The 1970’s are remembered by those who were around during that era as an economically depressing time. Inflation was the defining feature of the economy, but the gas crisis was a close second. Gas lines, inflation, urban crime and history’s worst clothing styles was the 1970’s. When someone wants to produce images that are supposed to capture the mood of the period, inevitably they show people in the hideous costumes of the era, standing at a gas station.
Nixon taking the dollar off the gold standard gets the blame for inflation, but in reality, it was the interplay of energy and the dollar that caused the problem. The reason we have the petrodollar is to solve the inflation problem. This made official what had been unofficial since the end of the war. The dollar was the world’s reserve currency because it was used to trade energy on global markets. The Louvre Accord, which followed the Plaza Accord, stabilized the dollar internationally.
It is not an accident that soon after the dollar stabilized and became the default currency for international trade that the Soviet Union collapsed. The Soviets were dependent on food imports, and they raised the cash for food by selling energy products, mostly crude oil, on global markets. When oil prices declinedin the 1980’s, the Soviets suddenly found themselves struggling to raise enough dollars, which further strained an already fragile domestic economy.
The energy – currency link is an important concept to understand when thinking about what comes next for Western economies. A steady and consistent flow of energy products, along with a stable dollar, is what has allowed the West to borrow massive sums in order to underwrite the domestic economy. We are now entering a period of erratic and inconsistent energy flows, along with an unstable dollar. This is largely due to the decline of the American empire.
The energy markets are the first issue. Washington’s war on Russia has destabilized energy markets through efforts to cripple Russian energy sales. While this has failed, it has created distortions in the markets. For example, Germany now must import expensive LNG to replace the cheap pipeline gas from Russia. Meanwhile, India and China enjoy cheap energy from Russia. All of which is traded in rupees, yuan, and rubles, rather than dollars and euros.
Added to this is the realignment of the Gulf countries. Led by the Saudis, the oil producing countries have aligned themselves with their most dependable partners, Russia and China. The Saudis are now willing to trade in currencies other than the dollar, which is an enormous change. While it does not mean the end of the petrodollar, it is a step in that direction. It also means the dollar will not be the only currency used in international trade, thus lowering the demand for dollars.
Then we have the growing problems in America’s domestic energy supply which are largely due to bad policy. The growth in domestic supply has stopped. New investment is in decline as a result, so the decline in domestic supply will continue. This will inevitably drive-up global prices, but also flip North America from a net exporter to a net importer of energy products. There is only so much oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and it is at its lowest level ever recorded.
Of course, inflation is already an issue. Despite the happy talk from the government, anyone who buys things sees the problem. Food inflation remains an issue, despite low energy costs over the last year. Now that oil is creeping back up with a target of $100 per barrel, inflation will become even more obvious. Add in the softening of the economy and you see the signs of stagflation, which is the combination of high inflation and economic stagnation.
The one thing missing from this picture is brown leisure suits. While gas lines are unlikely in the near term, reckless foreign policy could easily result in the disputes with the Saudis turning into rocket high gas prices. Aggression towards the Chinese will result in shortages and inflation in other parts of the economy. This is coming at a time when the bulk of Americans are losing trust in the economic and political system, not just the people pretending to run the system.
That is where the parallels between the 1970’s and this period stop. The economic and political crisis of the 1970’s was largely due to the American political class adjusting to new global realities. Europe and Asia were back online economically, but the global currency arraignments were still tuned for the 1950’s. The West was also on the cusp of the microprocessor revolution, which would require the freeing of capital from old industry so it could flow into the new technologies.
This crisis is largely due to incompetence. The Russians were happy to sell their energy and agricultural products to the world at a good price. They just wanted the West to respect the territorial integrity of the Russkiy Mir. The Chinese are happy to be the manufacture of the world, as long as Washington refrains from trying to overthrow the Chinse government and that of its neighboring allies. The Saudis were happy with the petrodollar as long as America stayed out if its domestic affairs.
All of this is happening in the shadow of a rapidly growing debt problem magnified by higher borrowing rates. The deficit is over $31 trillion, a number that is inconceivable to most people. Debt payments are now at one trillion per year. The ongoing baby boomer retirement is going to drive both numbers higher. In 1980, Ronald Reagan ran on the promise to end deficit spending and clear the national debt. Half a century on and the problem is worse than anyone imagined possible.
America is now entering a period with the economic and social aspects of the 1970’s, but this time it is set in the world of the film Idiocracy. The main cause is not changing global conditions, but a suicidally incompetent ruling class. In the 1970’s, the solution was better policies. Fifty years on, the solution is an entirely new international order to replace the old order, which also means replacing the American ruling class with a new ruling class capable of navigating the new order.
What all this means is that this version of the 1970’s will bring us far worse things than denim leisure suits and velour car interiors. Add in the demographic problems and the picture is far grimmer than that 1970s’ picture. Instead of a 20-something in a terrycloth jumpsuit standing in a gas line, the image of this age could be a 60-somehting boomer in a golf shirt lined up at a food bank. In the end, we may look at the 1970’s as a warning about what was ahead for the American Empire.
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I was born in ‘69, child of the 70’s, and it was pretty damn good compared to what these kids have today. I enjoy “That 70’s Show,” and it was a pretty accurate depiction of the time. People for the most part were attractive, fit and active. We ran around outside playing sports, riding bikes everywhere, mom warned us to be home before sunset, which we rarely were. There were good movies and tv shows, although sitting in front of the boob tube was not a way of life. There was great music as well as some bad, but all… Read more »
While leisure suits were indeed stupid, it seems every generation has its hideous fashion trends. I’m old enough to remember the huge skirts, lurid lipstick, and greasy duck’s-ass hairstyles of the 1950’s, beehive hairdos, hair curlers seen in public, and bullet-bras of the 1960’s, etc. However, the current craze that truly disturbs this old man is young white girls covering themselves with huge, gaudy tattoos. The other nonsense came and went, but this fad is basically forever, but you can’t tell THEM that!
Totally agree. Mode of the 80’was hideous too.
IMO, the best time was the age between the 90’s and the tattoo era :Circa 2000-2005, we had abolished the “too-large suit” of the early 90. Women were sexy, oftenly in (moderately)-high-boots, and their skin was immaculate.
(for men, my favorite era would be France mousquetaire era, circa 1620 ; late 15th and early 16th in west Europe ; France near 1825 and, also, during the 1790′)
¡Que venga pronto!
I agree with Z’s assessment of the 70’s versus now and the 70s as a warning. However, I also see the 50s and 60s as warnings and significant precursors to the modern world. A lot of the young dissident right views the 50s and 60s as a whitetopia ruined by those evil boomers who were all hippies. Like everything else, reality was different than what the media portrays it as being but the media’s narrative resonates so strongly emotionally that the truth is rejected. The element of the 50s and 60s that I find the biggest precursor of the modern… Read more »
Terrycloth jumpsuits! I won’t miss those! Arguably, though the styles of the early 80s were even worse than the 70s. And the music, ecch!
The women’s shoulder pads of the 80s were so awful that they may never return
but I miss the big hair
I emerged from puberty about age 15. It was the eighties when my high school basketball coach’s wife seduced me in her bright yellow terry cloth jumper. She was a former BigTen cheerleader. A summer of s_x schooling followed, which I associate with terry cloth. Oh hell yeah, go terrycloth!
Degenerate boomer brags about degeneracy of his salad days without having wised up even a bit in the intervening decades. Wonders why his generation is generally blamed for turning country to crap and why current generation are trans in polycules. Waddles up stairs to big RV with “I’m spending my kids inheritance!” bumper sticker and rolls sadly away.
No discussion of the 70s would be complete without this classic: https://tinyurl.com/fvvwdvpx
I’ll see your tranny/murderer horror and raise you the Brady Bunch Variety hour with fake Jan.
As noted in my posts below I’m an auto racing fan. Earlier this summer someone put up on YouTube an un-edited (save for removing commercials) NBC broadcast of the 1981 Michigan 500, the first 500 mile Indy Car race broadcast live (5 years before the Indy 500 was broadcast live same day on ABC). The announcing team includes Paul Page and . . . . . Bruce (not Caitlyn) Jenner. Talk about being taken aback! 😲 I want to time travel back to 1981 and tell him “Stay the HELL away from anyone named Kardashian, for the love of all… Read more »
I remember watching that race. Foyt had a bad wreck.
Damn near lost his arm. 😬
Carthage thought it had found a permanent formula after the second Punic war but it’s goose was cooked right then and there. For fifty years it enjoyed unparalleled prosperity while it sacrificed its infant children to Moloch and then it was destroyed right down to its foundation stones. It was surrounded by those damned Numidians you see but it was largely a commercial empire so its leaders continued oblivious to the danger. It didn’t see just how precarious its situation truly was, or if a few did, there was nothing they could do about it. Everyone who comments here understands… Read more »
Today’s post would be a golden opportunity for me to really expound, as the history and philosophy of economics has been one of my longstanding interests. Theology, ontology, philosophy of science, and philosophy of economics have all been matters of mature and reflective avocation for me, and are subjects I feel I can comment upon with some authority. However, since I’ve already laid out my basic economic prescription for the United States in a previous post, I’ll refrain from repeating that material here. Instead, I would just like to encourage everyone to be hopeful. The manifold ways in which the… Read more »
You could say that Putin’s mere continued existence is a defeat for the empire. That every day that the war in Ukraine continues is a defeat for the empire. These things demonstrate to everyone, every day, that there is a sphere of the world not just beyond GAE control, but capable of thwarting GAE intentions.
