Reply #26: Not as newsy as you'd think :-) [View All]

[Mairead]

...since I'm 5-10 years older than you :evilgrin: I remember those prices. I also remember the wages of the time.

We've been living on the fruits of plunder for a long time. Wages have generally at least followed if not kept up with prices so the periods of crushing disparity have been brief. I'm really asking: what happens if the party's over as from now?

We have a societal structure--suburbs, cars, commuting to jobs, poor insulation, lots of electrical and gasolene powered appliances built abroad cheaply and shipped here cheaply--built on the availability of 'free' energy. Yet every year, people not much older than us die because the energy isn't 'free' enough to do them any good. They freeze or die of heat stress because they can't afford the price of enough energy to change their personal environment and we've constructed a society that prevents them going anywhere else.

My question is: what if the wealthy elites decide to raise prices but because of globalism there's no way to force them to also raise wages? How many people here will be able to go on living as opposed to sinking to a bare-existance level? How many will still be able to post at DU? Who will be able to communicate? What will that do to the ability to resist?