As we sit back and wonder which way the boat is going to tip in the stormy sea of the U.S. economy many people are wondering if they will have a job in the future or not. The housing market is quickly taking on water and may well take down other sectors of the economy. Across the nation job loses may well enter into other areas of the economy such as truck driving jobs, and jobs that require travel.
If we go back in our time machine to the early 1930’s and look at the unemployment rate we can see that unemployment reached just under 30 percent. In today’s population that would mean up to 90,000,000 people would be out of a job. Jobs needless to say would be in high demand and any type of job openings would be quickly filled.
The cause of great depressions can be debated. Most evidence though point to the monetary policy as the cause of economic depressions. Both in the past and in our current problem the Federal Reserve, which was by the way instituted to curb depressions, controlled and issued the monetary policy from 1913 to our present crisis. By expansion of the supply of money, and then the contraction of it quickly, can cause havoc on a economy. Lending money to anyone that has a pulse, the expansion, and then contracting the money supply by raising interest rates, is an event to watch for in a unstable economy. So far we have not seen aggressive contracting at the moment. However we have lived through the expansion phase, just look to all the unoccupied homes.
Another contributor is the government itself. By raising tariffs, price fixing, wage controls, high income tax, raising all other taxes, all by the way instituted during the great depression, did not help solve the problem. In fact it would lengthen out the depression, tripling the number of years compared to any of the previous economic downturns.
Job search would be a never ending task for many people during this time. The government would provide jobs eventually. But these hot jobs, though seeming to be a blessing, were no more a blessing than having someone break your arm on purpose and then thank them for taking you to the hospital. Sure your arm being broken would provide the doctor a job but you would still suffer pain till it was healed. One should be wary of a person that broke their arm in the first place.
Unemployment during the great depression, though very high, is no indicator of what will happen in our day. We have to remember agriculture was a larger employer then than it is today. Many families lived on farms and employed others to work on them as well. People still will need food in any type of recession or depression we face as a nation. However how well you eat, may well be a concern.
Whether we get our food domestically or by import is of no concern. The big concern will be how much will the government interfere in the free market, and how fast will the Federal Reserve contract the money supply.
During a SHTF situation, pain could become an annoyance for some, but unbearable for others.
If doctors are scarce and medicine becomes even scarcer, this one little weed, found all over North America and similar to morphine, could be a saving grace.
Prepper1cense 