I believe so. It is also what allows us (Americans) to live well beyond our means through exporting our debt to other countries.
That stops if we are no longer the world's reserve currency.
The way I understand the situation is that our way of life will drastically change should this come to pass. Mortgages, car loans, personal credit cards - we are a debt based society.
Hopefully most on this site have been eradicating their debt as much as possible these past few years as part of their prepping.
Consider the shock and behavior shift it would take to move back to one where if you didn't have the money, you would do without until you did because the credit just is not available.
Let's be real, we aren't living beyond our means. We have one of the largest landmasses in the world, and it is replete with resources.
We would've been and should have been totally self sufficient, as American companies have basically made most innovations the world has seen and had we not allowed them to give them to China for cheap manufacturing, we would have had essentially a world monopoly on everything.
Which we could do again.
Bring jobs back to the U.S., cut frivolous spending on social bullshit and we would generally be fine.
Without skilled labor at all levels, those 'resources' will stay where they are and not become intermediate or final goods.
We have 10 lawyers for one engineer. Twenty (or more) realtors per engineer. Paper pusher to producer ratio is about 100 to 1, and rising. Most engineers are old, getting older. Plants are closing, technicians aren't replaced.
But tattoo 'artists' are increasing in numbers.
It's not that easy to come back from a loss of technical knowledge. It takes a while.
Just starting out of college, I was talking with an older engineer about a well known company that was in the process of going down the tubes. I asked him what he thought was causing that company's demise, and he said "They lost their technology". I'm like "what??" Then he said "They lost their 3 key engineers, and would never recover from the lost talent". He was absolutely correct. Some people are very hard to replace, in spite of what some managers like to think.
AND you have elucidated what started happening back in the late '70s...China/India came on the scene and then around that time , Windows came out and the world has NOT been the same since...I was an mech. engineer and I worked on the VERY LAST OIL REFINERY IN TEXAS AND THE UNITED STATES...we started buying oil from the Saudi's...
Also, MEs don't use the OLD pencil calcs, they use a damn computer...and the Engineering SCHOOLS are filled with FOREIGN STUDENT WHO ARE PAYING EXORBITANT FEES that the American students ALSO have to pay...
Our OWN downfall is through university greed...this also goes for Computer Science programs...AND THE CHEATING THAT GOES ON WITH THESE STUDENTS IS BEYOND THE PALE...Shut the "collage factories" down, send the students back to their own lands, tell the unis ----NO FEDERAL FUNDS OF ANY KIND.... you sink or swim on your own merits...
Apologize for the screed but I am a "RETIRED" programmer AND engineer!!!
Lets just use a small example - an aspiring 6 sigma blackbelt was pointing out all the failures occurring at an inspection station - had to spend hours educating him that the root causes were occurring upstream and the results were being caught by the inspection system - it was his job to find the root causes, but the Pareto chart pointed at the inspection system. Eventually got him pointed in the right direction....
It has other issues too, grift, wokeism etc, but the FIRST thing it lost was its engineering culture, to be replaced with 'sales' and 'business' culture.
The IEEE did a study on the failure of the space shuttle boosters. NASA managers ignored the advice of their engineers who spoke up about the risks involved launching in cold weather. What was particularly interesting though was that that same culture decided on the company they chose to build the boosters, and rather than go with the company with the track record of success, they went with the company with the management structure they preferred.
Not to poke a fight, or cause any malcontent, but I am basing this solely from my life experience where I have seen few engineers become successful managers. I have seen non-engineers become very good at generating ideas, but because they lack the engineering disciplines need the engineers to work out into real time products. Now I'm not against engineering by any means, in fact I know we need as many as we can produce. Here's my argument. Engineers go to school to design, build and create concepts into things. Non-engineers attend "other" disciplines (management) schools to oversee the other important support aspects and dynamics of making the idea into reality. When an outfit can dial in two disciplines to work cohessively, it flows. I have come to firmly believe that in order to survive and flourish is to keep the disciplines seperate but functioning together. Paying the engineers the salary for doing exactly what they do of designing, building and creating while paying the managers their salaries of supporting the engineers to meet the objectives. Allow the engineers to be free of the logistic burdens and do what they went to school for and the managers to carry the logistics burdens all the while an open comms line between the two disciplines to ensure target objectives are met.
