The below video covers the month by month unemployment since January 2007. But that's not the only indicator of a coming collapse. Real unemployment, counting those who cease looking for work,...or those who are under employed,..... you know those PhD holders flipping burgers, would raise this rate more than double. Add projected taxes increases to pay for the Obama Administration's social programs, taxes and fees associated with National Health Care, projected fuel increases and the following higher prices for commodities all make the case for a depression, not recession, and great chance for a economic collapse of this country. Are you prepared?
According to the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are nearly 31 million people currently unemployed -- that's including those involuntarily working part time and those who want a job, but have given up on trying to find one. In the face of the worst economic upheaval since the Great Depression, millions of Americans are hurting. "The Decline: The Geography of a Recession," as created by labor writer LaToya Egwuekwe, serves as a vivid representation of just how much. Watch the deteriorating transformation of the U.S. economy from January 2007 -- approximately one year before the start of the recession -- to the most recent unemployment data available today. Original link: www.latoyaegwuekwe.com/geographyofarecession.html.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Urban Survival Firearms - Back Up Iron Sights
UrbanSurvivalSkills.com received a new comment on the post, Urban Survival Gear - My Basic Kit: Load Bearing ...: “Anonymous said,…..Remember to know how to use ALL that fancy scopes and what not on your AR-15/ M-4 rifles. Good old fashion iron sights are the way to go! If you can’t see at night, hide well!”
Troy Industries Back Up Iron Sight - shown Above
UrbanMan Replies: I absolutely am a fan of iron sights,….given a choice between iron sights or a scope, I would choose iron sights. I carried an M-16 then an M-4 for over two decades using only iron sights, when I wasn’t assigned a scoped bolt gun. I started using various scopes, first the old Bushnell-EO Tech precursor when I was teaching shooters to use the same. I have used many scopes over the years,…primarily the Bushnell, EO Tech, Aimpoint Comp ML-2, Trijicon TA-42 and TA-11’s and Leupold CQT. If I had to pick a scope from the aforementioned list, it would probably be the Trijicon TA-42, but they are pricey so I don’t have one on any of my M’4’s. My work gun has an EO Tech.
If you mount a scope on your M-4 you should also have BUIS (Back Up Iron Sights). Lots of good types out there. I happen to use the old A2 version BUIS from GG&G, although there are many makes and models of M-4 rear sights out there, presuming you have an M-16/M-4 with the OEM front sight.
Troy Industries, MA Tech and A.R.M.S. all make BUIS that I have used and are familiar with. I really light the MA Tech BUIS except for the fact that the spring loaded aperture often loses or breaks the spring under repeated use. In my opinion, the GG&G is a robust BUIS and as good as any, better than most.
GG&G Back Up Iron Sight - Shown Right
Any of these BUIS can be purchased from Brownells,…click here.
Urban Survival Planning - Courtyard Vegetable Garden
UrbanSurvivalSkills.com received the following e-mail from a reader who appears new to Survival prepping, but seems to be catching on, learning skills and acquiring Survival Gear and Equipment.
Dear UrbanMan, I am a HVAC technician and am located within the city with a population of just over 500,000. I am living in a quad plex one street of a main six land boulevard. I started a courtyard garden this late spring with the intent to gain some experience growing some vegetables as well as produce some food for the table!
I am growing two types of squash, egg plant, cucumber, mini tomatoes, onions and beets. I tried growing carrots and peas, but that didn’t work out.
You can see from the picture that my squash is large,…..I placed the coke can for scale. With four squash plants so far this year I have harvested 13 or 14 squash fruits. I have about six or seven other fruits coming to ripeness. Each squash fruit is large enough to last three, sometimes four meals easy. I add them to everything, but in a Survival situation I would use the vegetables to augment the rice, beans and pasta I have stored in buckets.
I use one egg and some flour to bread the sliced squash and fry up in a pan, then added to the cooked rice. I have grilled the sliced squash like shisk-k-bobs over the grill and also over an open fire. Pretty good actually. Next I’m going to try baking in a dutch oven over an open fire with rice, beef bullion and some beans – sort of like Survival Jumbolaya.
I am learning how to preserve by canning so I can make some of these vegetables last into the fall. I live in a climate where I think I can grow vegetables through late October. I am also thinking about a small greenhouse so I can grow late in the winter.
