[Newfie]

Between shifting the manufacturing process to using foreign value added materials, components, and sub assemblies, and also fully exploiting automation, I think the manufacturing dollar growth can be almost decoupled from domestic manufacturing jobs growth.

We are doing an experiment to see if you can make a society without a middle class,
to me this is like taking the insulation from between two high voltage wires.

Yes, I was trying to say we need to look at bigger terms, look at the macro situation and I think you are saying something similar.

The BIG trends do not look encouraging.

We have an older work force, with fewer immediate resources (land) to fall back on. Oil, water, and other resource depletion will make recovery harder this time.

The things that keep us going are highly interdependent upon a well oiled global economy working well.

Things being somewhat depressed, staving off total collapse, is probably the best we can hope for.

[Pops]

So then you think this is the new normal for the US, fewer jobs manufacturing disposable "stuff" and more jobs flipping burgers?

Is that not the definition of a steady state economy?

BTW, the largest part of what we export is not disposable "consumer goods" but capital equipment I would think a strong steady state economy would need - replacement parts for worn infrastructure:

agricultural products (soybeans, fruit, corn) 9.2%, industrial supplies (organic chemicals) 26.8%, capital goods (transistors, aircraft, motor vehicle parts, computers, telecommunications equipment) 49.0%, consumer goods (automobiles, medicines) 15.0%

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html

[Newfie]

Pops,

You are kinda loosing me here with your point of view. I see three conditions possible.

1 - The OLD Normal - continuous growth, things will be better for my kids than me.
2 - Steady State
3 - The New Normal - decreasing wealth, on average. My kids will have a poorer time than I did.

NO politician is talking about anything other than OLD Normal, including Obama, although I doubt he believes it.

Flipping burgers while some android makes Boeings does not, Not, NOT bring personal joy and happiness.

But I think even that is overly optimistic.

What are YOU saying? What is your view?

[Pops]

I didn't start out with a POV, that's why I asked
And I just stick things in: factoids, thoughts, BS, just to keep the conversation going - betcha didn't know the Rules say we are each responsible for keeping our own threads on topic.

But I've started to think we are caught in the grasp of the perpetual no-growth economy and not just the doldrums.

The Lost Decade in post asset bubble japan saw bank bail-outs, credit crisis, asset deflation - no economic growth. This guy, along with Krugman and others sees the US going the same way:

With both the United States and Japan, the market manias were ignited by laughably loose credit policies, smoldered under a lack of oversight from government regulators, market analysts or such private-sector sentinels as credit-rating agencies, and were finally fanned into a frenzied financial conflagration by the promise of easy profits.

So a decade or so of a bubbly hangover with no economic growth, asset deflation, "life support" for zombie companies, etc; and then after we take our medicine, BAU resumes and we're off to the races just like before.

That would be the Lost Decade - a scary thing for pols, economists, J6p and not fun. But never fear, The Good Life Returns - eventually.

OR

Take the current recession, add in the "Lost Decade" stuff above, plus what has been mentioned in this thread about the US moving to a "service economy", stagnating real income, and wealth inequity before the recession...

Then add in oil production constraints rumored to be coming our way this decade and it's possible - probable, that expensive energy will put a lid on any recovery just as it warms up. Then an "L" shaped recession and next recovery the same, down, down, down until some kind of equilibrium is reached.

So, not by design but by default, what do you get?

Zero Economic Growth, the definition of a steady state economy.

___
Does that mean we all flip burgers? No, but in the theoretical steady state economy there is less economic activity because there is no population growth. Manufacturing, construction, etc are in business to replace, repair, maintain existing inventory, not "grow" to fill new demand. Obviously there would be "New", Improved" models of everything, and business would compete for market share, undercut the competition, improve quality, reduce quality, etc but the basic idea of the ever expanding marketplace would be gone.

In this world (50 years from today) there are still rich and poor, haves and have nots. But what there probably isn't is the broad middle class that was born out of the industrial revolution. Not only did we not float every boat, many boats sank. Remember the average energy consumption is 10% of today's and that doesn't make the good life cheaper to buy or the job to buy it easy to get. Jobs building all those luxury items are long gone and much of what is left is true service work, street sweeper, shoe repair, ditch digger, use your imagination.

See the connection?
Cheap energy + growing population: demand for "Stuff" = "good" jobs making Stuff = more money for stuff = repeat.
Expensive energy + stable population: demand for necessities = jobs making necessities = enough money for necessities = repeat.

___
My Mom and Dad were both janitors, I've had 100 times the Stuff they ever had, I've never been 100 times as happy. Possibly, I've never been AS happy because of the Stuff.
Maybe our grandkids will be wiser.

