I don't know what you are talking about. There are no poor people in the US. We're all middle class here and continued economic growth will save us. ;-)

I see some people getting it. But they aren't the normal people you see on the street corners, they are people that don't talk about it as much as we here do. I am both positive and negative about it, a doomer one day and bright and shiny the next. I guess at times like this, poli-tic-critters can't say the truth for fear of not getting in office, or because their handlers tell them the shut up about it.

On the ground there are people doing things like the story up top about the Great unwashed, where they don't bath as much as they used too, that is saving some water, more than it might have done.

Fads like that have positive affects in time.

I save water because I know I must, or else, yet in balance every ounce I save is wasted by others it seems.

But I have knowledge and no fear, and when they can't get the water to come out of the tap they will have fear first, knowledge second, if at all.

India, can't get out of the hole it is in, unless they try, even if they fail, they see trying as better. There was a TED talk about how some places in India have better water catchment systems than most of the US in compariable climates. I don't have a link to it, but it was neat watching how they have been collecting water in that region for over 400 years the same way.

per capita they aren't nearly as wasteful as americans. Although I have a feeling americans are going to be learning from the vast sea of unemployed how to not waste things, maybe that is a good sign of this whole mess.

Charles, BioWebScape Designs for a better fed and housed world.

Maybe 1.1 billion Indians cannot attain a western lifestyle. But with economic growth perhaps 300 million of them can and another 500 million can be lifted out of extreme poverty.

Not sure what your point is. If I was running India or China or living there I would want the economy to grow. I would see that as a way to reduce poverty and make my nation strong and powerful. Perhaps peak oil or climate change will cause mass deaths; perhaps it will not! Either way there is no point in sacrificing economic growth today for a disaster which may or may not occur in the future and over which you have no control anyway. If India reduces its fossil fuel consumption, some other country will consume more. Either way the CO2 is released in the atmosphere. In the meantime the nation that grows faster becomes stronger, builds a more powerful military and acquires a seat at the decision making table (IMF, World Bank, UN security council) where the fate of weaker nations is decided.

Nobody wants to fire nukes; where did that come from?

The farmers in India don't blame coal plants. The unsustainable use of ground water in India has nothing to do with CO2 levels in the atmosphere. But either way, even if India sacrifices GDP growth, the coal will be burnt by somebody, somewhere.

Here is a challenge: if it is possible for a country to grow economically(*) by using renewable sources of energy let the wealthy and advanced nations set an example. When North America, EU and Japan get 50% of their energy from renewable sources feel free to lecture developing countries on sustainability.

* - Maybe a wealthy country can live without economic growth. A developing country where millions don't even have sanitation or electricity must pursue economic growth.

What’s Your Consumption Factor? By Jared Diamond

TO mathematicians, 32 is an interesting number: it’s 2 raised to the fifth power, 2 times 2 times 2 times 2 times 2. To economists, 32 is even more special, because it measures the difference in lifestyles between the first world and the developing world. The average rates at which people consume resources like oil and metals, and produce wastes like plastics and greenhouse gases, are about 32 times higher in North America, Western Europe, Japan and Australia than they are in the developing world. That factor of 32 has big consequences.

It may be not be fascist, but from their side of it, it seems rather unfair.
Six Mongolian kids living in a tent and burning wood have a much lighter footprint than one American kid living in a McMansion and riding in an SUV.

Leanan,

I agree it's "unfair" that Western cultures developed highly advanced technological societies before Asians, Africans, Muslims, South Americans, etc. This still does not change the fact that we have 7 billion people on a planet with resources capable of sustainably supporting perhaps 1/10th that number at a Western lifestyle, or possibly a larger fraction at a reduced material standard of living. It's unfair, but... would you willingly trade places with those Mongolian herdsman? How about your kids' future standard of living?

Personally, I prefer quality of life to quantity, and I wish every country could share in the benefits of high technology and a high material standard of living. I think a true end to poverty and war might finally be possible if every nation agreed to reduce their population sizes to sustainable levels.

