08:54 – It was 60.7F (16C) when I took Colin out at about 0645 this morning, sunny and calm.
Barbara is headed off to the gym this morning while I await the insurance adjuster and contractor. She’s going to stop at the supermarket on her way home. The Lowes where she formerly shopped closed down a few weeks ago. Another regional supermarket chain, Grant’s, took over the location and opened for business Saturday. Since Lowes closed, Barbara had been picking up milk and bread at the local Food Lion (hawk, spit), so she’s looking forward to having a decent supermarket to shop at again.
This afternoon and the rest of the week we’ll be doing science kit stuff. I’m not sure when the contractor will be starting work downstairs, but no doubt we’ll have at least several days’ worth of chaos when that happens.
We had a frozen pizza for dinner last night, and the chocolate cake we made yesterday afternoon for our evening snack. The chocolate cake was from the modified King Arthur Flour recipe I posted previously. It takes about five minutes to mix from scratch.
One of the things I really like about the King Arthur recipes is that they list ingredient amounts three ways: by traditional cup/fluid-ounce/tablespoon measure; by traditional weight; and by metric weight. North America is about the only place traditional volume measures are still used in recipes. The rest of the world generally uses weight, which is a lot more precise and reproducible.
As a scientist, I’ve always cooked/baked using weights rather than volumes for just that reason. Doing that obviously requires a scale. The one we use and recommend is actually a shipping scale. We actually have two of them that we’ve been using for years, one of them in the kitchen and the other in the downstairs work area. They cost under $30, weigh in pounds and ounces or metric, have a capacity of 110 pounds (50 kg), a resolution of 1 g at weights up to 20 kg and 2 g up to 50 kg, and operate on AC power or three AAA cells. I periodically verify them against standard weights, and they’ve remained spot-on since we bought them.
In addition to using them in the kitchen and for their intended purpose weighing shipping boxes, we also use them for repackaging LTS food, doing weigh-counts on bulk items, and so on. Highly recommended.
55 feels like 51 this morning, but headed to 60 later, 70 tomorrow and supposedly 80 on Wednesday. With sun. That would give everything here a chance to dry out; it’s been waterlogged like a continued cool Mud Season for weeks now. Still can’t see the pier. Also means I can keep working outside and maybe wrap up a bunch of stuff by Thursday once and for all. Well, at least what I’d hoped to have done weeks ago.
“One of the things I really like about the King Arthur recipes…”
A Vermont company for many decades; highly recommended products and recipes. A visit to their web site is worth the time. 100% employee-owned, too. We’ve been to their HQ and store down in Norwich many times over the years:
http://www.kingarthurflour.com/visit/
And now back to my scheduled tasks, chores, errands, etc. Wife should be arriving with Princess sometime between “noonish” and midnight.
Alton Brown’s baking book emphasizes using weights over volumes of ingredients, and he’s really into the science of cooking. I hesitate to recommend the book, however, because, like all of his work, the errata was quite lengthy the last time I checked. Maybe later printings are better.
http://dailycaller.com/2017/05/14/ann-coulter-is-worried-the-trump-haters-were-right/
Coulter, Drudge, Buchanan; you’d think by now they would have learned about how it is when politicians and demagogues full of populist promises get to Mordor and inhale the vapors there. It’s a sick and evil place.
But like Coulter says, what choice was there?
And we still probably have a better window of time to get our chit together out here. So there’s that.
One quick update on my OS/2 experiment – I’m still trying to find a genuine IBM install CD. On Saturday, I met someone for a craigslist purchase who is a longtime Lenovo worker. I asked where the IBM OS/2 folks would have been and he said Boca Raton. Just in case, I posted a wanted notice on their craigslist site. Thanks for the feedback so far.
Cooking by weight, roger that. Any recipe I use regularly gets translated from volumes to weights. This is especially important for powdered ingredients, as their volume can vary hugely based on how finely they are ground, or whether or whether you scoop or pour them into the container. Probably also depends on the humidity and the phase of the moon, for all I know.
@SVJeff;
You may discover that all you’re likely to find are OS/2 diskettes rather than any boot CDs. Of course you can hook up an external floppy drive to your machines, assuming USB ports at least.
Sorta like how Windows NT originally came out on a pile of floppies.
