Schooling (6-13 or so) has to, and will, become more localised.

First, because travel and busing etc. will beome more difficult, or impossible. Second, because parents will want/need very local schooling, will go for community organisation, even only for safety etc. considerations.

Third, it is likely that State Corporatism, as is current in the US and France, China as well, but that is another can of worms, will come to a stop.

The US has a clumsy scheme with schools funded largely by local taxes, ie. it is class run; social advancement no longer exists, hasn't for a long time, and it has *bad* teachers, I say bad, as individuals they are not to be blamed, the teachers are trapped too.

France shows a different pattern of extreme centralization and rigidity also with ‘poor’ teachers. These systems will simply collapse and are doing so as I write.

The US today job-wise has a few growth, if one can even talk about ‘growth’ sectors: Education, health, Gvmt (military, weapons research, etc.) Education is the most visible, demands and funding grow. At the same time, ppl check out and leave.

Same all over. Astoria school district just about killed the schools with their consolidation and bussing schemes. The people fought it, but the administration won, as usual. Now, they can't afford the busses, and the kids are spending 2-3 hours on busses in some cases, everyone is cranky.

One room schools produced some of our brightest people. Back to the future, I say.

But you can improve your football team's chances with a big high-school. That's the whole reason they don't split up high-schools here. Of course smaller schools would let more kids play and fewer just watch, and you'd have more nearby teams to play as well. This has long been a pet peeve of mine.

Of course you also get better depth and breadth on advanced/gifted classes and special ed as well, plus more electives. Those all become "wants" not "needs" when time get harder I guess.

At the level of indebtedness/stimulus proposed and in- process either inflation or deflation will be fatal. Inflationary pressure from liquidity that equals a third or more of GDP would make the (dangerous) inflation of the late 1970's child's play. That annual inflation was on the level of 8 - 12 pct with wages increasing 7 - 9 pct. There is a good paper on this period:

http://econ161.berkeley.edu/Econ_Articles/theinflationofthes.html

What has been suggested is more along the lines of this:

I lived in Brazil during the 1960s and 70s, so I have an idea of what ramplant, uncontrolled inflation can do. At its worst, the currency was losing about 30 to 40% of its value each month. This explains how 1 = 1 came to be 1 = 0.00000000000000001, or whatever ...

http://www.brazilbrazil.com/inflat.html

This was caused by a large flow of investment capital into Brasil which makes this form or monetary inflation similar to that experience by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait earlier this year.

Another version is what happened in the Weimar Republic in the 1920's:

The flight from currency that had begun with the buying of diamonds, gold, country houses, and antiques now extended to minor and almost useless items -- bric-a-brac, soap, hairpins. The law-abiding country crumbled into petty thievery. Copper pipes and brass armatures weren't safe. Gasoline was siphoned from cars. People bought things they didn't need and used them to barter -- a pair of shoes for a shirt, some crockery for coffee. Berlin had a "witches' Sabbath" atmosphere. Prostitutes of both sexes roamed the streets. Cocaine was the fashionable drug. In the cabarets the newly rich and their foreign friends could dance and spend money. Other reports noted that not all the young people had a bad time. Their parents had taught them to work and save, and that was clearly wrong, so they could spend money, enjoy themselves, and flout the old.

The publisher Leopold Ullstein wrote: "People just didn't understand what was happening. All the economic theory they had been taught didn't provide for the phenomenon. There was a feeling of utter dependence on anonymous powers -- almost as a primitive people believed in magic -- that somebody must be in the know, and that this small group of 'somebodies' must be a conspiracy."

When the 1,000-billion Mark note came out, few bothered to collect the change when they spent it. By November 1923, with one dollar equal to one trillion Marks, the breakdown was complete. The currency had lost meaning.

This latter episode was not caused by in influx of foreign exchange but rather a weak government trying desperately to maintain employment to avoid a takeover by Communists. It printed money because nobody told it to stop doing so.

The common element to all inflationary scenarios is rising wages. This will not happen in the US because of anti- worker bias both in government and in private business. Business is blind both to the need for customers with means and for non- fiat investment funds. Both are only obtained from a highly- paid middle class. Cheap credit from the Fed and the reliance upon it by the investment community has been the greatest cause of the current credit debacle. Another component has been deficit spending by the government. So, kiddies ... what is the prescription for solving the crisis caused by cheap credit and overspending by the government?

As for stimulus, there is another good article about the current situation:

“A psychology of bad times is becoming the mindset of the public,” says Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center, a survey operation.

This psychology is realistic. Only idiots are optimists at this point, another deflation indicator since in bear markets the bears are right!

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/weekinreview/21uchitelle.html?hp

U.S. Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., and U.S. Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., both said U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson brought up a worst-case scenario as he pushed for the Wall Street bailout in September. Paulson, former Goldman Sachs CEO, said that might even require a declaration of martial law, the two noted.

State and local police in Arizona say they have broad plans to deal with social unrest, including trouble resulting from economic distress. The security and police agencies declined to give specifics, but said they would employ existing and generalized emergency responses to civil unrest that arises for any reason.

“The Phoenix Police Department is not expecting any civil unrest at this time, but we always train to prepare for any civil unrest issue. We have a Tactical Response Unit that trains continually and has deployed on many occasions for any potential civil unrest issue,” said Phoenix Police spokesman Andy Hill.

Is this comedy or what? This is more of the disconnect from reality that makes we wonder how these people get these jobs in the first place. Don't you have to pass a test to become Treasury Secretary?

There is a strange dichotomy in the country right this second; there are millions of people preparing fot the inauguration and trying to find a happy place for themselves in the center of it. There are millions upon millions more sitting down with their families and friends discussing the most likely road for the country and doing so in a very fearful and serious way.

Left hand ... right hand.

Alan ~

Best holiday wishes for you and yours. I'll get back to you :)

Way back when, the 50's and 60's we ran most of our tractors on LPG and the local gas utility ran all their pickups and a large part of their car fleet on natural gas. The set ups on gasoline engines was pretty much the same for the two. A large, heavy pressure tank in cars located in the trunk to take the place of a gas tank and the same in the bed of the pickup truck-taking the place of the tool box you see in many pickups. Benefits were pretty much the same, extremely clean burning fuel. Fewer oil changes, spark plugs were never fouled and lasted long times. The life of engines increased dramatically. The trade offs were less power and fewer miles per gallon plus the cost of conversion not to mention a trunk that lost most of its usefulness. Filling up a NG or LPG tank isn't a simple or particularly easy thing with heavy high pressure hoses and quick couples that require more than a bit of strength and skill to engage. In those days both NG & LPG were so cheap that when filling we would vent the tanks to the atmosphere; a practice that the EPA would not allow today, which would necessitate and extra return line of high pressure hoses.
On the farm we also purchased tractors that were designed for LPG/NG from the get go and if there were a large enough market I would imagine auto makers would oblige. Hope this helps.

One other thing, I can't see NG/LPG ever taking the place of diesel trucks as it lacks the BTU's to give the low end torque and MPG's that diesel provides.