firewood and beyond
I'll be the doubting Thomas of the group. We saw more people in the firewood business than ever before, mostly out of work guys looking to make a buck or some were just trying to augment income. A few seemed to want to sell enough to justify them buying a splitter for their own use. As oil goes up this fall more will be burning wood, but their will also be more in the business. People in my area are selling it at rock bottom prices as it is. The job market is not likely to get better and you'll see a lot of part timers and hacks in the business again. Some home owners will seize the chance to buy their own splitter. This will be the situation in my area as wood is plentiful and it's not hard to find somewhere to cut.
--that is exactly what I am seeing. as the economy gets worse, a lot of part timers or trying to be full timers are showing up, selling firewood, running full time yardsales or hitting flea markets, scrapping, both legit and by theft, assorted other crime, etc..
I even started seeing joe homeowners in my area who don't burn wood start to cut up and split and stack what wood they have outside in their front yard with "for sale" signs. Years past it would be dragged out there with a "free" sign. Those are clues, along with watching how the pawnshop stuff changes, how many rides "for sale" sitting in peoples yards, stuff like that. It's been getting steadily worse around where I am the past three years now. There's still a lot of wealth and people making money and riding around in fancy rides, but the opposite end of that spectrum is increasing fast. I mean you just don't see that many legitimate jobs in the classifieds either compared to some years ago, it's like "sell avon" "join the gun toters and go overseas and dodge IEDs", "sell tannning beds make huge dollars".
Areas with a lot of government workers per capita look like the economy is "good", they get their money regardless and are in the leaast threat of getting fired or having their jobs offshored, etc, whereas other areas are much different.
I've been on a lot of forums the past few years and reading between the lines that is the impression I get when people comment on the economy, they tend to think their area is representative of everywhere, and it just ain't like that.
This economy is in bad shape, real bad shape, very generally speaking, across the whole. Them black suited fatcats are running scared now because they have about exhausted all their little tricks to keep their economic scams running. You can just shift money from one pocket to another so much before you got to admit you ain't making any new MONEY worth a flip. You can only get foreigners to swap you real stuff, durable goods or energy, for various brands of what are really just IOUs for so long. they just ain't gonna do that forever, they ain't that dumb.
Major headlines all over showing that the dollar as sole world's reserve currency is about to end. THAT will be the major economic and social tipping point.
I sincerely *doubt* most people have any inkling what this will really mean when it comes to life inside the USA.
We have very few people still kicking who were full working adults during the great depression. So we have no..hmm...generational/tribal knowledge that is being imparted, it is mostly theoretical to most folks alive today. They haven't lived in a *real* bad economy yet and because their particular personal economy is still good, well "it'll never happen" "it won't get bad" etc.
All I got to say is good luck with that! History just don't lie, we have dozens of previous empires to look at for clues. An empire in decline is easy to see. How fast and hard is a variable, but not the outcome.
What has happened to the USA is an example of "corporate raiding", just done on a hugemongous and unprecedented scale.
