revisit: Wednesday, October 08, 2008 Econtraryonomics, part deux

Because I went looking, I got to read this (& below) again.  Because not only do I know another post came down, I know a whole lot of people who knew housing, the economy, and everything else pre-"Great Recession" wasn't coming back.  Ever.  And that isn't a bad thing.  Said so then; say so now. 
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My sister-in-law said it best. She said, “It’s unnerving.” She lives outside of Atlanta and they have not had gasoline, businesses are in business one day and gone (with the doors locked to the former employees) the next, nothing anywhere is as we might have expected it to be.

Where I am coming from is that I have seen this coming, even though I have never known (and don’t now) the exact form it will take. I said to my father back in the 1990s, “This cannot continue.” That was about the stock market. But I said the same sort of thing about land prices as they became untenable. Housing. Everything that has inflated beyond any real form of value. And now, unlike in the Great Depression, there is not an ever-expanding source of domestic oil nor do people actually know how to grow or even cook their own food as most did then. I’ve long felt food, especially food, was vulnerable because of its dependence on oil. So now we have peak oil combined with a financial meltdown fueling . . . who knows what.

So, just so you know, I feel the same sorts of uncertainties I think as everyone else. I do think I’m more prepared for them than most people, but still. It is an uncertain time. I do feel for people who expected one thing, who worked hard for one thing even, and find that it won’t be there for them, no matter what they do. I understand the factors that blind people into believing that it can’t happen, or at least that it can’t happen to them. I know that denial is the most basic Freudian defense mechanism, and if you are a little more advanced, you’ve probably learned to rationalize why I just can’t happen, not to you, not again.

And even if you are more enlightened, like me and my SIL, it is still unnerving.

Suck it up, folks. Life is changing. It would have been better to have developed a vision for what it could be, for the wonderful possibilities that it can hold, before now. But right now, well, don’t be expecting it to stay the same. Or for it to get back to “normal”. Rather, retirement and vacations will be seen as useless and wasteful things not needed by those living a useful life. Instead of “investing” in children's college funds, we can invest in building multiple generational lives with them, real life skills, etc. We can save ourselves, save the earth, and live moral lives worth living all at the same time.

There are alternative and hopeful visions to be seen out there. It is part of what I’ve been trying to model for all these years here. Come on folks, shake it off, suck it up, get on with it.

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Now SIL also didn't adjust it turns out, just blamed the current resident of the white house because he isn't white which I find interesting.  Vision is different than hallucination.