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  3. For years I’ve read about how the middle class has been declining. But, I really did’nt know why. Thank you for this epiphany! It explains alot!

  4. 1) Our stupid historians speak of Jefferson’s political philosophy as “agarianism” — a love of farming as a mystical source of virtue. But Jefferson’s real point was independence — a farmer is an independent businessman whose self-sufficiency gives him the freedom to resist economic coercion. Unlike 60 percent of Americans today — and the remaining 40 percent are unemployed.
    2) Jefferson himself foresaw the danger. He strongly urged inserting a ban on economic monopolies into the new Constitution. In his Dec 20, 1787 letter to James Madison, Jefferson noted:
    “I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries; as long as they are chiefly agricultural; and this will be as long as there shall be vacant lands in any part of America. When they get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, they will become corrupt as in Europe. Above all things I hope the education of the common people will be attended to; convinced that on their good sense we may rely with the most security for the preservation of a due degree of liberty.”
    Ref: “The Papers of Thomas Jefferson”; Vol 12; Julian Boyd ed, Princeton NJ, 1955.
    3) The fact that 99 percent even of our college graduates are deeply ignorant of important facts — and ignorant of the lessons of history that guided the design of the Constitution — shows how far the designers of our K12 curriculum have succeeded in destroying Jefferson’s hope for the education of the voters. Of course, those designers are largely anonymous and have no accountability to either the parents, students, or voters.
    4) Jefferson’s letters to/from other Founders during the Constitutional Convention –when he was in Paris — are well worth reading. Being more private they are on occasion more enlightening than the propaganda that was crafted in the Federalist Papers to promote acceptance of the new Constitution.

  5. A somewhat strange article in some ways. There is no “self sufficiency” it is a dream and deception. How often is it defined by purchasing PV systems to get off the grid. Or living out in the boonies but needing to own a car. I have also heard this concept defined as “simplifying your life” and that at least makes more sense. I kind of acknowledgement and acceptance that we aren’t and cannot be self sufficient but merely “play” at it.

    1. Some folks may “play” at being self-sufficient…but many of us are actively working at being as self-sufficient as possible…because very soon, I believe it will be necessary. Developing the “horizontal relationships” the author talks about will allow all those involved to greatly benefit and to thrive rather than simply survive.
      And by “self-sufficient” I don’t mean just my nuclear family…but the “horizontal relationships” the author refers to. Local (within walking distance) family, friends and neighbors that you can work with to improve everyone’s lives. One family may have a market garden, another a row-crop farm, another has an orchard and berry patch and another hunts and fishes well…each shares/trades the excess of what they produce so everyone benefits with a wider variety of foodstuffs. Or one family has chickens and another has dairy goats and a third has pigs…by trading excess, everyone has a variety – and it lessens the risk if one type of livestock has a problem in one year. One person may be a blacksmith, another a mechanic, another a herbalist and trade services, products and foodstuffs back and forth. And share big projects…barn/house-raisings, large scale hunting/butchering, harvests, etc. Rather than trading money for something – you trade something you produce or can do for what you want or need. And the “trades” aren’t always immediate this for that…you may have excess something now and your neighbor may have something excess later – with good relationships, it doesn’t matter because you know what you give now will be returned in kind/value at some point later.
      This is what I consider “self-sufficiency”…doing as much as you can to cover the basic needs of life – because when it comes right down to it that is all you can count on. But also produce excess to your needs or develop skills to enhance your life and chances of survival by developing these horizontal relationships to avail yourself of a wider range of foodstuffs, products, services and equipment.
      Read history…it lays out how all this was done before money became the main medium of exchange. Everyone with land used to do it this way, before the industrial revolution turned most of us into wage slaves. Those without land were peasants, serfs or slaves – BUY ARABLE LAND if you don’t want to end up in another “vertical relationship”, dependent on someone else for your very survival!

    1. @ThoDan
      They made them — or their neighbors did.

      I fail to see the attraction of our modern system –which has plunged us into $20 TRILLION of debt — $10 Trillion incurred in just the past 8 years. A system that will collapse without a $1 Trillion per year military budget — and that is not counting the American blood shed in endless foreign wars. A system in which 1 percent of the population seizes 25% of the national income by bribing the Congress.

