Author: Charles Hugh Smith

If you’re giving gifts, consider giving tools. It takes a number of things to make healthy home-cooked meals: the will to do so, knowledge, organization, experience and a few good kitchen tools. Young people who didn’t grow up cooking and baking often lack all five essentials. It’s hard to cook if you don’t have a decent knife, vegetable peeler, containers for leftovers, and so on. One of the secrets of being to cook/bake across a wide spectrum of cuisines is having the tools to do so within reach. The same is true of preparing a meal for guests: having all … Continue reading →

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The American Power Elite may yet discover that throw the bums out applies to all existing Establishment parties and Elites. As I have often noted, historian Michael Grant identified profound political disunity in the ruling class as a key cause of the dissolution of the Roman Empire. Grant described this dynamic in his excellent account The Fall of the Roman Empire, a book I have been recommending since 2009. The chapter titles of the book provide a precis of the other causes Grant identifies: The Gulfs Between the Classes The Credibility Gap The Partnerships That Failed The Groups That Opted … Continue reading →

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Here’s what’s obvious, but unacceptable: we need a new system. Pundits and apologists are quick to chastise anyone who even speaks of class war, as if the words alone might spark what the pundits and apologists fear. The pundits and apologists dread the words because they know the Class War has already started. The mainstream media’s hope is that denial will somehow suppress the broader recognition that the fault lines in American society are cracking wide open. Last week’s entries explained why increasing wealth/income inequality is the only possible output of the current social- political -economic order. All the proposed … Continue reading →

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While many hope that every low-skill person can become a high-skilled worker, training people doesn’t create jobs for them. One of the most appealing beliefs about technology–that it will always create more jobs than it destroys–is no longer true. It was true in the first and second industrial revolutions, for one simple reason: the new industrial revolution created vast numbers of low-skill jobs that offered displaced workers abundant opportunities for work that did not require more than entry-level skills. It only took a few minutes to learn one’s job on an assembly line in the first industrial revolution, and many … Continue reading →

The post Why I Will Never Hire Anyone appeared first on LewRockwell.

The ‘crapification’ of jobs is the direct result of the ‘crapification’ of the economy. Two recent articles shed light on the ‘crapification’ of jobs and the rise of income inequality: Martin Wolf on the Low Labor Participation as the Result of the Crapification of Jobs(Naked Capitalism) The Measured Worker: The technology that illuminates worker productivity and value also contributes to wage inequality. (Technology Review, via John S.P.) While both articles offer valuable insights into the secular trend of stagnating employment and wages, I think both miss a couple of key dynamics. As a general starting point: if you want to … Continue reading →

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Collapse begins when real reform becomes impossible. We all know why reforms fail: everyone whose share of the power and money is being crimped by reforms fights back with everything they’ve got. Reforms that can’t be stopped by the outright purchase of politicos are watered down in committee, and loopholes wide enough for jumbo-jets of cash to fly through are inserted. The reform quickly becomes “reform”–a simulacrum that maintains the facade of fixing what’s broken while maintaining the Status Quo. Another layer of costly bureaucracy is added, along with hundreds or thousands of pages of additional regulations, all of which … Continue reading →

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Now that virtually every nation is entering the bust phase, all are being tested. Booms powered by credit, new markets and speculation are followed by busts as night follows day. This creates a very difficult test for every nation-state facing the inevitable bust: how does the leadership deal with the end of the boom? As the world is about to learn once again, the “fix” may make the next bust even more destructive. let’s start by reviewing what conditions generate booms. 1. An undeveloped nation gains access to new credit, markets and resources and go through a “boost phase” much … Continue reading →

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Those calling for an end of the Empire don’t seem to realize that the federal state’s vast entitlement programs are ultimately funded by the Empire. The Status Quo would have us believe that America and its Empire are one entity. This is handy for those with Imperial designs but it is false: America could be untangled from its Empire, and many of us believe it is essential that America untangles itself from its Imperial structures and ideologies. What I call The Imperial Project was cobbled together in the aftermath of World War II, when the Soviet Union and America posed … Continue reading →

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Here’s a chart that shows how the Status Quo “fixes” every problem: it transfers more debt and more losses to the taxpayers. Many hold a touchingly naive faith that the Status Quo will save them even as the current system unravels. Why is this faith naive? Let’s start with this key question: does the Status Quo strike you as being even remotely competent? If you answer “yes,” we have to ask: what planet are you on? Mars? Here on Earth, no one that isn’t a bought-and-paid for-shill of the Status Quo would even make the risible claim of Status Quo … Continue reading →

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If others in our class are still rising while we’re stagnating, we sense a great disturbance in the financial and political Force. Rising economic inequality tends to generate political instability for all the obvious reasons: the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, the rich say let them eat brioche and next thing you know, the ungrateful wretches are tearing down the Bastille and a youthful army officer has to restore order with a whiff of grapeshot. After which he launches a war of conquest that kills hundreds of thousands and bankrupts nations. So yes, economic inequality can generate quite … Continue reading →

Forgiving skyrocketing student debt won’t solve the real problem, which is the soaring costs imposed by a cartel that is failing to prepare students for the economy of tomorrow. Everyone understands soaring student debt is a problem: burdened with $1.3 trillion in student loans, young people are unable to start businesses, buy homes and start families. The high cost of housing and meeting regulations to launch businesses add additional burdens, but the weight of $1.3 trillion in debt right out of the starting gate is crushing. The “solution” being pursued by the federal government is obvious: take over most of … Continue reading →

Markets discover price via supply and demand: Big demand + limited supply = rising prices. Abundant supply + sagging demand = declining prices. Eventually, prices rise to a level that is unaffordable to the majority of potential buyers, with demand coming only from the wealthy. That’s the story of housing in New York City, the San Francisco Bay Area and other desirable locales that are currently magnets for global capital. In the normal cycle of supply and demand, new more affordable housing would be built, and prices would decline. But that isn’t happening in hot real estate markets in the … Continue reading →

And here’s the knife in the heart of the Echo Housing bubble: declining household income. The Federal Reserve-induced Echo Housing Bubble is finally starting to roll over, and the bubble’s pop won’t be pretty. Why is the bubble finally popping now? All the factors that inflated the Echo Housing bubble are running dry. These include: — unprecedented low mortgage rates — FHA mortgage approvals for anyone who fogs a mirror — frantic cash buying by Chinese millionaires desperate to get their money out of China — the Federal Reserve buying up trillions of dollars in mortgages — lemming-like buying of … Continue reading →

The shackles of this new serfdom are invisible, but no less destructive for being invisible. One of the more remarkable characteristics of American life is our passive acceptance of systems that are so obviously completely insane. Yes, I refer to our healthcare system, a.k.a. sickcare because in America sickness is profitable and health is not, and healthcare profiteering that would be the envy of pirates and warlords everywhere is the norm. What warlord wouldn’t jump on the opportunity to jack up the cost of a medication from $13.50 a tablet to $750 overnight, or as the article highlights, jack up … Continue reading →

The USD strengthening since last July is the core driver of the global recession. The parlor game of the moment is laying odds on the Federal Reserve’s decision to raise rates, leave rates unchanged, or (gasp!) hint at future stimulus. There are certainly a multitude of inputs to the Fed’s decision, and a variety of potential consequences, but only one really matters: the effect on foreign exchange/currency markets. It’s not that difficult to understand the one dynamic that matters. If the Fed raise yields/interest rates in the U.S., that makes the U.S. currency, i.e. the U.S. dollar (USD), more attractive. … Continue reading →