But what does it mean when used in the terms of the world economy?

After thinking about this, I believe that it does not mean that if we get a few people moving up, the rest will follow. Not one bit. What it means in terms of the World Economy is this, when the US economy is doing well, we are the tide. When the US economy is doing well, then other nations prosper since we are a net importer of stuff.

How did China get so wealthy? It was US consumers who lead the charge for less expensive stuff, which in turn created the demand. And then China filled the void. They took it from other third world countries since they have three things most other countries do not: Cheap labor, communism and habits. Since there are so many people over in China, the can throw bodies at problems for cheap (kind of like what occurred here not very long ago.)

But how does communism fit in? Think repressed wages for the masses. Let me ask you a question: Why does China not want to have a fluid currency value? Reason is, and then they would have to deal with increasing wages as inflation crept up. This in turn would increased prices on stuff produced in China, which would eventually lead to production moving to somewhere else – India? Africa?

Now what is the habit that was previously mentioned that is different in China over the US? Because of repression, the Chinese have always been forced to save due to incessant shortages. A typical communist issue In America, we buy stuff to flaunt our wealth and do not reinvest our money in companies/stocks/precious metals. So while the Chinese has an emerging middle class, ours is declining.

Then to top it off, you should see what the tax rate is for the Chinese

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_the_People’s_Republic_of_China

Which is pretty reasonable when you have billions of people?

The fact is, low taxes, coupled with high productivity, you have wealth.

This takes me back to the original premise. Even with the Chinese doing well, it will not help the world economy except in a few areas of natural resources. When the US does well, the rest of the world does well. We are the tide.
So what can you do? Buy American (or local) and keep Americans employed. When you do, then Americans buy stuff that is manufactured worldwide. When we Americans are consuming, the rest of the world is producing, which keeps them employed.

In a previous post, I showed a cobb oven made from mud in the land down under.

Now, I am going at an oven on my own property. It was planned for whilst building the Tuscan camo’d bunker. I set up the base and pured the concrete floor over a year ago. I poured the insulating vermiculite layer earlier this year. This week, I scored some almost 100 year old fire brick from work (tested out as non-hazardous), borrowed a harbor freight tile saw from a friend and started in earnest!

The oven diameter is about 41.5 inches and will have a finished interior height of about 19.5 inches. As one of the readers asked, are you going to cook a whole dear in it? The answer is – maybe

The goal is to get this thing completed by this Thursday/Friday so that I can get a fire in it and have a pizza on Thanksgiving with the family – we will see. I ran into a few problems due to breakage of tools and my anal retentive engineering behavior. Top it of with my slave/child labor rebelling (at first) and you get a union style work stoppage. That came to a quick halt!

As for the mortar recipe – 1 part fire clay, 1 part lime, 1 part Portland cement and 3 parts silica sand (fine/30 grit). Thoroughly mix and the stuff is sticky!

I have finished the first two rows (a soldier course and the first chain.) The soldier course has a 20 degree angle put in it. Each chain will be subsequently steeper. The trick right now is for me to get the opening completed before I get too much higher on the dome.

Keep your eyes peeled and be sure to wear your personal protective equipment – I blew through 4 sets of gloves and still have a few lime burns.

After opening the valve and checking to make sure my berms were up and the gophers were ready to be flooded (add maniacal evil genius laugh track here) I slipped off the mucker boots and wet socks and came in side to check my water inventory/ water storage. I know that we live on less than 1 gallon a day per person in my house. But for planning, I like to have an excess. So, 5 people, 110 gallons. 22 days of water. pretty simple. However, we also have the critters to consider. 3 dingo’s (aussie shepard/queensland healer mix) – need to have about 1 gallon a day for the dogs based on past experience = So water is now I have 18 days of water.

In either event, I am short water. We should have 30 days of water on hand. So I need 180 gallons which is 3 drums (165 gallons) plus 15 gallons of water bottles.

Here is my trick on water bottles. I get a few of the neighbors to save me 2 liter soda bottles. I wash with hot soapy water – for soap, I use simple green! Then I rinse 3 times with 1 cup of water per rinse. Then 1 ounce of hydrogen peroxide in the water swished around. and with the bottle cap on and upside down until filling time.

