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Thursday, July 23, 2020

Americans Are Getting Out of Dodge-Rural Revival



Poor Man Survival

Self Reliance tools for independent minded people…


ISSN 2161-5543

A Digest of Urban Survival Resources

 


Rural Revival Redux:
Gold, Guns, God, & Whisky


The Plot Against Trump (and Why It Will Fail)

 

They’ve tried to suggest he’s in Putin’s pocket...

They’ve tried to impeach him on the weakest grounds…

And they’ve even tried to pin a global pandemic on him.

All the while ignoring decades of destruction to so many Dem-run cities…

 


 

Everything happens in cycles.

Without this crucial and fundamental knowledge, everything -- from the whole of human history to your daily grind -- seems like a random, chaotic mess.

Without understanding the hidden power of cycles…

Just when you think a trend is going to go on forever, it pulls the rug from under your feet.

Without understanding cycles…

You’ll tend to think that, when you’re low, your depression will go on forever…

And, when you’re up, you’ll never stop winning.

With a firm grasp on the inherent cyclical nature of life, however, things start to make a little bit of sense.

And the thing about BIG events -- like COVID-19 -- is they don’t halt or disrupt cycles. In fact, they tend to act as accelerants.

They simply break down the old cycle faster, and speed up the new one.

Today, we’re going to take a quick look at a longstanding reckoning of yours truly…

And how it’s beginning to play out.

Rural Revival?

Since 2016, I’ve been talking about the prospect of a Rural Revival… based on the -- back then, apparently wildly unpopular -- idea that we’ve long hit Peak City.

Though I didn’t imagine it would happen quite like this (although riots and economic devastation weren’t completely out of the equation)…

Gold, Guns, God, & Whisky

In 2017, in a missive titled, Gold, Guns, God, & Whisky…

I laid out a few contrarian investment ideas based on this Rural Revival premise.

Gold is the most obvious.

And these other ideas don’t seem so contrarian these days, either.

1] Guns, in strictly monetary terms, have shown to be an excellent investment. And they have obvious utility. Obvious choice.

(To boot, I’ve never seen more support for the Second Amendment -- from both sides of the aisle -- than I’ve seen this year.)

2] Land. Having spent much of my time out in the sticks, I can attest that people are buying up land hand-over-fist.

Raw land is on track to get red hot.

Furthermore, as Rickards points out below, cities are interesting places to live when you’re young and hip… with museums, bars, clubs, and a whole lot of novelty.

But what happens if you’re not that young anymore (Millennials aren’t)? And what happens when cities are both expensive and not that interesting (everything’s closed)?

“We could see,” I wrote in 2017, “a rise in hipsters tired of paying $3,500 for a closet in San Francisco, who want to grow their own tiny artisanal purple carrots and raise fainting goats.”

Whatever the case, I also pointed out:

“Even if a Rural Revival, of sorts, is an absurd proposition in your mind, though, nobody’s making any more land.”

3] “Bootleg” whisky. Even when there’s not much to celebrate, people like to celebrate.

I currently live in one of the craft beer capitals of the world.

For obvious reasons (and some not so obvious), the alcohol industry has never been more bustling.

Knowing how to “bootleg” your own whisky will never go out of style.

I’m not talking about distilling it, by the way. (Because that would be illegal -- and would “unfairly” cut into the government’s high-tax racket on hard booze.)

I’m talking about stocking up on the base stuff and then putting your own twist on it to make it “premium.”

Exactly like the big boys.




Americans Are Getting Out of Dodge


By Jim Rickards



I want to discuss some of the permanent changes that the national economy is going through.

It has to do with what you might call the Great American Exodus. There’s a massive migration out of the big cities.

Millions of Americans are fleeing the cities for the suburbs or the country from coast to coast.

There’s hard data to support that claim.

For example, let’s say you want to rent a U-Haul trailer from New York City to the Catskill Mountains, which are not that far away. Or you want to rent a U-Haul trailer from Los Angeles to, maybe Sedona, Arizona.

