[TomWayburn]

I'm afraid there is no choice but to pay everyone the same regardless of how hard they work or what they do or what the preparation had been. Yes, and furloughed workers who, during the period of riotous consumption of fossil fuels, earned fabulous salaries for getting a larger slice of the pie for their employers, should get the same pay as everyone else. But, it isn't really pay, is it? It's a license to consume real material wealth, which except for land, water, and embodied human effort, is measured in emergy units. There is just one proviso: Each person may choose to replace only himself by reproduction or not to reproduce. Violators will have their rights sharply curtailed. To do the right thing, probably, it will be necessary to save liberals and conservatives from themselves.

Remember, it's not the freeloaders who are eating your lunch; it's the billionaires.

https://www.dematerialism.net/ and https://www.dematerialism.net/MonetarySystem.html

[vtsnowedin]

I'm afraid there is no choice but to pay everyone the same regardless of how hard they work or what they do or what the preparation had been. Yes, and furloughed workers who, during the period of riotous consumption of fossil fuels, earned fabulous salaries for getting a larger slice of the pie for their employers, should get the same pay as everyone else. But, it isn't really pay, is it? It's a license to consume real material wealth, which except for land, water, and embodied human effort, is measured in emergy units. There is just one proviso: Each person may choose to replace only himself by reproduction or not to reproduce. Violators will have their rights sharply curtailed. To do the right thing, probably, it will be necessary to save liberals and conservatives from themselves.

Remember, it's not the freeloaders who are eating your lunch; it's the billionaires.

https://www.dematerialism.net/ and https://www.dematerialism.net/MonetarySystem.html

You are totally out to lunch.
You can't pay the janitor the same pay as the engineer designing the new product that will make the company profitable. How much more the Engineer makes or how much less he makes the the CEO is debatable but they will never be the same in a economy or system that works.

[AdamB]

The fact that one can pull out a phone and access Facebook or have internet access in a cushy cubicle(only if they are lucky enough to land such a job), while being saturated with distractions("entertainment") from the media, is poor consolation for the fact that we went from needing one low wage earner to be able to support a family to needing two median wage earners to be able to support a family.

I'd like some of your winter, please.

The decline of the American standard of living has been disguised by the need for two earners for some 3 decades now, true.

You really don't want my personal winter though. I discovered only in my first year of college that running water in the winter was a wonderful thing. And food in the cafeteria? That was great! Didn't have to hunt, trap or shoot any of it. Discovered cheesecake that year.

[The_Toecutter]

You really don't want my personal winter though. I discovered only in my first year of college that running water in the winter was a wonderful thing. And food in the cafeteria? That was great! Didn't have to hunt, trap or shoot any of it. Discovered cheesecake that year.

I've been homeless before and am no stranger to what you describe, albeit the details may have been different.

And yeah, I don't want your personal winter. But the late 1970s recession sounds like a much more prosperous a time for working people than this shit we have today.

[Newfie]

Not so sure about that, hard to make comparisons. By the late 70’s I was pretty well on my feet and in a repression proof career. I sought out jobs with high security.

Earlier in that decade was another recession. There was a small development, some houses were nearing completion when the recession hit, wall up but needed windows. They sat there windows boarded over for several years.

Recession is personal, and local. One mans depression can be a boom time for another. My Dad was trying to start a small business doing house repairs. But he fell off a roof, broke 3 ribs, got pneumonia, no medical insurance. He didn't get out of bed for 2 years. Those were lean times, our personal recession. Ate a lot of rice, with milk and butter.

Later he managed to wrangle a janitors job at my high school. Then he was in high cotton, a regular paycheck, in a dry heated space, with medical and retirement.

What I observed early in made me cautious later in life.

[AdamB]

You really don't want my personal winter though. I discovered only in my first year of college that running water in the winter was a wonderful thing. And food in the cafeteria? That was great! Didn't have to hunt, trap or shoot any of it. Discovered cheesecake that year.

I've been homeless before and am no stranger to what you describe, albeit the details may have been different.

I always figured that those of us from humble beginnings understood that the world as it exists for us today is like summer having arrived. Sure...winter might be coming in our lifetime, but for all the claims of it to date (be it peak oil, climate change or other doomer silliness), I've still got running water, food from the grocery, the ability to travel and do things professionally that I find interesting.

And yeah, I don't want your personal winter. But the late 1970s recession sounds like a much more prosperous a time for working people than this shit we have today.

I guess that depends on what your 70's were like. Mine were without running water and store bought food. Not much in the way of jobs, the energy crisis and fuel rationing struck me as bad news, but without a car or means to fuel it, it wasn't as important then as it would be today. Now that my transport around town is electric, I think it is great that I don't worry about those fuel costs much today at all.

[AdamB]

What I observed early in made me cautious later in life.

What I observed early in life makes me laugh my ass off over what folks now proclaim as doom. This doom! That doom! Doom is coming! Doom is tomorrow! Doom is here (even if no one notices)! Strikes me that you are right, doom has much more to do with personal consequences of ones decisions than it does anything in the macro world around us.

[vtsnowedin]

Imagine if you will, if all cell phones and wifi stopped working completely. The younger generations would have no clue about how to carry on without them.

[AdamB]

Imagine if you will, if all cell phones and wifi stopped working completely. The younger generations would have no clue about how to carry on without them.

Having some "modern" children, I would completely agree. I find it amusing that they rarely use them as phones. I call one of them and they ask "how come you didn't text instead?".