As regards to Coulter, I am happy with Trump to date. He managed to put a youngish conservative on SCOTUS. And that, meinen freunden, is no small victory.
It is going to take time for Trump to turn the Titanic formerly known as the USA. I am not even sure that he can do it. But, Trump does see the iceberg. Hillary would still be calling for more steam.
My son says that the new SCOTUS judge is Scalia junior. Gorsuch is an originalist and a textualist.
WRT to courts, those judges that have invalidated Trump’s visitation directives have never quoted that section of the US Constitution that states: “We the people of the US and everywhere else…..” Yes, I welcome the new judge to the SCOTUS.
Been discussion regarding computational alternatives to MSFT, namely LINUX things.
Hey, how does this look and then using Google Docs and Google Cloud?
https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=18737&cl=res&utm_source=170515_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=18737&utm_campaign=170515_monday
Professional baking books use weight, as it requires more accuracy and precision for the chemistry to work right. For regular cuisine, there are few recipes outside of molecular gastronomy that need anything but volume measures.
I made eggs Benedict for the wife yesterday. Normally, Hollandaise sauce is tricky and requires whisking egg yolk, water, and lemon juice over simmering water, then streaming in warm clarified butter and whisking like a madman. The science nerds at the Food Lab made a change that takes the recipe to 2 minutes. Put the egg, juice, and water in a cup just larger than a stick blender. Melt the butter until foaming subsides. Don’t clarify. Then use the stick blender on the egg mixture, then stream in the hot butter. Boom, excellent Hollandaise in no time.
WRT tRump:
As I recently expressed, I am not happy with him, anymore. He is being way too timid. He needs to really clean house and tell the republicrats and his staff that HE IS IN CHARGE, not anyone else. He sets the goals and agenda and the republicrats must meet it. He is not a micro-manager, but it obvious that the republicrats do not know how to manage or even plan when they are given a goal. The republicrats only interest is in their own re-election and the “electorate” is too stupid to really hold them accountable.
tRump needs to make it clear that all this distraction related to Comey and the “coverup” needs to stop last week.
The AG needs to take a hint and arrest a bunch of people, including some judges who think they are the SCOTUS. Obuttwad and hIllary need to be in adjoining cells awaiting their punishment for high crimes and etc.
Well, here is an indication of how polluted with illegals and other non-producers our public schools in Kennewick are. We have hit the magic number of 62% of these folks so the gooberment is now going to provide FREE breakfast and lunch to all the students so that the students on the dole do not have to be embarrassed by having to show their “poor kid” card.
Our private schools went on a building spree a few years ago because they had long waiting lists of students whose parents wanted them to get a real education. Even though they have increased their enrollments by 200% to 400% they are once again full and have waiting lists.
Finally, not all college professors are tolerating the snowflake generation:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/opinion/sunday/u-cant-talk-to-ur-professor-like-this.html
In 2007, when I was 49, I took a course given by a 51 year old. Apart from teaching us not to trust Wikipedia he insisted on students not just assuming they could call him by his first name. So I didn’t, I called him Dr Taylor, and he immediately said call me McComas. I think he was irritated with teenagers taking liberties rather than with old codgers like me.
He did annoy me by asking for my opinion of how returning Vietnam War soldiers were treated in Australia – making a show of pointing out my age. The rest of the class (200+) didn’t exist back then.
I have read the recent post by Mr. DadCooks and:
I APPROVE!!!
As for tRump; I’m down with him not messing with 2A mainly, and I’m OK with a couple of his executive orders and appointments. I am most emphatically not OK with the jingo war bells ringing again for about a dozen different places on the planet and would have thought he was less likely to do this than Field Marshal Rodham. One now wonders.
And now the latest bumf is that he IS gonna clean house and boil down his staff to just his family and relatives, which is totally bogus. I’d keep the SecState guy, dump a couple of other guys, keep Bannon on a short leash, and start hammering on replacing a shitload of Fed judges. Get the troops outta Korea, Japan, Okinawa, Germany, the Middle East, etc., and close our southern border; don’t need a stinkin’ wall, just a no-man’s zone.
