How does one ‘get ahead’ during hard times?
Look, I’m a systems guy. I think in systems terms. You should as well.
Why?
Because we’re entering a period of time when the major systems that have supported humanity are going to fail.
Or, put more accurately: they are already failing.
As just one example, our monetary system delivers outsized gains to the already stupendously-wealthy while piling up massive debts on the backs of we citizens, both born and yet-to-be-born. The US Federal Reserve is the unelected and unaccountable body that is most responsible for have made America’s billionaires nearly $1 trillion ‘richer’ since the pandemic hit.
These next three Fed-related data points are, in a word, obscene.
The first shows that the US Federal Reserve now “owns” more US federal debt than all foreign central banks. The second shows how billionaires are getting grotesquely wealthier from the Fed’s “rescue’” efforts. And the last shows how the Fed’s record-low interest policy has resulted in an explosion in federal debt:
(Source)
(Source)
This is obscene (and infuriating!) to anyone who cares about the future. Leaving aside the morality issues for a moment, we can at least conclude that the behaviors and values on display are thoroughly unsustainable.
Eventually spending more money than you have ends in ruin.
Speaking of spending what you don’t have, a similar story can be told about ecological overshoot and humanity’s extractive practices — it’s akin to spending both the entirety of the interest income as well as some principal each year from our environmental trust fund.
There aren’t many resources that one can point to which aren’t in some serious form of either concerning decline or depletion, or both. Already thousands, if not millions, of people in the American West are considering relocating because of the ever-present danger of disruptive if not life-threatening fires:
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