[Newfie]

See the connection?
Cheap energy + growing population: demand for "Stuff" = "good" jobs making Stuff = more money for stuff = repeat.
Expensive energy + stable population: demand for necessities = jobs making necessities = enough money for necessities = repeat.

___
My Mom and Dad were both janitors, I've had 100 times the Stuff they ever had, I've never been 100 times as happy. Possibly, I've never been AS happy because of the Stuff.
Maybe our grandkids will be wiser.

I've been a grumpy mood for a couple of days. This thread bugged me and I now think that we are missing one more item in this mess. We have talked about automation in terms of manufacturing but it has also been going on in terms of agriculture as well.

One of the reasons we have more "stuff" is because we have moved people out of agriculture and into manufacturing. If you don't have to till the field you have time to make rockers. But our agriculture is in trouble for a variety of reasons: depleting oil, depleting land quality, changing climate patterns, depleting aquifers, more resistant bug (etc.) strains. We have gotten all the gain there is to get out of agriculture so it can no longer be seen as a way of promoting growth.

But there is continuing upward population pressure. The US has not been able to deal with our immigration issues. There is every reason to believe that this will only get worse in the future as the increasingly "huddled masses" crowd our door.

Some hold out hope that technology can get yet more gains from the system. But clearly, as the GOM oil disaster points out, the low hanging fruit has been picked. In summary I see the big picture trends all pushing us into a downward spiral.

On a more personal note there are some interesting parallels here. By age I am, IIRC, at 59 between you Pops and Patience. Long generations in my family so my parents were Depression era kids. Or my Dad was. Mom was a Newfie, her home town got electricity in '67, 1967. Dad was a bayman digging clams, then a handyman, then a janitor (at my high school - oh the joy.) Mom cleaned houses. I have done well but most of my happiness stems from my Wife, even though we fight bitterly at times.

What hope I see in our kids future lies in being able to decouple "happiness" from "stuff." But that only works as long as you have a full belly.

[Ibon]

Some hold out hope that technology can get yet more gains from the system. But clearly, as the GOM oil disaster points out, the low hanging fruit has been picked. In summary I see the big picture trends all pushing us into a downward spiral.
.

When we use the term downward spiral this frames the picture of the future in this negative direction of loss of opportunity, loss of wealth, loss of strength. This is understandable if you have been habituated for the past couple of generations on growth and expansion.

When you look beyond the essentials for a sustainable society (shelter, food, sanitation, transportation, health care) all the rest of the economic activity could be considered surplus. We have a cultural value system that views surplus as fun and the essentials as drudgery. It will only take one or two generations to habituate our culture to a non growth based paradigm.

Think of being born into a world where your work, vocation and culture dedicates resources into maintaining what you've got and where technological advances are dedicated to strengthen the resilience and maintenance of the existing infrastructure instead of expansion and growth which exceeds carrying capacity. That is not an idealistic goal but rather was the status quo for the majority of our species history.

And I would argue that there is a deeper inherent sense of wellbeing and happiness in being held in a culture that maintains itself rather than one that exceeds its carrying capacity while escaping in consumerism.

And yet so many of us today are seeing the dismantling of this system as a negative spiral downwards.....

What hope I see in our kids future lies in being able to decouple "happiness" from "stuff." But that only works as long as you have a full belly.

IT will happen. And if all the economic activity that today is dedicated toward "Stuff" was redirected toward maintaining and sustainability than we might even transition with bellies half full.

It's all a point of view.....Is the belly half empty or half full?

[Outcast_Searcher]

One big negative factor, IMO, that isn't being pointed out here on this very interesting and thoughtful thread, is that there is a serious decline in MORAL behavior at all levels of society.

Pick your institution - and it becomes an example of how NOT to behave. e.g. Cheating athletes (former heroes to youth) on drugs. The insurance industry in general has become a giant scam using lawyers to fatten profit margins by cheating claimants. Government incompetence, greed, and ineffectiveness (which of course, states the solution is exponentially MORE government) grows by leaps and bounds at all levels. Corporations become mafioso style gangs bent on profit maximization instead of being decent "citizens" of society. The church frequently becomes (as an institution) a lesson in how NOT to behave toward their neighbor. Individuals, rich and poor, move toward "get all I can for ME at any cost - why not? -- that's what virtually every class of institution does!"

Honesty. Integrity. Hard work. Personal responsibility. Property rights. Respect for other people. Living within one's means. These values seem to have been largely lost today, and the results are plain to see.