It’ll cost you much, much more than if you were going the other way. If you went from Sedona to LA, or the Catskills to New York, the price is only about one quarter as much. In other words, you have to pay a 400% premium to get the trailer going out of town, but U-Haul will practically pay you to bring it back in.

And there are shortages. If you’re moving out of your apartment to a house or another apartment outside of the city, try getting movers. I’ve done this recently myself, and know others who have. It was very hard to book moving companies or something as simple as a U-Haul trailer.

So the mass exodus out of cities is a real phenomenon, backed by solid evidence.

This is a shift we probably haven’t seen since the 1930s, when people left the Dust Bowl and moved out to California, looking for jobs in the agricultural industry. That was a mass migration. We’re seeing another one now, except this one’s going in the opposite direction.

And that’s a big problem for the economy because cities are centers of economic activity that contribute a lot to GDP. There are three primary reasons for the exodus.

The first is simple demographics. People talk about millennials as if they’re kids just out of college. But, the oldest millennial is turning 40 in two years. So they’re not kids anymore. They’re often adults with jobs and families, and a lot of obligations.

Many of them have been living in cities since cities are generally interesting places to live and offer the greatest opportunity. But there’s a natural tendency for people in that demographic, who might have enjoyed the city in their twenties and thirties, to say it’s time to move out to the suburbs when they reach a certain age.

And that’s happening now. So that’s the first factor contributing to the mass migration from cities.

The others are far more serious…

The most obvious is the pandemic. Look at New York City. Clearly it was ground zero for the pandemic in the United States. Something like one-third of all U.S. coronavirus fatalities took place in New York City or its immediate surroundings. That’s a highly compressed area.

And people realize that the density of the population, living on top of each other in crowded apartment buildings and offices, taking crowded public transportation, going to concerts and Broadway shows, etc., is like living in a Petri dish.

It’s obviously a lot easier to catch a virus in a crowded subway car than on a country road. So people are saying, “Give me space, and I think my health prospects are a lot better,” and that’s actually correct.

The third factor driving Americans out of cities is the riots.

Do not understate the damage of these riots. I don’t want to veer off into the social aspects or politics of the riots. Everyone’s got their own opinions. And peaceful protest is our constitutional right, which should be supported. If you’re peaceful, you have every right to protest against injustice.

But no one has a right to loot stores and start fires. We shouldn’t have to debate that.

But that’s what happened in large cities throughout America. Minneapolis obviously saw a lot of violence. But New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Atlanta, St. Louis, Denver, Portland, Oregon and many other cities suffered similar damage.

And with many calls to defund the police, people who might enjoy city life can see the writing on the wall. Crime rates are already spiking in New York, for example, which will probably get worse. And the NYPD has seen a 400% increase in retirement applications since the riots.

Cities have always been a trade-off. You had high taxes, lots of city noise, crowded conditions and certain levels of crime. But many put up with all those costs and annoyances in exchange for a very lively cultural and intellectual environment, more interesting jobs, interesting people, museums, great restaurants, movies, live shows, Broadway in the case of New York, etc.

But now the trade-offs don’t seem worth it for many. The cultural aspects are gone. Museums are closed. Restaurants are closed. Movie theaters are closed, etc. And crime is going up. So you’ve got all the costs and then some, but none of the benefits. And that’s why people are leaving.

So when you combine demographics, a pandemic that makes city living unattractive and riots, you get a major generational shift that we haven’t seen since the 1930s.

Now, you cannot underestimate the economic impact of this. The cities are where most 80% or more of the population, economic output, job creation, and R&D are centered. And who’s leaving the cities?

It’s the people who can have the option to leave. It’s the talent. It’s the money. It’s the energy. It’s the people that you most want in your cities who have the ability to leave.

And of course, now we have this whole work from home model. So a lot of corporations are saying, we don’t need 10 floors on 53rd and Park Avenue. We can do two floors of shared conference facilities, with a shared receptionist. So the commercial real estate market faces some strong headwinds.

The bottom line is, we’re looking at a substantial drag on economic recovery based on this migration out of the cities. It’s a big story that’s not getting nearly enough coverage.

And this is going to continue. This is something that only happens every two or three generations. You probably have to go back to the baby boom in the late 1940s and early 1950s for something comparable.