Work with the Russians, Iranians and Chicoms insofar as possible to destroy ISIS totally and similar musloid enterprises around the world. Obliterate Mecca, Riyadh, Medina, Islamabad, etc., if they don’t behave properly and stay in their own desert shit-holes. Meanwhile stop importing them here and remove the ones already in the country ASAP. Bring troops back from wherever to do that gig.
And the main project should be getting our financial house of cards in order like yesterday. If that’s even possible anymore, but I suspect it means reducing the Fed leviathan considerably, cutting entitlements, and raising taxes. And before they raise taxes I wanna see the leviathan reduced.
But none of this is gonna happen, and like Coulter’s analogy, he’s probably driving the car to NYC instead of out to LA like the plan agreed to. How slow he drives there is to our benefit as we get ready for whatever comes our way, none of it good.
@SVJeff
You can find OS/2 Warp 3.0 and 4.0 at .
If these aren’t suitable, I still have my OS/2 CDs somewhere. I know because I think I saw them recently.
I think that the OS/2 had to boot from floppies (two if I remember) and then would install from the CD. That may have been improved since I last installed (about 20 years ago). The floppy images are on the CD.
OOPS!
The url disappeared. It is
https://winworldpc.com
One quick update on my OS/2 experiment – I’m still trying to find a genuine IBM install CD. On Saturday, I met someone for a craigslist purchase who is a longtime Lenovo worker. I asked where the IBM OS/2 folks would have been and he said Boca Raton. Just in case, I posted a wanted notice on their craigslist site. Thanks for the feedback so far.
Arca Noae should release their installers any day now. That is the future of OS/2 not only on newer hardware but old platforms as well.
One alternative is to find someone with eCommStation discs.
Boca and Tampa would be places to look for IBM graybeards who worked on the OS/2 product line. Advantis provided the dial (!) networking out of the Tampa IBM offices across from Raymond James Stadium.
Sadly, I remember seeing OS/2 boxes in our back room when I worked in the building for AT&T. I already kick myself for leaving an original PC AT reference manual behind when I quit in 2010.
FYI: Most of the IBM graybeards I’ve encountered over the years in FL are fairly bitter and a little crazy if they lived through the 90s working for the company.
If you’re lucky, they will just cut the deal with you and sell the discs for cash. If you’re unlucky, you’ll hear about their encounters with TJ Watson Junior. Kinda like Vogons and poetry — being thrown into space is the better outcome of any encounter with the species.
The retired PhD who ran a lot of research in Tampa spends his retirement years using political favors at the state and local level to keep his meth-dealing son out of prison. The son used to be our WiFi guru at AT&T!
As regards to Coulter, I am happy with Trump to date. He managed to put a youngish conservative on SCOTUS. And that, meinen freunden, is no small victory.
My expectations were met with a decent Supreme Court pick and avoiding a war with the Russians.
I think Trump and Putin are playing some kind of mind game, putting on a show for a reason that isn’t immediately clear. I’m guessing the intended audience is the Islamic world — secular dictatorship is the only kind of legitimate government most of that part of the planet understands and fears.
I guess they might understand secular dictatorship but they all seem to want islamic dictatorship like Turkey or via a plutocracy of mullahs.
The musloids want the Greater Caliphate and sharia, period. A secular dictatorship would just be another step along the way, which is why they align with commies for now and vice-versa. The commies want a commie state, because, you see, it just hasn’t been done right yet, and they may need to go through another few hundred million corpses to get it right. And the musloids don’t mind creating however many billions of corpses; they just need enough dhimmi slaves to procreate and do the shit work. After they’ve gotten rid of us infidel Normals, they’ll go after each other and the winner take all. My money would be on the commies, of course.
I have read the recent post by @OFD and:
I APPROVE!!!
Once again, thanks @OFD you have made my day. Great minds think alike 😉
Lurking here, mainly.
Off to Nashville in an hour. Stuffed with TexMex to the brim.
“Great minds think alike”
And as wifey reminds me: “Fools seldom differ.”
“Stuffed with TexMex to the brim.”
Bastid. I likes me a bunch of TexMex. If I still drank, I’d be washing it all down with lemonade margaritas.