Think of the level of friction / impediment to overall productivity this causes.

Even my personal hero, Warren Buffett, tries to excuse what Moody's did via rating garbage mortgages/derivatives and also recently tried to get an exemption from reasonable margin requirements for Berkshire's derivitives, as it would reduce profit. The last "decent" rich man (IMO) lets his shining example of being above the fray go down in flames.

I think this is a rather large nail in the coffin of ongoing growth if it isn't fixed.

(And I am NOT some Bible-thumping religious person. I don't go to Church. I consider religion to be merely a philophical point of view, suggesting ways for people to live together without constantly fighting. I'm just talking about common sense "general" ethics here).

[Pops]

My parents were defense plant Okies who did whatever to get by in the 40s & 50s & I was a poor white kid in the central valley of CA in the 60s & 70s - if I wanted a little spending money I picked up walnuts & almonds, peaches, eggs, black eyes, whatever. I wasn't totin' a cotton sack and my fingers didn't bleed but you get the idea. Being even a second generation Okie then was just about as close as you can come to being a wetback today.

Mexicans were really the only non-whites in our town, most lived in the labor camps just like my parents did when they arrived from OK 20 years before. Of course the labor camps are gone because they were below standard housing - many migrants live in the orchards, on the dirt, under tarps now. I have quite a bit of sympathy for migrants, legal or not.

A burger flipper makes $7.50/hr. a field worker makes $8.50. But how many white kids are picking lettuce? The answer, if you asked the pickers in the field is that they all are! And US born to boot!

But seriously, if those 4 million or however many mexicans are not out there, who is going to pick that fruit? Does anyone who wants the big fence built really expect the unemployed white kids to get out there and pick peaches this summer or skin and debone those chicken breasts or milk those cows? Give me a break. When people start talking trash (with their mouths full of cheap food) about the evil illegal aliens it just make me want to spit. It's like the chicken hawks talking about war, they took a deferment, their kids will never enlist - and forget a draft, but by God we need an elective war - it's your Patriotic Duty! I'm all for a big fence and zero immigration and enforcement of employer fines but if we don't have a guest worker program I'd bet it winds up costing more in the long run than the services that gall the self-righteous "compassionate-conservatives".

__
But like someone at TOD said the other day, if a thread stays active long enough at PO.com it eventually gets around to population control! I'm anxious to see the census results later this year (first of next?), they will say a lot about which direction we are headed.

Really, when I started this I was wondering if what we usually tend to think of as circling the bowl might not be more of a wringing out - like the stock Cowboy Movie where the hero needs to sober up from a 5 year bender (100 years in our case) before he can strap on the hog-leg and go out and battle the desperadoes.

Or like Ibon said: Is the belly half full or half empty!

[dsula]

But seriously, if those 4 million or however many mexicans are not out there, who is going to pick that fruit? Does anyone who wants the big fence built really expect the unemployed white kids to get out there and pick peaches this summer or skin and debone those chicken breasts or milk those cows? Give me a break. When people start talking trash (with their mouths full of cheap food) about the evil illegal aliens it just make me want to spit.

This has nothing to do with 'evil' mexicans. This has to do with too much too fast. If you lived in a 'white' town all of your life and within 5 yeasr the place turns 30% latino it is understandable that you feel upset. You will feel 'overrun' 'out-of-place'. You feel a stranger in your own town. That's what makes people upset. However most people cannot express this feeling, because the political correct everybody-is-equal and every-culture-is-as-valuable-as-mine crap was beaten into them from early childhood.

[ritter]

Nice post, Pops.

[Ainan]

This is turning into one of the most truthful threads I've ever seen on PO.com. Particularly Outcast_Searcher's post. Religion comes in two parts, the moral code and the enforcement. Who care's if God exists? It's a non-issue. Humans are not born with a moral code, toddlers do not know 'right' from 'wrong', they need to be taught. Humans also easily forget, a religion, with its folklaw and ceremonies keeps them following a moral code. I've never heard of an atheist civilisation, or even of atheist hunter gatherers. Only during the decline phase of a civilisation do people turn away from their religion and therefore the moral code holding things together. Screw Jared Diamond, I assert the leading cause of societal collapse is turning away from religion.

[lper100km]

When we use the term downward spiral this frames the picture of the future in this negative direction of loss of opportunity, loss of wealth, loss of strength. This is understandable if you have been habituated for the past couple of generations on growth and expansion.

When you look beyond the essentials for a sustainable society (shelter, food, sanitation, transportation, health care) all the rest of the economic activity could be considered surplus. We have a cultural value system that views surplus as fun and the essentials as drudgery. It will only take one or two generations to habituate our culture to a non growth based paradigm.

