The Un-Depression

Sudden Sharp Sustained Stupidity Statistics

Dulness, as Pope reminds us, is a Goddess. As a resident for now a number of years -58 to be precise- after my father’s job required migrating from Hershey PA where life was sweet in a VW bug with quite few things packed on the misfitting car rack going cross country-I can only marvel at the slope of NOPE starting with my being flung into the Northern California in the 60’s. Here my human plant growth is obviously I am only this thus. My experience of the US decline is from Sacramento and San Francisco. Edge city at 66. And yet I lively myself up to interview for a real job and not a gig job and today my 3d and final interview 1 hour from home. They say by 18th of August I will know. The job suits me well. And it is entry level which is entertaining and so being 20-30 years older than this office with a depth of experience the company is forced to decide between a callow youth and moi.

This not simply brute fact but the most ordinary and uncanny thing. The key notion here is that of insecurity. In a state of radical insecurity, and moreover in a world-wide state of such insecurity, the preoccupation of the individual is to find any prop at all to lean on. I find comfort leaning on say 1966 and back and a bit less going forward. The Triumph of Greed in the end is a failure. Free markets can never exist. A mirage. And regulating markets in a greed based political system with no concern for tomorrow save return to power.

Nothing’s shaking on Shakedown street. Hasn’t been for years. The conquest by Covid came when the immune system was weakened the new political putsch more global in scope than even 9/11. Covid Ideology Depopulates and Debrains. Federal regulations prevent an autopsy to discern which came first. FOIA’s reveal DEBRAINING without surgery using light and sound delivered by SCREEN appears to be the culprit.

Stagnant growth

A new state forecast from the Department of Finance shows a grim possibility: San Francisco saw one of the highest percentage population losses in the country during the first year of the pandemic, and it may not recover from that decline. The forecast projects a stagnant population through 2060. 

Fewer pregnancies and an aging population mean that deaths are projected to outpace births starting in 2024. And while net migration is expected to turn positive next year, the natural decrease in population means the city is projected to fall to about 828,000 residents in 2023, followed by slow growth. By 2060, the city’s population is projected at 845,000, still around 25,000 people or 2.9% below 2020 baseline levels.

“It’s going to be hard to get back to those levels just because we’re continuing the demographic trends,” said Andres Gallardo, a Department of Finance demographer. “We see low births. We see low migration.”

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The Keynesian fantasy is drawing to a close. Financialization and endless debt-funded stimulus were artifacts of four unique conditions (cheap, abundant energy, demographics, globalization and financialization) that have all topped out and are now sliding down the backside of the S-Curve. AI can put lipstick on the mirror but it is incapable of reversing the end-game decay of these four unique conditions.

Since there's no alternative to the Keynesian dream of eternal "growth" funded by magic, we're doing more of what's failed until the system collapses in a heap: we'll do more of what's failed until it fails spectacularly.

It's worth recalling Peter Drucker's observation that enterprises don't have profits, they only have costs. The same can be said of governments and entire economies. Borrowing to pay rising costs has a short-half life because debt accrues its own costs and piles up risks which have their own uniquely asymmetric dynamics.

Now that debt is rising faster than "growth," and "growth" is dependent on speculative credit-asset bubbles, the collapse of the Keynesian dream looms large. Plan accordingly, i.e. reduce your own exposure to risk via Self-Reliance.

https://ko-fi.com/thejournaloflingeringsanity