Then what?

So, the sun finally broke through this afternoon. And so did my "end of daylight savings time" fatalistic and anti-social depression. I look around at the delicate harmony of so many humans living bumper to bumper... and the dawning "Season of Excess" and I wonder if the impending inevitable doom that I feel is felt by others as well. Each year the madness grows... how much further can we, as a species, indulge ourselves before we're slapped with a big fat reality check?

The way I see it:

The price of fuel and water is certain to go up and will certainly will force businesses to raise prices or fail. Inflation is following, with it the purchasing power of the dollar is shrinking. (and it will continue until it catches up with it's value outside the U.S. too)

As buying power weakens, the jobs that depend on shoppers will suffer. Anyone employed for Developing, Producing, Distributing, Promoting, Financing and Selling STUFF is going to have a hard time. And when they lose their jobs, their ability to shop goes away too... plunging us into a recession.

And then the banks start foreclosing on mortgages. Families thrown out to live on the streets. Crime will increase due to desperation. There won't be enough to tax to hire enough police and the great capitalistic experiment will grind to a great big chaotic bloody quagmire of poverty and starvation.

The government is already fiscally bankrupt and will be no help. Big business will continue to do well, they'll have the leverage to pick and choose among the masses for the indentured servants that will help them carry on. But the rest of the country is going to start looking a lot more like New Orleans after Katrina.

Yes, yes... I'm just being cynical, and everything will likely be just peachy. But right now all I can see in my mind's eye are great tracts of big suburban homes without power or water, and people standing in soup lines.