Well, here’s the entry into the population discussion!

Many decry the doomer outlook in favour of a more optimistic assessment of a sustainable future as Ibon has noted above. Let’s ignore the turmoil that is bound to occur on the way to sustainability. I think it’s generally accepted that sustainability is achievable only in concert with a significantly reduced world population. That seems to be where the doomer vision begins.

But having achieved sustainable levels, what then? Will people be satisfied with the same old, same old ad infinitum, tilling their fields and herding their flocks and sticking around the same neighborhood all their lives? To be satisfied with that existence, it seems to me that simultaneously, a significant mental shift has to occur, a shift that essentially renders people incurious and passive. Curiosity is the distinguishing human trait that has inevitably led to the explosive exponential growth in knowledge and industry over the past 200 years with arguably mixed results. Passivity is a requirement, otherwise greed and ambition will again recycle into territorial skirmishes, resurrecting the military industrial complex and a return to unrestrained growth. A sustainable balance has no need for skills and knowledge beyond those needed for agriculture, basic construction and some medical remedies. There is obviously no need for such esoteric concepts as space flight.

Sustainability is seen by many as a utopian future. But will it foment an attitude that excludes scientific discovery, lives by inflexible rules, envisions a future without variation from the present and, unnaturally, somehow represses aggression? In a society that, of necessity, would be highly labour intensive, education beyond that needed to pass on survival skills would not be seen as relevant or valued. In fact, given the hindsight of history for those who might remember, there could be a backlash against scientific knowledge as being proven too dangerous. Ignorance is better. However, the absence of computer technology would quickly reduce scientific knowledge to the trash can of history in the blink of an eye. Such circumstances invite the early rise of a priestly class and hence a slide into arbitrary superstition and mind control. It sounds very disappointingly familiar.

And the meek shall inherit the earth – a hopeless fallacy or a reality?

Is this doomer talk, or simply the realization that the last 200 years have seen a severe and exponential blip on the steady state carrying capacity of the world and that a return to normalcy is overdue? Are we destined to precipitously regress to the techno levels of the 1700s only to start a long climb back? It’s all speculation anyway, since no one living now will likely be in that situation, though they may well encounter the initial privations associated with population decline.

[Newfie]

Pops,

Sorry if I pushed your buttons on immigration. I'm just saying that it is happening and likely to increase which will increase pressure. So take it easy on the messenger, please.

BTW - Mom, Wife and Daughter in Law are immigrants. Canada, Germany and Columbia respectively.

[Pops]

Believe me dsula, I know exactly what you are talking about. Every one of those little San Joaquin valley towns now are predominantly Mexican Americans. Most Mexicans I know are hard working people, they'd work most fat crackers into the ground without breaking a sweat and they save and take care of their families and are good people. Having said that, they can be just as mean as git-out and their kids are just as bad as any bunch of spoiled punks who gang together anywhere.

Did I mention I don't live there anymore?
___
You're right, 1/100, a stable population would be, well, just a stable population. It would still be a human population, grasping and greedy and conniving by nature and maybe even more evil than it is now. A stable population in itself doesn't change much except possibly lessening the damage of an increasing population. Beyond that I can't think of anything certain.

But when I think about a future with less readily available energy, I don't see everyone as dirt farmers scratching out a survival ration in a mean life - though there surely will be those. Likewise I don't see us dropping back centuries, Gutenberg only made the printing press 600 years ago yet today literacy is widespread. I don't know enough about what it takes to make a computer so I don't know how permanent they are but they are as ubiquitous and as running water and the light bulb and in my opinion will be instrumental in making the transition from the car culture. Anyway, I just can't see all our knowledge evaporating - though I'm sure someone will tell me we're only a hair's breadth from the Lord of the Flies.

There will always be industry and trade and specialized skills, those things are simply too fundamentally valuable to any community to disappear. Look up Staniford at Early Warning blog, he talks about the resilience of surplus. Surpluses only come with specialization.

In general, I would have to guess that just like today there will be many forms of government from brutish to benign, many types of economy from collective to every-corporation-for-itself (the US way I'm sure) to many types of faith. I doubt there will be any one size solution - there never has so why would the future be different. And there will be war and atrocities and resource conflicts - there are now and we've never had it so good.

