how will we ever get through this mess.

What we need to start teaching our children is the value of capital. Not just what capital can buy, but how to invest capital. Our government run schools do not teach any type of financial intelligence. What out government schools do is train kids how to take orders and regurgitate facts.  This was sufficient during the industrial age but not during the information/entrepreneurial age we are in.

Today’s world requires a deeper level of critical thinking. We have over 6 billion people on this planet (and growing). We all need food, clean water, and energy. We are running out of oil and clean water. The majority of inland water sources are becoming contaminated. The soil in the areas we are growing food in is becoming depleted of nutrition robing our foods of essential vitamins and minerals our body needs.

“The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it” Albert Einstein

The economic crashes we have experienced are starting to wake people up. The internet has done an excellent job of getting good information into peoples hands. As we move forward we should see people take more responsibility in their own lives instead of relying on governments to solve their problems. Growing food and producing energy at a local level will become a normal part of our lives as technology advances.

Renewable energy will replace oil in the future. According to www.ecology.com the global energy demand is 400 quadrillion Btu’s a year. Nuclear only accounts for 6% and oil account for 41%. We need to find cleaner more efficient ways to produce energy.

Educating the younger generations will empower them to face any challenges we may see in the future whether it be economic crashes, food crisis, contaminated water,  renewable energy, and solving our poverty problem. We have all the tools necessary to move forward into a bright new future. We just need to stand up and become leaders in our communities. Thank you for reading. Please comment and tell us your thoughts.

With our national debt breaking the 16 trillion dollar mark not to long ago we really need to start preparing ourselves for the worst case scenario. Now I am not a dooms-dayer but I do believe in planning for the worst and hoping for the best. With how fragile our power grid and financial system is we should have food, water, and some sort of money stored up outside the system set in place. Having these necessities will help us survive economic collapse.

First on the list is making sure we have a 6-12 month food supply on hand. Foods that require little or no energy to cook. Also food that has long shelf life like can goods, dry goods, and dehydrated foods. Here is a good site with a lot of food alternatives for survival.

Next is a clean supply of water or a great way to filter water. We need water before we need food. A lot of people prefer bottled water. I do not like storing things in plastic considering plastic comes from crude oil and can contaminate whatever it touches. It’s up to you but you can buy 5 gallon glass jugs to store your water in from Midwest Supplies. Or you could go one step further and buy a dehumidifier that turns the water into drinking water. It’s made by a company called Air2Water.

I would own some guns and a lot of ammo for protection.If your against guns I understand but we are talking worst case scenario. I would also take some classes to learn how to handle your guns if you didn’t grow up around them. Also the younger kids learn to respect guns the better. Guns are not a problem it’s those who abuse them.

Next you need a plan for you and your loved ones. Whether its a place to meet if the sh$# hits the fan or just what to do if  things do start to fall apart.

After all of these bases are covered I would start getting to know your neighbors close by to see what kind of people they are and get them to start thinking about how to survive an economic collapse. Don’t be a dooms-dayer but what if the power was going to be out for 30 days in the surrounding area? What if grocery stores couldn’t keep their shelves stocked? What would your community do? What would the churches do? Does anyone have back up generators or a way to produce heat if you live in a colder climate. Look what Hurricane Sandy did to the east coast of the United States infrastructure. There were over 8 million people without power. Gas was being rationed out. Step up and be a leader and start organizing your community.

After you have all of this figured out you can start to look at ways to profit during this economic hurricane we are in. There are a lot of different ways. Learning new skills, buying distressed properties and renting them out, you can hedge against inflation with gold and silver. It’s always better to be 10 minutes early then 1 minute to late. Thank you for reading and post your thoughts down below.

The United States infrastructure is falling apart nation wide. According to the Council On Foreign Relations:

“The United States has huge unpaid bills coming due for its infrastructure. A generation of investments in world-class infrastructure in the mid-twentieth century is now reaching the end of its useful life. Cost estimates for modernizing run as high as $2.3 trillion or more over the next decade for transportation, energy, and water infrastructure. Yet public infrastructure investment, at 2.4 percent of GDP, is half what it was fifty years ago.”

As a nation the Federal Government cannot afford to fix all of the structural challenges we have. We have a 16 trillion dollar debt and it is growing larger every minute. Have you ever thought how much 1 trillion is? It’s just under 32 years in seconds. How can we fix the United States infrastructure if we can’t get our debt under control. That means at a local level our communities need to start coming up with solutions to these problems.

According to Richard Duncan’s book “The New Depression” we should be investing the money we are printing into the United States infrastructure and renewable energy projects. Richard talks about the investment paying dividends back in the future. Not only would it create tax revenue through private contracts but it would also create a a new industry for jobs.