_Unexpected World: The EMP Survivor Series Book 1_ by Chris Pike
https://www.amazon.com/Unexpected-World-EMP-Survivor-Book/dp/1534742913/
Book number one of a three book series about an EMP apocalypse in the USA. I read the POD (print on demand) version in trade paperback with very nice paper and fonts. I have purchased the second and third books in the series. The author has promised a fourth book in the series.
An unexplained EMP happens to the USA in the southern region along the Gulf Coast. The book does not tell what happens to the rest of the USA. As with all EMP books, the damage is extreme, affecting all automobiles, computers, electrical grids, etc, etc, etc. And airplanes.
The protagonist is in a courtroom in downtown Houston when the EMP hits as he is awaiting the jury’s decision on a charged murderer that he is prosecuting. A plane subsequently crashes into the courthouse as the protagonist is talking to his daughter who is on a plane to New Orleans and the EMP kills their connection. Moments later, her plane crashes in the Atchafalaya swamp.
I enjoyed the book very much, especially since it is set in Texas where I live and in Louisiana. However, I disagree with the author that an EMP over the USA will kill car computers. Regular computers wired to the grid, yes. But car computers that live in the horrible environment of automobiles with under-voltage, over-voltage, current spikes, etc, etc, etc. Cars will probably survive the EMP but your electrical grid, not.
My rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars (670 reviews)
WRT tRump:
As I recently expressed, I am not happy with him, anymore. He is being way too timid. He needs to really clean house and tell the republicrats and his staff that HE IS IN CHARGE, not anyone else. He sets the goals and agenda and the republicrats must meet it. He is not a micro-manager, but it obvious that the republicrats do not know how to manage or even plan when they are given a goal. The republicrats only interest is in their own re-election and the “electorate” is too stupid to really hold them accountable.
tRump needs to make it clear that all this distraction related to Comey and the “coverup” needs to stop last week.
The AG needs to take a hint and arrest a bunch of people, including some judges who think they are the SCOTUS. Obuttwad and hIllary need to be in adjoining cells awaiting their punishment for high crimes and etc.
I approve but the law does not. I did not compare the USA to the Titanic sighting the iceberg lightly. These things will take time to change. Or, they may not be changeable as we may have struck the iceberg already and are not aware that the USA is taking on water (debt and illegal immigrants to name two items).
The design of the USA was not perfect. The founding fathers did not give us a balanced budget requirement. Nor did they give the President a line item veto. And a few other items to further bind those who would rule over us.
I read the SCOTUS has told NC “fuck you” on voter ID. Feds to States “we’re the fucking king of the US”. Unbelievable that the NC voter ID law is “raaaaycisss.”
Game over, man, game over.
Yeah, it’s too much of a burden to require IDs for voting.
So they fixed it so just any Tom, Dick or Harry, or more likely, Abdul, Jose, and Leroy can vote and since they’re almost always voting Dem, Bob’s yer uncle! Slick, ain’t it? Been going on since the late Edward F. Kennedy and his minions came up with their voting and immigration scams back in 1965. Payback for not making him National Administrator.
Now they can vote, drive and run for office. Sweet.
Cue up Skynyrd: “Gimme Back My Bullets”
Patrick nails it again, per usual. Some of us remember that particular history and he’s right: nothing remotely comparable today.
http://buchanan.org/blog/comey-saturday-night-massacre-127070
[snip] start hammering on replacing a shitload of Fed judges [snip]
It would be a lot more productive to simply nominate / approve judges to fill the ranks of the open seats. I seem to recall reading about 200+ open seats at the district & appellate levels. Replacing Federal judges, short of an actual impeachable offense (see Hastings, Alcee) ain’t going to happen, outnumbering the liberals would be a wonderful thing. Start an assembly line, every Tuesday the President announces three more nominees, and have the Senate Rs confirm them. Oh, and it would be red meat to your base to influence the judiciary for the next 30+ years.
Removing the Confederate monuments isn’t turning out quite the way Mitch Landrieu planned.
“It would be a lot more productive to simply nominate / approve judges to fill the ranks of the open seats…”
Wow, I hadn’t realized there were so many open seats. I APPROVE! Let it rip!
WRT to Nawlinz monument removal and clever citizen-subjects; we must take our small victories where we can find them, I guess.
Gee, I wonder when they’ll come to Boston and screech for the removal of the Shaw monument opposite the Snake House, or desecrate the graves of various Founding Father slave owners. (we must judge peeps of 250 years ago by 2017 PC standards, doncha know).