I just don't get people who consider any reduction in population to be the END OF THE WORLD (btw, I'm *not* saying your one of them). The world got along just fine (actually much better) when the population was under 500 million, as it was for most of our recorded history. We require people to get a license to operate a car, years of college to perform surgery on other people, but... adding to our already bloated world population? Why, that's a fundamental HUMAN RIGHT! According to most right-wingers and religious fanatics of all stripes, to infringe upon that supposedly God-given right is NAZI EUGENICS and a One-World government conspiracy.

Shaman,

I think what your quest comes down to is a desire for a great religious reformation that would give meaning and purpose to people's lives apart from occupation and income. I do expect major changes in religion over the next 100 years. What I fear is a return to fundamentalism, not only Islamic and Protestant fundamentalism but also all over the world. For example, the traditional Hindu religion was the basis for the caste system in India that justified poverty for the many and wealth for the few.

Religion is really a wild card in influencing the course of the next hundred years. Let me recommend "Revolt in 2100" by Robert Heinlein as a brilliant extrapolation of trends that he saw coming some decades ago in the U.S.

I accept your arguments without hesitation.

And many argue Don's arguments. How many people could find work in the electrification of society and (other) green energy remains to be seen, but there is different kind of work.
Interesting is the book 'the next economy'('from mass economy to information economy') written by Paul Hawken. Not that I don't see problems ahead, probably aggravated by bad decisions the next few years, but 40% unemployment ? That happening depends on a lot of things.

For over a decade even when I did work at a paying job, I always told people when they asked what I did, by saying. I am an author. They'd ask what I write, and we'd talk about that.

If they asked how my bills were paid, I'd tell them where my money came from. As I have never gotten paid for writing, in cash money at least. I do have several art works from other people and several nice stories in trade magazines under th heading "what I got from this lifestyle"

I'd give people the task to build their own homes, and helping others build them as well, putting in the gardens and food forests and other growing systems that fit where they live. I'd ask them to explore what they have talents doing, and see if they could do those things to trade their time and talents with others for things they might need. Though this system might need a local currency to pass around, it could still stay on whatever National currency was out there, if they had to deal with people not from their area.

Networking these groups so that each little burg/ city neighborhood, or what not, could meet up and exchange commerce once in a while would be a good way of spreading the ideas and mind sets of the concept.

Not something that is going to be easy to formulate while we are still wandering around in vast city states that we have today, but something that at least I am thinking about while I plan other projects in my BioWebScape Design business (no money need pass my hand for me to help you and yours).

I have over 225 college hours of course work and no piece of paper to say I got a career lined up out of it, I saw the whole way they were pushing a career for going to college, and regected it out of hand. School is to teach you things you did not know before hand. What you are is not defined by what you know.

Charles,
BioWebScape Designs for a better fed and housed world.

Joule,

Gross DOMESTIC product is carefully defined to measure domestic production of goods and services. The concept of Gross National Product does have the weaknesses you attribute to the GDP concept.

To the best of my knowledge, the linkage between employment and growth rate in GDP are just as strong as they have ever been. The actual percentage number needed to maintain a given level of employment is not always 3.5%. For example, if the labor force grows rapidly, then we'd need a number greater than 3.5% to maintain percentage levels of employment and unemployment. Changes in the growth rate of productivity per labor hour also affect the GDP rate of growth needed to stabilize the unemployment rate. For example, productivity might grow at 3% and the labor force might grow at 2%. Then we would need a 5% rate of growth in real GDP just to keep unemployment from increasing.

Some prominent economists have estimated that to knock one percentage point off the unemployment rate in one year it would take a growth rate of 5% in real GDP over a year to do that. Clearly, we're not going to have GDP growth anything like that over the next year, and hence it is almost inevitable that the unemployment rate will increase significantly over the next year. Thus a 2% rate of growth in real GDP is bad news, because it means that the unemployment rate will increase.

GDP is not a measure of employment, it only provides the aggregated value of goods and services purchased. While it's not likely that GDP would grow with half the workforce unemployed, it could happen.

So GDP can increase without a corresponding increase in employment. That is largely the history of the US after Bill Clinton foolishly allowed the federal government to slip into a surplus by the end of his term, precipitating a recession, just as has occurred every single time the 'deficits are evil' superstition has blinded the polity to the horrible effects of a federal government surplus.

