A very good read to get your brain a thinking.

[Dreadbelly]

There was this other thing I read, I can't think of the title, but it was somebody's doctoral thesis online somewhere, talking about fuel dependance. When the oil is either gone, or the middle east politics and economy is to unstable, there is a way to press coal in to a form of gasoline. (Like the Nazis did) America's coal economy would revive, we have a LOT of coal... But because the workers would demand higher and higher wages, and the cost of refining the coal in to fuel to power all of the cars and trucks and our shipping industry, the whole supply and demand thing, based on projected trends and a whole bunch of stuff I can't possibly understand, it showed that only the upper middle class and beyond would be able to afford fuel. Everybody else would be screwed, and the classes would suffer a major shake up, as where people had been previously wealthy under the old economy would become flat broke.

The thesis was a good read... Hundreds of pages. If American workers had to produce goods again, and pick all of our own food, and manufacture our own stuff, prices would skyrocket to all time highs because of 'America's Living Wage' situation and workers demanding higher and higher paychecks to keep up with the cost of living in this consumer plantation. Television sets would cost thousands of dollars more if made here in America rather than an Asian sweatshop... Companies like Wal Mart would collapse because the high cost of low prices would kill them. A pint of strawberries would be a lux item because of the American workers out in the fields picking them would have to have a living wage, meaning the cost of food would have to go way, way up, meaning wages would have to be even higher to keep up with the cost increases.

I could see how the conditions for total collapse could come about.

Either way, no matter the outcome of what may happen, thinking about this increases my respect for people that can do it themselves.

[Mike1]

Let us remember that socio-economics is a very thin line away from political discussion. And we are watching, so gang wary.

[bubba]

Yeah Mike, I'm avoiding the political like the plague.Politics might influence how things come about in this case, but not what is likely to happen.