“If we bail out we can hide out in a French girl’s hayloft.” – Memphis Belle
My cat’s a commie. Keeps wanting free food and only talks about Mao.
Over a decade ago, I was reading a post by John Michael Greer (here’s a (LINK) to his current blog). In that post, he talked about time compression and our tendency to not think about historical events in the timeframe that people actually lived them. His example was that of a young girl, born at the time of the French Revolution.
In my mind, the French Revolution turned to the Napoleonic era and the defeat at Waterloo in a fairly short time. I mean, I knew it took longer than the two days we spent on it in World History in high school, but that young girl, born when heads were rolling on the guillotine, would have been 25 or 26 and likely had her own children when Napoleon got waffled in Belgium.
And that poor French girl couldn’t even post about how tough her life was on TikTok®!
26 years. That’s a number that, back when I read Greer’s post, surprised me. From a distance of 230 some years, four years of Biden is an eyeblink.
Chuck Norris once stared into the abyss, and the abyss looked away.
The amazing amount of debt that’s been printed in the last four years along with the rampant inflation made me think back to that young French girl. I think that in 100 years, people will look back on our time and compress it, and I think that they’ll talk about it as the time when the United States sank to third world standards in what, to them, will be just a paragraph in a history book.
There’s plenty of precedent for it. Spain, after the colonization of the New World, brought back ship after ship filled with massive amounts of gold and silver for a period of about 100 years. This caused several related things to happen:
- The inflation from the huge supply of gold and silver distorted the entire economy of Europe, causing an inflation that lasted at least 100 years.
- The huge amount of wealth caused the Spanish to import labor (a lot of to do the work that Spaniards refused to do, you know, like sweeping or making the bed). The Spanish aristocracy also was allergic to work, since they considered it low class. Apparently, the exceptions were being a professor or a priest, but mainly they just sat around in fancy clothes sweating.
- Spain then got caught in an endless web of pointless wars, probably because they were bored.
- Oh, and when the gold and silver stopped flowing from the New World? Yeah, they didn’t stop spending, they just went bankrupt again and again.
This is not a good combination. In less than 100 years, Spain went from being THE world power and the largest economy in the world, by far, to being poor and irrelevant.
In California you can’t get a tattoo of flames on your biceps, unless you have a fire arms permit.
I imagine the world in Spain as it declined in decadence just slowly got crappier and more expensive every day, just like we’re seeing today, as we see a long, slow slide to becoming the third world. I wrote last week about the encrapification of the Internet, but other businesses are doing it, too. McDonald’s® has record profits, but I’ve seen Big Mac® meals advertised for $15 or so.
The Mrs. bought a McFish© sandwich the other day and put it in the fridge, perhaps as some sort of religious ritual since I have no evidence that humans actually eat them. I opened it up to give it a look, and was surprised to see a biscuit-sized sandwich.
I made some fish tacos the other night, but the ungrateful fish just swam away.
It’s been a while since I’ve even seen a Filet-O-Fish©, but the last time I ate one it wasn’t made out of a single goldfish. Heck, I think the last time I ordered one was sometime during the Bush Administration. Which one? Much like Bill Clinton, I can’t remember which Bush because there were too many. Back then it was a full-sized sandwich, but at some point, it became bite-sized.
I could come up with more examples from other companies, but that one will do. Keep this in mind: McDonald’s is now a luxury food. Are McDonald’s™ sales number up? Sure! Prices have doubled. But I haven’t been there in months (which is probably good for me) due to my inability to rationalize the idea that a Big Mac™ meal costs more than a pound of ribeye steak.
I can spell panda with just two letters: P and A.
What’s the outcome? Middle class people aren’t going to restaurants nearly as much, which is causing them to fail. Examples abound:
- Red Lobster© closed 87 locations
- TGI Fridays® is closing 36 locations
- Applebee’s™ closed up to 35 locations last year
- Denny’s© closed 57 locations last year
- Outback® has closed down 41 locations
Middle class people are now too poor to go to these restaurant chains. Period. Inflation has priced them out and wages, held down by continual streams of illegal aliens have not kept up.
This is part of the slow, creeping third worldism showing up in the United States.
Over the span of 26 years, where does this take us?
