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).
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Plant, protect, and watch
it grow!
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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.
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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...
You may also like...
Other Bits n Pieces
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...
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.
(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
Additional FREE Resources
The SHTF Emergency Coffee and Tea Kit
Coffee and tea are
both things that should be in your food stockpile. A short to long emergency
can be hard enough without being forced to do without something you are used to
having. Consider that coffee and tea are … Continued
Living
Frugally In Suburbia
You live differently than your neighbors.
You live differently than your neighbors.
14 Frugal
Food-Rescuing Tips from Grandma
These depression-era frugal tips still work today!
These depression-era frugal tips still work today!
8
Simple Ways to Put More Money in Your Pocket
Have more money without working harder!
Have more money without working harder!
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24 Mistakes That Send Energy Bills Soaring
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
No-Brainer Device Cuts Power Bills Up to 90%
Easy-to-use---No
Maintenance.
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A Smoking Frog Feature, Shallow Planet Production
