- A Chinese Factory Slave Explains Why Manufacturing Jobs Are Never Coming Back To America
Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,
While we all loved President Trump’s campaign pledge to bring jobs back to America, there are powerful economic forces at work that suggest the shift to cheap labor is pretty much irreversible. Yes, Trump has spoken with the leaders of some of America’s biggest companies and he’s been successful at getting those chief executives to commit to creating or keeping a few thousands jobs here and there, but when you consider that the competing foreign labor force primarily responsible for manufacturing America’s consumer goods numbers in the hundreds of millions of people, the notion that we’re somehow going to see explosive manufacturing growth over the next four or eight years is nothing more than a pipe dream.
But don’t take it from us. A Chinese factory worker explains exactly why we have absolutely no way to compete with the near slave-like conditions found in foreign factories:
Zeng walked CNBC through his decision to spend six weeks in a factory working 12 hours shifts Monday through Saturday, mostly during the night, and what he discovered along the way.
“They just gave me the address of the factory and I just went. I just showed up. When I was there I saw people holding luggage waiting in a long line, so I just stood in the line,” Zeng told CNBC in an interview.
“When it was my turn they asked for my ID, asked to see my hand and asked me to recite the English alphabet. I got in after that. It took less than 30 seconds. You don’t have to apply or have any skills.“
…
“The first thing I can think of from a labor perspective is that the wages are unacceptable for American workers. So, in the factories, I was getting paid about 3100 yuan, or $450, per month. I don’t think American workers can accept those kind of wages based on living conditions and prices here,” Zeng said.
“Even if they relocate factories to the U.S. they’d replace workers with robots,” Zeng said. He said Pegatron already uses robots to apply cameras to iPhones, and to drop batteries into the devices. Robots, Zeng said, are more precise than human workers, and precision is particularly important for those two components.
If President Trump wants iPhones manufactured in the U.S., Apple will need to front the cost to pay the much higher wages required in the U.S., which means that consumers will have to be willing to pay more. Either that, or it will have to rely a lot more on machines, which won’t create jobs, and might end up taking them.
Source: Yahoo News
For those who are having trouble visualizing the cumulative effect of what Zeng describes, this chart pretty much sums it up and shows how much manufacturing jobs as a percentage of America’s total workforce have declined since the 1960’s:
At first glance you may be thinking that we have no where else to go but up.
The problem, of course, is that if you do try to shift jobs back to America, and even if you triple the wages from what factory workers are making in China, those taking a monthly paycheck and benefits from the government already make more money for doing nothing than they would assembling mobile phone components for 12 hours a day.
One recipient of welfare summed it up succinctly in the following shocking interview:
While workers out there are preaching morality at people like me living on welfare, can you really blame us?
I get to sit home… I get to go visit my friends all day… I even get to smoke weed…
Me and people that I know that are illegal immigrants that don’t contribute to society, we still gonna get paid.
Our check’s gonna come in the mail every month… and it’s gonna be on time… and we get subsidized housing… we even get presents delivered for our kids on Christmas… Why should I work?
Ya’ll get the benefit of saying “oh, look at me, I’m a better person,” but when ya’ll sit at home behind ya’lls I’m a better person… we the ones gettin’ paid!
So can you really blame us?
There’s always hope, we suppose, that the millennial generation, currently demanding free college and living in their parents’ basements, will rocket America into its next great manufacturing boom.
But we’re not going to hold our breaths.
- Dr. Pieczenik Says Counter Revolution Taking Place Inside White House to Silence Alt-Right
Dr. Steve Pieczenik, the consummate intelligence insider, made a bold claim on the Alex Jones show today, suggesting the National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster and Jared Kushner were behind a counter revolution to silence the alt-right. He cited the outing of General Flynn, the demotion of Stephen Bannon, Gorka and others, as evidence that something was happening inside the White House to silence the movement that got Trump elected.
Moreover, Dr. Pie warned the U.S. military was ‘out of control’, waging and fomenting wars in five different countries.
