April 2, 2020 report, Hoda Kotb and Stephanie Ruhle dicuss the latest jobless claims number, 6.6 Million Americans filed for unemployment this past week.
"I just want to hug the country."
-Stephaine Ruhle, in the report above
We have what's looks to be the worst pandemic, in about 100 years, spreading across the United States, right now. Most businesses have closed temporarily, a largely mandatory shutdown to slow the spread of this new disease. We're about three weeks into self-isolation, ordered by politicians, in many parts of the country. Life in America has completely changed in a matter of weeks. I wandered up to a CVS this morning to buy a Diet Coke, and people were lined up to buy toilet paper, before the store opened. When I was in high school in 1983, a "dime bag" meant $10 of weed in a plastic baggie (with stems and seeds to be picked out), and the dealer would tell you, "Dude, it's Hawaiian Tai Stick," when it was really Idaho homegrown. We're about two weeks away from a dime bag being a 10 cent shopping bag with two rolls of toilet paper, and the dealer saying "Dude, it's two-ply!" Check the bag first, make sure it's really two-ply, dealers will always be dealers.
Over 200,000 Americans have caught the Covid-19 corona virus as of today, and over 5,000 have died. The arc of the contagion is still on the upswing, we don't know when we'll see its peak, and infection numbers will begin to drop. A bungled early response to the crisis, by the White House, has definitely made matters worse than they might have been. A huge number of Americans have been "self-isolating," and are online all day, and getting a bit stir crazy, trying to cope. That's the "black swan" illness aspect that's happening. A black swan is a event that is very unlikely, but has huge consequences if it does happen. The term comes from the 2007 book, The Black Swan, (not a paid link) by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, explaining the concept.
For about three years now, I've been blogging about several social and economic trends that I thought we really needed to try and get ahead of. During that time, I've been largely struggling survive myself, for a variety or reasons, and haven't been able to put near enough energy into writing about things I saw coming down the pike. Here in Dystopia I've written about the Toffler's Third Wave, and how I believe it is still playing out, and remaining parts of the old, Industrial Age world are still breaking down. I covered that in several chapters. I also wrote here about how I saw P.R. Sarkar's Law of Social Cycle concept playing out. American business culture, specifically the massive amounts of "crony capitalism," and the revolving door between government and Big Business, has reached peak corruption. This massive level of corruption has stifled the lifestyle of working Americans, by and large. This lowering standard of living spawned the widespread populist movement, predicted by Sarkar's theory. This Populist Movement first raised its head in the Occupy Wall Street Movement, nearly a decade ago. Then, in the 2016 presidential cycle, we saw populist presidential candidates spring out of nowhere, and gain huge amounts of support. Senator Bernie Sanders led the charge on the political Left. Real estate billionaire, and reality TV star, Donald Trump, led the charge on the political Right. Hillary Clinton and the Democrats old guard fended, off Bernie, and she won the popular election, but Trump squeaked to the win with the electoral college.
Now, after three years of gross incompetence in the White House, we have an early, bungled response to the deadly pandemic, AND the long held back economic collapse, happening simultaneously. The result is a sudden change in everyday life for all Americans, and over three million new jobless claims a week ago, and 6.6 million jobless claims this past week. We are in a place unknown in modern history, none of us alive have seen a pandemic and economic collapse like this, at the same time.
I, as a homeless blogger, living on the streets of L.A. county, predicted a nearly 10,000 point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, on January 26th, 2020, weeks before it actually happened. You can read the post here. This was NOT some crazy event that couldn't possibly be predicted. It was inevitable, and I happened to get fairly lucky calling the timing of it in my blog, Steve Emig: The White Bear.
Four months ago, a major stock market drop and economic collapse, seemed like a ridiculous idea to most people. Now, my belief that we are heading into an depression, possibly a full scale, 5-7 year very stagnant economy, maybe a textbook great depression, seems much more possible. And we are still only at the beginning of the economic consequences. We've seen a collapse in the repo market, treasury bond yields, and the stock markets. The corporate bond market collapse is starting, as I write this. In addition, millions of Americans will have trouble paying the house or apartment rent, either now, or in the next month or two. Then comes the collapse in residential real estate prices, auto loans, consumer debt, and student debt. Those collapses will be mirrored by collapses in the commercial real estate and commercial rental markets, and later, colleges and universities (a result of the student debt collapse). Then we'll see a massive economic hit to many of our second and third tier cities and small towns. A huge number of those are now "Eds and Meds" cities, relying on their local colleges, universities, and hospitals, as the largest employers. With a collapse in student debt (and other forms of debt), these towns and cities, hit hard by the loss of factory jobs 20-30-40 years ago, will take another huge economic hit. That will be another huge blow to rural and small town America, places like those where I grew up in Ohio.
THIS is why I've been trying to raise some awareness to these issues over the last three or four years. This is HUGE. This affects pretty much every American directly, and much of the world, indirectly. The human cost from the pandemic will be enormous. I do truly feel for all the sick, and the families who lose loved ones. But those are not my particular areas of expertise. I'm a social dynamics/economic trends/futurist thinking geek. My area of knowledge is the Big Picture I've tried to put into some kind of context here in "Dystopia," and how we first survive, and then rebuild America, as a vibrant, smart, much more creative, entrepreneurial, and green thinking nation in the Information Age.
As I write this, The Fed has been creating dollars by the trillions (which devalues every dollar in your wallet, purse or bank accounts), and throwing that money at Wall Street, the major banks, and corporate America. But that can't fix this. No matter how much money may be in the coffers of large corporations, WE, regular people, are the actual economy. If money isn't flowing through our hundreds of millions of hands, into the businesses and organizations of our choice, then the economy won't work. Period.
The underlying systems are breaking down. The central bank led, Industrial Age built, U.S. and world economy infrastructure, is breaking down like my mom's 1979 Ford Pinto falling apart in 1985. It just won't keep working no more. It will need to be rebuilt. The whole fucking economic system will need to be rebuilt as an Information Age economic system, with things like digital transfers, crypto, the hyper-connectedness of today's world, all built INTO the system. How do we do this? I don't know on the macro level, because the macro level is so screwed up right now.
This is new to all of us, we've never had a society with the technologies available today (unless you believe in Atlantis, and Plato told us how that ended). There is no pre-made game plan. The new Information Age needs to be created, piece by piece, and linked together.
There is, however, a context for all of this. I think the three theories I've shed light on, the Toffler's Third Wave concept, P.R. Sarkar's Law of Social Cycles, and Richard Florida's Creative Class concepts, best explain the underlying story of why this collapse is happening, and happening now. I think these concepts give us ideas and trendlines on where society is heading. They give us some direction work towards. But this is new, we are all winging it. And it will get crazier before it appears to get better. So how do we begin to rebuild? That's what the next chapter is all about.
Written by Steve Emig (aka The White Bear)
All opinions are mine, and are not officially endorsed by anyone in the videos I share, or by anyone whose work I mention.
Blogger's note- 9/12/2023- I have not changed anything in these posts since I wrote them in 2019-2020, except these notes at the bottom. I even left in the typos I missed initially. As of late summer 2023, I'm doing most of my writing on Substack. Check it out.
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