I could, and I have. Russia’s example in standing up to the GAE has taught an important lesson to people everywhere, but I think it’s most notable aspect has been not the SMO in Ukraine but the withdrawal from the global banking cartel. That was the moment when someone finally proved that you could step outside the holodeck and not vanish. It was, and is, an incredible accomplishment. About Ukraine, though, I think Russia has gotten itself stuck. Yes, they are winning the “war of attrition” on the battlefield, but what kind of war of attrition is it really when… Read more »
>The right metric is wiping out the Zelensky regime and its Western backers. Time will tell. But if Ukraine is just the bloodiest front for the West in what has become a global conflict, I’d say go even slower… If Russia’s economy is set to actually grow this year, as is my understanding, then I would say that in Ukraine the Kremlin has both the watches and the time. So why rush? Zapping Zelensky now gives his backers an out. Better to leave that albatross hanging around NATO’s neck until at least this time next year. Meanwhile keep applying pressure… Read more »
Putin is well aware that ending the Zelensky regime and/or conquering all of Ukraine will not be the end of the war. Maybe he has reasons not to be in a hurry to push it to the phase that would come after that. You don’t think the GAE is just going to stand down if Ukraine is defeated?
It’s a real dilemma for Putin, since he could easily send the tanks into Kiev, but America’s leaders are so unhinged they might just press the Big Button. So he has to walk a fine line.
I am far from a military-geo political expert. But it seems the current trajectory is Russia up, GAE and Ukraine down. Why would you do something to change that trajectory? As the Taliban showed, you beat the GAE by not losing.
I think Russia is carefully choosing the timing of important military developments in Ukraine, and not simply slow rolling its activities solely for attrition purposes. A lot of critical political developments are scheduled over the next 18 months; including elections in Russia, USA, Europe, and Taiwan. A big military victory occurring late this year could significantly influence the outcome of many of these elections. And the strategic goal for Russia is not simply to bury the corruptocrats in Ukraine (which they can do at will), but to undermine the globalist leaders in the West that are the real enemy. They’re… Read more »
The difference, seems to me, between Russian bonehead moves and GAE ones is the Russians learn from theirs.
I bet if you were to poll random Americans, and ask them if the USA should (A) threaten global and agricultural markets by not respecting the territorial integrity of the Russkiy Mir, and (B) should threaten global manufacturing by trying to overthrow the Chinese government and that of its neighboring allies, you would likely get something in the neighborhood of 80%-99% “no” to both questions. Maybe a little lower depending on how many stalwart liberals you ask, but the point is, this behavior is just objectively insane, and not in the interests of American citizens. The American government obviously does… Read more »
“It is like we are on a bus being driven off the cliff by a psychopath who refuses to let go of the steering wheel. I really don’t see any way off the bus.”
At this point even those lacking the spiritual intuition to see undeniable evil as it jumps up and down and demands we notice it… Occam’s razor pretty much demands we acknowledge the literal devil exists.
The “conspiracy” is so far reaching, well coordinated, and universally malign it obviously cannot exist as a matter of human agency but its nonethless everywhere to see.
It seems fantastical to think there was a time when Russia needed to import food. It’s not really much crazier than saying there will come a day when America needs to import food. People would look at you like you’ve got three heads. But in Russia it really did happen. In the present day, it’s also almost impossible to wrap your head around China being colonized and controlled by foreign powers from another continent, with relatively minimal military intervention and very little actual geographical colonization. The “century of humiliation.” It seems today as far fetched as the same being done… Read more »
Speaking of food, Fort Hood Texas can’t find enough cooks to keep the troops fed:
https://www.foxnews.com/us/cook-shortage-army-post-shutters-some-mess-halls-leaving-hungry-soldiers-scrambling-report
Between this and the pictures of the latest Marine recruits I don’t think dissidents have much to worry about.
In Iraq and Afghanistan the Army outsourced the food service to civilian contractors. One wonders why they haven’t yet done the same at home. That doesn’t necessarily end the possibility of staffing shortages, but it appears the problem is a lack of Army cooks, not lack of cooks period. For what they were paying in the ME, folks were lining up to do it.
Look this problem is easily solved. Change the name to Ft. Floyd and whiteness will be abolished and the kitchens will be cranking out hot meals like nobody’s business in no time.
Dam’ straight. Chittlins, hog jowels, fried chicken and watermelon on ebbery plate.
Emmett Till Brigade, represent!
“For months, one [dining facility] was open and was a more than 30-minute drive for my soldiers,” a noncommissioned officer who anonymously spoke to Military.com said. “All the soldiers were going to that one. It’s unmanageable during the workday.” I think of my late father, who was actually “In The Sh-t” in the ETO in WW2 in a US Army Infantry Division, eating either C-Rations warmed over a feeble fire or whatever hot slop “Cookie the Cook” for his unit could slap on his mess kit, or even worse, cold C-Rations while worrying when Real No-Fooling Not Sees would drop… Read more »
For virtually all of its history Russia hovered around the edges of food scarcity, and that scarcity was exacerbated to the point of famine by the malicious and deranged policies of the Bolsheviks. In point of fact, the proportion of Russian arable is and has been small. The Ukraine, of all places, has been Russia’s breadbasket, and it is now largely under the GAE’s thumb. This may be yet another reason Russia invaded.
I agree with Zeihan. I also think that the, ‘just add more new young people’, crowd is just the tail end of the dead end of the quantitative thinking that has driven us into this ditch. It is just Keynesianism dressed up as demographics rather than pump priming – Krugman’s spend to extinguish debt fallacy. A nation is far more than an economy whose health is measured by the volume of refrigerators and toaster ovens you sell to flesh meat sacks. The boomers bought a bunch of things, but how healthy is the economy in their wake? That says nothing… Read more »
Oops! I agree with Zoar.
FWIW in the 1970’s the World War II generation was still in charge. They weren’t perfect by any measure but they abided by a certain set of rules that aren’t today (prosecuting a presidential opponent for example). The Dem party had not yet gone completely around the bend.
Now it is an “Idiocracy” but on steroids.
Whatever else they were, at least they were competent. Thinking hadn’t yet been outlawed.
Sure it was; thinking was no longer legal no later than 1965.
Gas lines, inflation, urban crime and history’s worst clothing styles was the 1970’s.
True. But some of the best music.
And some of the worst:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpqqjU7u5Yc
Well, it’s no Muskrat Love, I’ll tell you what. 😏
?????
You do get the double entendre, right?
How DEEP is your love?
You understand which particular depth we’re talking about here, Massa Gynecologist?
I’ve met GenX & Millennial chicks in the last few years who worship the BeeGees.
And Boomer chicks – they’d walk over broken glass to get to a BeeGees concert.
https://tinyurl.com/43fhzdpu
By way of contrast, this is what GenZ is cursed with for their sojourn through stagflation:
https://tinyurl.com/2ept9wzr
And Boomer chicks – they’d walk over broken glass to get to a BeeGees concert.
You haven’t LIVED until Boomer Wine Aunts go crazy dancing and singing to Rick Springfield.
And no, you really DON’T want to experience it.
Every time I see Lizzie it reminds me of the poop emoji.
haha that link led me to this in the feed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyxCbgUBAMA
A bit maudlin, but compared to what comes over the airwaves today it sounds like Mozart.
Early in the “AI” tulip-mania, among musicologists there was a fad for quantifying the complexity of popular music. Anyone who can hear notes and do simple arithmetic (in bulk) can do it, but automating the calculations for masses of songs only became possible a few years ago. The first finding: Judged by harmony, timbre, rates and degrees of change, etc., popular music became clinically retarded the day “Black Hole Sun” left the charts, and its IQ has been sloping steadily downward ever since. This musicological fact is racist, sexist, “rockist,” and “auteurist”—in sum, anti-corporate—so now it’s forbidden to judge music… Read more »
Recall when “pop jogger influenced music is crap” became more or less a quantifiable objective fact. Lots of cool graphs.
Remember this being deboonked by soyboy heavily promoted by our hebrew friends running youtube… who basically said that since ostinato is a thing that exists beyonce is basically mozart but better.
One of those obscure early signs of how mad the ruling tribe ideology could become
The DC elite are corrupt at every level….and….inept at every level. Did I mention CORRUPT? So how do we fix it? Certainly not at the ballot box.
And I looked good in my short shorts, knee-high tube socks and Frampton hair.
A lot of people remember the ’70s fondly because they were young at the time despite the overall picture being rather shitty. My own youth was not quite so idyllic so I was redpilled right from grade-school. No doubt, the ’70s were freer because you did not have the nanny state/Karen state, you did not have surveillance cameras everywhere, you did not have digital databases everywhere, you did not have the social media panopticon and you did not have cancel culture. The Left was beginning to usurp the institutions, but the default culture at the time continued to prize free… Read more »
I’m far from the first person to point out that for the left, free speech was just a means to an end rather than a core principle. Once the goal had been reached, up came the ladder.
