Ever wonder why the dollar is in a steady decline? Ever wonder why so many foreign corporations and companies own so much American property?

     It's really quite simply because we have ceased to be a producing nation. Not that we are not very productive, very busy, very hard working. It's just that we no longer produce very much physical material for all of our hard labors. This is not to say that our exhaustive intellectual property or managerial and IT service isn't worth anything, it has value, in it's own way.

     But here is the problem: all this intellectual property, managerial whatnot and IT services, you can't eat them, you can't wear them, they will not quench your thirst, they will not power your machines. They are luxuries.

Can you build a country's economy solely on luxuries?

Yeah, I didn't think so either. Read more...

    Popular culture appears to be slowly jumping on the green bandwagon, even as the necessity of personal sacrifice becomes unavoidably apparent. And I find myself in constant position of explaining the deeper implications to simple things. Such as, Just the other day I was talking with my youngest brother, who is seventeen years my junior.

    The topic was biodiesel, and he was quick to explain to me that I shouldn't be considering biodiesel because using it is causing starvation in other countries. But, it's not really US citizens using biodiesel that is causing food shortages in particular. It's market pressure from many different angles that is making food increasingly expensive that is causing food shortages in other countries.

    Buying a gallon of gasoline for $4.00 is doing just as much as buying a gallon of biodiesel made from corn in pushing up the cost of food in Egypt(for example). A willingness, or the force of social addiction, to pay such high prices for portable energy, has a ripple effect on the very foundations of the food market. Four dollar a gallon gas means the petroleum used for fertilizers that are the true power behind modern agriculture gets more expensive, so farmers have to raise the prices to cover their overhead. And what is worse is that there is a market ripple delay... Read more...