Saturday, May 12, 2012

How we got into this Economic Mess

There are so many different factors that I can't really mention all of them here because there are literally hundreds of reasons the U.S., Europe and the whole world is in the present economic mess.

The easiest one to define would be overpopulation of human beings on earth. This is an easy one because there are not enough resources any longer to sustain this many people under any present foreseeable economic system. So, no matter what anyone does the way things are about 10 million people worldwide are likely to starve to death this year with that number beginning to increase a lot the rest of this century. But likely this number won't be counted up properly even though this is what is happening in actuality.

2nd, the problem of oil. Even though shale oil and fracking will defray some of the problems with oil as a fuel and natural gas, it will take a while to ramp up in most of the world for a variety of reasons. Shale oil is unlikely to be unlocked through fracking in Europe because unlike the U.S. Europeans who own property don't have the rights to the minerals on their own property the state does. So, this will tend to make people demonstrate against fracking unless they are given the mineral rights to their properties in Europe. And even if that happens the water many places is being poisoned by some of the things presently used in fracking. But if fracking is only done with relatively clean water and sand and rocks it is possible that fracking can continue without damaging water tables worldwide.

3rd, interllocked with oil directly is food. Since most food on earth is created through using tractors to till the soil as oil becomes more expensive in fits and spurts worldwide this will greatly reduce what poor people can pay to buy food unless it is subsidized by world governments.

4th, The Global Military industrial Complex that President Eisenhower warned us about in a speech when he left office as President has continued to grow exponentially since World War II with no letup. And money paid to the Global Military Industrial complex by nations, warlords, drug dealers etc. syphons money from nations that could have instead paid for food and shelter of their poorer residents.

5th, Technology is growing so exponentially that the average person on earth has no concept of how fast jobs are being lost worldwide to new technologies that reduce the employment of humans exponentially every year. In the U.S. alone the percentage of people working or looking for work has dropped 8.9 percent since 2000 which is a whole lot less people working. And remember that is only a percentage because likely the amount of people potentially working age has grown with each new graduating High school Class and graduating College Class every year since 2000.

6th, Culture Shock and Global Climate Change Shock. More and more people's homes and businesses are being devastated worldwide by floods, droughts, tornadoes, and people's lives directly and indirectly are affected more and more worldwide.

7th- Education becomes more of a problem too. For example, most new jobs would have to be researched and trained for. But often, Junior Colleges mostly funded by local (county or City) money might have a vested interest in people obtaining jobs locally. So, it is possible that they wouldn't necessarily steer students toward jobs in other states or counties or countries because that wouldn't be cost effective for the taxpayers of that city or County. So what that means is that students would have to take it upon themselves to search what fields around the country or world need workers and then  get into training programs for those trades. And even if they did this they might not be able to afford to go to those jobs and to rent a room to start working in another state or locality or country. So, in order to be a success now a lot more burden is on the student than before to actually do enough research to make the right choices to get the available jobs everywhere in their country or world.

And so far I haven't even tried to deal with banks and Credit Default Swaps and ending legislation during the 1980s through the present in the U.S. that protected us from wild investments worldwide by banks and banking institutions. And until those laws (or some like them) are voted in and implemented it is possible to have successive recessions and even one bigger than the Great Depression in the future ongoing during the next 25 to 50 years.

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