Greetings Mr. Thompson,
I remain highly intrigued with your stance on the American public education system and would like your opinions on what American public schools should do to liberate themselves from federal control through absurd laws like NCLB and curriculums like Common Core. I am planning a great educational revolution to ignite in the forecast for I see that this society will not survive and thrive within the next decade if we continue to allow the indoctrination of our youth to pursue. I want to become the next Diane Ravitch of our time, only this time it is to be put into action. The aging intellectuals combating a failing system cannot continue for long, so I am willing to step up for the fight of Americana.
With warm regards,
Edo Strike
WRT to Nawlinz monument removal and clever citizen-subjects; we must take our small victories where we can find them, I guess.
New Orleanians rarely let an opportunity for mockery go to waste.
You’ve got your work cut out for you, Edo Strike. We’ve already lost at least two or three generations of Americans to our public skool system and the colleges and universities. If a revolution took place tomorrow morning and was successful, it would still take another two or three generations to continue being successful and for the older generations to have died off.
A lot of educational institutions took/take Fed money, and when they do that, they cede control accordingly.
I put the odds of success at nearly zero, as the whole imperial edifice does not have much longer to live. Maybe after the counter-revolution and civil war we can look at what to do about educating our children. But I and most of the participants here will be long dead.
Trump has a pretty obvious problem: Quite literally everyone in Washington is against him. The entire political establishment, which includes all of Congress. The entire bureaucracy. The judicial system. The MSM. He can affect the few people he can appoint, but they are hemmed in by the bureaucracies they manage. His reactions to this situation have been chaotic at best.
The thing is: None of this should have been a surprise. He should have been prepared, and gone in a lot harder at the beginning. Also, he should really shut his mouth (and his twitter account). Actions would speak louder than words.
Really, a disappointing showing so far…
Really, a disappointing showing so far…
Concur. He is really too trigger crazy and simply reacts without thinking. That is dangerous in a position such as his. I would think he would have advisors telling him to cool down and take it a little slower. Apparently not. His demeanor may have been OK for a corporate world but not for leadership of the U.S.
The saddest part is that the only other choice was a criminal scum.
…and the criminal scum doesn’t know when to quit. HRC is apparently trying to found a new political organisation. Does she actually think she can run again in 2020? Or does she want to play king-maker?
I should would like to see her playing her games from inside a jail cell. Shame, but it doesn’t look likely to happen at this point…
Sensor platform attached to a balloon,
https://americansecuritytoday.com/ic-realtime-develops-silent-rapidly-deployable-aerial-surveil-solution/
“IC Realtime has developed a silent, rapidly-deployable aerial surveillance solution that provides law enforcement, border patrol and special event personnel the ability to remotely monitor events taking place in large areas.
Called PLAS (Persistent Low Altitude Surveillance), the solution is comprised of a flight deck and imaging unit attached to a tactical-grade balloon that is released into the air by security personnel on the ground via a carbon fiber power tether/mini CAT6 cable.”
n
“I should would like to see her playing her games from inside a jail cell.”
I should would like to see her playing her games from inside a cremains jar.
FIFY.
IMO, the actual function of the school system today is to free the other parent to enter the workforce. Schooling functions as daycare for younger “students” and to keep older ones from entering the workforce at all. Thereby avoiding lower competitive pressure on all wages from those now deferred new workers. That makes taking out loans to stay in school particularly insane. At any rate, actual learning is a minor, almost irrelevant side effect of the current mandatory attendance school system.
Until such time that the price of “education” rises to a level deemed, perceived or actually too expensive to achieve these social unintended consequences nothing will change. Between the Khan Academy on the ‘net and the Robinson homeschool method, learning can happen without participation in the mandated system today. Learning and schooling are only peripherally correlated now.
I might speculate that soon enough imploding pension purchasing power might force seniors to move in with their breadwinning offspring. The seniors could take over “education” of the youngest and free the breadwinners to do their thing out in the world. Something of a return to a formerly common type of economic unit, the 3 generation household.
We’ll see.
