Man, I just cannot shake the feelings of impending doom everytime I listen to the news. (I’ve pretty much stopped watching the news. I now either listen to it on the radio or I read it on the various newswires on the internet.)
It seems like everything is doom and gloom about the economy, housing, fod and fuel prices, war, etc, etc.
I have to pause and think about my own exposure to these things – my house has a tiny fixed rate mortgage, I don’t have any debt other than the mortgage, the girlfriend has her job with a good degree of job security, we don’t have many luxuries other than internet and Warcraft, the truck is paid for, there no mountain of credit card debt, and by and large we’re not in a bad place should the economy tumble.
I cannot imagine being one of these people you hear about on the news…the family with two kids, three cars, an overpriced house, fifty grand in credit card debt and the threat of downsizing in the future. I think I’d explode from the stress.
But, at the same time, most of what I read and hear says that the majority of the people in these dire situations put themselves into it. Either by getting mortgages using inflated/falsified earnings data, living so far ahead of their income or just generally being incredibly shortsighted. So, while I feel bad for them I have a tough time feeling sorry for them. Earning $46,000 a year and lying to buy a $750,000 house isn’t a ‘mistake’, it’s fraud.
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‘Jericho’ returns to TV next month for their abbreviated seven-episode season. I read somewhere that the first three episodes were leaked onto the internet so if you’re the impatient kind, you can probably find them out there. Don’t ask me about links, I have none. I read about it on arfcom so you may wanna go look there.
I will say that from what Ive read about the second season, it appears the first season format of ‘just trying to stay alive’ is going to give way to episodes about more ‘tin foil hat’ type of things. I’d elaborate but I don’t want to ruin things for anyone.
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Still following the elections. I am still of the opinion that at this point who wins will be irrelevant in regards to gun policy. Nothing good will happen for gun owners out of the next election, it’ll only be differing degrees of bad. Buying magazines, ammo and gun s is never a bad idea and it is even less of a bad idea now with about ten months left until elections
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That reminds me….
When you stock up on firearms and related materials, don’t think that you are stocking up for the day TSHTF. What you are doing is stocking up for the rest of your life. Whats the difference?
If you’re stocking up because, say, you live in New Orleans and you’re worried another Katrina is going to blow through you might stock a case of 9mm, a case of .223 and a case of 00 buck and figure you’re all set. You’d probably be right. And then when the Katrina Mk II is over then what? Say you used up half of that stash (giving it to friends, neighbors, etc) what do you do? DO you buy more? Of course you do…and you can do that because its still available now that the immediate crisis is over.
I stockpile firearms and materials on the assumption that whatever I have right now is all I have to last me for the rest of my life because at some point they will no longer be available. If I say that I have a Pelican case with x Glocks in it someone will ask “Do you really think that when TSHTF you’re going to need x Gocks? If you need that many then you should have brought artillery support.” But that’s not what those are for..oh sure, they’re good to have if things really do get weird but Im not thinking that come some Katrina-esque disaster Im going to need x Glocks. I have as many as I have because someday the powers that be may say that no more can be sold, or they’ll restrict them so highly as to make them virtually unobtainable, and then whatever I have has to last me for the next 40 years.
Remember that wild and crazy Assault Weapon ban in 1994? Lets say it didn’t expire, however many AR magazines you had at the time of the ban would be all youd be able to have for the. Rest. Of. Your. Life. Sure, you might be able to buy more grandfathered ones…maybe for $30 ea…and ten years later for $50 ea…and further down the road at $100 ea. So at that moment, when you’re staring at the television watching the news and you realize that whatever you have at that moment is probably all you’ll ever be able to have….do you think you have enough? You have two AR’s in the safe, maybe thirty magazines for the pair and you still have forty years of living left in front of you. Forty years of hoping that your rifles don’t suffer failures, that you don’t lose/break/damage/forget or otherwise ruin a magazine. Do you even own anything mechanical that you’ve managed to consistently keep in good condition for forty years?
A lot happens in forty years…in five years you flip your truck on a patch of ice and your rifle is destroyed in the wreck. Eleven years from now someone breaks into your home and steals your pistol and a rifle. Fourteen years from some overzealous cop at the range says you’re gun/magazine is illegal and confiscates them..he’s proved wrong but you don’t get them back because department policy is to never return guns. Seventeen years from now your house catches fire and your pistol is lost in the flames. Twenty years from now your son is getting married, moving away and you don’t want him to be unarmed so you want to give him a rifle and pistol. Thirty years from now you want to set a pistol aside for when your grandson comes of age.
So, really, is it that outrageous for someone to think that maybe a half dozen rifles and a couple hundred magazines is a bad idea?
Economic news
Don’t forget, the Leftists that run the mainstream media are trying to talk down the economy since a Republican is in charge. When Clinton was up for reelection in ’96 the economy was all sunshine and lollipops 🙂 Looking at the actual data, the economy isn’t that bad.
I know the general feeling. We have a truck, a SUV, and 3 motorcycles and all but the truck are paid off. My truck does have a loan, but I put enough cash down on it to keep the payments low (and almost make the salesman pass out, hehehe). If needed I could pay off the balance today. We have a low (by Fairfield County, CT standards)mortgage on a condo, and the credit card gets paid in full every month. About our only large extra monthly expense is renting a storage unit.
The plan is to sell the condo and buy a house with a garage in the mortgage+storage unit cost range for now and save up to escape CT in the next 8-10yrs when current family obligations are fulfilled.
