I spend a lot of time in third world countries in Central and South America, the Caribbean, Asia, and Africa. Once you step outside the "Tourist" mecca, these places all have similar characteristics in common, the first of which is concentrated populations and extreme poverty. I believe that a serious reduction in the standard of living is fast falling on the United States and I want to point a observations that might be useful. Street markets will open on the sidewalks. These won't be in the area of the big corporate chains, but in the inner city areas, in alleys and secondary streets. They will open directly in front of vacant buildings that are owned by banks too invested to allow the former tenants to operate at a reduced return. Products such as cloth and home-grown vegetables and poultry, even small live-stock will change hands at these street-vendors.Automobiles will be abandoned where they quit because maintenance issues will always be secondary to feeding your family and there are alternate means of transportation to owning an automobile. Small motor-cycles will be the primary urban transportation and it won't be uncommon the see three or four people clinging to them as they wind their way through pot-holes in the streets (city services will otherwise occupied). Armed guards will be posted at gasoline stations, the surest cure for drive-aways. Eventually, you will see people carrying 100lbs. propane cylinders on their little honda motor cycles. Trash will accumulate in the gutters because people are basically nasty, lazy creatures. Gold will disappear as jewelry, being replaced by brightly colored cloth because people, no matter how poor, are still vain. More walled and gated communities will rise and bars become normal window dressing. Police will openly carry assault weapons and will not hesitate to use them. Cell phones will entirely replace the land-lines as more of the copper cable gets stolen for cash. Electrical codes will become a joke and more shanty-towns will spring up from vacant lots. Bi-polar unwashed vagrants will shout loud messages from god at every street corner. Teenagers will rush out to wash your windshield at every halt in traffic, hoping for coins. There will be a smell of decay, urine, and cooking everywhere. Life will become a much cheaper commodity.
One interesting aside is that hardly anybody will watch the news on television because electricity will cost too much. People will spend more of their time outdoors because the comfort of air-conditioning or heated climate control will be cost prohibitive. Kids will learn to play games again instead of gluing themselves to the television or Play-station. CHildren will learn to scavenge for food much like the hunters-gatherers they were meant to be. Park squirrels, rats, stray cats...it's all food. FIshing in canals and duck ponds..ducks already gone...There will be a large amount of violence initially, but it will tone down after the population thins out.
I have been to alot of $#!+ countries in southeast asia and they are all the same as SC described. People just will not be able to understand what real poverty is untill you see it in your face. I know that I didn't understand how bad it can be untill I saw for myself. OGM
After a while the rats thin out a bit also as they also are simply meat in a furry wrapper, just squirles with bald tails. NY just has ones with more meat on them than a lot of places. lol
Yep, I never appreciated what we have in the U.S. until I saw some of the world while in the Navy. The place that brought it all home? Alexandria, Egypt. You see the kids walking down the street in their school uniform, they see a Westerner and they immediately go into begging mode. And that's the kids that are well to do in that area.
For me, also during my Navy years, it was Mombasa, Kenya and Jamaica - away from the touristy areas. The majority of Americans have a hard lesson coming . . .
For me it was Bangladesh. I had been to other countries that were well below what the poorest I had ever seen in the States but Bangladesh is about as rock bottom as you can go. If you ever get a chance to go there DON'T. It is to put it nicely the armpit of the world!!!!! Although I did leave there a very humble man. So I guess it wasn't all bad. OGM