My case in point of experience is I was employed at a highly respected U.S. Naval research and development facility as a Program Manager and saw too many young engineers promoted to management positions over a talent pool of former military types with combined 200+ years experience in personnel/logistic management. The long term result was a group of very talented and promising engineers were pulled from viable projects and over time they lost touch of what they originally attended school to do as they became mired in the logistic support arena for these projects. This often resulted in the person leaving for "greener pastures" and the promotion cycle would repeat itself. At the same time, the non engineers mentioned were designated as engineer technicians supporting roles were helpless in advancing some projects because the managing engineers wouldn't listen to the input. Budgets often went over the limits and production targets were missed. It had become so convoluted of mismatched disciplines that I eventually too left. The big difference was this was a U.S. Government facility, not a private firm and monies were always available..... so the cycle is probably still going on.
Again, I use this posting based solely from my personal experience and not looking to insult or demean any career path one chooses. Yes, there are the exceptional talents that appear from time to time that can handle the rigor, but I honestly believe that if an organization recognizes the talents and utilize them accordingly with disciplines where non engineers manage and engineers engineer separated yet parallel to each other, phenomenal things can happen.
You wrote a lot to unpack, and I won't get into everything, as that would take more time than I have today.
A couple points - a lot of engineers have the degree, but not the mindset. Some techs do have the mindset, but didn't get a degree, and most large organizations require the degree (for good reasons and poor ones as well).
Attitude matters. Doesn't matter - degree or not - people with poor attitudes are a PITA to work with - doesn't matter how smart they are.
Engineers are generally underpaid by a lot and few companies recognize a technical career path. This is also true of the best techs. The easiest / fastest way to advance in a career is to manage others. I have a daughter who could have become an engineer - she has all the tools and talent, but decided it was more trouble than it was worth. I can't blame her for feeling that way.
Concur in all aspects. I saw your post and needed to vent. I was frustrated (still am somewhat) with the fact that we couldn't deliver to the warfighter what they needed in a timely manner. Cost over runs, missed target deadlines, etc.all because of inexperienced personnel in key positions. Not their fault, especially when pushed by their superiors to fill the vacated slots. Our young engineers were brought in at the higher payscales for their experience levels and within a short timeline were given managerial positions which was crushing their abilities. The maddening part was the talent pool of the SMEs (military) who knew exactly what was needed and couldn't advance because the position required an engineering degree. That was where I worked and the senior/executive management mindset. Have a great day fren!!
Correct. We have more people with skills in getting food stamps and medical for free than any other country. Those who comes from other countries don’t want to work or want to be an executive without working and no skills. That’s the type of people are coming plus terrorists and thieves murderers, etc.
The realtors? The insurance agents? The 'health care' workers (you know the ones in the reception that can barely speak)? The tattoo 'artists'? The lawyers? The MBAs?
Who?
The illegals?
The most important resource of a country is its human talent. This country has been blowing it away on shit paper pushing jobs for the last 80 years. And now we're in the terminal phase.
Romans could build aqueducts and had cities with > 1M inhabitants. Check what happened after the fall of the western roman empire in the west.
Hovels & mudhouses.
Loss of technical knowledge & skilled craftmanship is a real thing and it takes DECADES to get it back.
Really? Have you taken a look at our national debt? We are living beyond our means.
Every spending bill passed does not have a corresponding tax $ coming in to cover it.
And this isn't just by a little, the national debt is 14 digits according to the Massie interview. We totally are living beyond our means.
The things that you state - Large land mass, resource rich, innovation, US based companies, jobs, etc. All true.
We should not be where we are. We could get out of this (I believe) - however, we would need to shift massively to do so. Our thinking up until now is spend and spend more.
According to Massie, even congress is apathetic about it.
The “classic monetary reasoning” that the only way to get out of this amount of National Debt, is to “monetize” that Debt. That means print the shit out if money and dilute/devalue the existing debt. That also means they will dilute and devalue EVERYTHING denominated in US dollars. EVERYTHING. Property, investments, currency, everything. That also means the COST of EVERYTHING after every single time that ‘printer’ cranks out US dollars goes up just a little bit. After they do that over and over and over, then you are paying $4 for a carton of 12 eggs. Economics: the slow burning fuse.
Ok, and my understanding is that being the world's reserve currency allows this. Without being the reserve currency, wheelbarrows of dollars for a handful of groceries comes to mind.
Propose an alternative.
I'm not being snarky, I am genuinely curious. How would you do this? What would it take to move the mindset away from this paradigm.