Interestingly, he mentioned how $KBR was in countries that the United States had no interest in for the sole purposes of looting it (I am long KBR).
Now on the important matter of Jared Kushner.
Pieczenik said the Kushner family is an ‘incredibly corrupt family’ that cannot be allowed in the White House. Jones said Trump’s sons are ‘total patriots’ and have been leaking information to Mike Cernovich and others.
“Trump is for real, but he is being pulled by every side. There is an attempt to have a soft coup against the President,’ said Jones.
Pieczenik weighed in, ‘I’ve repeatedly said that Jared has to leave. There’s no question he’s involved in corruption with the Chinese, […] the Israeli family, the Steinmetz, who were already indicted for diamond smuggling,’ further illuminating the point that AG Sessions was ‘fully aware’ that the Kushner’s were corrupt.
Dr. Pie fired a shot across the President’s bow, saying ‘we have the neocons coming back. I am warning the administration, again and again, I did not take the time and the effort and the liberty and the risk that others weren’t willing to do to bring back pathetic neocons like Elliot Abrams or John Bolton or anyone of those morons that you put in there. If Mcmaster doesn’t understand how he came to power, he came to power because Tom Clancy and I gave him money. He came to power because he sat on the boards of other companies.’
He warned against any preemptive strike against N. Korea as being both ‘idiotic and inept.’He described intervention in Syria as being foolhardy, saying ‘putting in artillery and howitzers into Syria when you have no idea who the Al-Waleed’s are. You have no idea how many Christians the Bashar family are protecting, millions of them. And you’re gonna do a regime change because you have some moron named Pompeo, who’s head of the CIA because he was #1 at West Point, but had never been in intelligence? He’s never been overseas, really never understood anything…’
Watch.
Content originally published at iBankCoin.com
- Big Brother Is Still Watching You: Don't Fall For The NSA's Latest Ploy
Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
“You had to live – did live, from habit that became instinct – in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.”—George Orwell, 1984
Supposedly the National Security Administration is going to stop collecting certain internet communications that merely mention a foreign intelligence target.
Privacy advocates are hailing it as a major victory for Americans whose communications have been caught in the NSA’s dragnet.
If this is a victory, it’s a hollow victory.
Here’s why.
Since its creation in 1952, when President Harry S. Truman issued a secret executive order establishing the NSA as the hub of the government’s foreign intelligence activities, the agency has been covertly spying on Americans, listening in on their phone calls, reading their mail, and monitoring their communications.
For instance, under Project SHAMROCK, the NSA spied on telegrams to and from the U.S., as well as the correspondence of American citizens. Moreover, as the Saturday Evening Post reports, “Under Project MINARET, the NSA monitored the communications of civil rights leaders and opponents of the Vietnam War, including targets such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Mohammed Ali, Jane Fonda, and two active U.S. Senators. The NSA had launched this program in 1967 to monitor suspected terrorists and drug traffickers, but successive presidents used it to track all manner of political dissidents.”
Not even the passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the creation of the FISA Court, which was supposed to oversee and correct how intelligence information is collected and collated, managed to curtail the NSA’s illegal activities.
In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, George W. Bush secretly authorized the NSA to conduct warrantless surveillance on Americans’ phone calls and emails.
Nothing changed under Barack Obama. In fact, the violations worsened, with the NSA authorized to secretly collect internet and telephone data on millions of Americans, as well as on foreign governments.
It was only after whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations in 2013 that the American people fully understood the extent to which they had been betrayed once again.
What this brief history makes clear is that the NSA cannot be reformed.
This is an agency whose very existence – unaccountable and lacking any degree of transparency – flies in the face of the Constitution.
Despite the fact that its data snooping has been shown to be ineffective at detecting, let alone stopping, any actual terror attacks, the NSA has continued to operate largely in secret, carrying out warrantless mass surveillance on hundreds of millions of Americans’ phone calls, emails, text messages and the like, beyond the scrutiny of most of Congress and the taxpayers who are forced to fund its multi-billion dollar secret black ops budget.