If my in laws moved in, I’d take the kids and leave.
n
@Nightraker said:
Sorry but you must not have seen recent statistics, something like 42% of millennials (which I am now calling “the snowflake generation”) are still living in their parent’s basement, most are not making anywhere near a “breadwinning” wage, and 59%* of millennials are single and have never been married.
Millennials spend their money on “things” and nothing of lasting value. They rent instead of buy and do not save.
The 3 generation household died over 50-years ago with my Grandparents generation. The millennials have no concept or examples of what that is.
The public school system is a total tool of our now socialist/fascist gooberment (what our government has become, a goober**).
Only a TEOTWAWKI will produce the rapid change and utter destruction of the way things are now so that our “civilization” can restore itself (which IMHO we have already rinsed and repeated several times, like a Star Trek episode).
Our species has not matured enough to handle the Free Will we have been given. Nor do we really understand what it really means to be personally responsible.
Reference:
* http://www.gallup.com/poll/191462/gallup-analysis-millennials-marriage-family.aspx
** http://onlineslangdictionary.com/meaning-definition-of/goober
As I recently expressed, I am not happy with him, anymore. He is being way too timid. He needs to really clean house and tell the republicrats and his staff that HE IS IN CHARGE, not anyone else. He sets the goals and agenda and the republicrats must meet it.
Sorry, he can’t do this for several reasons:
– even if you have huge wins in an election, you can’t just ram things through. Nixon had that problem. LBJ only got his agenda through by wrapping himself in JFK’s death and using every bit of arm twisting that he could. Today, one of the big sticks that they had back then, the party funding and donor system, is gone – that’s why we had 16 or 17 Republican primary candidates last year and Trump emerging. You have to, at least in public, respect the wants and needs of the Senate and House.
– Trump apparently has no plan, no goals, no agenda. He has no philosophy of governing. His ego has him darting from one self-inflicted foot wound to the next. (He invented the term “priming the pump”a few months ago? Please.)
I read the SCOTUS has told NC “fuck you” on voter ID. Feds to States “we’re the fucking king of the US”. Unbelievable that the NC voter ID law is “raaaaycisss.”
They didn’t exactly do this. From what I read, the Chief Justice said, in lawyer words:
“Your briefs in support of the appeal are terrible and all over the place. You did a crap job and we can’t find that you even have standing to appeal. Get your shit together and come back another day.”
The state can still appeal, they just need to do a better job.
Oh, no doubt: MIL suites and “failure to launch” millennials are a deep mine for future sitcoms since we have to laugh as we must not cry. “Meet Me in St. Louis” was somewhat an idealization when it was made. Low income 40ish grandmothers today are press ganged into perpetual child raising, hardly a good thing for the grandkids.
The low national labor participation rate is even more frightening when considering that government workers are included and their efforts are not only usually unproductive but anti productive in an economic sense.
However, the postulate of my speculation was that pensions and SS will not retain their purchasing power for much longer. New accommodations will be rethought AFTER. Many of the preps we make now are a savings account to survive and even prosper when that kind of SHTF.
“Snowflakes” of every age and stripe are a luxury of the current status quo. Change the status and they will melt into something else.
“Change the status and they will melt into something else.”
Poorly armed, untrained revenants, roving the devastated cityscapes and looking for food, ciggies, booze and drugs, dodging various gangs and cannibals. Most dying off, eventually.
I’ll be curious as to how long our own SS and VA disability payments will last, and what they’ll buy in another year or five or ten. And what we’ll be doing to survive when we’re in our 70s and 80s.
The state can still appeal, they just need to do a better job.
Yes. I can only hope the State gets their shiz together. I also see a lot of the lower courts are nothing but hacks, pressing ideology. I hope SCOTUS eventually Jap-Slaps them.
Is that rayciss?
WRT viability of SS and VA disability payments:
Limited and not to be counted on.
Since my Wife’s retirement we have been scaling back to live just on our combined SS checks and working further to reduce it down to the lower of the two “survivor’s benefits”. It is a rough go. We both have substantial amounts in retirement plans and my Wife has a substantial 457B (deferred compensation). We plan not to touch them as they are lifeboat for when SS fails. Of course we have to start taking minimum distributions from the retirement plans when we reach 70, but our plan is to put that back into whatever is a secure principle preserving investment.
