Chaos everywhere - preparing for uncertain times

The world may feel more uncertain than ever before.  There just doesn’t appear to be any level of security in the future, both in the job market and in the way, prices are going.  Millions of Americans feel stressed about the future, and they don’t know what is coming down the pipe for the next few months and years and how to deal with it.  So, what does this all mean?  What does an increasing level of chaos and uncertainty mean for average Americans and more importantly, how do we deal with it?  Consider this.  Most senior citizens rely to some extent on Social Security and the government funded Medicare and Medicaid programs to survive.  There are rumors floating around that Social Security will be cut and the healthcare programs will be eliminated – this increases the stress seniors must deal with not only in terms of today but the future.  What is one possible solution they can turn to?  Moving in with their kids, who have a family to look after on their own or try to squeeze more roommates into their houses to help pay the bills if Social Security is cut.  Conclusion – the services that rely on seniors to spend their social security checks will cut back because the income they rely on is suddenly not there and they will need to let go of staff that take care of seniors.  An implosion of the network that is built up to cater to seniors causes a huge part of the economy collapse. 

Scenario two.  Millions of government jobs may disappear due to the cuts in the system.  All those people who previously paid mortgages, bought food, paid for utilities and other essentials, paid school taxes, run out of funds to continue supporting their local economies.  This leads to services being eliminated, and all those public sector employees now competing with everyone else for private sector jobs.  Conclusion.  An implosion of the economic forces driving the areas where large swaths of government centers are located. 

Scenario three.  Unemployment rises to over 15% due to the collapse of the sectionalized economic output, impacting now nationwide areas, such as housing, transportation and other vital and necessary economic drivers of the overall US economy resulting in a banking crisis as people stop paying their loans.  Conclusion – a general collapse of the US economy, throwing the world economy into a potential recession or depression, putting a downward pressure on the entire global system, as it happened in the 1920s and 1930s. 

Inevitable course of action – a world war that will eliminate a vast part of the economic buildup of the past 75 years resulting in huge shortages, suffering and potentially famine that we haven’t seen since the Third Reich rolled its tanks into Poland. 

Granted – this is the most worst outcome one can draw but even a collapsing regional economy resulting in millions unemployed can have a huge impact on everything.    How do you prepare for something like that?  The answer is, unless you have limitless resources, you really can’t.  So, you have to do the next best thing.  You must do everything in your power today, to prepare for an uncertain future that may or may not come.  The best outcome we all hope for is stability and an economic future that allows people to attain a level of sustainable lifestyle that they can find acceptable.  That is the secret sauce to what to aspire to – a level of acceptable lifestyle that allows someone to live in a manner that they don’t find objectionable.  This does not mean that someone becomes wealthy.  This does not mean someone is without problems.  What this means is that a person, who has attained an acceptable level of lifestyle is ok with handling the problems thrown at them and have a fair degree of confidence that they can survive. 

At the base of it all, that is what stability is, after all.  Once stability is achieved then we can think of finer things in life.  A used Toyota that is reliable and somewhat comfortable but without AC in the summer, is an acceptable level of stability to travel in.  A new RAV4 with all the bells and whistles is the finer thing in life.  A shopping cart full of food that can sustain a family for two weeks but requires maximum effort to use every single item to maximum efficiency and plan every meal, is an acceptable level of survivability.  Going out to dinner occasionally is a luxury.  Paying the mortgage or rent on time, but just barely, by really watching the spending every single day of the month and not spending on anything other than essentials is an acceptable level of survivability.  Perhaps a little stressful, but manageable.  Having the ability to pay weekly and make extra payments towards a mortgage and not missing that money is a finer thing in life.  Having to come up with various ways to entertain ourselves and kids that cost no money, such as going to parks, public performances, playing board games and occasionally watching a movie is an acceptable level of survivability.  Being able to get dressed up, go to a fine restaurant and then the Symphony is a luxury. 

So, as times become more and more uncertain and frankly, chaotic due to the chaos being rained down on the country, unless we have already been thinking strategically about an acceptable level of survivability, we should start immediately adopting a form of action that assumes that our resources will be stretched to the limit as time goes on.  The only response that we have under our control in these uncertain times is to batten down the hatches and assume that to survive these uncertain times, we will have to adopt a mindset that figures out what our level of an acceptable lifestyle is.  The first rule of surviving an economic war is to pull all available resources to ensure the long-term survivability of our budget.  Under a normal circumstance, we would be bombarded by messages of positivity by elected leaders, assuring us that to avoid an economic downturn, we should be good Americans and just live normally as we would otherwise and then everything will be ok. 