That description really makes you “come alive”…
Do you FEEEEEEEEEL Like CG2 Do?
And then music too fell off a cliff in short order, I’m going to say about 1983. The cultural decline has been long evident from that perspective. I have this notion that societal rotting goes in stages, one which must precede the other, and the decline in music showed up well before the decline in most other things. Circa 2000, most everybody thought everything was hunky dory, but by then the music has already been mostly garbage for a good decade and a half, indicative of some kind of cultural rotting from the head down.
Much like special effects improvements did to movies, MTV and video did to music. It became more about the spectacle (visuals) rather than the music itself. However, there are always a few gems in the mud.
Jeffrey Zoar: “And then music too fell off a cliff in short order, I’m going to say about 1983.”
I agree that after the mid-1980s, the floor fell out of the house.
Something absolutely bizarre happened to Western Civilization between 1984:
https://tinyurl.com/5c83mesx
And 1992:
https://tinyurl.com/5n8b3zue
Maybe it was simply the necessary result of Griswold [1965] and Roe [1973]?
Maybe the requisite DNA just wasn’t in Our Race anymoar?
Note that the collapse does align almost perfectly with the Bush 41 administration.
Bourbon
Thank you for the a-ha video.
Very cool and enjoyable.
Jeffrey Zoar: “Circa 2000, most everybody thought everything was hunky dory, but by then the music has already been mostly garbage for a good decade and a half, indicative of some kind of cultural rotting from the head down.”
Back in the day, I studied about a decades’ worth of Billboard Top-20 songs, comprising roughly two hundred “hits”, from 2000 through 2010.
And only ONE song had a clear identifiable hum-able whistle-able sing-able melody:
https://tinyurl.com/famrad84
The rest of them [199 or moar] consisted of nothing but very loud grating ear-piercing random noise.
Bourbon, I am an amateur musician, have been musical my whole life, I practice 2 hours a day, so I think about music in ways that the average person does not. I used to wonder if my distaste for the music of the last 30-40 years was just being old and out of touch, you know, like the old folks who disapproved of Elvis back in the 50s. But careful specific reflection has shown this not to be the case. I have always enjoyed, still do enjoy, music of all styles, all genres, even rap (what very little of it… Read more »
I thought the pop culture in general was just fine until 1992. That was the year I dropped out.
It was in the early 1990s that I became consciously aware that the music was turning to shit. And it wasn’t because I was old and nostalgic. I was in my early 20s.
Yes, I was 24/25 myself. Typically, after every paycheck I received, I’d go down to the Sound Warehouse and snag an album. But it just so happened that, in 1992, I could simply no longer find any albums I wanted to buy. The music had become boring and uninteresting. And, from what I’ve gathered, it has only gotten exponentially worse since then.
That seems a little off. 1991 was one of the greatest years in rock history: Nevermind, Loveless, Spiderland, Laughing Stock, Gish, and good albums by U2, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, RHCP, Massive Attack, The Orb and others. It’s not like suddenly, a few months later, everything went to shit.
1992 saw the release of Pavement’s debut, Slanted and Enchanted, Dirt by Alice In Chains, Wish by The Cure, Harvest Moon by Neil Young, and others. Music still had lots of room for whites. After the Millennium is when non-underground music became completely touched with the tar brush.
At least the 70s had style.
Haven’t noticed style (or at least a change in what passses as style) for going on twenty years in music, literature, fashion, architecture, etc.
Since about 2000, women’s styles of dress keep getting progressively sluttier/more skin. What young women commonly wear socially today, even the hookers in the 80s didn’t dress that slutty. Other than that, I don’t see much change either.
Where I live the trend is deliberate uglification: more tattoos, and unkempt hair dyed unnatural colors.
And this is on increasingly older women, even grandmothers. It strikes me not so much as a style as it does evidence of sickness.
There is geographical variation to this. The slutty is more where the “beautiful people” are. The common factor throughout is the tattoos. “We’re a bunch of nonconformist rebels, all 150 million of us.”
Without question. When I see a girl who has disfigured herself, I see a girl who is mentally ill. And the greater the disfigurement, the more profound the illness. There are a lot of sick women out there.
That’s part of the pr0nification of society, largely initiated by Howard Stern.
Howard Stern–one of those shapeshifting Chinamen. See Early Life. Real name, Ho Wei Sin.
Every. Single. Time.
Goes back further, check out “porn jew edition” of insomnia stream by Devon Stack (aka Blackpilled). On Odyssey rather than youtube of course.
You DO listen to insomnia stream right? Basically the most honest high effort, professionally produced cultural analysis on video anywhere
The 70s were a time with some of the best music ever, some of the weirdest, some of the blandest, and some that wasn’t good at all. But back then we weren’t assaulted with the crap that is rap, that is now pushed on us in heavy doses. (which begs the question, “just who is doing that, which group wants us listening to rap and hip hop continually?”)
Agreed, with Rush, Led Zeppelin, etc.
But the decade ended with a song that was perhaps the worst “ear worm” ever recorded.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhzy7JaU2Zc
Economic and sartorial considerations aside, the 1970s were paradise compared to the present. Yes, the hypodermic filled with cultural strychnine had already been plunged into America’s heart, but the effects of the poison were bradytelic and had not yet manifested themselves to anything like an intolerable degree. Pop music was wonderful–arguably better than the 60s and 80s–television shows were often very funny and entertaining in other ways, Hollywood produced films that captivated one’s attention rather than enraging normal people via deranged moral homiletics. What’s more, there wasn’t an image of a negro plastered on every wall, and glaring out from… Read more »
“Pop music was wonderful”
You sure about that, dude?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rptW7zOPX2E
I’d take the loathsome Helen Reddy pablum over whatever fingernails on a blackboard ‘music’ emanates from the studios today.
What, you don’t like “Wet Ass Pussy”?
There were some stinkers, of course. Alas, today’s pop music scene is nothing less than a shit-field.
“The one thing missing from this picture is brown leisure suits.” Look Z, I lived through wearing plaid polyester pants back then. Since I was a kid my mother bought them for me and that’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it. I’ll keep the khakis and the polo shirts thank you very much. 😏 As others have recounted the mid-late 1970s and into the early 1980s sucked because of stagflation, ridiculous interest rates, and the hangover from Vietnam. Blue collar union jobs were starting to disappear with the closure of steel mills and auto factories. We let the Japanese… Read more »
It’s going to be wild when Congress allocated hundreds of billions to mass produce tanks only to find out that reality isn’t a video game where weapons fall out of the sky once you pay the money.
Going to be even funnier when the new diversity bilks the government for all it’s worth and charges tens of millions per drone.
All that money, and none of it is real.
Chet-
They’ve already begun the allocation process so it won’t be long now.
When the price of gas goes up, the politicians will blame Big Oil price gouging, like always, to distract blame from themselves.
As for parts shortages: Absolutely. China can put the squeeze on at will. Right now I am waiting parts for my tractor and my wife’s SUV. They’re on a slow boat from China. How slow is up to Xi Jinping.
Looking around in a large mexican and Senegalese city located in the geographical US I dream of some scenario when the US could catastrophically lose a major war… in some miraculous way that doesnt also mean thousands of brave young white christian southern boys dying (like usual).
Im hoping dont ask dont tell gets fully reversed and we get an all tranny army first.
mmack: “the 1970s to the early 1990s was the absolute nadir of the American auto industry” OTOH, it was the absolute zenith of the American DIESEL truck industry. Your namesake, the Mack E6. Caterpillar: 3406, 3406A, 3406B, 3406C, 3406D Cummins: Small Cam, Big Cam I, Big Cam II, Big Cam III, mechanical N14, 12 valve 5.9L, 12 valve 8.3L, 12 valve 8.9L Detroit 2-Strokes: 6-71, 6V-71, 8-71, 8V-71, 12-71, 12V-71, 16-71, 16V-71, 6-93, 6V-93, 8-93, 8V-93, 12-93, 12V-93, 16-93, 16V-93, etc etc etc Ford New Holland: 6.6L, 7.8L International: DT360, DT408, DT466 Apparently moast of China’s transportation infrastructure now runs… Read more »
Everything about this coming era will be far worse than the 70’s. All of our poor decisions over the past 50 year will magnify these issues. For instance, in the 70’s, the U.S. still had a strong manufacturing base, even if past it’s peak. Today, we have “hospitality and leisure” as our economic driver. A large part of the price of a manufactured product is its transportation to the store. In the 70’s the store could have been a few states away from the factory. Today, nearly everything we consume was imported from another continent, and the cost of moving… Read more »
Many of the police state measures are being implemented in anticipation of exactly what you described will happen.
jrwirth: I remember the ’70s, and they sucked. But when I imagine waiting in gas lines now . . . amidst all the lovely diversity . . . I envision massive conflict and violence. As bad as things were back then, I was still able to get an entry level job as a teen. I was able to purchase things – admittedly often crappy – that were made in America. I still thought saris were exotic. My innocence and ignorance of the sexually perverse in the early ’70s was shattered in college in the late ’70s, but I still had… Read more »
Who is going to provide manpower for a resurgent manufacturing base. Twenty-seven year in the my factory has seen a work force with one black man, and a shop full of white engineers and machinists transform into a place manned by African “asylum seekers” and slackers. Of course we are on our ass losing money and fading fast.
