Got a future? Got a way to survive? To prosper? Really? Seems as though we are being told that “the end is near.” America is doomed. The world is doomed. Are the doomsayers right?

Some nasty signs:

1. Millions of jobs are going begging. The Labor Department reported that total job openings fell by 10 percent in August, a huge drop by any historical standard. The 1.1 million drop in openings is the largest decline since the lockdowns. Job openings are now at their lowest level in a year. But there are still millions and millions: retail and wholesale, manufacturing and raw material businesses are desperate for people.
2. Apparently, some businesses are just giving up finding workers. Either because they are now OUT of business, or because they are permanently downsizing.
3. The pool of labor is stagnant or shrinking. At the same time, labor participation is still stuck. Millions are missing from payrolls. Counterfactual history suggests that we’re missing as many as 8.3 million people from payrolls who otherwise would be working. This despite an incredible number of border jumpers supposedly swelling the workforce.
4. Apparently millions of people are so demoralized that they have stopped looking for work and are willing to depend on government handouts and aid from family. So government welfare rolls are also swelling. Homeless shelters are full to overflowing. Soup kitchens can’t keep up.
5. Inflation is climbing fast – and the lies Uncle Joe spread about it slowing down (based on fuel prices) have now been revealed for lies as the fuel prices climb nearly daily. (In the last ten days in South Dakota, we’ve seen gasoline (w ethanol, a local product) go from $3.62 to 4.06 a gallon, and Diesel go from $4.77 to $5.16 a gallon.) But milk, metal, medicine, meat, and more are all climbing 2-3% per month!
6. Wages – at least for lower level jobs – are climbing: $15/hour is more and more being offered by fast food places, supermarkets, and the like. Due to political pressure, new minimum wage standards, and desperation for workers. And now inflation.
7. Real estate and other prices are off – some sharply. Housing starts and re-sale prices are down. While construction costs skyrocket. New and reinterpreted regulations are making it harder to find, process, and transport materials: basic stuff, like lumber and roofing and siding. Backorders are months and months long.

There are no doubt more economic news bullets, but let us look at some political and military ones.

1. US military recruiting is off – way off. Despite standards being reduced, people just are not joining. And worse (from the military point of view) they aren’t staying, either. And those who joined after Bloody Tuesday (9-11) and stayed are now mostly retired or retiring.
2. The drumbeat of war with Russia in and over Ukraine and the seemingly-doomed energy-starved Europe continues. Louder and faster. Russia is on the run, we are told. Putin must be put down like the rabid animal he is. Just a few billion more – and a few NATO troops – and the war is won! (We may not be in Moscow by Spring, but surely we’ll be in St. Petersburg and Volgograd!)
3. We are told that we are closer to nuclear annihilation than at any time since 1962: sixty years.
4. More and more new regulations are going into effect, and old regulations reinterpreted to provide command and control of everything. Not just at the federal level, but at the State level as well. And enforcement is up, after the pandemic slowdown.
5. China’s society, like its economy, is melting down, we are told. So foreign intervention and adventures may be the only way for the CCP to maintain control.
6. The November elections in the Fifty States are “the most important in our lifetime” ((c) 2022 version) and only a new Republican Congress can save us. Even while the pundits crow about the successes of such failed efforts in the past as proof “this time it will be different.”
7. And of the elections don’t come out, we have the “nuclear” option: national divorce. Irreconcilable differences. Red states go right, blue states go left. Purple states tear themselves apart. China and the EU (or Russia) come in and divide us more, just like Japan and Germany were going to do in 1942.

Lovely.

The conclusion seems to be a simple one. America is washed up. There is no future except in one of the extremes: far left or far right. (Take your pick on which the Libertarian Party fits in, folks.)

(Oh, and don’t get your hopes up. If we manage to eke out a few more years without total collapse, we are told: (a) Global warming will destroy us. (b) A rogue asteroid will wipe us out. OR (c) the Lord will come back and “GAME OVER” will appear.)

But…

Methinks we’ve heard all this before. “The end is coming.” At least here in the States, we’ve heard it every decade or two. But we are still around.

Americans tend to wait to the last minute to accept and implement a survival option. A way to make up for years of stupidity and wrong choices and procrastination. This not only could happen how – it is likely to. Oh, there will be those who want to push their agendas, continue to advocate and implement unrealistic, unsustainable, and ultimately unsuccessful policies and actions. But most people will finally (reluctantly and as the timer clicks down to zero) decide that survival is more important than all those other things.

And a key piece of survival for Americans – and the rest of the world, for that matter? Liberty. The ability, the opportunity, to make our own choices. However constrained they may be by reality and resources.

Is this some sort of fantastic “deux ex machina” idea? Readers, you tell us!