Daily Episode 123 - An Ever Increasing Pressure

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Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fanfellas.

I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fan Girls podcast, and your resident lover of all

things Sanderson.

And I'm Steven, your bookish internet goofball, but you can call me the smash daddy.

And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic, Miss Born.

But here's the catch.

Steven here has not read Miss Born before.

That's right.

Hey, hey.

So each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chip.

And along the way, we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will

even try to guess what's next.

Spoiler alert, he'll be wrong.

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I've been thinking quite a bit recently about what it means to be collapse aware, and

kind of coming to this conclusion that the world is filled with doom right now.

doom has become mainstream, but collapse awareness has not.

I think everybody is feeling the anxiety that comes from vaguely knowing that things are

wrong, that something is wrong, and that we're headed in the wrong direction.

But that anxiety comes, I think, mainly from not really understanding the underlying issues.

While collapse awareness brings with it a certain burden of understanding the world, the

way that it is, and the way that it's going to be.

I also think that it provides some clarity, and that can provide relief from anxiety.

I bring that up because there was a series of different articles and things that I've

seen this week that are reminders of the things that are happening to everyone, and that

are happening at an increasing rate, they're the things that people notice, they're the

things that put pressure on people that make their lives harder.

As these things that increase that generalized anxiety, that as collapse aware folk, we

know what we're seeing, we understand why it's happening, whereas the vast majority of

the population might be experiencing these things, but not understanding what's driving

them.

Now having the knowledge of why it's happening doesn't make it any easier, it doesn't

make it not happen to us.

It might mean that we've been able to take steps to prepare for it so that the burdens

aren't so heavy.

But they are everyday reminders of the rapidly approaching deterioration, and while many

people may still think that collapse will happen in a calamitous moment, right, or a year,

or whatever, the truth is that I think that we will just keep seeing more and more pressure

applied in many of the areas that we're going to talk about today.

Now, these articles are not all inclusive, I'm not talking about every type of pressure

that people are experiencing right now, it's just more about what happened to just pop

up this week that is relevant to that conversation.

So first one is an article from ABC Australia, and it says homeowners struggle as insurance

premiums rise more than 50% in five years.

Insurance is a huge conversation, and we've talked about this several times and about

how it's sort of the canary in the coal mine, right?

Both means that things are happening in the background, that actuaries and insurance

companies are taking note of because they're realizing they can't make a profit.

It's also showing the future that we're headed into and consequences that we're going

to face that cascade beyond insurance like being able to get a mortgage, being stuck

where you live, and increase in the number of people renting versus buying those types

of things.

It says home insurance premiums have increased by 51% in the past five years.

Because at risk of natural disasters have the biggest premiums with a Brisbane resident

in a flood prone area quoted more than $70,000 a year.

I'm just going to read a couple pieces of this I don't want to get too far into it because

it got some other articles to talk about, but it says since the black summer bush fires

the cost of home insurance for Paul and Denise Cameron has almost doubled.

The retired couple who live in Dargen near the South Wales, New South Wales, Blue Mountains

built their home in the months before the catastrophic event.

The fire came right up to the front of the house and took out a few of the trees along

the front.

In one sense, I think we were lucky because the fire went sort of around us rather than

straight through as it did at the other end of the street, so the annual cost to insure

their home has increased from $220, let's see, $2,600 in 2019 to $5,000 today.

That is after a 30% discount from their provider because they hold multiple policies and have

been a customer for 50 years.

They shopped around, but ultimately only NRMA would ensure them.

When I went to several companies, they wouldn't insure us at all up here, so we really only

had one company.

Article goes on to talk about how obviously many of the areas that are most difficult to

insure are the ones that have been hit hardest by natural disasters.

In Brisbane's West, they pay the most averaging $8,400 a year with some areas that saw floods

that being quoted as high as $70,000, $60,000 a year.

So anyway, yes, this is specific to Australia, but the problem itself is not.

Right, insurance rates are increasing everywhere, and that is a trend we'll continue to see.

Sort of as an anecdote, I was just today looking on one of the fire subreddits, if you're familiar

with fire, which is financially independent, retired early.

It's for people who are sick of being in the system and are doing everything possible

to leave work before the normal retirement age, and there was someone there who was

talking about how they've been retired for four years, and because of that, they had

to very closely monitor their costs and their expenses, and they talked about how just

over the course of those few years, their insurance costs have doubled.

Their grocery bills generally have gone up, though they said that theirs went down because

they've been much better at planning and skimping.

Their property taxes went up by 25%, utilities are up 20%, liability insurance, homeowner's

insurance, car insurance is all up 30%, so this is all just over the course of a few

years.

Highly anecdotal, I know, but just something that I happened to see as I was doing non-collapse

related things today.