There will be no new manufacturing base. Hispanics and Africans, women, jews and pajeets do not do hi-tech manufacturing.
That goes back to the demographic catastrophe which alone will sink us.
Exactly this. High-tech manufacturing is the domain of Whites and Asians. America no longer possesses the human capital to compete globally in high-tech manufacturing. This, and a host of other issues, have made me wonder whether the Chinese Exclusion Act was a strategic mistake. Had it not passed, the West Coast and most likely everything west of the Rockies would have been majority Asian, rather than majority Hispanic as it is trending now. US politics would be dominated by the interests of Whites and Asians, which are far more closely aligned than the interests of Whites and Hispanics, or Whites… Read more »
I would still prefer Mexicans to Chinese. Mexicans aren’t a threat to whites except in their voting power under “muh democracy.” Asians would have out competed us, which is why the REALISTS of that era knew to exclude them. They should have gone further with another tribe that feigns being white for advantage. There is East Asian kryptonite however. This is called “gambling.” Asians are hard wired to work 80 hour work weeks and then gamble it all away at the Mahjong table. It’s at a genetic level. Primitive Asians were fishermen. Their eyes are even shaped like fish. Their… Read more »
“Mexicans aren’t a threat to whites except in their voting power under ‘muh democracy.'”
This really does need qualification/extension. Mexicans are a threat perhaps not existentially, as Blacks are, but politically they are really too stupid to hold such power. Where in the majority, they elect political grifters with the best of them and the economy suffers.
The big issues of the day: abortion, crime, pollution, schools, welfare, and climate change, they are little different from Leftists–in the main.
JR Wirth: ‘There is East Asian kryptonite however. This is called “gambling.”’ And guess who controls the gambling tables? [ANSWER: Meyer Lansky Inc = Pritzker Family Crime Syndicate + Adelson Family Crime Syndicate]. BTW, the moast important news story of the 21st Century broke just a few weeks ago: It turns out that Lee Harvey Oswald’s CIA handler was a Lithuanian j00, named Reuben Efron. So Efron was charged with the task of handling Oswald prior to the assassination, and then Jack “Ruby” Rubenstein was charged with the task of silencing Oswald after the assassination. We do all understand what… Read more »
Answer to all these people that think that United States will become the Third World, in these comments and others: You won’t be like the Third World. The Third World are poor countries where everything is done in a manner compatible with poverty. You will be a poor country where everything is done in the manner of a rich country. Here, in the Third World, public services are bad but taxes are low. You will have high taxes and bad public services. Here in the Third World, we have low salaries (not my case) but we don’t worry about climate… Read more »
I was in grade school during the ’70s, and I remember it pretty well. It was definitely a mixed bag. The country was much whiter, much thinner, and, very importantly, had 130 million fewer people so there was a lot more space. The early ’70s were mostly a continuation of the prosperity of the ’60s and a continuation of the Cultural Revolution of the ’60s, but the wheels really fell off starting in 1974-75 or so. I remember watching Nixon resign in 1974, that seemed to mark the beginning of the decline (although in reality it was happening prior to… Read more »
the 55mph national speed limit to “save gas.”
That one really pisses me off, now that I have a vehicle with real time mpg monitoring. The sweet spot for mileage is closer to 75 than 55.
My grandfather had a Buick with a loud annoying buzzer that would sound continuously if you went over 55. He was getting old and his hearing was going, so it wasn’t long after he bought it that he couldn’t hear the buzzer anymore, and would drive along at 60 or so with that buzzer going BZZZZZZZZZZ. Wasn’t really any point telling him, we just tolerated it.
Speedometers were limited to 85 mph by federal law in the late ’70s-early ’80s.
As if that would stop people from pinning the needle on 85 and then just keep on accelerating if they wanted to.
I remember when they went from 120 to 100 MPH. For GM it appears to have been the 1974 model year. I had a 1976 de Ville where the speedometer topped out at 100. A online look at a 1973 showed 120. Didn’t stop me from foolishly burying the speedometer. And kinesthetic feedback told me the car was still accelerating. By 1977 for GM cars at least, the speedometer was limited to 85 MPH. Some cars had 55 MPH either highlighted or circled. I know since I looked at a 1977 de Ville before I bought my 1976 and it… Read more »
they never buried the Left
And therein lie the problem. The Right is simply not sufficiently ruthless. Look what the Left does to its enemies. I know, I know, the GOP is not really conservative/Right. We await our Generalissimo.
¡Que venga pronto!
1970s cars are the most depressing pieces of shit in american history. Rolling rectangles. Its like they took a tall soviet prison complex, laid it down, and put wheels on it.
The weren’t all rolling rectangles
True, The Brougham Epoch (As CurbsideClassic.com puts it) had its Ugly Ducklings with the upright, rigid, “Neo-Classical” styling (Note the proliferation of upright central grills in cars of that era. Stolen from the classics of the 1920s-30s), and it wore poorly in some crapwagons like the Granada/Monarch, Aspen/Volare sedans, and some of the downsized GM Mid-Sizers. And the less said about the AMC Gremlin and Pacer the better (Unless you’re Wayne and Garth). But, to each his own, I’d love to have my first car, a mid 1970s Coupe de Ville back (not exactly the beat to death piece of… Read more »
“The growth in domestic supply has stopped. New investment is in decline as a result, so the decline in domestic supply will continue.”
Peter Zeihan said this 2 days ago: “US shale has been expanding in leaps and bounds over the last several months and years, especially since covid started to let up and it’s nearing record levels and it’s only gonna go up from here…”
Is he wrong?
Chances are he is wrong because he is wrong about everything. Wrong about covid, wrong about the vaccine, wrong about Ukraine and he’s a faggot.
That he is. But many people listen to him. And whether US shale production is growing or not and whether it’s nearing records should be verifiable. I suspect that both, Zeihan and Z-man rely on secondary sources. Can someone here point me to an actual/official dataset showing the state of US shale production?
On that last item – the percentage of gays among the “creative class” seems higher to me nowadays than even the oft-cited 10% (which of course is probably only true in big cities which concentrate them). I think what might be going on in many cases is that AA is applied more aggressively to gays because they can usually at least do the actual job they were hired for. So if you’ve got to pick from three people, one an outstanding normal White heterosexual, one a mediocre White gay, and one a sub-par diversity, you pick the White faggot every… Read more »
Shale is literally the best windfall this country has seen in decades. It’s also the reason natural gas prices were reduced to pennies above transportation costs. Right now, because we’re the stupid country, with stupid, degenerate leadership, all kinds of EPA schemes are working their way through to hobble it out of existence. As we hit our economic and energy crisis, I predict that we will reverse course on this. But let’s they they’re SO stupid that they don’t (because mother Earth). This issue alone would be grounds for a “Texit” from the U.S.
I’d add controlled to the list of our leaders attributes.
There is more than enough evidence to make that case.
I’ve read in various places that shale (tight) oil has been a money losing proposition since day 1. I have not heard the same thing about shale gas though. OTOH, it’s hard to imagine people just keep pumping money into a money losing project. Frankly, anyone shipping gas or oil overseas should be arrested as a traitor. Fossil fuels are a one time gift of nature which cannot be replaced. Not only is it giving away our inheritance, it harms us because the price we pay becomes subject to world market conditions. Why should foreigners in foreign places be able… Read more »
He is one of those guys who uses the tricks of fortune tellers. For example, “expanding in leaps and bounds over the last several months and years” can mean anything. Expanding over the last few months could mean a blip, while years implies long term strategy, but then he throws in the Covid business which contradicts that. Then there is this: https://www.ft.com/content/26bd3376-c4b4-4257-98e1-93b29706d2d8 and this: https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/shale-rd-cuts-cast-shadow-future-us-oil-production-2023-05-25/
Thanks for the answer.
From what I recall shale/fracking only ever worked in a declining interest rate environment so that poor cost-to-product ratio could be pushed out into the future indefinitely (“indefinitely” turned out to be sometime last year).
It was always iffy as fracking is the equivalent of scraping the last bit of ice cream out of the tub with a spatula.
Zeihan is the Malcom Gladwell of our time.
Shale is a creature of credit, and cheap credit is going bye bye. It will take shale along with it as it exits.
The policies of the 1960s were the underpinning of many of the problems we face. After the Vietnam “conflict” most people who had a heartbeat began to realize the US wasn’t that good ol’ Uncle Sam after all. The 70s were an attempt to block out the distasteful memories of the 60s. We had a ’71 Dodge Polara two-door, avocado green with a black vinyl roof. 360CI V8. Cloth and vinyl interior with the (factory) air conditioner hanging below the dashboard. Cruising at 75 on the interstate, one got the sensation of levitating at high speed rather than rolling over… Read more »
Ah yes… avocado. Not just good for your health… also good for your eyes.
Well maybe.
Not sure avocado Corning ware or (worse) melamine crockery ever looked great.
