I've been following the lack-of-water thing in the US Southwest pretty closely because Ken's daughter bought a house in North Las Vegas with the assumption that Real Estate Goes Up Forever(tm). The first thing to watch is of course that real estate can crash, also, but the larger issue is the lack of water.
Arizona has this problem too and I've been out there. I'm convinced heat and dehydration make people crazy and stupid. And they're proving it, as they're giving up on public education and just giving each parent $7k a year per kid. The parents are supposed to take this money and put it toward private education, or a good homeschooling program, or something like that.
I know what will happen. 90% of those parents will pocket the money and throw the kid a bunch of Jack Chick tracts and whatever free material the Christian nationalists send them in the mail or hand out at their church.
We've all seen the snippets of video from the Middle East where kids have little toy guns and grenades and so on, and grow up indoctrinated that to be a suicide bomber is the best thing ever. Well, we'll see it in flyover country here too.
Asian parents won't leave their kids high and dry. With a $7k per kid per year to start with, if they don't have them already they'll set up schools where the parents might have to kick in a bit more than the stipend, but the parents will do it. A lot of Hispanic parents will too - maybe in their case it will be the Catholic churches stepping up. But Asian parents, these are the parents who send their kids to extra school after school. Asian high regard for education is the mirror opposite of white American contempt for it.
I was tired last night and had a headache from, no kidding, having had that little bottle of Underberg. My stomach was fairly empty when I had it, and it had licorice in it which I know can give me a headache if it's the real stuff. So I went to bed fairly early for me, after doing an hour, or attempting to do for an hour, octave exercises.
I woke up at about 3:30, had coffee and nuts and vitamins, and packed all the things that had to go, and got going my usual time. Drop-offs went fine, and it being a Friday I would have been able to check the laptop place's trash, the enclosure that's only open Friday and Saturday that I've been cleaning up. But I rode up there and saw something further up that I wasn't sure what it was ... as I got closer my eyes decoded what it was - a bike trailer with a bike, bum-style which means pretty garbage-y. "Oh shit, a bum!" I said to myself and turned right around and got out of there.
I checked the bountiful dumpster but didn't find anything this time. It varies.
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