      In just 8 years, our NIIP — the net debt we owe to foreigners after subtracting any debt they owe to us — has soared. From minus $2 Trillion a few years ago to over $8 TRILLION –over 40% of GDP –today. Have you seen our lying news media telling our voters anything about that?

      What happens if the foreigners turn off the spigot? Our politicans have sold our children and our grandchildren into slavery. But, hey, Bill Clinton picked up $200 million in “speaking fees” from his grateful billionaires and Obama seems on his way to doing the same — as soon as he can return from all those lavish vacations.

      1. No, they didn´t made them.
        Their neighbours maybe did, when these neighbours were craftsmen not Farmers.

        These craftsmen needed ressources, materials, Tools etc. some can be locally found and produced, others are not.

        Not even in the stone age could a Family be Independent, it was too much work to do.

      2. That $20 trillion went to welfare and other free stuff and wasn’t because we have a modern system.

        The military budget isn’t $1 trillion but the welfare budget is between $1.2 – $1.8 trillion. But I often wonder when an American complains about the military if they believe in defense or not. Would you stand up and fight or run away?

        1. Later time I checked it is not foreigner invaders who are holding me up at gunpoint and taking my income. It’s something called the IRS — any way to get the Army to defend me against them?

          And if the money is for “defense” then why do Chester PA, Camden NJ, Flint MI etc etc have some of the highest homicide rates on the planet? Who is defending those Americans? Cause they ain’t being shot at by Muslims from the far side of the world.

          Although it is an interesting question — if Putin made it to the beaches of New Jersey (with a military budget about 1/10 of ours) then would he screw us any worse than what our own elites are already doing?

  7. Saving is another way to reduce your dependency. Even if it’s only a day’s wages, it insulates you from future problems. Living below what you bring in makes it possible to plan for more independence in the future. ThoDan: A little research might help answer your question. Clothing etc. does not have to come from Walmart. The point is to have your dependency on society offset by your contributions to same.

    1. No they come from the fields of Linnen, Cotton, from the wool of sheep…and then were woven into fabric, and so on till somebody made clothes out of them.

      The Point is the farmer is not necessarily more Independent, than the weaver, the tanner, the doctor and the teacher.

      1. 1) If the weaver, the tanner or the doctor does not give the farmer a reasonable deal, the farmer can either do things himself or find someone else.

        Certainly the farmer does not live in fear of expressing his political opinions for fear the weaver will fire him.

        2) Contrast that with the modern American wage slaves whose families can be plunged into deep poverty if the wage slaves are fired or laid off for any reason — or for no reason at all. Employment at will.

        3) Obama’s Director of National Intelligence Clapper lied through his teeth –under oath — to us and the US Congress about massive NSA surveillance of the American People. Obama and the Congress’ Intel Committees supported that lie with their silence. We only found out the truth because a young man named Edward Snowden tried to warn us. Yet what happened to Snowden?

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Clapper#Testimony_to_Congress_on_NSA_surveillance_programs.2C_2013

        4) Disaster after disaster strikes America because the people who know what is going on can’t speak up for fear of their family having to go on welfare. That is why 4500 soldiers died in Iraq to seize nonexistent nukes — and all too real oil deposits.

        5) Did no one on Wall Street see the looming subprime crisis in 2007 while Alan Greenspan was telling us and Congress that the problem was behind us? Someone sure did — the yield curve inverted in January 2007. Long term Treasury bond yields nosedived BELOW short term rates as a tsunami of money flowed into the Treasury bonds that are the best safe harbor against second Great Depression.

  8. J.E’s ideas are not radical — they are old. Very old.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrarianism

    They have always been resisted –with violence — by the Rich. And by the prostitutes of the Rich — people who marvel at the deceit of the news media fail to realize that the reporters, pundits and editors have no other skills than lying. No other way of earning a living. Of course, that violence and deceit is what destroyed the Roman Republic upon which ours was modeled. Those who blame Julius Caesar never look at what and who created Julius:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiberius_Gracchus

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