Then drain the peroxide, fill the bottle with Reverse Osmosis water (which I have in the kitchen) and treat with chlorine bleach. Please note, that for every 5 drops of chlorine, I add 1 drop ammonia to form a chloramine solution which is very stable in comparison to chlorine alone. Though, some people are sensitive to chloramine, so tread wisely.

To do the chloramine route, take your water, add the chlorine, close and shake the water bottle then add the ammonia. Do not mix the chlorine and ammonia together as you will probably get a reaction you do not like (and burns your lungs!)

A couple things about chlorine:
-Chlorine bleach has a shelf life of about 6 months, depending on temperature
-You should use the unscented stuff
-do not used any of the powdered stuff

As for the ammonia, please be sure to buy the unscented stuff – usually costs a buck for a half gallon at Wally World – one of the few places that carry it in my neck of the desert.

Please be sure to rotate your water supply! A friend of mine accidentally did not rotate his water and found out during a multiple day power outage that one drum of water resembled a duck pond! Fortunately, he had several others that were within date.

Setting up a rotation with drums is quite simple – go out and buy large labels from the office supply store, Put an expiration date on them and stick them on your drums. Then be sure you at least once a month you check your supplies.

Rich Dad on Silver

As he says, give up Starbucks for a few days and buy some silver! It is an industrial metal (like copper) and many more things. Plus, with the Fed pushing more paper on the market, it is easy to buy. If you want long term investments, invest in Gold with your 401K. Just be sure to diversify somewhat. Look at Gold Company stocks as well (hint from a friend who is a commercial investor.)

Toyota’s are excellent vehicles overall. The founder of Toyota took to heart Dr Demmings (yes, an Amercian) discussion on qulaity and production. As a matter of fact, the highest award in manufacturing in Japan is called the Deming Award. Dr. Deming was charged with assisting the Japanese manufacturers in reestablishing their manufacturing ability after World War 2!

The reason why the vehicles are so well built is due to a lack of variation. What that means is that the parts used no only fall within spec, but the size of the window of the variation is much smaller than that accepted in the US. Why do you think we have so many issues with leaking seals on engines and transmissions?

Without a labored explaination, if your family/friends or even you own a newer Toyota, please head on over to : www.toyota.com/recall to see which vehicles are affected. They even have a short video on the recommended stopping procedure.

or just cut to here: http://www.toyota.com/recall/videos/stoppingprocedure.html

Lets start with the Bureaucracy’s.  111 or 112 new agencies will be formed to handle the slew of paperwork and develop the new regulations.  HOLY CRUD!  Did you know that the 3rd largest employer in the world is Great Britain’s Health Agency.  Mind you Great Brittain has less than 25% of the population of the US.  Wow, I guess our government is not large enough already!  I guess the Democrats think that you and I are too stupid to manage our money, so they will handle it for you – welcome to the Super Welfare State!

Next – cost:  We are looking at $1.5 Trillion and quickly moving to $2 trillion.  Where is the money coming from – you and me via taxes direct and indirect.

Medicare will have $400 billion cut from it to help cover the costs.  Sorry Grandma, the country needs the money.

To pass the bill, each state is not treated equally, so some states are more equal than others, while the less equal states will be paying more on average!  You can thank the spineless Harry Ried for that one!

And it goes on.

What can you do?  go to www.house.gov and www.senate.gov and find your reps.  Tell them in no uncertain terms that should they vote for this piece of crap, you will vote them out of office.  You can tell them that the bill is way too onerous and way too large to be effective.  Sorry, 2000 pages is too much.

The big problem was that the folks toughing it out was that they would share it with others.  Thus you get airborne illness propagation.  Or Contact Propagation for the poor soul who sat in the chair of the sickie.

Fortunately,  companies are now being aggressive about illness (notice I did not say progressive – a bad word unless it is an insurance company).  They are seeing the value of staying home.  They are finally understanding that having sick folks at work causes more people to get sick – what a concept!