As long as the government is allowed to make a mockery of the law—be it the Constitution, the FISA law, or any other law intended to limit its reach and curtail its activities—and is permitted to operate behind closed doors, relaying on secret courts, secret budgets and secret interpretations of the laws of the land, there will be no reform.
Presidents, politicians, and court rulings have come and gone over the course of the NSA’s 60-year history, but none of them have done much to put an end to the NSA’s “technotyranny.”
The beast has outgrown its chains. It will not be restrained.
Moreover, even if the NSA could be reformed, the problem of government surveillance goes far beyond the criminal activities of this one agency.
In fact, long before the NSA became the agency we loved to hate, the Justice Department, the FBI, and the Drug Enforcement Administration were carrying out their own secret mass surveillance on an unsuspecting populace. Just about every branch of the government—from the Postal Service to the Treasury Department and every agency in between—now has its own surveillance sector, authorized to spy on the American people.
Then there are the fusion and counterterrorism centers that gather all of the data from the smaller government spies—the police, public health officials, transportation, etc.—and make it accessible for all those in power. And of course that doesn’t even begin to touch on the complicity of the corporate sector, which buys and sells us from cradle to grave, until we have no more data left to mine.
Consider that on any given day, the average American going about his daily business will be monitored, surveilled, spied on and tracked in more than 20 different ways, by both government and corporate eyes and ears. A byproduct of this new age in which we live, whether you’re walking through a store, driving your car, checking email, or talking to friends and family on the phone, you can be sure that some government agency, whether the NSA or some other entity, is listening in and tracking your behavior.
Corporate trackers monitor your purchases, web browsing, Facebook posts and other activities taking place in the cyber sphere. For example, every time you use a loyalty card at the grocery store or elsewhere, your purchases are being monitored, mined for data, and sold to the highest bidder. Every time you use your credit or debit card, or your digital “wallet,” your transactions are being tracked. Uber’s ride service app knows where you are even when you are not actively using the service. Even store mannequins are being used to monitor and identify shoppers with facial recognition software.
Major cities are being transformed into “Smart Cities” filled with sensors in everything from pavement to lamp posts, and all of that data is being linked together to monitor the day-to-day lives of everyone in them. In some cities, even the sewage is being monitored and could potentially be used to find out what drugs a household may have used.
All of your medical data in the near future will be constantly monitored, and while the data is supposed to only be shared with your doctor, in practice it will be accessible by any number of government and private actors. Microchips in “smart pills” can communicate with tablet devices to ensure the elderly take their medications already exist. And a transponder injected into the skin that contains a person’s entire medical history has been approved by the FDA. Wearable health-monitoring devices likewise can be used to monitor you, and the information collected can be used in a court of law. Smart toothbrushes can monitor your brushing habits and communicate them to your dentist, or anyone else. Smart alarm clocks can monitor your sleep habits.
Like all other devices relying on the Internet of Things (IoT) to communicate, these can be hacked into by government and private corporations.
The “internet of things” refers to the growing number of “smart” appliances and electronic devices now connected to the internet and capable of interacting with each other and being controlled remotely. These range from thermostats and coffee makers to cars and TVs.
Of course, there’s a price to pay for such easy control and access. That price amounts to relinquishing ultimate control of and access to your home to the government and its corporate partners. For example, while Samsung’s Smart TVs are capable of “listening” to what you say, thereby allow users to control the TV using voice commands, it also records everything you say and relays it to a third party. Same goes for Amazon’s Echo.
“Smart houses” filled with IoT-capable devices are just starting to come into play, but by 2020 Samsung pledges that all of its devices, including its household appliances, will be IoT capable. Such products include ovens, microwaves, vacuums (including robot vacuums), refrigerators, dishwashers, washing machines, and dryers, as well as smart hubs which coordinate everything. Coffee makers and toasters are also being made IoT compatible.