Burnt Orange all is forgiven!
Looked at buying my first house in the mid 1990s and the realtor took me to a mid-1970s era split level in my price range. It hadn’t been updated (save for paint) since the home was built.
It had the original green shag carpeting from the 1970s. It looked like they gutted and skinned Oscar the Grouch and put his hide on the floor.
Avocado green. Also an unmissed feature of the 1970s.
Taking a minute to appreciate the comment section here. Even if not a single one is correct, it is great that at least every one discusses real things that really matter and that take into account real things that once really happened. I am not saying that not a comment is correct either. Just saying, thank you everyone who comes here for being a serious person. We have to keep our heads high no matter what. If the terry cloth pant suit at the gas station was bad, well at least it was on a smoking hot Nordic descendant surrounded… Read more »
Back at you, my brother. Mad props to you, and all others here. It’s truly the wreck of the Hesperus today, but it is good to hear all of your voices in these times.
These attacks on 1970’s fashion have GOT to stop!
The denim leisure suit was pinnacle of activewear:
…and the powder blue tuxedo took formalwear into the heavens:
I await an apology, which I’m certain is forthcoming.
Unpopular opinion, but kind of like the 1970s. I like the hair, the interior design (as long as it was on the MCM side and not the Liberace side), and especially the films and music. Artistically, the 1970s were the height of American pop culture.
I also miss how decades could be pinpointed by a mere photograph or video. Show me a photo now, and I couldn’t tell you if it was 2003, 2013, or 2023. Before the turn of the century, you KNEW what ridiculous decade the sample was taken from.
The 1970s were, as IMDB correctly says, the greatest period ever for American film…My guess is that the collapse of censorship was the cause…
I don’t know. I found Midnight Cowboy and Saturday Night Fever and a number of other iconic 70s films to be tawdry and depressing. Kind of like the 70s themselves…
But, yea, a heck of a lot better than the last ten years and, no doubt, the next ten to come…
Midnight Cowboy was released in ’69.
70s music was awesome, even a lot of what gets called disco. But I admit the worst disco was pretty bad.
The 60s basically ruined fashion. In the time before that, even homeless people dressed better than we do today. Their suit might have been dirty and had holes in it, but they were suits. Pretty much all men wore hats and nice shoes too. A respectable man wouldn’t be caught dead in a pair of gym shoes anywhere but the gym.
Disco lyrics were completely inane, but the instrumental aspects of the music were actually quite appealing. That music was smooth with a driving rhythm that really did compel one to dance. Rap, disco’s negroid successor, simply makes one want to commit violence. And that, I’m sure, is its primary purpose.
There’s a special place where disco and jazz meet that has mostly been forgotten by time, was never played on the radio, the records are all out of print, but has been preserved for posterity (for now anyway) by Spotify.
If you like those shaggy, floppy male hair styles from the 70s, all you need to do is stroll across a college campus for a reprise. Everything old is new again.
And you’re quite correct about the bland, aesthetic homogeneity of the 21st century, although I think it extends all the way back into the 90s. From the standpoint of visual design aesthetics, there’s not all that much difference between 1993 and 2023. On the other hand, the disparity between 1993 and 1983 is stunning.
The globohomo illustration style of the early ’90s is very similar to today’s. I don’t think they’ve even bothered changing the name of it from “Memphis” to something new. But there has been a visible degeneration, from something like “corporate notebook doodle” (e.g., the now-famous “jazz” cups) to a visual propaganda so uniform it really looks like *nobody* made it (distorted vector people of indeterminate non-whiteness). The former evocation of the hand-drawn was a false welcome, but today’s Google blob people are intentionally alienating. A state surveillance company—as almost every company is—dressed in the comic misproportions and garish colors of… Read more »
You could land a Piper Cub on those lapels in your first link.
Last week, a documentary about race car drivers from the early 70’s was playing on one of the televisions at the gym. It is a film called “Stewart” about Jackie Stewart and I highly recommend it, if only for the images from the past. It was a bit before my time and I have zero interest in car racing but it was extraordinary. The footage from the early 70’s was absolutely incredible. Yes, the clothing style was strange and goofy but everyone was white. The drivers, all the fans in the crowd, and the commentators were all white. It was… Read more »
Bingo! I’d jump in a time machine and wear those goofy clothes–hell I did–immediately if it would free me from today’s fantasy world of Black superiority.
Example, there is a series on Netflix, “Lincoln Lawyer” which has a White guy as the lawyer hero. Yet, every character in the justice system is a high level Black and most of the “bad guys” in the system are White. Not only are the numbers bizarrely disproportional, but reality of course is the exact opposite!
There was a point around the beginning of the Reagan presidency where judges began to be portrayed by women and minorities. It started slowly, there was still Judge Wapner and Night Court, but it started to gain momentum and a decade or so later, judges were almost always depicted as having the “wisdom” that white men can never know.
Yes, and the books aren’t like that at all.
It appears that Western civilization is now entering a period similar to the Bronze Age Collapse…The US and its allies are trying to put out fires all over the world, with little success, as finances deteriorate rapidly…But in this case, our opponents aren’t the “sea peoples” but the Asian landmass giants, both of whose populations are intact and finances sound…
From the point of view of the Rest of the World, I suspect that the West is viewed as a bunch of rampaging freebooters, and thus their equivalent of the Bronze Age Sea Peoples.
This.
Present company excepted of course.
The leadership of NASCAR are a bunch of anti-White SJWs. But the fans keep letting them get away with evil, like just recently suspending a driver because he liked a George Floyd meme making fun of him and the Bubba Wallace noose scam. This is insane. NASCAR fans might be 1% black on a good day. I imagine some of it comes from (((NY))) advertising agencies running to Ford and GM kvetching about their brands. Not to mention their support of the pervert community and pedophile community. You can’t enjoy nuttin without these freaks making it all about them. Everything… Read more »
Well, I ‘am’ a devotee of automobile racing, and particularly the history of open-wheel racing, and I can tell you that if you enjoyed “Stewart” you should check out the 1966 film Grand Prix. Basically, it’s a soap opera on wheels, but it is also an artistically gorgeous movie that accurately captures the parlous, romantic nature of F1 racing in the 60s. And, needless to say, nary a negro to be seen. PS–Even Ron Howard’s Rush, which came out several years ago, is well worth seeing. It focuses on the rivalry between Nikki Lauda and James Hunt–to very different men–over… Read more »
It’s not a work of fiction, but there’s a youtube video shot back in the day documenting the Cummins diesel entry into the world of auto racing. The name of the video is “Diesel Race Car. Diesel Indy Car 1952. Cummins Diesel.” (with the period). It’s pretty cool. I thought it was pretty interesting. They even set a record for fastest lap time, IIRC, in the qualifying runs.
Yes, the Kurtis / Cummins Diesel Special (Chassis maker / engine) did set a track record with a 138 MPH average with a 1 lap record of 139 MPH (Qualifying for the 500 is four laps) and won the Pole Position for the 1952 Indianapolis 500. It was the first turbocharged car to race at Indianapolis and the last diesel powered car to do so. Turns out to get a hope in Hell of aerodynamics and reduced drag, Frank Kurtis the chassis builder laid that big ol’ inline Cummins diesel engine flat on its side. Alas, aside from the car… Read more »
Yes. IIRC, that diesel ran the entire race without having to pit. But it was a much heavier and slower machine than the frontrunners, which is why it didn’t finish high up in the money.
You’re crossing the streams Ostei:
https://www.cummins.com/company/history/indianapolis-500
The car that ran the entire Indy 500 without a pit stop did so in 1931.
Amazed Cummins or someone else didn’t bring back running at Indy with a diesel.
Everyone looked healthy and happy. They seemed thoughtful and had conversations about immortality. It was such a stark contrast from all the other screens showing the present day trash. Thanks for the mention of the Jackie Stewart documentary. The early 1970s were a changing point for auto racing. Prior to this death was an expected part of the game. Designers and engineers aimed to go faster first, and safety was sometimes a secondary consideration, if that. When television brought racing into people’s living rooms, seeing cars and drivers slam into walls or other cars and people getting seriously injured or… Read more »
The most important element of racing that has been lost in the monomaniacal safety push is the sport’s heroic element. Prior to the sanitization of racing, people worshiped drivers almost as gods because what they did was incredibly dangerous and difficult. Mere mortals would never get behind the wheel of an Offy-powered monster with skinny wheels, minimal suspension, no roll bars and sans fire suits, surrounded by gasoline, and go careening around Langhorne with 20 other daredevils. The safety push has made racing mundane. Drivers are no longer heroic figures; they’re corporate automatons who mouth the expected pieties, and they’re… Read more »
My previous comment simply disappeared into the ether. It didn’t even go to the moderation queue. Just gone.
Congrat’s. Same here–waay too often. I suggest you “copy” the response before posting. Then see if the post appears in some form before moving on. Nothing is more frustrating than to spend considerable time and effort in thought and reply only to see one’s work vanish!
Since you spend such time frequently, I sympathize.
Yes, I have taken to copying any laboriously crafted comments of mine to have in the pocket when this happens.
