Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler OT: Katrina and World Support?

>>I have no problem with creating new markets and getting the entire world into the modern age, my problem is doing it in such a way that too many people have to suffer the move back to third world status right here in North America. Am I thinking of just myself? Darn right I am!! I don't want to see my pensions evaporate, I don't want to see my Social Security fade away, I don't want to see my hard won 401k savings eroded by financial and governmental irresponsibilites. A strong American economy with lots of high wage, high tax paying employees contributing their fair share, is entirely in my benifit.

Not to encourage thread splitting but IMO anyone who already has their savings is going to be OK. My concern is for the kids just coming out of school now who are coming into a more uncertain economic world than we have seen in North America for a while. Don't know about the US but Canada is DEFINITELY heading towards third world status in terms of day to day life. Standards of living are dropping, and our economy is shifting strongly towards a bunch of poor people selling cheap stuff to each other and clustering into extended families to survive.

My personal theory is that the only reason we have not seen further economic problems is that the combination of savings from the boomer generation plus cheap goods from China we can sell at high margins are carrying what would otherwise be an insanely overbuilt retail sector and allowing most people to keep jobs and support the service sector.

What I don't know is what will carry the economy once the boomer generation ages further and stops buying so many toys. The next generations don't have the savings and generally aren't buying the luxuries that we are.

As Craig says, this is not the end of the world. We will find some new way to survive and make the economy work, but there is no guarantee that things will be as good as they are today. Toronto is picking up a lot of that third world "what's in it for me, why should I subordinate my desires for the greater good ?" mentality and we are seeing that in spades in NO today.

It takes many generations to build a "civilised" society but nowhere near as long to muck it up...