Are we headed for another Great Depression?

Question

What with rising gas and fod prices and unemployment, the future doesn't look so bright.

Answer 1

Yes, we are.  Rent the movie, "Crude Awakening".  It will open your eyes to the stark reality that cheap energy is coming to an end.  

However, as always, there is hope, if we hurry up and start using a whole lot more solar energy.  It's our only real hope for the near future, until we figure out how to use magnetic energy or ocean tides, wind, etc...  

Coal is out, nuclear is out.  Uranium will run out just like coal will.  And coal, though plentiful in the U.S. will be used at a much greater rate, and with much more dirty air, though there are fortunately companies already making coal burning cleaner now.

In the meantime, gas will have to rise more, so that people will have it beat into their thick skulls that we are running out of oil.

The process has already started, with people travelling much less, going to movies less, buying less clothes, etc.... just to pay for gas.  These activities will snowball into people losing jobs, which in turn decreases demand, so it just keeps going downhill.  

Food is going up due to gas prices.  But fortunately we've already learned a hard lesson that it's insane to make gas from corn.  It's like, "Let's make our food prices go sky high so that we can ride around in our SUVs while we are starving!"   It just doesn't make sense, and most people already realize this.

But most people don't realize that if they put solar panels on the entire roof of their house, they can sell electricity to the electric utlility companies in the day time, and then buy electricity at night, probably ending up having a surplus or an energy buying and selling balance in their favor, which will in turn help pay for that higher gas bill for their car.  

Right now solar panels are rather pricey, but the prices will certainly come down over time when more people buy them.  This is a good step in the right direction.  But first we are all going to have to feel the pain of a less mobile life, and a more expensive one, where a lot of our income goes to survive.  But it's really not all that bad of a life.  We tend to adjust pretty well to stuff like this.

Some people don't adjust too well though, and they start looking for someone else to blame.   They might drive around in their gas guzzling SUVs or larger than they really need pickup trucks looking for some Jews, Blacks, Mexicans, g**s, or some other minority group to blame and kill, thinking that this will solve their economic woes.  Hopefully we've learned that this is NOT the solution.