I bought a couple of those Suisse Sport Alpine Sleeping bags and Aqua Mira Water Filter Bottles from your Survival Store and am in the process of building some Bug Out Bags.
In my quad plex, I have witnessed Survival Prepping to two out of the three other occupants. I myself have a wife; the other people I’m beginning to develop into a Survival Group are also couples, but not married. One I took to the range shooting my Bushmaster copy of the M-4 and now he bought a Mini-14 and a .357 Magnum handgun. I am working on the other couple as well – at least he owns a 12 gauge shotgun. But both have also planted some vegetables and are about ready to stock some basics like rice, beans, salt, soup stock and such.
So you can see we are starting to get prepared. I have gained a lot of confidence as I am beginning to get prepared but scary as I have along way to go before I satisfy I am ready. Can you ever be really ready?
So thanks for all the information on your site.
Dear UrbanMan, I am a HVAC technician and am located within the city with a population of just over 500,000. I am living in a quad plex one street of a main six land boulevard. I started a courtyard garden this late spring with the intent to gain some experience growing some vegetables as well as produce some food for the table!
I am growing two types of squash, egg plant, cucumber, mini tomatoes, onions and beets. I tried growing carrots and peas, but that didn’t work out.
You can see from the picture that my squash is large,…..I placed the coke can for scale. With four squash plants so far this year I have harvested 13 or 14 squash fruits. I have about six or seven other fruits coming to ripeness. Each squash fruit is large enough to last three, sometimes four meals easy. I add them to everything, but in a Survival situation I would use the vegetables to augment the rice, beans and pasta I have stored in buckets.
I use one egg and some flour to bread the sliced squash and fry up in a pan, then added to the cooked rice. I have grilled the sliced squash like shisk-k-bobs over the grill and also over an open fire. Pretty good actually. Next I’m going to try baking in a dutch oven over an open fire with rice, beef bullion and some beans – sort of like Survival Jumbolaya.
I am learning how to preserve by canning so I can make some of these vegetables last into the fall. I live in a climate where I think I can grow vegetables through late October. I am also thinking about a small greenhouse so I can grow late in the winter.
I bought a couple of those Suisse Sport Alpine Sleeping bags and Aqua Mira Water Filter Bottles from your Survival Store and am in the process of building some Bug Out Bags.
In my quad plex, I have witnessed Survival Prepping to two out of the three other occupants. I myself have a wife; the other people I’m beginning to develop into a Survival Group are also couples, but not married. One I took to the range shooting my Bushmaster copy of the M-4 and now he bought a Mini-14 and a .357 Magnum handgun. I am working on the other couple as well – at least he owns a 12 gauge shotgun. But both have also planted some vegetables and are about ready to stock some basics like rice, beans, salt, soup stock and such.
So you can see we are starting to get prepared. I have gained a lot of confidence as I am beginning to get prepared but scary as I have along way to go before I satisfy I am ready. Can you ever be really ready?
So thanks for all the information on your site.
Monday, July 19, 2010
Urban Survival Planning - Financial Collapse Likely
We're three feet away from a thick curtain. When it raises it'll be a bleak picture.
From The Dollar Collapse, "Why We’re Ungovernable", by John Rubino on July 14, 2010
For the first time in 250 years, politics has become irrelevant. Not uninteresting or unimportant; obviously the way a society organizes itself matters to its citizens and its place in the world.
But today there are no policies left on the “possible” menu that will save us from what’s coming. So a rational person’s time is better spent preparing rather than debating.* (Later, when we’re trying to decide what to build from the rubble, the argument will get interesting again.)
The most recent batch of election and poll results illustrates this point:
The Social Democrats and Greens took over Germany‘s most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia, on Wednesday in a minority government the centre-left says could one day challenge Chancellor Angela Merkel at federal level.
At a time of weakness for conservative leader Merkel nine months into her second term, the Social Democrats (SPD) speculate that they and the Greens could form a minority German government after the next federal elections due in 2013.
According to a new ABC News/Washington Post poll, registered voters are increasingly critical of President Obama’s work on the economy, and by an 8-point margin they say they’d prefer to see the Republicans take control of Congress. It’s a clear sign of GOP opportunities and Democratic risks going into the 2010 midterm elections, with 51 percent of poll respondents saying they would rather have Republicans run Congress “to act as a check on Obama’s policies.”
So what’s happening? Just a few years — in some cases just a few months — after sweeping into office with promises of “change” and a quick clean-up of their predecessors’ messes, leaders of major democracies from across the political spectrum are being swept right back out.