Smart TVs seemingly out of Orwell’s 1984 will also collect data and spy on you. Modern gaming consoles likewise have internet connections, and those with cameras can be used to spy like any smartphone or computer. Smart power outlets can turn your lights on and off remotely, and smart thermostats work similarly.
All of them monitor when you’re at home or not, as can smart home security systems. Wi-Fi routers can even monitor the inside of your home and distinguish between different individuals in the house, while reading their lips to “hear” what they say. Other forms of home monitoring systems for the elderly can be hacked and used by anyone.
Already the web-enabled “Hello Barbie” doll has been the center of a hacking controversy, in which security experts disclosed a number of significant security flaws with the toy. Other smart objects include smart golf clubs, which monitor the speed, acceleration, and swing plane of your golf swing, smart shoes which track your location and can guide you on where to go. Tostitos has even unveiled a promotional smart bag of chips which can tell you if you’ve been drinking too much.
That doesn’t even begin to touch on all of the government’s many methods of spying on its citizens. For instance, police have been using Stingray devices mounted on their cruisers to intercept cell phone calls and text messages without court-issued search warrants.
Doppler radar devices, which can detect human breathing and movement within in a home, are already being employed by the police to peer inside a suspect’s home.
License plate readers, yet another law enforcement spying device made possible through funding by the Department of Homeland Security, can record up to 1800 license plates per minute. These surveillance devices can also photograph those inside a moving car. Recent reports indicate that the DEA has been using license plate readers in conjunction with facial recognition software to build a “vehicle surveillance database” of the nation’s cars, drivers and passengers.
Sidewalk and “public space” cameras, sold to gullible communities as a sure-fire means of fighting crime, is yet another DHS program that is blanketing small and large towns alike with government-funded and monitored surveillance cameras. It’s all part of a public-private partnership that gives government officials access to all manner of surveillance cameras, on sidewalks, on buildings, on buses, even those installed on private property.
Couple these surveillance cameras with facial recognition and behavior-sensing technology and you have the makings of “pre-crime” cameras, which scan your mannerisms, compare you to pre-set parameters for “normal” behavior, and alert the police if you trigger any computerized alarms as being “suspicious.”
Capitalizing on a series of notorious abductions of college-aged students, several states are pushing to expand their biometric and DNA databases by requiring that anyone accused of a misdemeanor have their DNA collected and catalogued. Technology is already available that allows the government to collect biometrics such as fingerprints from a distance, without a person’s cooperation or knowledge. One system can actually scan and identify a fingerprint from nearly 20 feet away.
Radar guns have long been the speed cop’s best friend, allowing him to hide out by the side of the road, identify speeding cars, and then radio ahead to a police car, which does the dirty work of pulling the driver over and issuing a ticket. Now, developers are hard at work on a radar gun that can actually show if you or someone in your car is texting. No word yet on whether the technology will also be able to detect the contents of that text message.
It’s a sure bet that anything the government welcomes (and funds) too enthusiastically is bound to be a Trojan horse full of nasty surprises. Case in point: police body cameras. Hailed as the easy fix solution to police abuses, these body cameras—made possible by funding from the Department of Justice—are turning police officers into roving surveillance cameras. Of course, if you try to request access to that footage, you’ll find yourself being led a merry and costly chase through miles of red tape, bureaucratic footmen and unhelpful courts.
And the FBI can remotely activate the microphone on your cellphone and record your conversations. The FBI can also do the same thing to laptop computers without the owner knowing any better.
Government surveillance of social media such as Twitter and Facebook is also on the rise. Americans have become so accustomed to the government overstepping its limits that most don’t even seem all that bothered anymore about the fact that the government is spying on our emails and listening in on our phone calls.
Drones, which are taking to the skies en masse, will be the converging point for all of the weapons and technology already available to law enforcement agencies. This means drones that can listen in on your phone calls, see through the walls of your home, scan your biometrics, photograph you and track your movements, and even corral you with sophisticated weaponry.
