What is our likely future in the USA?

Preparing for the possible future demands an understanding of what is most likely to occur and what if anything can one do to bulwark himself against the coming storm. With the passage and signing of the ARRA 2009 (American Recovery & Reinvestment Act of 2009) into law, America will be contorted into a more centralist-directed form of government, dare say, a more socialist obeying monstrosity? Listening to the liberal-speak on some of the networks, calling this move by the Obama administration "socialist" is just fear-mongering, and those that do so are being partisan.

 

Regardless of what you believe, socialism or capitalism, it matters little in how the coming economic storm is going to impact your current life. Let me suggest the most likely scenario given what has happened since the beginning of September 2008 is that we are going to move into a more restrictive recession, yes, even a depression as unemployment reaches over 10%, the GDP continues to contract, and the private sector pulls back from investment and innovation.

 

This is largely due to the impact that heavy governmental spending has in a free-enterprise system where the government is just one more player in the field. Without being in total control of the economic means of production, the central government competes with private capital for investment and innovation. Since the government can literally overpower any private player in the market due to its ability to use taxpayer and taxing authorities, many private investors are pushed to the sidelines while waiting for the government to make its move or takes its stake.

 

By shoving private capital aside, the government inadvertently deepens the pullback as private capital seeks greener pastures elsewhere (see Japan as an example -- the lost Japanese decade), requiring that government increases its intrusion into the free-market mechanism, deepening the recession and those the cycle continues until an event such as a war or earth-shattering discovery like electricity shocks the economy awake.

 

So know what is going to come forward given our current situation, how does one prepare for the reversals of fortune that are likely to leap from the shadows? How does one prepare for changes unlike anything experienced?

 

I suggest that you begin to prepare for dealing with "your void."

 

What is this void? It is the emptiness that catastrophic changes initially produce as they force us from one form of lifestyle into one less acceptable. How we deal with this emptiness will determine our ability to weather the future changes.