I think by now many of us are getting the sense that things are not recovering in the economy as quickly as we had hoped and as the mainstream media reported it would. Each week we read that yet another company is laying off hundreds if not thousands of employees, adding to the already double-digit unemployment. It seems as though the only people benefiting are the big banks. The last time things were this bad, however, the country and the world saw global poverty as never before experienced.
Although it was only 80 years ago (which as a historical reference is nothing) the majority of people who lived through it are no longer among us. Today it’s something to “Google” rather than a reality for most. In fact, if you were to ask most Americans, they think things are just slow to bounce back, but bounce back they will. Some blame the current administration, while others blame the previous one. Quite honestly, it’s beyond the point of playing the blame game—it’s time to take a different approach.
In past recessions, things rebounded fairly quickly, and we saw that things were generally better than they were before the “slump”. What’s different about this financial crisis?
First of all, not since World War II and the Great Depression has our debt-to-gross domestic product ratio been this high. This ratio is a comparison of what a country owes and what it produces—in effect, it shows a country’s ability to pay its debt. The higher the debt-to-GDP ratio, the less likely the country will pay its debt back, and the higher its risk of default.
In 1946, our ratio sat at 121.25. World War II had just ended and the tab was due. As our servicemen and women came home, they re-entered civilian life, vying for jobs and consumer products. Industry boomed. By 1948, our debt-to-GDP ratio started falling, registering at 93.75. It continued to fall until the mid-80s, when another recession hit the United States.
Between multiple recessions, 9/11, consumer confidence and spending plummeting, and a Congress that still thinks the American taxpayers have an unlimited purse, we haven’t reversed that rising trend since. NAFTA and moving our industry to Mexico, Korea, and China makes it impossible for the American economy to recover. Service jobs are just not sufficient to keep an economy going.
As a result, our economy is having an even harder time rebounding this go-round. The last shock, a result of a confluence of things ranging from greedy banks to homeowners wanting it all and willing to use non-existent equity in their homes to get it, to poor judgment calls in both administrations—well, in a word, it’s a mess!
Rather than assume we can get out of this if we just relax and weather the storm, we need to think like people who want to survive.
But what does being a survivalist mean to you? That’s the question you have to answer. That answer will, in turn, help you formulate the next steps you need to take to begin living independent of society or government control.
- Do you want to pay off your home, car and credit cards, living debt free so any further economic downturn won’t be the end of the road? There are plenty of organizations out there that have the resources to help you do just that. Dave Ramsey is one source that has proven credentials and is Christian-based. Another is Dr. Gary North, an excellent source on biblical economics and debt reduction. You can find him at www.deliverancefromdebt.com [1].
- Are you interested in acquiring land where you can have a farm and a life that more mirrors our ancestors than the one you’ve been living while trying to climb the corporate ladder? A place where you can grow vegetables, have a few chickens, maybe even a goat or cow? Solutions from Science will soon release a publication that can help you learn how to take advantage of tax lien sales that will help you get the property you want for pennies on the dollar. Be on the lookout for it soon.
- Perhaps you’d rather stockpile gold so that you have tangible wealth in the event of an economic meltdown. Our book How to Buy Gold can help you avoid the scams and pitfalls that are out there.
Perhaps you feel that you need to do all the above and then some. Whatever your decision, the quicker you nail down your choices, the more prepared you’ll be when “stuff hits the fan.”
This isn’t a conservative issue, or a liberal issue. It doesn’t matter if you come from a Libertarian bent, a Republican background, or if you’re a dyed-in-the wool Democrat. Whatever your ideological or political beliefs are, at the end of the day, we’re all in this mess together. Only by working together and learning from each other can we hope to survive.
Things are changing—fast. We better all be ready if we don’t want to be taken for a ride down a slippery slope to nowhere.