It’s a given that the government’s tactics are always more advanced than we know, so there’s no knowing what new technologies are already being deployed against us without our knowledge. Certainly, by the time we learn about a particular method of surveillance or new technological gadget, it’s a sure bet that the government has been using it covertly for years already.
If you haven’t figured it out yet, we’ve all become suspects, a.k.a. potential criminals.
As I make clear in my book, Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we now find ourselves in the unenviable position of being monitored, managed and controlled by our technology, which answers not to us but to our government and corporate rulers.
This is the creepy, calculating yet diabolical genius of the American police state: the very technology we hailed as revolutionary and liberating has become our prison, jailer, and probation officer.
So don’t get too excited about the NSA’s latest concession.
It won’t stop Big Brother from watching you.
- 51% Of Murders In The U.S. Come From Just 2% Of The Counties
Authored by John R. Lott, Jr. via Crime Prevention Research Center
The Distribution of Murders
The United States can really be divided up into three types of places. Places where there are no murders, places where there are a few murders, and places where murders are very common.
In 2014, the most recent year that a county level breakdown is available, 54% of counties (with 11% of the population) have no murders. 69% of counties have no more than one murder, and about 20% of the population. These counties account for only 4% of all murders in the country.
The worst 1% of counties have 19% of the population and 37% of the murders. The worst 5% of counties contain 47% of the population and account for 68% of murders. As shown in figure 2, over half of murders occurred in only 2% of counties.
Murders actually used to be even more concentrated. From 1977 to 2000, on average 73 percent of counties in any give year had zero murders. Possibly, this change is a result of the opioid epidemic’s spread to more rural areas. But that question is beyond the scope of this study. Lott’s book “More Guns, Less Crime” showed how dramatically counties within states vary dramatically with respect to murder and other violent crime rates.
Breaking down the most dangerous counties in Figure 2 shows over half the murders occur in just 2% of the counties, 37% in just the worst 1% of the counties.
Figure 1 illustrates how few counties have a significant number of murders. Figure 3 further illustrates that with a cumulative perspective. 54% of counties have zero murders, 69% have at most one murder, 76% have at most two murders, and so on. To put it differently, only the top four percent of the counties have 16 or more murders.
If the 1% of the counties with the worst number of murders somehow were to become a separate country, the murder rate in the rest of the US would have been only 3.4 in 2014. Removing the worst 2% or 5% would have reduced the US rate to just 3.06 or 2.56 per 100,000, respectively.
Even within the Counties with the murders, the murders are heavily Concentrated within those counties
When you look at individual counties with a high number of murders, you find large areas with few murders. Take Los Angeles County, with 526 murders in 2014, the most of any county in the US. The county has virtually no murders in the northwestern part of the county. There was only one murder each in Beverly Hills, Hawthorne, and Van Nuys. Clearly, different parts of the county face very different risks of murder.
The map below shows the distribution of murders in Indianapolis, with 135 murders. Although the city extends well beyond the 465 Highway that encircles downtown Indianapolis, there are only four murders outside of that loop. The northern half of the city within 465 also has relatively few murders.
Washington, DC has large areas without murders. 14th Street NW divides the eastern and western parts of the district, with murders overwhelmingly limited to the eastern half. The area around the capitol is also extremely safe.
Here is the murder map for Dallas.
Gun Ownership
According to a 2013 PEW Research Center survey, the household gun ownership rate in rural areas was 2.11 times greater than in urban areas (“Why Own a Gun? Protection is Now Top Reason,” PEW Research Center, March 12, 2013). Suburban households are 28.6% more likely to own guns than urban households. Despite lower gun ownership, urban areas experience much higher murder rates. One should not put much weight on this purely “cross-sectional” evidence over one point in time, but it is still interesting to note that so much of the country has both very high gun ownership rates and zero murders.
Conclusion
This study shows how murders in the United States are heavily concentrated in very small areas. Few appreciate how much of the US has no murders each year. Murder isn’t a nationwide problem. It’s a problem in a very small set of urban areas, and any solution must reduce those murders.