🤯. HOLY SHIT. That is fucking criminal. That is what a 40lb bag of chicken feed costs. I gave away 4 dozen today. I could not live there, unless I could raise birds and sell eggs. Id be rich.
We own a business. I have to do the taxes every month, and I divide them into two basic categories, cash or credit card sales. The cash sales used to be upwards of 50 a month. Last month, I had two. I think it would be hard to devalue our currency when our currency currently is plastic credit.
That is exactly why its devalued, a credit card is the ability to print money. The high interest rate means that percentage of interest charged devalues every dollar digitally printed by the use of that card. Further devalued by the charge to the business to take it. The dollar is worth about 2 cents and if we are honest it's really worth zero already. Like a dead fish out of water, still alive and kicking but no where but death to go.
My family also owns a small business. My dad used to make trips to the bank everyday for cash. Now it is 1-2x/week.
I have noticed an uptick in small business giving 3-4% discounts for cash because of the card fees charged to the business. The money that the major credit card companies make is insane. It literally borders on loan sharing rates.
Lucky for us, the Congress/Senate just recently banned CBDC in the U.S.
Also, the SCOTUS just allowed States to decouple from the feds and issue their own State Bank-backed currency.
Plus, a large swath of States have just cancelled tax on gold/silver and a lot of them have gone so far as to allow metals to be used in banking transactions, now.
Good. I'm tired of being represented on the world stage by a criminal syndicate claiming my nation's banner.
🖕[🤡]
twstalker - https://x.com/BRICSinfo/status/1799189559818756448
Full Interview at TCN: https://tuckercarlson.com/tucker-show-thomas-massie The above piece is at 3:20.
It was a great interview. I didn't know Massie before but now I think he is one of the few good guys in Congress.
Hey, is there a link to that information about Massie backup power?
I didn't know him until I watched a doc a couple years back featuring him and Matt Gaetz.
They have already put the gear wheels in motion to stop using US dollar worldwide.
Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't that the only thing giving the dollar any value?
I believe so. It is also what allows us (Americans) to live well beyond our means through exporting our debt to other countries. That stops if we are no longer the world's reserve currency.
The way I understand the situation is that our way of life will drastically change should this come to pass. Mortgages, car loans, personal credit cards - we are a debt based society.
Hopefully most on this site have been eradicating their debt as much as possible these past few years as part of their prepping.
Consider the shock and behavior shift it would take to move back to one where if you didn't have the money, you would do without until you did because the credit just is not available.
Let's be real, we aren't living beyond our means. We have one of the largest landmasses in the world, and it is replete with resources.
We would've been and should have been totally self sufficient, as American companies have basically made most innovations the world has seen and had we not allowed them to give them to China for cheap manufacturing, we would have had essentially a world monopoly on everything.
Which we could do again.
Bring jobs back to the U.S., cut frivolous spending on social bullshit and we would generally be fine.
Without skilled labor at all levels, those 'resources' will stay where they are and not become intermediate or final goods.
We have 10 lawyers for one engineer. Twenty (or more) realtors per engineer. Paper pusher to producer ratio is about 100 to 1, and rising. Most engineers are old, getting older. Plants are closing, technicians aren't replaced.
But tattoo 'artists' are increasing in numbers.
It's not that easy to come back from a loss of technical knowledge. It takes a while.
Just starting out of college, I was talking with an older engineer about a well known company that was in the process of going down the tubes. I asked him what he thought was causing that company's demise, and he said "They lost their technology". I'm like "what??" Then he said "They lost their 3 key engineers, and would never recover from the lost talent". He was absolutely correct. Some people are very hard to replace, in spite of what some managers like to think.
AND you have elucidated what started happening back in the late '70s...China/India came on the scene and then around that time , Windows came out and the world has NOT been the same since...I was an mech. engineer and I worked on the VERY LAST OIL REFINERY IN TEXAS AND THE UNITED STATES...we started buying oil from the Saudi's...
Also, MEs don't use the OLD pencil calcs, they use a damn computer...and the Engineering SCHOOLS are filled with FOREIGN STUDENT WHO ARE PAYING EXORBITANT FEES that the American students ALSO have to pay...
Our OWN downfall is through university greed...this also goes for Computer Science programs...AND THE CHEATING THAT GOES ON WITH THESE STUDENTS IS BEYOND THE PALE...Shut the "collage factories" down, send the students back to their own lands, tell the unis ----NO FEDERAL FUNDS OF ANY KIND.... you sink or swim on your own merits...
Apologize for the screed but I am a "RETIRED" programmer AND engineer!!!
