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Saturday, August 3, 2013

The Modern Debt Slave-History of US Consumerism


Bruce’s Poor Man Survival Bulletin

A Digest of Urban Survival Resources


For Independent Minded People!

ISSN 2161-5543

Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few. (Quote by - George Bernard Shaw)

 

From The Smiling Dog Saloon Files

 

 

In This Issue:

1.       USPS Tips for using Dryer Sheets

2.      How much food should you store?

3.      Looting vs. Scavenging, More massive surveillance on citizens

4.      Make it Yourself energy bars

5.      The Modern debt slave-History of consumerism

 

The U.S. Postal service sent out a message to all letter carriers to put a sheet of Bounce in their uniform pockets to keep yellow-jackets away. Use them all the time when playing baseball and soccer. I use it when I am working outside. 

 

It really works. The insects just veer around you. All this time you've just been putting Bounce in the dryer!

 

1. It will chase ants away when you lay a sheet near them. It also repels mice.

2. Spread sheets around foundation areas, or in trailers, or cars that are sitting and it keeps mice from
entering your vehicle.

3. It takes the odor out of books and photo albums that don't get opened too often.

4. It repels mosquitoes. Tie a sheet of Bounce through a belt loop when outdoors during mosquito
season.

5. Eliminate static electricity from your television (or computer) screen.

6. Since Bounce is designed to help eliminate static cling, wipe your television
screen with a used sheet of Bounce to keep dust from resettling..

7. Dissolve soap scum from shower doors. Clean with a sheet of Bounce.

8. To freshen the air in your home - Place an individual sheet of Bounce in a drawer or hang
in the closet.

9. Put Bounce sheet in vacuum cleaner.

10. Prevent thread from tangling. Run a threaded needle through a sheet of Bounce before
beginning to sew.

11. Prevent musty suitcases. Place an individual sheet of Bounce inside empty luggage before storing.    

12. To freshen the air in your car - Place a sheet of Bounce under the front seat.
13. Clean baked-on foods from a cooking pan. Put a sheet in a pan, fill with water, let sit overnight, and
sponge clean. The anti-static agent apparently weakens the bond between the food and the pan..

14. Eliminate odors in wastebaskets.  Place a sheet of Bounce at the bottom of the wastebasket.

15. Collect cat hair. Rubbing the area with a sheet of Bounce will magnetically attract all the loose hairs.

16. Eliminate static electricity from Venetian blinds..Wipe the blinds with a sheet of Bounce to prevent
dust from resettling.

17. Wipe up sawdust from drilling or sand  papering. A used sheet of Bounce will collect sawdust like a tack cloth.
18. Eliminate odors in dirty laundry.   Place an individual sheet of Bounce at the bottom of a laundry bag or hamper.

19. Deodorize shoes or sneakers. Place a sheet of Bounce in your shoes or sneakers overnight.

20. Golfers put a Bounce sheet in their back pocket to keep the bees away.

21. Put a Bounce sheet in your sleeping bag and tent before folding and storing them. It will keep them smelling fresh.

22. Wet a Bounce sheet, hose down your car, and wipe love bugs off easily with the wet Bounce.

 

 

PM’s Roundup of Useful Resources…

 


DEMCAD shares with us his top 10 underrated barter items. IMO, most any of his suggestions could be desirable but I always suggest you do your best to avoid the need to barter. Here’s his list and his opinion on scavenging……



The age old prepper question: how much to store? The following article gives some guidance on the issue: “This question is a bit like asking ‘How high is up?’. Clearly, the more food you store, the better you will be able to withstand a Level 1 or 2 event (Level 3 events assume, more or…


 

What is Money?  5-Part Video Series w/ Bonus


 

5 Overpriced Items You Should Never Buy In
A Grocery Store

- Bottled Water: 4,000% average markup

- Name-Brand Spices: 100% markup

- Household Specialty Items: Up to 60% markup

- Name-Brand Cereal:
44% average markup

- Precut Produce: 40% markup

 


 

Who doesn’t enjoy making lists? I know I do! The problem is that they can get out of hand, never get followed-through with, and more. Here’s some ideas to keep that from happening: “Getting started in prepping seems a simple task – at least until you start looking at all the things you might need.…


Related post:

There are many useful items you can get that don’t cost much. Here’s a few suggestions and the first part of the post: “…While being prepared is important for many reasons, I do not believe…

 
 
 

Make-It-Yourself Energy Bars

They’re easy, nutritious—and delicious!