Why did Napoleon escape exile? He didn’t have enough Elba room.
My answer is that, just like France before the Revolution couldn’t imagine what the world would be like after Napoleon, and just like the Spanish who brought the great heaps of gold and silver back to Spain thought it was going to be totally awesome (el awesomo, I think is the Spanish translation), our first world wealth is rapidly slipping away.
The next twenty years will be, generally, poorer in the United States and in the West. The good news, however, is poorer equals poorer, not necessarily unhappier. Who knows, we might even be happier if we lose the Internet and can’t access TikTok© anymore.
No doubt that inflation is hurting many restaurants, but also appears that oversaturation may be a factor. I moved to my current town about 30+ yrs ago and there were only 3 or 4 sit-down restaurants and a few fast food joints. If a new restaurant opened, then it was almost certain that one of the others would close because there just weren’t enough patrons to support them all. Also, it wasn’t really normal for people to eat out all the time like they do now as it was considered more of a luxury back then.
In the 90’s/00’s, restaurants started popping up everywhere and most were supported, at least for a while as population growth in the area was bringing in new customers. People were also foregoing cooking as they were always on the go (and cheap money allowed this to happen). But now I think we are seeing a reversion back to the “old normal” in terms of restaurant density and so a lot of these overbuilt restaurants will close their doors until equilibrium is reached again.
You know, if we slipped back to a lunch counter and a few locally owned and managed diners, well, that might be a good thing around here.
Restaurants can’t seem to find enough workers either and service is poorer. That may contribute to the decline.
No, restaurants can’t find enough people at a wage that is 1/6 of what they were paying (purchasing parity on what a hour’s worth of McDonald’s wages would buy then versus now) in 1980. The money goes to corporate. Profits must increase.
John, your opening meme was bilingually funny. Mao is Chinese for cat. You’re a cunning linguist.
Ha! Thank you very much! I’ll pretend that wasn’t an accident!
I had your McD fish sandwich moment a few years ago when I went in for the first time in literal decades (I’m a confirmed Wendy’s guy) and had some kind of tasteless Big Mac clone that had been hit with a shrink ray. Nothing at all like the delicious two all beef patties special sauce lettuce cheese pickle onions on a sesame seed bun I ate a literal ton of during my college days. For 50 cents, yes, fifty cents each. Back when I looked excitedly forward to the future that our country is rotting in now.
https://www.aaaa.org/timeline-event/mcdonalds-two-beef-patties-says-mouthful/?cn-reloaded=1
In your list of mighty-have-fallen fast food chains, you forgot to mention the one most important one here in the South : Cracker Barrel. A former fav of mine. But…Go woke, go broke.
https://www.al.com/life/2023/06/cracker-barrel-trolled-on-social-media-for-going-woke-with-pride-month-ad.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/yourmoney/consumer/article-13456605/Here-save-dying-Cracker-Barrel-CEO-spend-700m-5-point-plan-quirky-menu-items-paint-job-price-rises.html
My own local CB, which I USED to go to frequently, has slowly turned into a disaster. Keep scrolling…this list is sorted by food service score number, and my local CB is really down there with an 80.
https://www.al.com/news/2024/02/madison-county-restaurants-with-worst-health-scores-roaches-gray-fuzz-and-black-and-brown-residue.html
Fast food is now a luxury, and one that increasingly just isn’t worth it. We used to put a man on the moon, now we can’t even do our national iconic food of hamburgers right…the perfect symbol of our nation decline into darkness.
Gradually, then suddenly.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/yourmoney/article-13464781/fast-food-prices-mcdonalds-burger-king.html
Pace Mrs. Hoytvitvis go broke, roll woke. The goal is to secure golden (ish) parachutes for HR and man as they blow up.
The Covidiocy killed their clientele (sometimes literally) and now the corporate laptop ladies of both sexes need an exit plan.
*Hoyt, it is
Oof!
We eat at home now, and often we eat better.
>I think that in 100 years, people will look back on our time and compress it
You’re an optimist. In 100 years illiterate savages, squatting in the shadows of partially collapsed skyscrapers, will be shivving each other with rusty screwdrivers as they fight over the rotting carcass of a pigeon.
100 years? That is happening already in many cities.