I have yet to figure out why your posts get routed to spam or trash. You are not alone. There are others. I did unriddle some other the other day. Their hand had a letter combo that triggered the spam filter.
The big one is the increasing debt, who and what reins it in? I don’t think there is a who, there is no leader or ruling class to rein it in so that leaves the what. The what may more than likely be either a sovereign debt crisis or a war. It is indeed going to be worse than the 70’s, no roaring 80’s are coming.
It’s mostly too late to reign in the deficits. Fed gov spending is ~25% now. If average deficits are running at two to five percentage points above nominal GDP growth, i.e., that’s how much debt to GDP grows in an average year, you’d need to cut spending or raise taxes by 2 to 5 percent of GDP. That would crash the economy and make the situation even worse. That’s exactly what happened to Greece ten years ago and they’ve never recovered. The only hope (and don’t laugh at how impossible this is) would be for both parties to get together… Read more »
“The only hope (and don’t laugh at how impossible this is) would be for both parties to get together and come up with a 10-15 plan to slowly cut spending and raises taxes. This would solve the problem gradually so as to keep the economy from tanking.” This has been proposed since Reagan. Closest it has come has been to raise taxes first (done immediately), then cut spending (never done). The people–no matter how stupid–are wise to this. The only way to regain credibility is an immediate, significant, cut. Say 5%. Then to allow a fiscal year to pass and… Read more »
By far the most simple way to fix the problem – and this will never, ever happen – is to allow gov spending to increase at a pace of inflation minus one percentage point.
It would be gradual and predictable. Again, will never happen. Indeed, will never even be considered.
I don’t have your economic acumen, but I wager a dollar to a donut that such is waay too little for the current situation The brakes have to be applied hard–if for nothing else to show good faith in the effort.
Paul Ryan says “HI!”
compsci,
I agree, but if we did what was needed, we’d crash the economy. Cutting spending or raising taxes by 2 to 4 percent of GDP would send us into a very, very deep recession which would cause govt spending to explode, revenues to collapse and GDP to tank, all of which would make the debt to GDP problem worse.
Citizen, that’s been said since Reagan era. Can’t do it, too harsh, calamity, etc.–and here we are today and there you are proposing the same old, same old. And to boot, saying the course correction won’t/can’t happen politically. So just what are you saying? You want your cake and eat it too?
Gradualism does not take into account the corrupt pol’s we have in power, who will undermine such agreement at first chance. That’s why I simply refuse to start there. 5% doesn’t touch the fat in all government agencies. Let the rotten system fail if it comes to that.
compsci,
I’m not disagreeing with you. What I proposed will never happen. That doesn’t mean that it’s not the best path in theory. What you’re proposing will never happen either.
What’s going to happen is the system will crash. Now, how hard the crash will be and what form it will take is unknowable.
Deficits will not and can not be reined in as long as the dollar remains the reserve currency. It’s called the Triffin Dilemma, and it applies to all countries whose currency serves as a reserve currency. Deficit spending is necessary to supply the world with the reserve currency they need to use to conduct business. The cycle breaks when it becomes apparent to the rest of the world that the host nation can no longer repay the debt. Historically, reserve currencies tend to last 100-200 years, and that has been with governments far more responsible than the US government. Given… Read more »
The petrodollar ensured that we’d run big trade deficits with countries that need to import a lot of energy, i.e., countries with a big manufacturing based. This guaranteed that our manufacturing base would be gutted.
It’s why China doesn’t want to have the global reserve currency, not that it could it if wanted for a variety of reasons.
The US has been playing an unsound game, betting money it doesn’t have, since the 1970s…Now, some big players are calling our bluffs…Some kind of default is inevitable, but my guess is that the Treasury will keep printing money and the Fed will buy the bonds, until its real owners, the big banks, call a halt to the proceedings….
The big one is the increasing debt, who and what reins it in? I don’t think there is a who, there is no leader or ruling class to rein it in so that leaves the what.
When it comes to the debt. My big question is “How”? I see no workable solution. Fiscal colapse appears to be the solution to the debt, planned or otherwise.
No roaring 1980’s are coming because there’s no second coming of Ronald Reagan in the offing to save America once again.
“The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.”
— Jeremiah 8:20
I’d argue that the current issues are more like the 1940s than the 1970s, though they share attributes of both and some new wrinkles. In the 40s, deficit spending was largely responsible for the growth in the money supply while in the 70s, it was bank lending. That’s the same today. In the 40s, debt to GDP hit 120% while in the 1970s, it was only 30%. Finally, the 40s was hit by a severe supply shock due to the war while in the 1970s, their was the oil embargo and the Boomer entering the workforce. In many ways, we’re… Read more »
Our deficit spending is in the trillions, and no politician is willing to stop spending or the influx of aliens into our country, who are a major cause..Our military spends a trillion per year, and our weapons are 2d rate…Our healthcare spending has gone up by a factor of 10, and we push dozens of vaccines which are making people sick…etc.
It’s all going down, the only question is when..Sadly, our kids will have to deal with it…
Yeah, it’s not going to get “fixed” in any orderly way.
“Nixon taking the dollar off the gold standard gets the blame for inflation, but in reality, it was the interplay of energy and the dollar that caused the problem. The reason we have the petrodollar is to solve the inflation problem.” Never was so much understanding packed into so few words. You’ve stressed the link between the dollar and fossil fuel. But there’s a third element to the triad: military power. Recall that it was Kissinger’s over threat of military intervention that caused the gulf states to acquiesce to the petrodollar (which meant selling their oil for dollars and then… Read more »
I have always been a “peak oil” skeptic because like affordable solar power, the peak is always a decade in the future. That said, there is a peak somewhere, so the world will need other options. The thing is, there is an option that is available. The world has a thousand year supply of natural gas. The technology to make liquid fuels like diesel and gasoline from gas have been around for a long time. The Nazis make diesel from cola gas. The issue is price, but that is going to be overcome in the near future. This is something… Read more »
“The issue is price”
Indeed, and to have a low price you have to have low debt. Funny how its all a giant circle like a snake eating its own tail. The debt will either default at some point in the near future or it will hyperinflate. Both are the same really when you think about it. Low prices but no money or insanely high prices but not enough money. This is where Klaus and globalists believe they can save themselves with CBDCs.
“The Nazis make diesel from cola gas.”
Huh, so Mustache Man really did make it to Argentina. Hope he brought his Shepherds with him.
Indeed, compressed natural gas is an ideal fuel for buses and other heavy vehicles that can be centrally refueled…Evanston, IL has done that for years..Natural gas is extremely free of pollutants as well..
However, estimates in the energy business are that we have maybe a century of natural gas remaining, counting Alaska…
zman: While there is an enormous supply of natural gas, that is precisely what the other side has targeted. No new gas stoves or water heaters. Even wood stoves (when permitted) must now have circulating fans . .. which require electricity. It is all designed to ensure that the shrinking White population has a lower standard of living (their ‘fair share’) and absolute dependence on corporations and the government. Any independence – of thought or word or deed – is to be rendered forbidden. Thus my concerns re well pumps and propane tanks – I’m not just a right-wing conspiracy… Read more »
Yes. This is akin to the Great Game, and the US is on the losing side of the Game. We toss military bases across the map like pawns on the chess board, believing that these bases equate to influence. But those bases are utterly useless once the worm turns. Witness Niger. For those of us of a certain age, it is astounding to watch major peace negotiations taking place in the middle east that are led by China and/or Russia, and the US doesn’t have a place at the table. Our recent military fiascos, coupled with the diplomatic train wreck… Read more »
Let’s not forget you can run ICE motors on natural gas. I bought a small block Chevy out of a National Fuel Gas company truck in my early Hot Rodder days, that was the cleanest engine I’d ever seen. No carbon deposits in the heads or intake manifold. The northeast where I live is a natural gas gold mine.
A large portion of gasoline consumption is commuting. With a “work from home” mandate and an economy that makes it largely possible, the GAE could stagger through an oil crunch for a while longer.
When the oil embargo hit, there were many alternatives popping up. For example, our biggest employers, Raytheon and IBM hired private busses to pick up workers. Today we have not just the Internet, but the possibility of EV’s for commute. I’m not so worried in that regard.
EV’s are just wonderful… if you don’t mind parking it for hours to recharge every day and don’t mind the risk of random, spontaneous combustion of the battery.
EV’s are a joke!
So much to choose from in today’s essay: …”this version of the 1970’s will bring us far worse things than denim leisure suits and velour car interiors”… I was there at the time, and yeah – it was bad. I think I could live with that again, but the long hair & side burns, Fu Man Chu moustache’s – they’re a bridge too far. As for energy policy, while mere incompetence is bad enough – yet that we might survive – rather it is the directed undermining and veritable sabotage of our energy system by the Green / Cloud (post… Read more »
I’ll take my ’72 Riviera in black cherry w/ a gray leather interior. Thanks.
Nothing beats the Chrysler Cordoba. I lusted after it and still maintains there has nothing been produced to match its style and elegance.
It really was that Rich Corinthian Leather that made the difference.
ah, yes . . . welcome to Fantasy Island
The full size luxury car from the early 70s or the mid sized one from 1975 on?
