Walter Kirn reflects on how economic hard times are making him and his neighbors talk to each other more -- and to their kids -- just as his grandfather said folks did during the Great Depression. What I found interesting about it is Kirn is stocking up on food. I read his piece when I got home from church today. During coffee hour, I talked to L., a Russian emigre woman, who told me she doesn't understand why Americans are so devil-may-care about coming economic pain.
"The newspapers ought to be telling us how to prepare, but instead they talk about nothing but sports and entertainment and everything like it is normal," she said. "It's not going to be normal."
She went on to explain how she can't understand the psychology of Americans, how they assume everything is always going to be okay. "What goes up must come down," she said. "Law of physics. But Americans don't believe that."
She explained that in the Soviet Union, people always planned for hard times, because they were always in hard times -- and knew how dangerous it was to assume anything. She told me about how her grandparents had survived the Siege of Leningrad by eating crusts of bread made with sawdust. Of course she and her parents never saw times that hard, but the memory of material deprivation, plus what they had to live with under the Bolsheviks, makes her very wary of ever counting on perpetual sunshine.
We talked about how we should get together and come up with a group in our church in which we could help each other learn strategies for coping with hard times, and build a food pantry for our community, should it come to that. In that regard, I think the Russian emigres in our parish have a lot to teach us Americans about how to get by on very little.
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Will Harrington,
We had a few bad hurricanes around the time of financial crash and aside from sporatic gas shortages in TN and NC related directly to the hurricane it didn't tank the economy into a Depression. The only thing that really could hurt is a direct hit by AQ on the U.S. homeland. I think that considering the state of the terrorist organization and the improved U.S. security I think that this is highly unlikely.
As for your other points,
A. It makes as much sense for gazillions of small farms to grow corn, soy beans, and other commodities as it makes sense to have $20 tshirts hand-sewn by small independent factories in New England. Larger agricultural producers can leverage greater efficiencies and lower costs which is a good thing for consumers.
B. This doesn't mean that small farms will cease to exist. Smaller farmers have already begun to shift to new market strategies (organic farming is a big hit).
C. There is more people in the U.S. who are "landholders," not less. More people own their own homes than did in the 1960s and 1970s; in fact, many are overextended and probably should never have been loaned money in the first place.
D. There is going to be some belt-tightening, and I'd hate to lose my job. However, the majority of Americans will only be slightly affected by it. Most Americans know this, which is why they're going out their business; however, it doesn't improve anyone's mood for the media to continue crying wolf.
Hating the spam filter. It lost my comments TWICE.
Sorry, fellow post-ers, but I want to see if this goes through.
Okay, so it went through last time. Let me try this again.
I was listening yesterday to a 'This American Life' rebroadcast of a Studs Terkel interview and thought Oh! I want to hear more! and Oh! such sorrow at the death of a man who knew how to listen.
The woman interviewed had been a child during the Depression, and she described how she and her sister would move from the soup line to the bread line to the line for milk, every day, to bring food home to their family. She said that the rich might have looked down on the poor, but those standing in line neither felt shame nor condemned one another. Solidarity, I believe, is the term.
So, Mr. Dreher, how about an elegy for Mr. Terkel?
during the recessions of the 1970's, Peak Oil was about 30 years away...
now it's at our doorstep...
so...
we've had prosperity with cheap oil...
but cheap energy is past its peak...
and recession years are here...
see shadowstats dot com for a great graph showing how we've been in a recession for almost every year of this decade...
in perpetual recession, it might not take much to dip into depression...
so...
expensive fossil fuels are here to stay...
and the alternative energy solutions are expensive...
without a CHEAP alternative?
well...
the Greater Depression is possible...
hmmmm...
hope for the best...
prepare for the worst?
abundance faith hope love joy peace to all...
Forgive Greenspan...
Forgive God...
godisaheretic -
You may have missed the link I posted a few days back:
---------
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/nov/09/miniature-nuclear-reactors-los-alamos
Mini nuclear plants to power 20,000 homes
£13m shed-size reactors will be delivered by lorry
Nuclear power plants smaller than a garden shed and able to power 20,000 homes will be on sale within five years, say scientists at Los Alamos, the US government laboratory which developed the first atomic bomb.
-------------
with electricity generated by a relatively low cost plant such as these, processed oil shale and converted coal converted to oil becomes realistic at (probably) at least $100/barrel and maybe less.
As demonstrated, $100/barrel is not going to cripple the economy, especially as we move to electric and hybrid transportation as battery technology improves.
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