Did they turn out to be incompetent, or their policies wrong-headed? There’s hardly been enough time for either verdict. But if not that, what?
The answer, in a word, is debt. When an economy’s borrowing passes an historically identifiable point it loses the ability to navigate from crisis to solution. In the case of Europe, Japan, and the U.S., the range of choices has narrowed to only two, inflation and austerity, and neither is working.
When Europe tried inflation by promising to bail out the PIIGS countries, the euro collapsed, as the global markets correctly saw an oversupply of paper currency on the horizon. When it switched to austerity, workers across the continent saw their livelihoods threatened. Either way, the folks in charge get blamed and have a tough time holding their jobs.
In Japan, public debt keeps soaring no matter who is in charge. The government, believe it or not, will borrow more this year than it raises in taxes. So the newly-elected Prime Minister proposed doubling the national sales tax to 10% and then backed off in face of falling poll numbers, thus becoming a tax raiser and a ditherer, a combination that hardly ever wins popularity contests.
The U.S. government has been flooding the system with liquidity for two years, but unemployment remains in double digits. Three of the five biggest states are functionally bankrupt and will either lay off hundreds of thousands of workers in 2011 or receive a bailout that will dwarf what Goldman and AIG got last year.
The next round of elections will bring either new leaders or old ones who adopt the other side’s ideas in order to hold power. Either way, the death spiral of the military industrial complex/welfare state/fiat currency system will continue, and accelerate.
Entire article here.
From The Dollar Collapse, "Why We’re Ungovernable", by John Rubino on July 14, 2010
For the first time in 250 years, politics has become irrelevant. Not uninteresting or unimportant; obviously the way a society organizes itself matters to its citizens and its place in the world.
But today there are no policies left on the “possible” menu that will save us from what’s coming. So a rational person’s time is better spent preparing rather than debating.* (Later, when we’re trying to decide what to build from the rubble, the argument will get interesting again.)
The most recent batch of election and poll results illustrates this point:
The Social Democrats and Greens took over Germany‘s most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia, on Wednesday in a minority government the centre-left says could one day challenge Chancellor Angela Merkel at federal level.
At a time of weakness for conservative leader Merkel nine months into her second term, the Social Democrats (SPD) speculate that they and the Greens could form a minority German government after the next federal elections due in 2013.
According to a new ABC News/Washington Post poll, registered voters are increasingly critical of President Obama’s work on the economy, and by an 8-point margin they say they’d prefer to see the Republicans take control of Congress. It’s a clear sign of GOP opportunities and Democratic risks going into the 2010 midterm elections, with 51 percent of poll respondents saying they would rather have Republicans run Congress “to act as a check on Obama’s policies.”
So what’s happening? Just a few years — in some cases just a few months — after sweeping into office with promises of “change” and a quick clean-up of their predecessors’ messes, leaders of major democracies from across the political spectrum are being swept right back out.
Did they turn out to be incompetent, or their policies wrong-headed? There’s hardly been enough time for either verdict. But if not that, what?
The answer, in a word, is debt. When an economy’s borrowing passes an historically identifiable point it loses the ability to navigate from crisis to solution. In the case of Europe, Japan, and the U.S., the range of choices has narrowed to only two, inflation and austerity, and neither is working.
When Europe tried inflation by promising to bail out the PIIGS countries, the euro collapsed, as the global markets correctly saw an oversupply of paper currency on the horizon. When it switched to austerity, workers across the continent saw their livelihoods threatened. Either way, the folks in charge get blamed and have a tough time holding their jobs.
In Japan, public debt keeps soaring no matter who is in charge. The government, believe it or not, will borrow more this year than it raises in taxes. So the newly-elected Prime Minister proposed doubling the national sales tax to 10% and then backed off in face of falling poll numbers, thus becoming a tax raiser and a ditherer, a combination that hardly ever wins popularity contests.
The U.S. government has been flooding the system with liquidity for two years, but unemployment remains in double digits. Three of the five biggest states are functionally bankrupt and will either lay off hundreds of thousands of workers in 2011 or receive a bailout that will dwarf what Goldman and AIG got last year.
The next round of elections will bring either new leaders or old ones who adopt the other side’s ideas in order to hold power. Either way, the death spiral of the military industrial complex/welfare state/fiat currency system will continue, and accelerate.
Entire article here.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