- Citi Issues An Alert On Its Most Popular Index
Citi's US Economic Surprise Index went negative late last week, but after this morning's data, it has collapsed to the lowest level since Oct 2016.
This is the biggest crash in US Macro data in 6 years…
And Citi is worried:
"After a weak Q1, downside misses in economic data this week have a heightened capability to trigger a reassessment of the whole growth trajectory."
This week's main focus will now be the US employment report on Friday, with all eyes firmly on average hourly earnings, with investors looking for it to confirm or deny the upward pressure seen in last Friday's ECI report. From there, we'll look for Chair Yellen's assessment on the economy Friday afternoon at 1330ET (which should be entertaining given the carnage above).
Who could have seen this coming? 'Soft' Data has tumbled to 3-month lows…
- Trump, Putin To Speak In Phone Call On Tuesday
President Trump is scheduled to hold another phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin On Tuesday. The call is scheduled for 12:30 p.m. that afternoon in the Oval Office, the White House said on Monday evening.
The topic of the conversation was not disclosed, and while the White House did not provide any further details to AB, potential discussion topics include the civil war in Syria, ongoing events in Turkey, and of course, the North Korean standoff.
Trump and Putin have spoken several times since Trump’s election, including last month following the attack in St. Petersburg, which Trump condemned.
Last month Trump confirmed what Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said previously that U.S.-Russian relations “may be at an all-time low.” It was a reversal from the rhetoric during his campaign, when Trump said he hoped he and Putin could work together in the fight against terrorism. FBI and congressional investigations continue into the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia and Russia’s meddling in the election.
Separately, earlier in the day Japanese media reported that Trump had also held a 30 minute phone call with Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Since there has not been an official readout from the White House, the topic of conversation was also unknown.
Another @POTUS–@AbeShinzo phone call, lasting about 30 minutes, took place today (May 1), according to Japanese media reports.
— Steve Herman (@W7VOA) May 1, 2017
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- WTF Chart Of The Day: Korean Stocks Record High Edition
In early 2016, when Kim Jong Un was hitting the headlines almost daily with threats (and missile tests), the Korean stock market tumbled reflexively as 'risk' was priced into equity markets.
That is a very different picture to what is happening now.
(Note the correlation – lower pane – between "nuclear, Korea" stories and the price of the Korean stock market is now strongly positive (as opposed to the more rational negative 'norm')
As the threat of global thermonuclear war surges amid US-North Korean tensions, 'investors' are piling into South Korean stocks, sending the KOSPI to a new record high…
So as the title suggests… WTF!
- Trump Destroys Michelle O's Legacy; Makes School Lunches Great Again
Michelle Obama made it her mission during her 8 years in the White House to eradicate all taste from school lunches. Afterall, what kind of self-respecting liberal would she be if she allowed school districts and families all across the country to actually choose what food best suited their communities and children?
She even made inspiring videos like “Turnip For What!?”, a clever play off Lil Jon’s track (great role model for children, btw)…see what she did there?
Unfortunately, no amount of cutsie jingles or rap lyrics were sufficient to make the following school lunches appealing to young school kids…and we can’t imagine why…
In fact, in the end, rather than eating a meal with slightly too much sodium, kids simply stopped eating lunch altogether. As the Washington Times pointed out back in 2014, over 1 million students stopped eating school lunch in the 2012-2013 school year alone. Meanwhile, schools all around the country reported they were buying food that just ended up getting thrown away or fed to pigs at local farms because no one would eat it.
The National School Lunch Program saw a sharp decline in participation once the healthy standards went into effect during the 2012-2013 school year. A total of 1,086,000 students stopped buying school lunch, after participation had increased steadily for nearly a decade.
The report found that 321 districts left the National School Lunch Program altogether, many of which cited the new standards as a factor.
The decline was “influenced by changes made to comply with the new lunch content and nutrition standards,” state and local officials said.