We have been fortunate and have survived bankruptcy, serious medical problems, and other challenges. We both believe that we are responsible for our lot in life and must be vigilant and conservative with our money/resources.
The foundation of the current financial paradigm is the petrodollar. The dollar is de facto backed by the oil not yet pumped out from under Saudi Arabia. We profit obscenely because all the other nations go along with that joke, cute trick, breathtakingly grand bargain. They do that because they have stacked up immense piles of dollars they hope to exchange at some future point and want to believe have value. We can get away with counterfeiting more and more dollars because no one really knows how much oil is under the sand and the dilution we even admit to is not yet severe enough to poison the value of the existing stockpiles of dollars.
When the wells start to dry up, or the Saudi’s take it into their heads to accept other than the dollar for their oil, or other countries sidestep that grand bargain somehow, it will be “game over” and “sporty”.
Until that time, we can have positively tsunami like financial earthquakes and still muddle along.
I might speculate that soon enough imploding pension purchasing power might force seniors to move in with their breadwinning offspring. The seniors could take over “education” of the youngest and free the breadwinners to do their thing out in the world. Something of a return to a formerly common type of economic unit, the 3 generation household.
My take on seniors reducing their living expenses is that they will sell their homes and move into RVs. RVs, while small, can move about at will and you do not pay property taxes in states like Texas. I have no idea which other states do not charge property taxes. I expect to see even greater migrations of people moving twice a year or so to avoid property and state income taxes. Just a PO box in the no state income tax states of Florida or Texas to anchor their residency.
Of course, to move into a 300 ft2 RV, one must be RUTHLESS in reducing ones stuff.
“Of course, to move into a 300 ft2 RV, one must be RUTHLESS in reducing ones stuff.”
That’s what storage units are for! 🙂 Unending lot rent and utilities, uncertain gas prices and high repair costs might dim that dream for many. OTOH, granny and gramps could be parked in the back yard at least seasonally, notwithstanding HOA or other zoning Nazi’s.
“WRT viability of SS and VA disability payments:
Limited and not to be counted on.”
I become eligible for SS early retirement this year. If/when I take it, I look at it as less than a grain of sand in the machinery and more practically, an extender of what capital is mine.
“my speculation was that pensions and SS will not retain their purchasing power for much longer.”
Had this conversation very briefly with my dad this weekend. He mentioned that throughout his life he managed to save for when retirement came. He’s been retired for about 20 yrs now. I mentioned that inflation was destroying his savings. He said, yep, and of course, his income hasn’t increased and everything else has. He hopes it will last long enough, but there isn’t anything he can do about it.
His steel mill pension was taken over by the Pension Guaranty Fund, at HALF the rate he was promised. SS and medical coverage help, but it’s the money in the bank that is paying the bills.
His home is paid for, but the neighborhood is devaluing rapidly which eats any stored value. Inflation is eating the stored value of his savings. Zero interest rates instead of 7% eats his potential….
Sucks to get old.
n
(and all that is why I think income property is the way to go, despite all the problems)
(and all that is why I think income property is the way to go, despite all the problems)
Me too. My experience over 30 years of renting out residential and commercial properties has been good. My Dad lost his shirt because he could not hold the several properties that he had during the downturns. Just remember, if you are making mortgage payments and not making cash money today, how are you going to pay the mortgage during the downturns ?
“Of course, to move into a 300 ft2 RV, one must be RUTHLESS in reducing ones stuff.”
That’s what storage units are for! Unending lot rent and utilities, uncertain gas prices and high repair costs might dim that dream for many. OTOH, granny and gramps could be parked in the back yard at least seasonally, notwithstanding HOA or other zoning Nazi’s.
RVs do not incur property taxes in Texas since they are a vehicle. Even if they have not been moved in decades.
I do not know about property taxes on single wides or double wides in Texas.
And there are plenty of trailer parks in Texas that cost less than $200/month way outside the big cities.
There are some places in the Valley in Texas that have really small singlewides that are only subject to minimal property taxes. They are a 1 BR apartment with a kitchenette/living area. The resorts they are in will have a storage lockers for rent. My uncle and his wife were snowbirds for a few years and rented a place in one of them. They had a porch to sit on and watch the sunset, cable TV, a rec. center at the place, and there were organized outings.