Is Poverty is far more likely than Anarchy in your lifetime?

[roisigns]

Is Poverty is far more likely than Anarchy in your future?

Is Poverty is far more likely than Anarchy in your future? I would suggest that it is.

How would you get by if unemployed and without unemployment insurance? Guns are not the solution in that situation.

 

[spencer rifle]

Guns could be part of the solution - they and associated ammo could be sold. Food preps are still food, and can be used to defray expenses. Chicken or egg - does anarchy lead to poverty or poverty lead to anarchy? History shows it goes both ways.

 

[findingZzero]

First poverty, then revolution, then anarchy! Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité
Then the guillotine.

 

[rockhopper46038]

I say yes for some, no for others. I get that some people are living paycheck to paycheck. One bobble and they could easily start a slide into poverty. It could happen tomorrow. Others have either saved or invested enough that only a Great Depression sized event would destroy enough of their accumulated wealth to force them into poverty. And an event of that magnitude, in the country we now live in, would likely be the trigger for anarchy.

 

[VN Vet]

As the Government keeps taking more and more away from any given person's ability to support themselves and their families, they will highly likely see unemployment with no UI unless you will swallow the worm. If you take the worm, you have become endentured to the Government. If you want to stay a free man and you have no one to help you, you will be forced to sell your self protection and self supporting supplies. The Government will be there to buy.

I do not believe there will be enough good people to step up and tell the Government that enough is enough and the line has been reached and crossed. We will need 10s of millions to stand up. I bet no one will say anything but give lip service.

I know I'm right, you know I'm, and the Government know I'm right. The end of our society will come quickly and in the night. When will this happen? Soon and in my lifetime.

 

[possum_128]

I'm retired and get a good pension from 30 years with Uncle Sam and 0 debt, so poverty is not happening to me. So yes, I will be fine.

 

[No2rdame]

I'm retired and get a good pension from 30 years with Uncle Sam and 0 debt, so poverty is not happening to me. So yes, I will be fine.

Just wait until Uncle Sam's monetary policies cause hyperinflation and that pension ends up being worth 2 loaves of bread per month. Sadly, that's what I suspect will happen to my nest egg. I build it anyway in hopes I'm wrong, and I truly hope that I am wrong.

 

[Leadeye]

I see standards of living moving towards mexico, a two tiered society run by a corrupt government. People there aren't happy, but they aren't revolting either.

 

[possum_128]

Just wait until Uncle Sam's monetary policies cause hyperinflation and that pension ends up being worth 2 loaves of bread per month. Sadly, that's what I suspect will happen to my nest egg. I build it anyway in hopes I'm wrong, and I truly hope that I am wrong.

I'm fine with that, it's all part of life, I have a little nest egg myself.

 

[BehindBlueI's]

In my personal future? Sure. I've been poor before. Like washing clothes in creek water poor. I'd have to move back to my rural property, but I'd get by.

That said, I've tried being poor and didn't care for it that much. I've learned how to manage money to attempt to avoid repeating the experience. I could go about two to three years without a salary at this point. It'd eat up my retirement plans, but I could do it. I'd last a lot longer if I let the house in the city default or rent it out. Its not hard. No matter what you make, somebody is getting by on 10% less. Figure out how they do it, and live like that. Then you have 10% of your income to save.

 

[ghostdncr]

How would you get by if unemployed and without unemployment insurance?

I believe the simplest, yet most difficult, solution is to merely wrap one's head around the concept of homelessness. Once past all the stigma we've built up about it, and after selling, donating, and trashing the mountains of "stuff" we've collected over the years, it's not too hard to get on with the hobo lifestyle and do just fine. I mean, I can get along indefinitely with the clothes I'm wearing and a medium-sized backpack stuffed with some well-chosen gear that I already own.

Once you work past all the fantastical anarchy/zombie apocalypse/Red Dawn/SHTF scenarios, you realize the actual concerns facing you will be procuring food, finding a warm place to sleep, and perhaps locating medical care after you've simply fallen on hard times. Wanna prep? Cover those bases now, while you're warm, well fed, and rested. Learn how to trap game and find local wild foodstuffs. Volunteer at a homeless shelter and find out how that system works. Don't pity the visitors. Introduce yourself and actually talk to them. Living rough as they do, many are a wealth of tips and tricks to getting by on very little. Learn how to sleep outdoors on a twenty degree night with only one blanket. Once you do it and see how easily it can be done, it's no longer a nagging fear. Learn not only basic and advanced first aid, but explore natural medicine, too. Basically look for the holes in your survivability cloak and then set out to do whatever mending is necessary. Starvation and homelessness are a vast unknown for most Americans, but there's little we fear more than that of which we know little.