In your example, I think that US GDP goes down, since imports are subtracted from GDP.

The US subsidiary of the mail-order company is buying a customer service from the Indian susidiary (in the case of a relocation, not an out-sourcing).

The company would probably make the cost of the service as high as possible, consistent with accounting and tax standards, so that the Indian susidiary is profitable and the profits can be sloshed around the international banking system to some off-shore tax haven.

Hi Charles,

Thanks for the little story, I appreciate it and got a kick out of it.

I posit that there are powers out there that we can't fathom, in realms that we can't fathom. Then again you know I am a Christian, so somethings just aren't as they seem at times. I try not to assume I know what is going on.

Though I myself do not subscribe to them I have no quarrel with your beliefs, it is your humanity that always manages to shine through your words.

Thanks and be well,

Fred

Growth in India and China is mainly based on rapidly increasing consumption of coal. Brazil produces all its own oil or very nearly so.

Another way to look at peak oil is to consider disenfranchisement if you will.
By this I mean stripping people of the chance for a better life and in some cases reducing their lifestyle significantly.

For the billions of poor living in poverty it means they will never get out. For millions of Americans and Europeans and Asians it means sliding from middle class to poverty or from poverty to desperate poverty.

I don't think GDP contraction and assumption of a return to peak GDP levels is a good metric for this. What it means is that and ever smaller group is left at the top of the pyramid. The bottom swells of course but the bottom will work to survive and the products of their labor will still filter to the top. Thus in general those that manage to not get knocked down will make the same or more than they make now.

This causes two things to happen obviously the poorer poor will use less oil at least as much as possible. Where they can't they will spend more on oil and cut back in other areas. GDP will of course contract but its more a sharpening of the pyramid of wealth. I suspect that GDP numbers will be fudged to make this look like growth. Unemployment figures will drop the unemployable as not part of the work force for example.

Its not some sort of static drop with the status quo and wealth distribution remaining constant but and ever increasing concentration of wealth both from and enlarging bottom tier and smaller middle tier.

The only question of course is how large and desperate can the bottom get before things get problematic obviously at some point as the class of impoverished people increase real democracy becomes difficult and defacto or real authoritarian governments become the norm.

Indeed in the US real true third world poverty was prevalent as late in the 1940's and prevalent at least in the South through the 1970's.
It was only in the 1980's that it was reduced to pockets in a few parts of the country. Europe I don't know but certainly for a time after WWII in western europe obviously much longer and still existing in the Soviet/Eastern bloc nations.
I'm 42 and old enough to have witnessed real poverty as a child in Mississippi and Arkansas and seen it decline as I approached high school. Anyone even 5-10 years older than me would have even better personal recollections.

Certainly other parts of the country threw off real poverty i.e shacks no running water etc earlier but only after the end of the Great Depression with the onset of WWII. The glory days of the 1950's onwards took time to reach the poorest parts of America. I suspect a similar pattern in Europe with the poorest countries eliminating extreme poverty on a similar time scale.

What we consider normal is really a phenomena that happened for 50 years or less depending on the region many areas closer to 30 or even less. The elimination of extreme poverty in the western nations is a very recent phenomena and it won't take much to make it return.
At some point the welfare systems put in place will simply be overwhelmed.

You may not actually see the benefit programs cut but perhaps spiraling food and energy prices will make it where the benefits can no longer keep you alive. And I suspect the programs will begin to deny more and more people and cut more off.

This is not a prediction its already happening.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39211644/ns/us_news-life/

43 million Americans are now living in poverty.

But its worse

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2007/04/poverty_numbers.html

Another 50 million or more are at close to the line. These 50 million will be pushed down below and the current poor even lower.
And another 50 will move to the at risk group right at poverty. So I foresee the US moving to where 50% of the population is living near poverty or 150 million with 50 in abject poverty.

I'm pretty sure this is sufficient to bust the safety net of welfare. Indeed it probably breaks before this which is what actually sends 50 million into abject poverty.

The demographics become similar to china or india. In the case of the US say 50-100 million middle class or above. 50 million lower middle class and the rest in poverty. Over time the upper level will shrink further.