In my case, I will be working a few hours a day from home to get myself through.  Besides, there is only so much reading one can do.  I am too tired to get up and organize my sullpies for more than 30 minutes at a whack.  With the laptop and a voice recorder, I am setting up lists and mentally organizing my stuff however.

Here is the thought for the day:  You have 1 hours notice to evacuate.  What do you take with you?  Lets put a little challenge into it – you also have the flu, so your physical capacity is 50% of normal.  Are you organized enough to grab your legal papers and survival kits.  Do you know what the emergency is?  Could the escape cause more problems than sheltering in place.

Where I live, if you had to rely on the highway system, you would be screwed.  I have several back roads out, which could get me to New Mexico, California, Utah or Colorado.  What about your escape situation?  You can contact your Local Emergency Planning Commission and ask to speak with the Executive Director.  They will have information on evacuation planning and estimated times to get folks out of the communities.

Best of luck!

With fall a falling, the leaves are changing and so will the blog.  I am not sure if I will change the theme or not.  But what will become obvious is that I will allow some advertising to occur.  I will be experimenting with the placement of the ads.  I do ask that if you see something, go ahead and click on the ad.  Ya never know what easter egg you may get!  This of course is at no cost to you, ad will help offset some of the cost to the site.

On another note, last week at costco in the Phoenix area, there was a home food storage road show.  Scarry thing was they were selling 6 packs of #10 cans for about $140!  Although the quality is good, this is a rather steep price.  I do know that there are sources of long term storage foods made by the big guys which are alot less expensive.  Lets face facts – you do not want to waste money.

Best of the weekend!

Believe it or not, the Times got the information from the EPA – Oh Boy!  Let me quote you from the Times Article

“An estimated 1 in 10 Americans have been exposed to drinking water that contains dangerous chemicals or fails to meet a federal health benchmark in other ways, an investigation by The New York Times has found. A report of the investigation was published in the September 13 edition of the newspaper.

“Those exposures include carcinogens in the tap water of major American cities and unsafe chemicals in drinking-water wells. Wells, which are not typically regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act, are more likely to contain contaminants than municipal water systems,” the report said. It notes that many who consume dangerous chemicals through their drinking water do not realize it because “most of today’s water pollution has no scent or taste.”

Needless to say, if you are not taking care of yourself, do not expect the government to do so for you.  Hell, if the local government and the EPA cannot protect you from bad water, what makes you think that Obamacare is going to do you much better?  Scary!  Here Johnny, drink this….

As I have been warning and espousing, get yourself a filtration system.  Reverse Osmosis is of course the best.  Others would be a three stage filter followed by a distiller.

Today was a great day for me and I hope it was for you as well.  Have you ever noticed how your outlook changes when a really positive attitude is happening?

Barring the Health Care Fiasco that the Liberals are pushing (Special Interest CRAP in my mind) I felt that things were really good today and fall is finally in the air.  So, be an ant and get to your food storage.

One thing to think about is this – where to get supplies for your basic storage for good prices.  You can get into a coop or other buying group – that is if the others are diligent.   You can go it alone, then do all the packaging, etc.  Another tact is to use a secret source which is right in front of most of you. No, it is not the government – Yeach!

The source I am talking about is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormon’s).  Please, lets not get into a philosophical discussion on religion.  Our country is based on the freedom of religion, plain and simple.

So, how do you use this source?  You probably know a Mormon or two, so it is really easy.  Ask them about food storage.  Interesting thing is that they are most likely able to discuss it or knows someone who can discuss it at length.  Then you can ask about getting supplies.  Most congregations (wards or branches) have orders which come from the cannery.  You can purchase items like dehydrated apples, potato pearls, and other grains in #10 cans or Mylar sacks.  Typically, there is an oxygen absorber pack in it as well.

Heck, if there is a LDS cannery near by, you can even voulenteer to assist in a packaging job and buy supplies.

The person to check with is the Relief Society President (get her number from the Bishop or the Branch President).  Then ask her about the food storage program – she will get you in touch with a specialist who can assist in planning your storage needs if needed.

Don’t worry, they will not require you to get baptized or go through some secret ritual just to purchase food!  They will stay in touch with you if you ask on upcoming orders though and actually treat you nicely!