We don’t have that now.  What we are getting is absolute chaos at the top, and if you watch elected leaders holding town halls across the country, from them we are getting a bunch of turtles, pulling in their heads and tales and complaining about how rude their constituents are by daring to question them.  We appear to have a lot of elected leaders at the national level, who are frankly scared of their voters and I am not confident that these trying times we are going through can afford to have leaders who fear their voters and scared of the times to reign in the chaos and the uncertainty and restore order. 

So, as individuals, we must do the things that will provide us with the stability we need to survive.  First things first.  As I said, we have to sit down and find that acceptable level of survivability that we will need to stick to and assume that until a new level of leadership is elected, we will have to plan for that acceptable level of survivability.  Second.  We must start building a community around us that we can rely on to help us through hard times which are coming.  Make no mistake about it – things will get rough in America.  No question about it.  So in order to survive them, let’s start building communities of support that we can belong to.  Does your car need work done to it?  Do you have a mechanic in your community of support that can assist you?  What can you do in return?  Can you perhaps take time to take their elderly parents to the doctor for them so they can concentrate on their business?  Or do you have a skill that people can rely on?  Do you have a backyard that is good for growing fruits and vegetables?  Do you have a community support member who has chickens?  Do you want to work with them to trade vegetables for eggs? 

I understand this sounds ludicrous – sounds like going backwards in time to the 1800s.  But the time to figure out how to get through a rough time is not when you start experiencing it.  It is now.  Is there no community of support in your area yet that you can belong to?  Start one.  Call your friends and family, call acquaintances, find out if they would be interested in participating in a simple weekly or monthly newsletter that everyone agrees to contribute to.  Nobody is willing to write and distribute the newsletter?  Then you do it.  Get started building a network for your area that folks can belong to because times will get tough in America. A lot of people who are on the edge of survivability will need a lot of help in the future and that help will not be there.  They will be literally left out in the cold and heat.  There is a lot of talk about the cutting of social security to seniors to fund a new level of tax cuts for the wealthy.  If that comes to pass, a lot of seniors will be without a means of survivability.  Including veterans who fought for this country.  People who worked hard and contributed to the nation.  They will need help, and that help will not be forthcoming from any heartless and cruel administration that cuts their survivability.  This is not the time to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps.  This is the time to start building alliances and communities with your fellow Americans and work together so that when the tough times do arrive, and they will arrive, make no mistake about it, we can be prepared to take them head on.  Our nation is not made strong by the top 10%.  Our nation is made strong by the 90% who toil and work and sacrifice and we are strong because we know how to work hard and to sacrifice.  I wholeheartedly reject the notion that people who have a lot of resources work any harder than those of us who don’t have their wealth.  In fact, I think we work 100s of times harder than they do.  Because if you see them on TV shows, if you see them on the news, if you see them on social media, all they ever seem to do is complain, accuse other people of things, come off as greedy moochers who just want more more more of everything.  They come across as the most ungrateful, most greedy, most grabby, most un-patriotic people you can imagine. 

What do 90% of hardworking Americans do?  We get up every morning.  Some of us by 3:30 every morning.  We go to work.  We work 8 hours then come home.  Some of us have second jobs we go to every other day.  We work until 9 PM.  Then come home after working 14-hour days and we prepare dinner and clean the house and then totally exhausted, go to sleep and then start again.  Yeah yeah yeah, I heard about how supposedly one CEO sleeps in his office… whatever.  He doesn’t have to clean the house.  He doesn’t have to take care of kids.  He doesn’t have to worry about everything.  He has no care in the world other than what he creates for himself.  Average Americans work twice as hard as he does and they still have to run a household, take care of their kids, take care of chores and worry about everything. 

That’s why average Americans will survive this chaos.  Because we know how to survive.  We know how to pull together when times are tough.  We know how to build a community because we know right from wrong, and we don’t treat our fellow Americans with disdain or outright hatred.  We take care of each other. We build things, we don’t destroy things.  We are survivors.  We are America Strong.