💯 true..
Where to even go with everything you stated...
Lets just use a small example - an aspiring 6 sigma blackbelt was pointing out all the failures occurring at an inspection station - had to spend hours educating him that the root causes were occurring upstream and the results were being caught by the inspection system - it was his job to find the root causes, but the Pareto chart pointed at the inspection system. Eventually got him pointed in the right direction....
Been there, Done That!!!!!
Case in point, Boeing.
It has other issues too, grift, wokeism etc, but the FIRST thing it lost was its engineering culture, to be replaced with 'sales' and 'business' culture.
The rest followed.
The IEEE did a study on the failure of the space shuttle boosters. NASA managers ignored the advice of their engineers who spoke up about the risks involved launching in cold weather. What was particularly interesting though was that that same culture decided on the company they chose to build the boosters, and rather than go with the company with the track record of success, they went with the company with the management structure they preferred.
Not to poke a fight, or cause any malcontent, but I am basing this solely from my life experience where I have seen few engineers become successful managers. I have seen non-engineers become very good at generating ideas, but because they lack the engineering disciplines need the engineers to work out into real time products. Now I'm not against engineering by any means, in fact I know we need as many as we can produce. Here's my argument. Engineers go to school to design, build and create concepts into things. Non-engineers attend "other" disciplines (management) schools to oversee the other important support aspects and dynamics of making the idea into reality. When an outfit can dial in two disciplines to work cohessively, it flows. I have come to firmly believe that in order to survive and flourish is to keep the disciplines seperate but functioning together. Paying the engineers the salary for doing exactly what they do of designing, building and creating while paying the managers their salaries of supporting the engineers to meet the objectives. Allow the engineers to be free of the logistic burdens and do what they went to school for and the managers to carry the logistics burdens all the while an open comms line between the two disciplines to ensure target objectives are met. My case in point of experience is I was employed at a highly respected U.S. Naval research and development facility as a Program Manager and saw too many young engineers promoted to management positions over a talent pool of former military types with combined 200+ years experience in personnel/logistic management. The long term result was a group of very talented and promising engineers were pulled from viable projects and over time they lost touch of what they originally attended school to do as they became mired in the logistic support arena for these projects. This often resulted in the person leaving for "greener pastures" and the promotion cycle would repeat itself. At the same time, the non engineers mentioned were designated as engineer technicians supporting roles were helpless in advancing some projects because the managing engineers wouldn't listen to the input. Budgets often went over the limits and production targets were missed. It had become so convoluted of mismatched disciplines that I eventually too left. The big difference was this was a U.S. Government facility, not a private firm and monies were always available..... so the cycle is probably still going on. Again, I use this posting based solely from my personal experience and not looking to insult or demean any career path one chooses. Yes, there are the exceptional talents that appear from time to time that can handle the rigor, but I honestly believe that if an organization recognizes the talents and utilize them accordingly with disciplines where non engineers manage and engineers engineer separated yet parallel to each other, phenomenal things can happen.
You wrote a lot to unpack, and I won't get into everything, as that would take more time than I have today.
A couple points - a lot of engineers have the degree, but not the mindset. Some techs do have the mindset, but didn't get a degree, and most large organizations require the degree (for good reasons and poor ones as well).
Attitude matters. Doesn't matter - degree or not - people with poor attitudes are a PITA to work with - doesn't matter how smart they are.
Engineers are generally underpaid by a lot and few companies recognize a technical career path. This is also true of the best techs. The easiest / fastest way to advance in a career is to manage others. I have a daughter who could have become an engineer - she has all the tools and talent, but decided it was more trouble than it was worth. I can't blame her for feeling that way.
Concur in all aspects. I saw your post and needed to vent. I was frustrated (still am somewhat) with the fact that we couldn't deliver to the warfighter what they needed in a timely manner. Cost over runs, missed target deadlines, etc.all because of inexperienced personnel in key positions. Not their fault, especially when pushed by their superiors to fill the vacated slots. Our young engineers were brought in at the higher payscales for their experience levels and within a short timeline were given managerial positions which was crushing their abilities. The maddening part was the talent pool of the SMEs (military) who knew exactly what was needed and couldn't advance because the position required an engineering degree. That was where I worked and the senior/executive management mindset. Have a great day fren!!
Correct. We have more people with skills in getting food stamps and medical for free than any other country. Those who comes from other countries don’t want to work or want to be an executive without working and no skills. That’s the type of people are coming plus terrorists and thieves murderers, etc.