But, in one of his first actions as Agriculture Secretary, Sonny Perdue took steps today to reintroduce some common sense into school lunches noting that “If kids aren’t eating the food, and it’s ending up in the trash, they aren’t getting any nutrition – thus undermining the intent of the program.”
Per The Hill, in an interim final rule, aimed at giving schools more flexibility, Perdue and his department are postponing further sodium reductions for at least three years and allowing schools to serve non-whole grain rich products occasionally as well as 1 percent flavored milk.
The rule allows states to exempt schools in the 2017-2018 school year from having to replace all their grains with whole-grain rich products if they are having a hard time meeting the standard.
Sodium levels in school lunches now must average less than 1,230 milligrams in elementary schools; 1,360 mg in middle schools; and 1,420 mg in high school.
Before Perdue’s rule, schools were expected to reduce sodium even further to average less than 935 milligrams in elementary schools, 1035 milligrams in middle school lunches and 1,080 in high school lunches by the week by July 1, 2017.
Further reductions were set to take effect by July 1, 2022.
Unsurprisingly, the School Nutrition Association and kids everywhere praised Perdue’s efforts to Make School Lunches Great Again.
The School Nutrition Association, which represents nutrition directors at schools across the country, was quick to praise Perdue. The group has been lobbying Congress for more flexibility in what the have called “overly prescriptive regulations.”
SNA claims less kids are buying lunch because they no longer like the food and schools are being forced to spend more money on lunches that largely end up in trash.
The former standards required all grains, including croutons and the breading on chicken patties, to be whole grain rich.
“School Nutrition Association is appreciative of Secretary Perdue’s support of school meal programs in providing flexibility to prepare and serve healthy meals that are appealing to students,” the group’s CEO Patricia Montague said in a statement.
“School nutrition professionals are committed to the students they serve and will continue working with USDA and the Secretary to strengthen and protect school meal programs.”
Of course, just like when Mayor Bloomberg’s Big Gulp ban got overturned, it’s unclear how/if families will be able to cope with returning to a world where they actually have to make their own decisions regarding sodium intake.
- Where Do You Go In A 'Hurricane'?
Submitted by Jeff Thomas via InternationalMan.com,
As a West Indian, I’ve lived through quite a few hurricanes in my time. My level of responsibility in each varied quite a bit. I was eight years old in my first hurricane and I thought it was great fun, as it was so exciting during the hurricane and, afterward, the landscape had changed so much that I had lots of new places to play.
On the other end of the scale, in 2004, my country, the Cayman Islands, experienced a Category 5 hurricane, with winds up to 200 miles per hour that sat on us without moving for 36 hours. I was responsible for ensuring that safety be provided for scores of my employees prior to the hurricane. After the storm, one of my companies took on the complete rebuilding of the country’s wholesale and retail food distribution facilities in order to ensure that the country’s population would have the most essential commodities—food and water. (A big change in level of responsibility over the years.)
In addition to having spent decades planning for hurricane damage, I’ve also spent decades as an economist, planning for major economic storms. In 1999, I determined that the world would experience what Doug Casey has termed a Greater Depression that would be more devastating than any economic event the world had ever seen. I predicted that it would happen in stages and that the final stage would be the most devastating. I would have been quite pleased to have been incorrect, but unfortunately, my predictions have come to pass. I believe we’re now quite close to the final destruction stage, a period that will lead to the collapse of many of the world’s formerly strongest economies, coinciding with a period of devastating warfare. In both the economic and warfare cases, those who are the world’s major players will believe that they’ll be able to control the extent of devastation and even profit from it, but events will go beyond their control and take on a life of their own.
As in the image above, there will not be just one, but multiple epicentres. Europe and North America will be hit the hardest economically. Next in line will be those countries, such as Japan, Australia, etc., that are the most closely linked economically with these centres. The next tier down will be those countries that are dependent on the centres, but more peripherally, such as Panama or Mexico. Finally, there will be those countries that are the least linked to the major centres, such as Uruguay or Thailand.