Yes. America is unusual, so normalcy bias evident in history’s flow does not necessarily apply. In 100 years this world will not resemble the current one, except in mass geographical structure.
These are the hours foretold in many sections of Scripture, the time of commercial and religious globalism and tyranny. Great and rapid changes loom due to many factors, not least of which is the ‘time of trouble’ promised in Daniel 12:1, under which we already live. The ‘trouble’ is the female adversary, and the nation is America, who exports her woke and feminist evils around the world, often by force (hello Afghanistan, Iraq, Ukraine).
All to say, toss normalcy bias out the window. It’s predictive for a gradually changing world, but we’re speeding outta control.
There is already war, beginning to manifest materially. The road ahead will be bumpy.
“In the world I see you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rock feller Center. You’ll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You’ll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Towers. And when you look down, you’ll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying stripes of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighways.” – Fight Club
There is still plenty of wealth in America but the concentration and distribution of it is the real issue. It is going to cause problems sooner rather than later.
Very much sooner. My earlier prediction was 2032 as the median breakup time. Trump’s conviction has moved that clock closer to us.
Spain and France were examples of corruption sourced is standard (fallen, corrupt) human nature.
America is different. It is a planned demolition.
It is. Could we have pushed it back? Certainly, but the price was so high.
I wonder what the rich will taste like?
First slimy, then crunchy.
Rotting pigeons?
Spam.
Ray, above nailed it. With the fragility of complex systems, I see the Competency Crisis crashing the “supply chain issues” or power generation or even planned sabotage, anything can happen, “then, all of a sudden”, we’re in it. I can easily see me dead in the near future from starvation, disease or violence. I’m gonna do my best to avoid those and other ways of passing. Living in rural Tennessee might give me a hedge.
There won’t be any gun confiscation in this neck of the woods until after Martial Law.
You know, I’ve heard a rumor that a country boy can survive. And there won’t be a gun confiscation around Modern Mayberry for 80 years.
I lived in Lenoir, NC 1976-88. Broyhill, Bernhardt, Kincaid, et al. Furniture heaven, textiles too.
GM of my A*hole father in law’s Esso Jobbership. He was drunk most of the time. Fired from my marriage in ’88. Moved up the mtn to Blowing Rock. Started an environmental biz, still at it. Lived in BR, W-S & Charlotte until 2019. Tired of snow, moved to the SC Lowcountry. Love it here. OK, the gist follows.
After a 4 yrs. absence, had to travel north from Hickory to Lenoir. Took 321-A through the heart of Furniture Country. Shuttered factories everywhere along that 12 mile route. Then a walkthrough in Lenoir around my client’s old petroleum bulk plant. Depressing, to say the least. Run down houses. Tall grass, weeds. 10+ yr. old vehicles everywhere.
That’s the summation of post-industrial America. Sometimes. I take US 21 from O-burg to Yemassee when coming back from Charlotte. Just as depressing, but much poorer.
I live in two pods, so to speak, that are wonderful. But wonder how long tney’ll be that way once the USD collapses.
This just led to a post idea. Prolly next Wednesday. Thanks.
Appreciated! Since 1977, all I’ve done is run two successful businesses. With the exception of Jackson, MS (my hometown), all 100K+ southern cities have boomed. OOPS! Forgot about Memphis.
Once you leave the Southern Metros, coastal areas, college towns & most of the NC/SC/GA Mtns., it’s pretty hopeless.
John, I had the same sort of thoughts as well, both in terms of time compression as well as my own normalcy bias. Viewed from the short term, everything seems lesser of change (mostly bad, in this case) than it does in the longer view. There is a reason you write about different aspects of the 80’s, or others of the 60’s and 70’s: when you compare now to then, you can really see the differences.
Another perspective would be that a man could have been born in 100 B.C. Rome and by 44 B.C have lived to see the Republic destroyed; had he lived a bit longer to 27 B.C., he would have seen the foundation of The Principate.
Normalcy bias: The reality of a significant drop in income is truly hitting home. I am trying to be attuned to it and make good choices now instead of just pushing it off and thinking somehow things will be different next year. Maybe they will, but not by any sort of measure to make up the gap.
Businesses are seeing it now. Soon enough it will show up in quarterly earnings.