I don't know if an economy where there is no growth (no need to expand the number of widgets/houses/crops, only repair and replace the existing supply) is more stable or not. But I can't see a reason to think that even at a lower energy budget and a lower level of consumption, people can't find a way to use their mind - art and sport and creativity have been around a long long, time. We have never known so much about how the universe works as we do today, that is the true gift of the oil age. Hopefully we'll move beyond fossil fuels before we run out or die out but if we don't, that knowledge will be our legacy to our grandkids, we sure won't leave much else.

__
No Problem, Newfie, I just got on a roll! I don't blame people along the boarder who are sick of the violence, I don't blame people with no education for being mad there aren't any low skilled jobs around - even though it isn't the migrants fault. I do blame the people paid to stir the pot - the politicians who care about party over people, the preachers and talkers and entertainers who diddle with people's deepest emotions to make a buck and stroke their own egos - entertainment my ass. Lots of advertising is just some schmuck trying to "grow" his business but the corporations who pay the pot stirrers so they can squeeze a few more bucks out of the empty pockets of the narrow little minds make me sick.

[Ibon]

The last couple of posts address a question that for me remains unanswered when I project forward on how cultural transition will evolve under growing constraints. If you go back to the integrity and general well being present during our grandfathers generation or if you see the integrity, hard work and general well being still present in the cultures of developing countries that are not destitute poor then you can't fail to recognize that modern consumption culture has created a decadence.

Our grandfathers generation and those in developing countries today were or are still striving for a better life defined by more material wealth. I spent 20 years living in developing countries often in rural areas and I can attest to the higher level of general wellbeing and happiness as well as community present in poorer countries. I am the first however to recognize that if you give any of these less developed areas sudden wealth they would all start chasing the same damn consumption life style we have and quickly loose their integrity.

So how will we live within sustainability where we work to maintain a steady state economy without the dream of accumulating more wealth. The superior morals or happiness we attribute to past generations or the poor of developing nations today may be true but they were or are dreaming of wealth accumulation.

So how do we bring about a transition back to that old integrity but this time without a growth based future dream space based on consumption.....Or can the dream space include progress but not necessarily growth.
Are there other ways to fulfill the human need of dreams of progress in ways that are sustainable in a steady state economy?

Because what fuels any society are its dreams, its aspirations, it's striving forward toward something better. That will always be present in any society. What ails us today is that these human attributes have been kidnapped by cultural values where better is defined by consumption channeled into chasing stuff.

[patience]

Outcast_Searcher said:
"And yet so many of us today are seeing the dismantling of this system as a negative spiral downwards....."

I see the real possibility of a downward spiral as possible if we mismanage what we have due to greed and selfishness. As resources decline, we can easily get to the point that we could not sustain what we have, at least at the present level. I don't know what standard of living will exist a generation from now, but I feel assured that it will be lower. It's a situation akin to eating the seed corn, if we push overconsumption too far.

[efarmer]

With the lifestyle success parameters defined during the waxing of the petroleum age we are used to the exponential rise of things, and in fact bank on it. I think transition will lag horribly, because most folks really want to go back to something from the petroboost era, and will see everything ahead as a temporary barrier to that goal to be endured but not embraced. Once it becomes clear that a major paradigm shift has taken place, the culture will shift to embrace lifestyles that are successful within the the scope of the prevailing resource vs. consumption gamut. I think it is 30 years, with a stretch in the time line each time a successful resource war or military force provided creditor give us a water hole and we all decide the we can go back instead of forward.

Kunstler's axiom will rule the process:

"We will do what we have done until we can't, and then we won't."

[Newfie]

Kunstler's axiom will rule the process:

"We will do what we have done until we can't, and then we won't."

I never heard that before but I think it kinda sums it all up pretty well.

[rangerone314]

When TSHTF, I'd just as soon not have X million more people in this country than there already are, let alone people who are not part of my culture.

Just take a look at what happens to countries that have large minorities in them that border the country where that large minority is a majority.

I lack sympathy for cheap labor since I do my own landscaping, and with every crop, fruit tree & nut bush I plant, my sympathy for cheap illegal immigrant farm labor also decreases.

I say penalize the companies & force labor costs to go higher, put carbon tax on food transported long distances. I'd pay the higher food costs (for as long as it takes until I'm growing all my own food). Stupid fat, cellphone talking, SUV-driving, Dancing-With-the-Stars watching Americans can get off their fat Wall-E-esque butts and grow more of their own food.

[Ibon]

When TSHTF

I've been hearing this expression now for years and years. We'll still be hearing it 10 years from now I'm sure.

There never will be that proverbial moment we constantly refer to.

And you know what?

It's a way to constantly shift off onto the future this mythological moment when the house of cards will fall.

It aint gonna happen that way.