A piece posted of the Washington’s blog the other day quoted a lot of supposed experts saying our aging demographics would put us in an unfavorable position for growth in the future. The more bodies you have in the prime spending age will determine your future growth . The article points to India and Brazil as the future growth leaders purely on their demographics.
Now the MAYBE NOT part of the story are my own thoughts on future growth. I believe we are entering a time when growth will not be possible due to limited resources of all raw materials, with declining oil supplies being the most pressing of all. The time frame of the demographic story is carried out to 2050 well into the down slope of oil production. To be considering growth at this point in our history is like wearing blinders. The myth of growth forever should be clear to all by now, we will be looking at sustainability instead.
My thinking is a country such as ours with an older population will still have locked up in our ageing bones the knowledge and skills to put into practice and teach other how to do will be of great value to our country. Having a large youthful population will not provide the skill sets needed to survive in the future. Believe me it won’t be Twitter knowledge.
Why these thinkers would want to bring up the Demographic crisis at this point in time blows my mind. Before we can even think about this future problem we have to survive the crisis we already have. The economic crisis will force us along the road to sustainability because we will not have a choice. You can already see the shift of some production to a local model (Farmers Markets) are a prime example and the shit hasn’t hit the fan yet. In the past week or so you have seen more and more talk about the dollar loosing it’s status as a world currency and it will happen and probably sooner than later. Just this one change in world business will force us to once again manufacture things in this country for the cost of oil will double and shipping and flying stuff if will make it way to expensive so that a local manufacturer will be able to compete. With the aid of tariffs we will rebuild our industry to a new energy efficient , repairable, long lasting machines as we have done in the past.
It feels good to be able to be positive about the future and understanding that it will be different is a big part of getting there. The immediate times will be tough, maybe 10 years tough, but in the end we will be a better nation.
Gerald Celente is his autumn forecast predicts most of the above will happen mostly because of the collaspe of world economic meltdown. Celente points out that in times past America was #1 in quality of life, education, health, income, upward mobility and was the most egalitarian and most envied nation in the world. In 2009 we no longer score as # 1 , we are not even in the top ten.
When we were #1 the following was true.
- Main street, not Wall street was the role model.
- Blue collar workers worked at jobs that gave them middle class incomes
- Mom and Pops ran their own shops not as clerks at Walmart
- Family Farms not Factory farms fed America
- Americans ate real food , not Frankenfood
- Qualtiy counted not just the bottom line
- a tightly knit community spirit
To get back to the America of old we will have to change the way we think about a lot of things.
The list above provides a simple list of things you can start to head for now. There are a few things we will have to have to make any of this possible:
- We must keep the electric grid hot at all costs. The only was that is possible without oil and coal is with nuclear power. If this source is blocke we are dead meat. You cannot make a case for a decent life without them.
- Adequate water supplies. A lot of the country is in dire straights for water supplies, the sources are being depleted rapidly and cannot be replace quickly if at all. We have started to reprocess waste water and pumping it to aquifers but have found out that a lot of the chemicals we put into our bodies end up in the waste water and are not removed by current processes. We need a lot more storage of the rains that fall on us and now runoff into the sea.
- Corporate farms will disappear when oil and fertilizers get too expensive , we will need a lot more farmers of the old style.
- Skills we will need a lot more craftsmen to build and repair the equipment of the future, skills we have outsourced in the last 30 years.
We must remember “WE DID IT BEFORE AND WE CAN DO IT AGAIN” . We can start now .
visti the following sites to start.
Gearld Celente News blog
THE TIGER’S MARKETPLACE
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