What If The Jobs Never Come Back

Famine most likely. Do recall the recent rice crisis? Hunger is a condition which immediately destroys all moral codes--hungry men and women will do almost anything. So, wars, at first likely just nasty local affairs, would likely trail in the wake of famine.

Your ignorance of the conditions under which "domestic servants" lived and worked is on a par with your demonstrated ignorance of nearly every historical subject.

The other side of that is that we Boomers won't be fueling the economic engine with our huge waves of purchasing power like we did in each of the various decades since the Boomer bubble was created by our parents. There's not a lot of non-essential cash to spend on frills when you're on a fixed retirement income.

In fact, most non-essential cash will probably be spent in other countries while Boomers are out traveling the world in their newly found free time.

wow, that is sugar coating it.....they did not save enough, had been told that for 20 years but never got with the program, their corporate pensions took a hit as corporations got out of the pension business, their government pensions are not going to get paid in full because government does not have the money, their SS is iffy for the same reason, and their piggy bank (AKA home) has taken a beating in value that might not come back for a decade or more....

Ya, spending money is going to be hard to come by.

What really butters my toast is that even knowing how much damage we're doing, even grasping some small part of how much we've destroyed in the name of humanity, we'll probably keep at it for a long, long time - coming up with new ways, more ways and methods for keeping this train running.

The answer is to have a human population that doesn't require so much to sustain it; so much destruction. Or to have less people to support (which isn't going to go over very well, given its obvious conclusion). But I doubt there will be any single "smoking gun that makes us change our ways" - we just figure out how to get around it, keep multiplying and destroying in newer and more efficient ways.

I've seen some examples of communities that have achieved this; towns and cities where the footprint of consumption for each individual is extremely low to nonexistent. I doubt I see that happening in the U.S.; there seems to be a predominant mindset that, with each thought expressed, subtly says "Gluttony is my birthright, damit!"

But no, I don't think there's any real apocalypse on the horizon; no made for TV scenario that'll change everyone's ways, I think we'll just keep limping on.

Thanks

I am not saying domestic servants lived well. It was just a way to maintain a semblance of employment in Victorian England. Who says our U.S. standard of living will be maintained? Every time I watched that sitcom Friends, I would think it was a portent of how young adults will be living communally in the not too distant future. The days of Seinfeld episodes ringing true, where a postal worker (Neumann) can live in an apartment on the upper west side of Manhattan, are likely gone.

Gone also are the days when working class Irish-Americans could move from one apartment on a street to another apartment on a street (Washington Heights, Manhattan), to have an additional room, have been gone for 50 years or so.

We have more gadgets to choose from, but urban living has become very expensive, as compared to the middle of the last century, in my opinion.

Have a nice day.