Well, if you’re into Mid-Size Pimpin’. But you wanna cruise the boulevard Large and In Charge style wise? You want, nay NEED the Chrysler New Yorker Brougham, preferably before the downsized 1979 models.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-american/curbside-classic-1978-chrysler-new-yorker-brougham-a-most-imperial-chrysler/
Hop in my Chrysler it’s a big as a whale and it’s about to set sail!
Did the Cordoba ever come with fender skirts? Nope, advantage New Yorker.
My dad let me use his 1968 Chrysler New Yorker when I went to college. It was the Great White Shark, with a hood area large enough to accomodate a tennis court.
1955 through 1972 was the classic era of American automotive design.
Bench seating. These cockpit seats have destroyed the fertility rate.
All part of the master plan, no doubt…
Hell, you can’t even get busy in the BACK seat these days!
Dated a gal back inna day that wanted to get busy in the back seat of her Saturn sedan. We’d have needed the Jaws of Life and a chiropractor to get out of there if we tried.
Hence the nickname, Sadern…
I’ll take my 71 Olds Cutlass convertible with 400 horse 350 Olds, W30 cam, Mike Janis prepped heads, Hooker headers, Offenhauser aluminum intake, and tricked out Rochester Q Jet carb, and race you for pinks!
” Led by the Saudis, the oil producing countries have aligned themselves with their most dependable partners, Russia and China…” —————————————— Point of order – I am not an economist… but… The Saudis – like all arabs, will change their alliances more regularly than they change their underwear. China will too. As will we. When the Almighty Buck is in play… we’re all whores. But from what I am seeing of Western central banks – there are a LOT of jewish faces involved, and there is a LOT of coin clipping going on with our financial policies. I notice that… Read more »
Taking money out of actual energy production and putting it into Chinese solar panels is idiocy on steroids.
Cheap energy, really cheap energy is one thing that would probably save the empire for another generation or two, but they’re bound and determined to flush it away because the TV they control told them to.
We (America) sits on an 800 year supply of coal. That can be converted to liquid fuel to supply the present rolling stock. Nuclear *is* viable as well. There is no shortage of energy (in various forms), there is a shortage of *will* to utilize what we have. This is the most observable failure of “democracy” as a system of government–the failure in a crisis to implement successful policy. Soon we will feel the affect of the second failure–a dysgenic society unable to support its present infrastructure within its “smart fraction”.
True, the Haber process, used by Germany in WW1, can convert coal into oil, but it would be much more expensive oil..We’re using 19 million bpd, and certainly couldn’t replace all of that…..
But we don’t have to replace *all* of it. We have our own supplies of oil. We merely replace the shortfall. As prices increase, alternatives (e.g., EV’s) become more attractive. The point here is not that energy becomes cheaper, but that it can be provided in a usable form and somewhat timely fashion.
“The one thing missing from this picture is brown leisure suits.”
It’s amazing to realize that those hideous clothes indicated a people that took pride in their appearance. Today the people would wearing pajamas at the gas station.
Niger and the African realignment seems pretty big. We really are ramping up for seismic shifts.
Africa will be interesting. If their leaders finally prioritize the people over individual enrichment, then dominoes probably start to fall.
Niger could be a flash in the pan or it could be a catalyst. I still don’t expect them to cure cancer, but semi functional governments and economies could be possible. The West will try to fight that in secret and hope to keep the status quo.
You’re kidding right? It’s just about who controls the natural resources. US, France, Russia, China. The question is who has the warlords on their side
Niger kicked out France. My guess is Russia will support them. As for how malevolent Russia is, that’s to be seen. I don’t see them imposing Afghan levels of control. My guess is they are pushing to destabilize EU energy.
Correct, since there was a pipeline planned to cross Niger for transiting Nigerian energy up to Algeria and then Europe.
A couple takes on this, one surprisingly down to Earth from Hal Turner of all people:
https://frankwright.substack.com/p/flashpoint-africa?sd=pf
https://halturnerradioshow.com/index.php/en/news-page/world/second-proxy-war-brewing-between-us-russia-niger-africa
Occupied France is fighting for the uranium- Occupied Germany needs French nuclear to keep the lights on.
Since it’s the same bunch that destroyed South Africa and the Congo over uranium and cal-tan (essential for all electronics), I expect the usual Biafran bloodbath eventually. Slava Afrika!
Anyone like the blue denim shirt/pants combo?
Canadian tuxedo?
That Krusty’s a real hoser, eh?
Only on fit chicks my son. Blokes look like fags.
Everything looks good on fit chicks, so they can’t be utilized for fashion tips.
Corduroys! Lawsy, what I wouldn’t give to see a well-fitted pair of Angel Flights bellbottoms.
I had some pairs of corduroy bell bottoms if I remember rightly.
Tom Petty had some great lines in his song “You Wreck Me, Baby”…
“I’ll be the boy
In the corduroy pants,
You’ll be the girl
At the high school dance.”
Memories, dude.
“When someone wants to produce images that are supposed to capture the mood of the period, inevitably they show people in the hideous costumes of the era, standing at a gas station.” Hey, I resemble that remark! I came away from NYC in the mid-seventies thinking that we had a tiger by the tail, that there would be no escape for the nation as a whole. I spent most of my life up till the last 20 years moving restlessly from one large urban area to the next in search of the kind of lifestyle I had known in the… Read more »
An empire built on trading fossil fuels, in its currency, decided to phase out fossil fuels to appease Mother Gaia.
I’ve developed a new catch phrase and used it so much that it’s beginning to annoy people. “It’s only going to get worse.”
Ice cream machine down at McDonald’s. “It’s only going to get worse.” Restuarant closing early due to labor shortage. “It’s only going to get worse” US tearing down statues in Arlington. “It’s only going to get worse.” Military short of recruits. “It’s only going to get worse.”
Fossil fuel phase out is to clip the wings of the majority of people. It’s about control as are CBDC, health passports, intersection security cameras, etc. The weasels who tricked their way into court advisor roles are going to lock it all up as tight as possible. The climate bit, as were wars on terror, covidism, etc, are just pretexts to lock things up and people down, especially us people. The Mother Gaia bit is used to distract from the real culprit, the you know who. It’s a diversion, bit of burger tossed to dogs so the theft can proceed.… Read more »
This is why people need to be looking at parallel systems and balkanization going forward.
Let the blue zoo try to run the monster server farms for their control grid 24/7/365 on solar and wind.
I think that their server farms will get access to reliable sources of energy, ar least for a while.
Us? Not so much. Kinda like go woke, go broke; when the Wokesters, serving as cover for the authoritarians who aspire to total societal control, run the allocations and the setting of same, they will make sure that they have what they need. Hopefully, they have miscalculated about that, given their gross incompetence in real world concerns, and it will crash and burn. But not right away.
There is a large natural gas field off of the coast of the Levant.
Amazon is building data centers in Israel.
US Intel Agencies utilize Amazon data centers.
Intel Corp is build a 25B$ wafer fab plant in Israel.
American technology is being vacuumed off to Israel. Before long the history books will be rewritten claiming they invented all that technology, because they are better at math.
JJ-
I understand your point, but my belief is that it is open to debate.
I say that because there seem to be plenty among those in charge who honestly seem to believe that so-called renewables can fully replace natural gas, coal, oil, diesel, etc.
Wild Geese,
I understood your intent, and my response was merely a characterization of how the Real Players would need to respond in order to keep the plates spinning, contrasting their pragmatism to that of the Green Loons who actually believe their own bullshit.
Tykebomb: That’s definitely my motto – I haven’t used those exact words but I have shared the intent behind them. Buy it now – it will either become more expensive or become unavailable. You’re losing money daily due to inflation – don’t leave it in the failing banks – spend it on something tangible and useful.
And it IS all getting worse – by the day.
Maybe we can get the return of disco now?
Ref Tykebomb comment: “it’s only going to get worse”.
On the one hand – that would be proof of the axiom.
On the other hand and on second thought – if disco rid us of hip-hop, rap, or whatever passes for pop music nowadays – I’ll take disco. (Are the Bee Gees still around)?
Loathed the Bee Gees back when they were actually popular. I now view them as the Beach Boys of the 70s. In truth, a very talented band.
Only the oldest of the Brothers Gibb, Barry, is still alive.
There’s a really good documentary about the Bee Gees that came out a few years ago.
My wife was watching some talent-themed show the other night and of course they trotted out the ABBA catalog again for another run-through.
The 1986 oil price collapse, caused by the Saudis flooding the world with oil, supposedly was requested by Reagan and his team to slam the Soviet economy, which did happen, hastening the Soviet decline and the end of the Cold War.
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/1986/06/1986b_bpea_gately_adelman_griffin.pdf
It was a depression.
Graduated HS and offered union carpenter job in 1971 – $12 per hour.
2000 sf houses nearby $25k.
Hid out in college 7yrs to become an architect. Very busy.
Got out in 1978, visited 100 offices NYC to Boston, got TWO offers. $6 per hour.
Smaller houses $75k. Gas 3x higher. Everything else too.
Need I say more?