We have already seen the ramifications of having an older power grid with Hurricane Sandy. Sandy left 8.2 million people across 20 states without power says Marc Clayton. This is 1 example. Last year Hurricane Irene left 8.4 million people without power over 13 states.

Don’t forget about the spike that left nearly 55 million North Americans without power in 2003. According to Wikipedia the Northeast blackout of 2003 was a widespread power outage that occurred throughout parts of the Northeastern andMidwestern United States and Ontario, Canada, on Thursday, August 14, 2003, just before 4:10 p.m. EDT. While some power was restored by 11 p.m., many did not get power back until two days later. At the time, it was the second most widespread blackout in history, after the 1999 Southern Brazil blackout. The blackout affected an estimated 10 million people in Ontario and 45 million people in eight U.S. states

What’s more disturbing is the lack of maintenance nation wide. It’s just a reflection of our society as a whole. If you look at most of the side streets in any older neighborhood you will see sunken in sewer holes, blacktop patch work , cracks, and part of the roads that are uneven. To top it off the majority of major retailers do not take care of their parking lots either.

Popular Mechanics recommends we start with these 10 places, and why, to fix first:

1. Circle Interchange/ Chicago: After years of being ranked two of the worst traffic bottlenecks in the country by groups like the American Highway Users Alliance, both the U.S. 101 at the I-405 Interchange in Los Angeles and the I-610 and I-10 Interchange in Houston are being revamped. But the third-worst spot for highway congestion, Chicago’s Circle Interchange, is going nowhere. One parkway and three expressways meet here, and close to 300,000 vehicles a day are forced to reduce speed while navigating a network of tightly curved ramps.
2. Brooklyn Bridge/ New York: It’s the oldest suspension bridge still being used in the United States and it is considered “structurally deficient” under the federal rating system.
3. Canal Lock/ New Orleans: The 87 year old Industrial Canal Lock in New Orleans carries up to 20 million tons of cargo a year between the Mississippi River and the city’s Industrial Canal, which leads to the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway. Supporting this commerce is critical to the economy of New Orleans and the entire country. Construction is expected to take 12 years
4. Water System/ Atlanta: Water shortages aren’t limited to the Southwest. When Georgians faced drought last fall, residents of Atlanta pitched in to reduce their consumption, yet as much as 18 percent of the city’s water was hemorrhaging through leaking pipes.
5. Alaskan Way Viaduct/ Seattle: After an earthquake in 2001 damaged the Alaskan Way Viaduct, a traffic artery in Seattle, inspectors found that some supports had subsided 5 in., weakening the structure. As many as 110,000 vehicles travel on the compromised structure each day.
6. Lake Okeechobee/ Florida: In 2006, engineering experts calculated that in any given year there is a 1-in-6 chance that the Herbert Hoover Dike will fail, releasing waters from Lake Okeechobee. If that happened, South Florida’s water supply could be contaminated, and 40,000 lakeside residents could be threatened by flooding. 
7. Dover Bridge/ Idaho: Idaho’s Dover Bridge sees about 5000 vehicles per day. The bridge scored an outrageously low “sufficiency rating” of 2 out of 100 in the National Bridge Inventory last year
8. Wolf Creek Dam/ Kentucky: Fixing the 5736-ft.-long Wolf Creek Dam in Kentucky is one of the highest priorities for the Army Corps of Engineers. Wolf Creek’s limestone foundation has been dissolving at an alarming rate, a problem that was initially detected in 1968-16 years after construction was completed. When the problem was detected again in 2005, the Corps lowered Lake Cumberland and began an ambitious repair effort
9. Sacrament River Levees/ California: Last year, the Army Corps of Engineers declared 122 levees in the country “at risk of failure.” Of these, 19 were on California’s Sacramento River. To pick just one, if the Natomas Levee were to fail, flood waters surging from the Sacramento River could endanger many of the 70,000 area residents-and put Sacramento International Airport under as much as 20 ft. of water.
10. O’Hare International Airport/ Chicago: It had the country’s worst record of on-time departures in the first half of 2007 (fewer than 65 percent), according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. And Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport is also among the worst in terms of near-misses on the runway-the airport saw 68 runway incursions between 2001 and 2006.

Not only is it inconvenient to be with out power or roads that are in good shape but it cost more to make repairs on roads the longer they go without attention. If the power goes out for any length of time there will be a huge deficit when it does come back on. We really need to start putting our resources in the right place in the near future or we, as a country, are going to face some big challenges with the United States infrastructure problems we have. They are not going to solve themselves. Thank you for reading. Please leave a comment or start a discussion.