India and China will follow a similar pattern however many of the poor will really simply never make it out of abject poverty and many that did will be thrown back.

Its a world with and ever shrinking middle and upper class and probably getting increasingly dangerous similar to Mexico or Columbia.
Once abject poverty returns to the US and Europe then 1st-2nd-3rd world will become increasingly blurred and begin to lose its meaning.

The reason I wrote this is this social/political/economic transition to a world of haves and have nots cannot be captured with simple GDP measures or other economic measures. Or more correctly it will be obfuscated until the riots and rise of authoritarian governments make it a mute point. And just as obvious these broken societies will be ripe for war the chances of war not becoming widespread are small.

My only real hope is that the growing poverty will work to cripple the military machines of most nations reducing them to less effective forms of combat. WWIII I hope simply means people are too poor to fight a large scale mechanized/nuclear war. Not that its not coming but we literally won't have enough food or oil to fight any sort of far flung war like WWII. More likely spreading border conflicts and civil war rather then our current nation states duking it out.

For example say China and the US engage in and increasingly violent proxy war. Diversion of resources to support the war leads to large scale riots at home forcing them to divert troops back home. The proxy war destabilizes the region leading to regional conflict. The stronger nations quickly get spread thin trying to beat each other and control the regional conflicts. If we are lucky few if any nukes are used.

Eventually of course even this fails and the conflicts get both deadlier and increasingly cruder as the modern equipment is not replaced.
Also of course the best equipped troops will be increasingly used to protect the remaining elite back at home.

In time even this fails and the troops are removed from most areas except the ones with very valuable resources. Much of Africa for example is left to its own devices same for many areas of Asia.

The nations begin to fragment and now starvation and disease become rampant even in the formerly wealthy nations like the US. Warlords start seizing power and fighting. Much of the world is reduced to Somalia with no functioning government but also little or no aid as there is no one left to give.

What really really interesting is the danger point is when enough oil is available to allow the nation states to wage all out war and potentially go nuclear. The ironic part is if I'm correct and oil production is or will soon show a dramatic increase in its decline rate may be the only thing that saves us from the danger period. It will of course accelerate the fall to collapse but as bad as that is its better than and extensive nuclear war. After the states start to fail we could still see some nukes used but given everyone is failing I hope no one will use them extensively as bombing someone serves no purpose once they are obviously falling apart and losing their military power.

I'm pretty sure the above scenario is basically right its basic thesis is that the growing number of poor will eventually cause everything to crumble. The only real issue is the time it takes to reach the point where the nation states of the world are obviously failing.

Best case is perhaps 30 years I don't think so the US will probably soon have 50 million in poverty the next recession will probably double this number. The real oil situation will become clear over the next few years if not months. I think we reach critical thresholds in a matter of years. Indeed I suspect that twelve months from now the scenario I've outlined will become increasingly obvious. Within two years even more so. I don't know at what point the social net starts to break down in the US 150 million in poverty is and obvious guess.
75 million is reasonable. Indeed 60 million may well be enough. 50 million in longer term poverty may actually be enough if they lose hope.
Although 75 million might not be the point at which things begin to really break down I'd argue that if we reach 75 million people in poverty then we are also obviously heading further down even 60 is dangerous enough to cause me alarm. Assuming 43 now thats 17 million.
Before the last recession it was about 39 millon so we added about 4 million. Another dip down could add even more say 4-8 million.
If its eight million or higher then its likely that the next dip would take out 10 million or more sending us into the 60 million danger zone.

This makes sense the US could handle one more deep recession similar to the last one from its current levels it would really suck hard but still just a very nasty recession or beginnings of a depression. I think you can see however that one more dip after that sends us over the edge. Even if the next one is just four million more so what ? If we dip again you can bet it will be much higher and will send us over.

Thus the US and the world can handle one more recession from its current levels. However oil demand becomes increasingly inelastic over time thus if oil is a serious problem I'd argue it will push us over the ledge which is a real depression after the next recessionary downturn.

At some point that actually not all that far off the poor become cement shoes ensuring we drown even if it may take time to happen the critical thresholds could well be breached fairly soon.