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Old April 25th, 2004 #55
Jenab
Senior Goatly One
 
Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: Hillsboro, West Virginia
Posts: 1,302
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Alex Linder
There are so many hidden taxes you can pretty much assume every dollar you spend has a good percentages of taxes in it. Don't boycott anything, boycott everything. Don't buy shit. That simple. What do you need?
Food. Water. Shelter. Clothing. Defense.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alex Linder
For perhaps $2000 you can stock your house with all the material basics you'll need for the rest of your life.
It might cost a little more than that. The cheapest food I know about is whole wheat bought in 100 pound bags at the animal feed store. This stuff is often dusty, so you need to winnow it by pouring it from bucket to bucket a few times in a light breeze. Each hundred pounds costs about $12. A ton of it (20 bags) costs $240. You'd need to store it so that bugs and mice couldn't take advantage, which means spending another $100 on Rubbermaid trashcans and Hefty trashcan liners, or some bargain equivalent. That's $340, and how long will it feed you? Maybe two years. If you expect to live another 30 years, you'll need 15 times the money (in today's dollars), and so the pricetag is already over five grand.

Of course, you'll want salt and sugar and baking powder, and a hand-operated wheat mill, a wood stove, and a biscuit tray to make wheat cupcakes now and then.

And man doesn't live by bread alone. You ought to grow potatoes in your flower garden, apple trees in your front yard, and walnuts in your back yard. (Note that nut trees require 12 years to mature to the nut bearing stage, while apple trees need only about half that much time.) You might consider growing sugar maples and thinking of ways to turn sap into syrup (for when your sugar runs out).

You will want to live near hardwood areas, so you'll have fallen timber to pick up in the summer to burn in the winter for heat and at other times for cooking. You'll need to have three cords of wood, at least, ready for the winter, beyond what you use during the other seasons.

You'll need some way to collect rainwater for your home water supply. Just forget about hot running water. You'll be lucky if you can get cold water to flow out the tap without your having to pump it upward with a hand-operated water pump.

If you think about it, you can find ways to live much, much more cheaply than most Americans presently do, but there's an initial investment for converting over that will certainly exceed $2000.

And you'll have to contend, sooner or later, with people who were warned about hard times, but who blithely ignored the warnings and went about their merry consumerist ways until it was too late. These dangerous idiots will accuse you of "hoarding" and send their representatives around to expropriate you. So you'll need guns and lots of bullets, plus the will and the skill to make every bullet count, to defend what is yours from those who want to take it.

Last edited by Jenab; April 25th, 2004 at 03:18 PM. Reason: Getting rid of a superfluous [/QUOTE]