We have become so accustomed to living life as we have been, whatever that may look like for each of us, that we have to varying degrees suffered a sense of shock since our economies have become depressed. It is a built-in part of our economic cycle that there are periods of contraction followed by shorter periods of expansion. Lately we have seen more expansion, and most of us grew up with easy credit, borrowing and spending were part of our economic system as we knew it. We thought nothing of borrowing heavily, buying our way to happiness and a sense of “the good life”. Lately though, our thinking has changed. We now talk of saving, spending less on things we use every day, trying to need less in the first place, and some of us, whether we realize it or not, are really looking for ways to live off the grid.
As I started to say yesterday, the “opting out” revolution seems to come from the sense that in order to survive, we will have to find different people with whom we can play this game of life if we are to have a fair shot at it, a game in which dollars are not used as a means of exchange, or in which whatever means of exchange we use is not controlled by people whom we don’t even know. Everyone I know and meet or read about who makes less than $100,000 USD per year is feeling the pain of America’s economic contraction.
Today everyone not in the upper tax brackets is in freak out over their economic security. Going cold-turkey from spending has been hard on those who used to be middle class or upper middle class, the strata of our society that really drove our economic expansion with their consumer spending, which has led to common use of new terms such as “frugality fatigue”. Even that phenomenon is wearing off, though.
The behavioral shift that has taken place in the aftermath of this consumer spending binge, our economic hangover if you will, is similar to the behavioral changes that followed the spike in gas prices. Permanent changes in behavior and consumer spending took place because of the prolonged and unexpected period of high gas prices. We are now entering a phase of acceptance that we can never trust again that if we work hard we will be rewarded with a good paying job that provides a nice home in a good neighborhood where our kids can go to good schools and we can drive decent cars that are well-maintained, and still have money for vacations and Christmas presents and college funds. In place of that trust in the system we took for an impermeable reality, we now look more and more to self-reliance and to our local community for economic exchange. Overwhelmed by the staggering and incomprehensible workings of our complex economy, the only thing about which we understand is that it is on the verge of collapse, we seek instead to make our immediate surroundings, our neighborhoods, our homes, safe and viable.
In this blog over the next week or two I will share with you, the reader, the steps people are taking to feel safe once again, to assure them that they can survive an economic collapse or a power outage due to a natural disaster, or the loss of income for an extended period of time. These responses include but are not limited to: Thrift store shopping; growing food at home; earning extra income; stocking up a supply of food and water; ways to stay healthy for those with no health insurance; and buying local and handmade items from people they can shake hands and talk with, local people, rather than from a nameless, faceless corporation, just as Faith Popcorn predicted we would after the banks were bailed out and people felt burned by Wall Street. The undercurrent of this thread of topics will be the low-tech revolution, growing out of the grass roots response into what I believe will become varying degrees of practice and acceptance nationwide.
*Note: Sadly, one of the very things Americans are doing nowadays to protect themselves from economic collapse or to remain self-sufficient in the face of a Katrina-level natural disaster has potentially become illegal. The Senate passed the National Defense Authorization Act last week, making America a battleground upon which our military can act as if in a war zone, detaining without due process or habeas corpus or even assassinate any citizen suspected of being a terrorist. Unfortunately, part of their definition of a terrorist was a person who has more than 7 days worth of food stored. Doesn’t that mean pretty much everyone who shops at Costco?
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