I have an employee who is talking about taking out a second mortgage on his home. I asked if some financial difficulties have come up. No, he says. He just wants some extra money to “have”. I guess that means to buy a HDTV with. Maybe take a trip. His wife would like some new jewelry. Maybe pay down some credit cards.
Amazing.
We am nowhere near what I would like for a “lifetime” battery, but far better stocked then most, and most are of a type that should function 100yrs from now with reasonable care. There are always chances and priorities in life, and right now today I’m gambling that using my $$ to improve my housing situation is more important then improving upon our battery. I suspect that priority may change sometime around November 2008, but we shall see.
Re: Economic news
This is quite true. On paper, things dont look bad at all. But the message being sent out by the media seems alot more pessimistic.
Which is exactly why I ordered (and recieved last week!) ten more AK mags from Aim Surplus at $8.95 each and 200 rounds of E. Europe .308 in a battle pack. Like the commander said, if we’re wrong, so what, but if we’re right then we will be sitting quite a bit better than Joe Six-pac that refinances his house to buy jewelry and a TV. We pay cash for nearly everything, have all our vehicles paid for, just put new tires on them too.
I would like to work on a 12 volt system/battery bank that can be solar recharged. The new LED truck lights can work perfect for emergency lighting. Guns come and go but they ain’t gonna spoil so how can it hurt to have a few extra put away for the uncertain future. Probably doesn’t matter which party is in power, stuff will only get more expensive and harder to come by.
If your dog needed surgery to recover fully and be able to live well for the next ten years, would you go into debt to do it?
When you have kids, this is an everyday question. If you don’t get your kids $4500 braces, are they going to have deformed mouths that prevent them from looking normal enough to be employable in high-paying jobs? If you don’t pay $50/month dojo fees will they be victimized wimps? If you send them to the abysmally bad local high school that’s losing its accreditation will they ever be able to go to college?
The needs never end, and they’re never cheap. Everyone ELSE is sending their kid on exchange programs to [China/Italy/Kenya], why aren’t you? Everyone else’s kid gets to ski with their school’s after-school ski club, how can you say no? And why rent when the tyke could have his own? But, of course, he grew so now he needs his own skis AGAIN. And they need a cellphone (how can a child be safe without a cellphone) and they need car insurance (OMFG, you wouldn’t believe the cost) and they need a bigger house and they need and need and need.
And you love them and want them to have every opportunity and you do it. You go into debt. And it becomes normal. We’ve spent $73,000 on private middle school and high school for a gifted child (the other two are in public schools because they don’t NEED private school) and we are just sitting ducks for a recession. But looking back, I don’t see how we could have responded in any other way. Our child needed this. You’ll do anything for your child.
ETA: This answer got threaded wrong. It was supposed to be in response to the poster who wondered how people could live so far beyond their means. All it really takes is one child and, voila, there you are.
The Ostrich Effect
I have wondered at the motivation of the media to constantly reinforce the notion that everything is on a roller coaster to hell. In addition higher ratings generated by sensationalism it also does exactly what you talked about, it makes people stop paying attention to the news.
Unlike you however, most of these people don’t then go to the radio and internet for news and information, they just watch “Dancing with the Stars” and ignore the rest of the world. They know that every time they turn on CNN it’s a grimmer and grimmer picture. The end result is that they are not informed about what is happening around them and are therefore unable and/or unwilling to act in order to preserve their few remaining freedoms.
Whether it’s deliberate or not, it’s undeniably happening.
Howdy… two things.
1) Jericho is pretty good so far.
2) how much would a day or two advanced notice on The Day be worth to you?
have you heard of Intrade? It’s a real events futures market. You can buy and sell futures contracts on basically any event. For example, I purchased 20 “Mitt Romney wins Nevada Caucus” futures contracts for $8 dollars each. When Mitt won, I recieved $10 dollars per contract making a profit of $40.
Sounds lame and boring for the serious survivalist right? What makes intrade cool is that there are contracts on basically everything. “Israel/USA attacks Iran before dec. 2008”, “H5N1 Bird Flu discovered in the US”, “Osama Bin Ladin Resolved”, “China attacks Taiwan”, etc. etc. Because those events are so unlikely the contracts generally trade between 50 cents and 2 dollars. However, when someone with inside information trades on it (for example, a first responder who sees a patient with symptoms of avian flu, tells a friend who trades on intrade), the price rises, indicating that someone out there knows what’s up.
If this sounds all silly and theoretical, lets look at an example. “Saddam gets captured” was trading for practically nothing for the longest time. Two days before he was caught, his contract started to go crazy. Someone, either in the intelligence or military community traded on the information and in doing so “let the cat out of the bag”.
Right now I hold small positions in basically every black swan SHTF type event. It’s pretty cheap insurance.
Re: Economic news
i disagree… on paper things look apocalyptic. Look up “credit default swaps”… the collapse of the subprime market was the first shoe, a recession that triggers defaults among overlevered private equity portfolio companies would cause the collapse of the issuers of credit default swaps.
The media has no idea what’s going on, they just know that bush is a republican therefore bad.
Clever. I respect this plan highly.
Tell me about the AK mags…do they have the ‘dorsal rib’?
AK mags
They do have the rib and are Romanian. A little crusty but looks like they will clean up fine. You can see them here.
http://www.aimsurplus.com/acatalog/Romanian_30rd_Steel_Magazine.html
Re: AK mags
Thanks for the link.