It's obvious that many folks enjoy preparing for end times and all, but falling on hard times seems a much more realistic scenario to me. I think our society in general is far too uneducated, uninspired, and generally indifferent to support a rebellion. Our enemies have too much trouble at home to mount an invasion of the continental United States. Zombies? I can't tell you how excited I'd be to quit my day job and kill zombies for a living, but there's not a single, reliably-documented case of such a thing ever existing. Great if it happens, but I'm not holding my breath.

 

[The Bubba Effect]

Well, I can skin a buck and run a trout line, so, you know.

It does not take too much to sustain my standard of living. I do figure I am much more likely to experience poverty than anarchy in my lifetime.

To keep this in my mind, I have this quote taped to a desk at work.

I am so firmly determined, however, to test the constancy of your mind that, drawing from the teachings of great men, I shall give you also a lesson: Set aside a certain number of days, during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with coarse and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: "Is this the condition that I feared?" 6. It is precisely in times of immunity from care that the soul should toughen itself beforehand for occasions of greater stress, and it is while Fortune is kind that it should fortify itself against her violence. In days of peace the soldier performs manoeuvres, throws up earthworks with no enemy in sight, and wearies himself by gratuitous toil, in order that he may be equal to unavoidable toil. If you would not have a man flinch when the crisis comes, train him before it comes. Such is the course which those men[SUP][4][/SUP] have followed who, in their imitation of poverty, have every month come almost to want, that they might never recoil from what they had so often rehearsed.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

 

[Iroquois]

Unless you've traveled outside the US you have not seen true poverty....What I fear more than loss of employment is the loss of government support to those who have allowed themselves to become totally dependent on it...this is the true source of anarchy that we all fear. These 'dependents' will riot if their source of handouts ever fails, and like the Rodney King riots , law abiding citizens will be on our own.

 

[kml]

Unless you've traveled outside the US you have not seen true poverty....What I fear more than loss of employment is the loss of government support to those who have allowed themselves to become totally dependent on it...this is the true source of anarchy that we all fear. These 'dependents' will riot if their source of handouts ever fails, and like the Rodney King riots , law abiding citizens will be on our own.

I agree completely. Been to a few but Haiti in the mid 90's was the most eye opening for me. Watched them tear the country and each other apart. I can't say I enjoyed my time there but it was the most educational experience I've ever had.
There have been quite a few countries that have had a true SHTF event in the last 2 decades and looking at how things played out in them, your right, there will be hoards and they will be mad.

 

[bwframe]

Well, I can skin a buck and run a trout line, so, you know.

It does not take too much to sustain my standard of living....

^^^ Part of my regular routine also.
I already DO live in poverty, by a lot of people's standards. Yet I feel rich...

 

[Trigger Time]

I think the two go hand in hand if enough people are hungry.

 

[PMPORTER]

I am unsure what crisis we will all face, but I am sure one is coming. My guess is that this Govt. will default due to the amount of money they spend. Before long they will have taxed us to the point that they will have no one left to tax. You have so many people living off the system now and when the Govt. Can't hand them everything they need to survive, where do you think these people will turn ??? That's right they will be at your door trying to take everything you worked for. I just hope it happens before I am to old to try and protect my family. So Zombies NO, but starving people that have never done with out oh yea and a lot of them. Not much difference in my opinion except that Zombies get back up and ask for another !!!

 

[eldirector]

Guns are part of the solution. Great for hunting, and putting food on the table. Beats using a slingshot.....

I've "prepped" for this as well. Savings, emergency funds, retirement accounts, investments, low/no debt. Add in the "normal" prepping stuff like food stores, garden, buying ahead on pretty much everything.... and unemployment is a little less scary.

Besides, I'm not too proud to change my career to support my family. I'd rather dig ditches than sit on my rear hoping the unemployment check keeps coming. I'll find a way to get by.

Now, economic collapse is a whole other problem......

 

[bwframe]

Now, economic collapse is a whole other problem......

Seems as if there was a book written about just that...
...back in the late fifties...
...?

 

[metaldog]

I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer. Benjamin Franklin (29 November 1766).

As for me... I will keep my guns. Whether in poverty or not. Guns ensure Liberty and protection for me & mine.