AND THAT IS SOME DYNOMITE THAT I HAVEN'T SEEN IN A LONG TIME!!!!!!
WOWZA!!!!🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Drill baby, drill. And accept only gold or repatriated dollars.
Who will do the drilling?
The realtors? The insurance agents? The 'health care' workers (you know the ones in the reception that can barely speak)? The tattoo 'artists'? The lawyers? The MBAs?
Who?
The illegals?
The most important resource of a country is its human talent. This country has been blowing it away on shit paper pushing jobs for the last 80 years. And now we're in the terminal phase.
Romans could build aqueducts and had cities with > 1M inhabitants. Check what happened after the fall of the western roman empire in the west.
Hovels & mudhouses.
Loss of technical knowledge & skilled craftmanship is a real thing and it takes DECADES to get it back.
Read my mind. 👏🏻 we need to go back where things were better and people used to work hard.
Really? Have you taken a look at our national debt? We are living beyond our means.
Every spending bill passed does not have a corresponding tax $ coming in to cover it.
And this isn't just by a little, the national debt is 14 digits according to the Massie interview. We totally are living beyond our means.
The things that you state - Large land mass, resource rich, innovation, US based companies, jobs, etc. All true.
We should not be where we are. We could get out of this (I believe) - however, we would need to shift massively to do so. Our thinking up until now is spend and spend more.
According to Massie, even congress is apathetic about it.
The “classic monetary reasoning” that the only way to get out of this amount of National Debt, is to “monetize” that Debt. That means print the shit out if money and dilute/devalue the existing debt. That also means they will dilute and devalue EVERYTHING denominated in US dollars. EVERYTHING. Property, investments, currency, everything. That also means the COST of EVERYTHING after every single time that ‘printer’ cranks out US dollars goes up just a little bit. After they do that over and over and over, then you are paying $4 for a carton of 12 eggs. Economics: the slow burning fuse.
Ok, and my understanding is that being the world's reserve currency allows this. Without being the reserve currency, wheelbarrows of dollars for a handful of groceries comes to mind.
Propose an alternative.
I'm not being snarky, I am genuinely curious. How would you do this? What would it take to move the mindset away from this paradigm.
You are 100% on the money.
No alternative … gotta blow it all up. Thats just how it is. No more fiat bullshit. Pandora is out of the box … this cant be ‘fixed’.
Are you kidding? Eggs at the farmers market here in Calicrazy just went up to 12 bucks a dozen.
🤯. HOLY SHIT. That is fucking criminal. That is what a 40lb bag of chicken feed costs. I gave away 4 dozen today. I could not live there, unless I could raise birds and sell eggs. Id be rich.
lol, no its not
Literally one of the few Congressmen that I think actually give a damn about this country
We own a business. I have to do the taxes every month, and I divide them into two basic categories, cash or credit card sales. The cash sales used to be upwards of 50 a month. Last month, I had two. I think it would be hard to devalue our currency when our currency currently is plastic credit.
That is exactly why its devalued, a credit card is the ability to print money. The high interest rate means that percentage of interest charged devalues every dollar digitally printed by the use of that card. Further devalued by the charge to the business to take it. The dollar is worth about 2 cents and if we are honest it's really worth zero already. Like a dead fish out of water, still alive and kicking but no where but death to go.
My family also owns a small business. My dad used to make trips to the bank everyday for cash. Now it is 1-2x/week.
I have noticed an uptick in small business giving 3-4% discounts for cash because of the card fees charged to the business. The money that the major credit card companies make is insane. It literally borders on loan sharing rates.
What they are doing is trying to kill off the US Dollar! Digital banking INCOMING
Lucky for us, the Congress/Senate just recently banned CBDC in the U.S.
Also, the SCOTUS just allowed States to decouple from the feds and issue their own State Bank-backed currency.
Plus, a large swath of States have just cancelled tax on gold/silver and a lot of them have gone so far as to allow metals to be used in banking transactions, now.
Well, well now that could get interesting…. I for one would like to see how this plays out.
I could just possibly imagine going into a bank now, in the near future, exchanging some of my silver for cash 💵
Cash backed by natural currency 😎
No, thats incorrect. it's going to stop using the private federal reserve note issued by the money masters. Good riddance
Exactly. Now, perhaps, we can go back to the Silver and Gold U.S. Eagle.
Until our food, technology and engineering can only be bought with the USD.