Poverty is a state of SHTF

posted in: Prepping, SHTF, Survival | 0

What happens when the middleclass disappears? And how do you plan for it?

It is a rather well documented tendency that the middleclass is disappearing from society throughout the western countries. And especially in the US. People are getting poorer. Depending on the level of poverty we will see, it will undoubtedly call for survival skills of some kind.

A lot of factors play a role in this scenario, but I think it is fair to say that it is a very realistic SHTF scenario. It may not be something that will strike suddenly, but more likely something that will develop gradually over time as it already is in many places.

Jaron Lanier, a digital visionary says: “the Web kills jobs, wealth – even democracy”. Is he right? Is it the beginning of a society breakdown that we’re experiencing? Or is it the beginning of a new economy? One thing is for sure, jobs as we know them are disappearing. The big question is: What will replace them? And how do you prepare for a scenario like this?

 

Kodak_Tower_Commercial_Street

“Kodak employed 140,000 people. Instagram, 13.”

“At the height of its power, Kodak employed more than 140,000 people and was worth $28 billion. They even invented the first digital camera. But today Kodak is bankrupt, and the new face of digital photography has become Instagram. When Instagram was sold to Facebook for a billion dollars in 2012, it employed only 13 people. Where did all those jobs disappear? And what happened to the wealth that all those middle-class jobs created?” Jaron Lanier says.

http://www.salon.com/2013/05/12/jaron_lanier_the_internet_destroyed_the_middle_class/

 

 

 

Photo redistributed under creative commons license from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastman_Kodak#mediaviewer/File:Kodak_Tower_Commercial_Street.JPG