It’s late afternoon, and your get-up-and-go is gone. So you do what many of us do—you reach for an energy bar. These bars sound healthy enough. But the problem is that many are not.

They often are short on fiber and protein and contain way too much sugar and too many “empty” carbohydrates and calories.

There is, however, an easy solution—making your own healthy (and delicious) energy bars! Even better, these bars don’t require any baking.

Recipes for energy bars that are not too sweet and packed with important nutrients and protein…


Related: Cookies for long term storage

Never seen cookies canned in a mason jar before but she says they good even after a year and apparently tasty as well. Oh, and she makes some cookies too……

 
 
 

The Nanny State-We love our government


 

This morning we have yet another article detailing a warrantless surveillance program by the National Security Agency that contradicts representations made by President Barack Obama and members of Congress. You may recall how Obama has tried to get citizens to embrace a new surveillance-friendly model of privacy after the disclosure of massive surveillance of citizens, including programs acquiring every call made by citizens. Various Democratic members came forward to admit that they knew of such programs and not to be afraid . . . they have our backs. Yet every story that has surfaced as contradicted claims that such programs are limited and do not involve the content of communications in emails and messages. The latest program being reported is called XKeyscore and is described as scouring emails, chat rooms, and browsing histories . . . all without a warrant. In the meantime, citizens in polls are saying that they are more concerned with the threat of their own government to their privacy than the threat of terrorism. Once again, citizens learned of this program not from their representative or their media but largely from the foreign press and the disclosures of Edward Snowden.

 

Long-standing assumptions built into our medical system deny virtually all Americans the right to affordable dental care, which is available in most other developed countries, while an antiquated and Puritanical attitude toward mental illness has been exploited to deny them adequate care for these conditions.

 

The Parting ThoughtNot to worry in the land of the free!

 

The Making of a Modern Debt Slave


In the ancient world, when people got themselves into debt, they were often forced to sell their daughters into prostitution and their sons into slavery.

Sometimes, the weight of debt broke up families... Sometimes families fought back. Writes anthropologist David Graeber in his book Debt: The First 5,000 Years:

"For thousands of years, the struggle between rich and poor has largely taken the form of conflicts between creditors and debtors -- of arguments about the rights and wrongs of interest payment, debt peonage, amnesty, repossession, restitution, the sequestering of sheep, the seizing of vineyards and selling of debtors' children into slavery. By the same token, for the last 5,000 years, with remarkable regularity, popular insurrections have begun the same way: with ritual destruction of debt records -- tablets, papyri, ledgers, whatever form they might have taken in any particular time and place."

Pity the children. They often paid for their parents' mistakes. Of course, the parents paid too. They suffered the dishonor and humiliation of having their children taken away and put to someone else's service.

What has changed? Today, the U.S. lumbers into the future with total debt equal to about 350% of GDP. In Britain and Japan, the total is over 500%. Debt, remember, is the homage that the future pays to the past. It has to be carried, serviced... and paid. It has to be reckoned with... one way or another.

Two-thirds of the American economy depends on Americans being jazzed enough about something new to go into terminal debt slavery to own it. But there hasn't been anything new that really changed anything for most Americans since the first iPad and most Americans can't even afford one of those.

 

America has run out of ideas. Not surprising since it ran out of literacy a long time ago. The only decent jobs that are left are in banks where the rich figure out how to rob anything the poor and middle class might still own, and lawyers who are getting excited about haggling over the ruins. The rest are baristas, hotel maids, bartenders and prostitutes, and even the world's oldest profession has hit hard times.

 

America has more obese people than any other nation because they consume so much fast food and spend so much time in sedentary activity (TV and computers)…

We also have the most illiterate and stupid people.  According to Newsweek: Americans are Stupid Because: We Don't Spend Enough on Education, but the truth is the U.S. spends more on education than almost every other nation on earth.

 

Read my article on the history of consumerism:



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