But there’s one sector of the economy that is doing well. That’s residential housing because it’s getting hard to find a house in many places. People are even bidding on houses without ever having seen the property.

If you’re looking to invest, you might want to look at suburban real estate and housing.

Regards,

Jim Rickards

P.S. My research indicates America could be facing a catastrophe that will catch most people by surprise…

And no, it’s not the coronavirus. But if I’m right, this historical event will change America forever.

Most Americans have no idea what’s about to hit them in the coming days. Which is why I’m urging Americans to take these 5 steps right now. (Hint: one of these steps could protect the lives of your loved ones).

 

Plant, protect, and watch it grow!
 
 
The notion of a self-contained cartridge in a firearm is more than two centuries old. A Swiss gun maker, Jean Samuel Pauly, developed the first self-contained cartridge for a shotgun. It consisted of a metal base that had a slot similar to what you would see in a modern screw. In its center was a flash hole. The slot was filled with a priming compound made of sulfur, charcoal and potassium chlorate. Read More.

 

 

Sidebar:

You may have already read or seen a variety of articles about what would happen if the grid went down or how 90% of people would die. You may also think that many of those articles are far-fetched and designed to instill fear in readers rather than seriously discuss the issue.

 If that’s the case for you, then you may think the same about this article based on the title alone. But the purpose of this article is not to scare you or to spread so-called ‘doom and gloom,’ but rather to educate you on what very well could happen if the grid really went down and stayed down.

 If and when the grid goes down, it’s not going to be like a normal power outage. Not even close. A true grid-down situation would last much longer, perhaps weeks or months, and during that time, a lot of things are going to happen that you never would have imagined...

 
10 Scary Things That Would Happen If The Grid Went Down

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Other Bits n Pieces


These Retired Military Officers Are Standing With Trump to End the Riots


 

Gun-Control Group Behind $4 Million Election Push Takes Coronavirus Relief


 

 

 

 

 Love him or hate him... all eyes are on Trump. 

Yes... I get it.

 Some readers are going to hate what I’m about to say next... 

But according to our latest research, despite what many pundits are saying... 

(Even those in the alt-media...)

Trump is still going to win. 

Our own Graham Summers has compiled the research 
right here.  

Not only does he show you why he believes Trump’s still got it in the bag..

Trump fights terrorists while Dems embrace it, both domestic & foreign.

 
What is going to happen in November 2020? That's the question I get asked most frequently these days.

The election seems to be on the majority of people's minds even more so that the coronavirus pandemic. In the summer of 2016, I accurately predicted that Donald Trump would enter the White House; and I met endless opposition to the idea. At the time, an overwhelming number of analysts in the liberty movement assumed Trump would lose, and that Clinton, by hook or by crook, would become president. Obviously, this was not the case.

Despite negative and misleading stories to the contrary, Trump will win a 2nd term.





Resist the Radical Left & Marxism

·         Protect our borders

·         Preserve freedom of speech

·         Safeguard our 2nd Amendment

 

The unrest rippling through society today is awakening more and more of us – protect yourself from the socialist scourge…if you believe in American self reliance:

Take a stand against the destruction of the American way of life!

 

Freedom Self-Reliance Action



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Implementing these fixes will save you cold, hard cash all year long.

 

People who are spending more time at home because of the coronavirus pandemic may see their utility costs increasing

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Easy-to-use---No Maintenance. 


 

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A Smoking Frog Feature, Shallow Planet Production

 

6 comments:

Mike said...

It sure seems we are in a war to save America-vote Trump!

Bev said...

I think we're going to start a local 'citizens protection' group to protect our homes & communities against the invasion of antifa/BLM & other Marxists. Spoke w/ our local sheriff & she's on board & will help w/ training.

Marvin said...

Enlightening-it would seem the communists aren't backing down on the left coast-best to prepare for the coming violence they portend. Ironically, home sales might break a record in July-everyone selling off city homes so they can move to a rural area?

Nancy said...

Terrific resources and insights

O'Malley said...

Ironically, our family is looking for rural property right now!

Mark said...

Mighty great resources-you're a true gem on the net!