All countries will be impacted by the coming economic hurricane, but the effects will vary. Those in the US and Europe will experience the equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane. Those in Australia and Japan will experience a Category 4. Countries in the third tier will experience a Category 3, and those countries that are either distant from or the least economically dependent upon the epicentres will experience Category 2 or even Category 1 damage.
This is not mere speculation. In examining previous depressions and the last two world wars, we can see that those countries that were the least connected to events tended to fare well. This will hold true this time around as well.
When we turn on the television and the weatherman says that a hurricane is approaching, we have to make a decision. Do we trust in the hope that it might not pass directly over us? Do we question the severity of the storm as it’s being described to us? Should we plan to stay at home, as in a Category 1 or Category 2 storm, or should we plan to go to a local shelter as in a Category 3 or Category 4 storm? Or, do we believe we’ll be experiencing the devastation of a Category 5, in which case we’d pack our bags, wave goodbye to our home, and get as far away from the epicentre as possible?
Well, first, we’d better look at the categories, then, based on where we’re located, ask ourselves what we need to do. We’re presently already experiencing Category 1 conditions.
Category 1 Warfare: Minor civil disobedience and/or riots
Category 1 Economics: Increased mortgage foreclosures, some strip-shop and mall closings, decreased spending overallCategory 2 Warfare: Major civil disobedience, riots, and/or insurrection
Category 2 Economics: The above, plus tariff wars, stock and bond market crashesCategory 3 Warfare: Minor bombing and/or ground invasion
Category 3 Economics: The above, plus minor inability of governments to pay entitlements, significant inflation, credit collapseCategory 4 Warfare: Major bombing and/or ground invasion
Category 4 Economics: The above, plus the end of the dollar as a reserve currency/end of the petrodollar, considerable inflation, short-term bank closuresCategory 5 Warfare: Nuclear destruction
Category 5 Economics: The above, plus major inability of governments to pay entitlements, permanent closure of the majority of banks, currency collapse, confiscation of deposits, major internal capital controlsThe above descriptions are not by any means comprehensive. They represent basic categories, to which many details can and should be added.
So, what should your personal plan be? Well, if you’re located in one of the epicentres (the EU and US), you might devise a plan to head out to the country, if you have a destination that you either own or rent. Then, depending on the severity of the storm, you may survive the damage. (A rural area is the equivalent of a hurricane shelter.) However, if you’re dependent on your government for income, you may not be able to survive a Category 3 storm. Even if your income is independent of your government, you may not be able to survive a Category 4 or 5 storm, as you’ll still be under the control of a collapsing system.
The closer you are to an epicentre, the worse the damage promises to be to you personally. And the stronger the hurricane, the greater the damage. It’s important to remember that personal preparedness will help, but the worse the state your government, infrastructure, local businesses and neighbours will be in, the more you’ll be impacted by their condition, even if you’re personally prepared.
As an example, those who choose to sit out a Category 5 monetary and/or warfare hurricane in Uruguay would be likely to fare quite well, just as the Europeans who went there during the world wars. (Very few of them returned after the wars, having found a better life abroad.)
In a Category 4 hurricane, life would be likely to remain relatively stable in areas such as the southeastern provinces of Mexico. In a Category 3, New Zealand might just be manageable.
However, in order to assess your personal situation, it would be advisable to have another look at the categories above and decide for yourself what degree of damage is likely in the near future, then make a personal assessment as to whether you’re willing to chance experiencing that level of damage.
We’ve passed the point of whether there’ll be a hurricane; we just can’t be sure how severe it’ll be. The winds are already picking up and those who choose to make a move will need to do so soon.
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If you live in the US or the EU, expect the coming financial hurricane to be a Category 5. Think major currency collapses, big bank closures, and capital controls. In other words, total financial mayhem. New York Times best-selling author Doug Casey and his team share all the details in this urgent video. Click here to watch it now.
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