> The deficit is over $31 trillion, a number that is inconceivable to most people. Debt payments are now at one trillion per year. While I don’t trust insider reports much, one report that rang true was someone saying Trump admitted the deficit was an insurmountable problem, and his main goal was the financial system not collapsing on his watch. Cynical, but he would be correct, as the requirements for balancing the budget would cause such an uproar every elected official would lose their phony-baloney job. The only way out is non-democratic, probably involving massive money printing, with the associated… Read more »
Does any Gen-Xer really think they’ll collect a dime of Social Security? Reading about annual debt payment of $1 trillion/yr, it’s hard not to imagine that even the huge bloc of voting boomers might take a haircut. Drop the COLA at the least, delay collection age, means test it, or, and this is a fantasy… ….no Social Security for anyone. If I paid more than most into it than everyone else and get nothing, how about you don’t either? How about no Medicare after 75, while we’re at it. Needs must when devil’s drive, as the saying goes. A man… Read more »
The question is less whether Social Security will be there but more whether it will be able to buy anything. The old dude in the golf short at the food bank can tell you the answer.
Partially correct. SSI has its own source of funding, so that is/will be divided among the recipients proportionally. Several unknowns at this time however. Inflation adjustments to SSI–will they be cut back? Will Congress change the law and cut back SSI on higher SES recipients and give to hold harmless lower SES recipients. Will unemployment climb to third world levels and the SSI income decline even further?
Last-wave Gen-Xer here (b. 1980), and no, I don’t think I’ll ever see a dime of my Social Security payments. I have had tens of thousands of dollars stolen from me to support aged and unaged welfare queens, and to fund a fantasy that never should have been dreamt. And it’s not only Social Security. The blast of forced redemptions from 401(k)s will put enormous selling pressure stocks, which will tank the markets. I do not offer financial advice, but anyone with money in one of those things might want to think about just taking the penalty and cashing out… Read more »
If you were born in 1980, that means you are a quintessential millennial. The millennials came of age around the turn of the century, hence the name. The rule of thumb is first wave boomers came of age in the sixties and early seventies. Second wave boomers came of age in the seventies and early eighties. Gen-X came of age in the 80’s and early nineties. Millennials came of age around the turn of century into the aughts. We seem to have lost control of the labels at this time as millennial started to mean young people. Now we are… Read more »
That is the first I have ever heard it classified that way. Always heard it referred to by birth year, not “came of age” year. A generational span of 20 some-odd years is also not unusual. In fact, I might argue for a wider ranges as family formation (and hence, the next generation) doesn’t seem to kick in until late 20s/early 30s, if that.
Pedantic people like to make hard lines with this stuff, but the only reason we care about generational stuff is the cultural framework. A man born in 1950 lived a different youth and young adulthood than a man born in 1960. Calling both of them boomers misses the only point worth getting. Regardless, if you are born in 1980, you are not Gen-X. You are the archetype of the millennial generation, hence the name.
This is why I hate generational politics.
I always saw it like this, or at least very similar to this:
Greatest Generation (born circa 1901 to 1924)
Silent Generation (circa 1925 to 1945)
Baby Boomers (circa 1946 to 1964)
Generation X (circa 1965 to 1980)
Millennial Generation (circa 1981 to 1996)
Gen Z (post-Millennial) (circa 1997 to 2012)
You see the problem with generational labels. A man born in 1901 probably served in the Great War or had siblings who served. The man born in 1924 was probably the first guy’s son and he was not alive during the war, but he probably served in the Second World War. How are they in the same generation? You can do the same thing with Boomers. The Boomer born in 1950 has experienced a totally different America that the Boomer born in 1964. That is why using the coming of age-cultural metric makes more sense. People who were in their… Read more »
Ackshually before the main millennial group there is a smaller group usually referred to as xennials. The people born in the early 80s who grew up with home computers but no internet until their teenage years. This actually composes the bulk of the “younger” (I mean we’re hitting our 40s now…) anti-woke people online, since they were already into adulthood when all the sjw crap started and not all of them got brainwashed. In fact, I remember back in college. I had an onion on my belt which was the fashion at the time, but the socially conscious students were… Read more »
True story, Ploppy! I’ve also heard ‘us’ referred to as the Oregon Trail generation. Fun game.
Like riding the crest of a wave. In that way I can relate to the oldest boomers: being educated and trained for this new world, and as you’re ready to enter it, it turns out to be this shitty thing instead of what you were told.
Damned if I won’t overcome it, though, or go down resisting to the last.
I go with this simplified generational classification and IMO it’s as good as any other. It’s easier to think in terms of decades rather than mid-decade dividing line, and it makes it easy to see the differences in each generational half. Of course the boundaries are soft:
Greatest: 00’s-10’s
Silent: 20’s-30’s
Boomers: 40’s-50’s
GenXers: 60’s-70’s
Millennials: 80’s-90’s
Zoomers: 00’s-10’s
Ploppy and Paintersforms. Yes, regardless of what the generational tables say, those of us born in 1980 will never relate to the true Millennials. We are quite different. Strauss and How extend Generation X until 1983 and I am inclined to agree with them. Even though 1980 doesn’t seem that long ago, I am old enough to remember a time when a few people still unironically used rotary phones and watched black and white TVs. Fewer years elapsed between the beginning of WWII and the year of my birth than between my birth and the present day. Even as late… Read more »
” The blast of forced redemptions from 401(k)s will put enormous selling pressure stocks, which will tank the markets. I do not offer financial advice, but anyone with money in one of those things might want to think about just taking the penalty and cashing out now.”
Unvarnished truth here. 401k’s have been low-hanging fruit a long, long time but it isn’t too late yet to do just as you suggested. It is a reasonable guess the penalties for cashing out conveniently will increase in the near term.
“The blast of forced redemptions from 401(k)s will put enormous selling pressure stocks, which will tank the markets.” As to my previous comment, you are wrong on SSI. As to above, you are also wrong–here’s why. When one redeems funds for a 401K, what does one do with them? Basically–one of two things, spend it or invest it. If you spend it, why? If for expenses, then you’d have withdrawn the funds in any event–not just because you are required to at a certain age. if you spend it, you are contributing to the economy as well. If you don’t… Read more »
Sir, I am referring to other factors that your analysis does not consider.
1) Once the selling pressure gets started it is only going to accelerate. It will be right regular stock market crash and people will have to sell their 401(k)s if they hope to get any value out of them at all.
2) People are going to need that money, at whatever penalty, just to help service their existing debts in a rising interest rate environment.
This is why the selling will happen; we won’t really have much choice in the matter.
Born in ‘80, too. Almost always have had the feeling we’re supposed to be Charlie Brown trying to kick the football. I’d rather kick Lucy.
“a few people still unironically used rotary phones and watched black and white TVs.”
(raises hand) We had a party line too lol.
“I’ve also heard ‘us’ referred to as the Oregon Trail generation.” I suspect dying of diarrhea in that game repeatedly has prepared me for our country’s future. I don’t remember ever having to handwrite essays outside of test situations, but I do remember putting stuff on floppy disks and taking them to high school only to find that the “open classroom” concept enabled kids to break every last available computer. Before that I remember the dot matrix printers, and the beautiful music they would make. Probably can’t get the ribbon feed paper, typewriter ribbon, or a suitable driver for one… Read more »
They will get a check and the numbers in the front will be the numbers they said they would be. Whether it buys anything is the question.
Elizabeth Warren said it best when discussing student loan forgiveness. “It’s all fake money.”
Social Security in some form might make it, it’d be nice if it covered the property taxes. The health system though…
Let’s just say none of us are going to get a decade of all-paid assisted living; maybe a pack of aspirin and a couple cyanide pills.
The basic problem with SSI–aside from being underfunded–is the perception of the populace that it is, or should be, able to support one in retirement. SSI was never sold that way nor is it (on the SSI website) sold as a (sufficient) pension to retire solely upon. Rather SSI is meant to be a supplemental source of income in retirement. Approximately 30-40% of needed income–tops! I don’t so much fault the people for this perception, I fault the government for making them so poor that they are never able to save sufficiently for their retirement in this society as they’ve… Read more »
Compsci: Must strenuously disagree with you here. You know and I know that whatever the government says is a lie – and that has always been the case, to a greater or lesser extend depending on the era and the politician. Social Security was a ponzi scheme from the start and FDr knew it. And he damned well did sell it as a pre paid retirement. The very idea that one ought to be able to live – comfortably if not luxuriously – without working for a decade or more – is a fantasy. Unheard of in the history of… Read more »
3g4me, nothing you’ve said contradicts me (if I’ve read correctly). SSI is an actuarially unsound program, but was arguably not so when created–as folk did not live as long. Congress simply did not adequately re-evaluate/adjust the program as our demographic profile changed. Prepaid (it’s my money) is not mentioned by me nor really important. The important part is that the program has a source of continuing funding for those receiving benefits and those coming into the program in the future. Inflation is mentioned by me and currently accounted for in SSI law. BTW: None of my other retirement plans has… Read more »
SS got the kids off the farm, their elderly and land abandonded, and into the maw of the industrial cities and universities.
It cut the family ties.
But back then, it was expected you’d work for the same company for 30 years, and retire with a gold watch and a company pension.
That was the plan.
Company pensions went extinct in the eighties, and was replaced with the scam called 401 k’s.