I know it's all doom and gloom but what can be done about it?

Out,_Vile_Jelly

Can someone dredge up the link to the superb End Of The World thread, the one with the advice about obtaining water from licking condensation off car windows? One of the funniest things I've ever read.

kabayiri

wotsthat wrote: »

The dog's a good idea. It can guard your shelter and when things get really tough you can eat it.

I'd suggest two smaller dogs. You might not be able to eat a whole big dog before it goes off.

If the dog goes off before you have eaten it, I suggest you should consider killing it first.

HTH

kabayiri

To the OP, I have a complicated and extremely accurate formula which shows how much you should spend to ride out this crisis ...

... except my equals key is broken so I can't show it. Apparently the formula I bought didn't account for such mishaps.

DervProf

JimmyTheWig wrote: »

When times are hard the last thing you, as an individual, should be doing is spending money when you should really be saving up a safety net and paying off debts.

Erm, I think you should be saving up a safety net when times are good, and not racking up too much debt.

Saving up a safety net when times are hard :rotfl:

Loughton_Monkey

I recommend everyone to take 'time out' from time to time and take a step back. Observe mass human behaviour. Don't just accept what people say, or immediately challenge it. Instead think for a moment about "why would they say that"? It's something I learned years ago - much to my advantage I think. Because the majority of people have the capacity only to think in "straight lines".

Things do not happen in a straight line. Change does not happen overnight. We are in a recession for God's sake!

It will last a year or more yet. Just live with it. It doesn't mean the 'end' of civilization as we know it. It simply means things will probably get a bit worse before they get better. What else do you expect for a nation, a continent and (Asia excepted) a world that has lived well beyond their means for 20 years? It means they must pay for their mistakes and get considerably poorer. In other words, take the hit. Only then can we start to claw our way back again. This is how it has always been, and how it always will be.

The world is full of complete idiots who see a trend for the proverbial '5 minutes' and use this to foresee meltdown [see so-called 'global warming' for the prime example]. Life will become 'business as usual' again. But not by Christmas! And not before the vast majority of us have taken a hit and recognised that you don't get something for nothing. Why do people expect that because the recession doesn't end 3 days after the last 'bail-out' that we must all convert our assest to gold and take tin-hat and corned beef to the hills?

Joe_Bloggs

@Loughton Monkey
Please do not go down the route of mentioning hedgehogs or any other convenient but misunderstood anthropomorphisms.

One popular explanation to the current situation is the Margaritaville episode of South Park.

J_B.

hallmark

Loughton_Monkey wrote: »

I recommend everyone to take 'time out' from time to time and take a step back. Observe mass human behaviour. Don't just accept what people say, or immediately challenge it. Instead think for a moment about "why would they say that"? It's something I learned years ago - much to my advantage I think. Because the majority of people have the capacity only to think in "straight lines".

If only you hadn't skipped the next lesson: "how not to be amazingly smug & patronizing as if you're the only person whoever thought beyond the bleedin' obvious."

Joe_Bloggs

The lesson than many of us skip relates to bitterness and vitriol.
J_B.

Reactor_2

Unfortunately, the only solutions to get out of this, also happen to be illegal. You will have to kill all the people who are receiving government benefits. The only way to do this legally is through war and there is only one nation on this planet that can implement this that is not crippled by bureaucracy. Or the PIGS become countries dedicated to sex tourism as they don't have anything else to offer the world, as I'm sure there are plenty of attractive girls there, and the price would have to be realistic too as they won't attract much business if they are charging £2k a night, but at £100, I'm sure there would be a dramatic turnaround in the economies. The oldest profession in the world, is not the oldest for no reason. Human capital is the most expensive and when your expenses are too high, you cut them.

People have to realise that the taxes they pay don't cover a fraction of the services they receive, like education for children and healthcare. A strong argument why the government in the UK bailed out the banks back in 2008 is a simple one. The taxes collected from the financial industry covers the cost of education and and healthcare in this country, which means that if the financial industry goes down the pan, so does the rest of the country as there would not be enough money to pay for everything, though there wasn't enough in the first place anyway, hence the increasing debt to fund the difference.

The Japanese have been down this road to nowhere for the last 2 decades after their overconfidence blew them up and now they are caught in a debt situation they can't get out of, with twice as many retired people demanding benefits than there are young people in the workforce paying taxes. If they couldn't change their economy using the tactics the rest of the developed world are now using, I doubt the outcome can be any better for the developed world. Only overconfidence would make someone do something that clearly doesn't work, thinking the outcome for them would be successful.

Capitalism can only work if we actually allow the weak to die off and let the strong prevail, otherwise the survivors have the burden of subsidising the weak, and let's be realistic here, I don't want to pay for your children to go to school as much as you don't want to pay for mine. Let nature select who should live and who should die, rather than creating rules on preventing those from dying and placing a burden on everyone else.

MRSTITTLEMOUSE

tomterm8 wrote: »

The basic solution is not to care too much about all this, and do the obvious things.

Basically, don't worry too much, do the things that will make you wealthier and happier regardless of whether disaster happens.

That's my attitude too.
I've never worried about what is going on out there.
Its going to happen anyway,so why make yourself more miserable worrying about it.
Life will go on regardless,so what if we're all that little bit poorer.
We'll adapt because we have to,we have no alternative do we.
So we may as well be happy while we do .