Another article from Business Insider is titled, You Could Burn Through $50,000 Covering

An Unemployment Stint In Today's Market.

It says, Job seekers are taking longer to find work these days, and some don't have

the funds to cover the cost.

Almost half of Americans don't have three months of emergency savings, and some workers

are saving specifically for the possibility of a layoff.

The article tells stories of people who spend months and months searching for jobs, and

the comments are full of people who talk about more anecdotally, sending in hundreds of

applications unable to find work at all.

I think there's no doubt that it's getting harder to find work.

If you are laid off, it's becoming more difficult for employees, and more of a employer's

market.

If employers have leveraged, they're going to use it, meaning people are going to be paid

less, and more people are simply out of a job, all while their costs are rising.

Meanwhile, the Social Security Trust Fund could run dry earlier than expected.

This is from CBS News.

This is referring to the Social Security in the US.

It says that the main trust fund could be depleted a year earlier than expected.

CBO forecasts that the old age and survivor's insurance trust fund, one of the two funds

Social Security Taps to Dispersed Benefits, will be exhausted in 2032.

The agency which provides budgetary analysis to Congress estimated last year that it

would run dry in 2033.

It says although the Social Security Administration wouldn't stop administering benefits at the

trust fund reserves are depleted, the agency could be forced to trim the amount it pays

to beneficiaries according to experts.

My takeaway from all of this is we don't have much time to spare to address the shortfall.

Max Wrightman CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, a

nonprofit advocacy group.

If there's not enough revenue coming in payroll taxes and I don't see that changing,

benefits are going to be cut dramatically.

I have always just assumed growing up that I would never see Social Security benefits.

I've been told since I was young that it probably won't be around and that's becoming

more and more true today and apparently earlier and earlier than previously thought.

On top of that, we already have our current administration that continually makes threats

to cut things like Social Security anyway.

Howdy, howdy ho and welcome to Fantasy Fanfellas.

I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fan Girls podcast and your resident lover of all things

Sanderson.

And I'm Stephen, your bookish internet goofball, but you can call me the smash daddy.

And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn, but here's the catch.

Stephen here has not read Mistborn before.

That's right, hey, hey, so each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single

chip. And along the way, we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers and Stephen will even

try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert, he'll be wrong.

News flash, I'm never wrong.

Episodes come out every Wednesday and you can find Fantasy Fanfellas wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, it's Howie Mandel and I'm inviting you to witness history as me and my how we do it

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Another article is titled California's housing crisis has turned RVs into rental properties.

This was a video posted by CNBC on YouTube and it walks through the housing crisis in California

specifically how there's these people they're calling them van lords people who are essentially

renting out old you know busted up broken down RVs to give people spaces to live.

This is you know a natural consequence of housing prices increasing to astronomical rates that

are unaffordable for the average person and people who are desperate to find a place to live

you know not wanting to or being able to pay rent for a full size home being okay with in the end

you know renting in in an RV now people live in vans by choice all the time right van life is a very

popular thing and it's a way to cut costs and be able to travel and but I don't think that's what

this is this is out of necessity living in broken down RVs it's basically just just to be able to

have a basic shelter I don't know what people are paying for these but I can guess that it's way

too much okay so we just went through what four different articles talking about some of the pressures

that are increasing for the everyday person and I just thought this juxtaposition was interesting

because then you see articles like this oil super majors profit nearly half a trillion dollars

since russia's Ukraine invasion this is from globalwitness.org and it talks about how you know one

of the biggest land wars that we've seen in the last hundred years is causing you know over a

million casualties but these multinational oil conglomerates are making eight of money half a

billion or excuse me half a trillion dollars in just the last few years and of course it's not

just oil companies the same thing can be said of AI of governments of surveillance of all these

tech companies they're taking advantage of you know our current situation last of all there was a

self-post on the collapse subreddit this week that I thought was interesting especially in

regards to this this person was not popular on the subreddit and got quite torn apart in the

comments but I thought it was interesting they said maxing out your 401k or pouring money into

index funds makes you complicit in the problem you're literally funding the endless exponential

growth doomsday machine of modern capitalism and reading through their analysis to a degree it

makes sense and I understand what they're saying yes by funding these companies by investing

in them putting money into a 401k or the stock market or whatever that might be you are feeding

into the machine and and those companies use your money to grow and that is troublesome that said

the comments made I think an even better point and that is okay so what do we do then we just

die or work until we die I'll read through some of these comments it says so what do we do for

retirement just die or this one with a little more nuance said no one is arguing the system isn't

stupid and broken but we all need to play their stupid game if we want to have any quality of life

food shelter when we are told to work what else do you expect people to do die in abject poverty

to spite the system this one says two things can be true the right thing to do for yourself and your

family is to save using index funds in the market and also it contributes to the problem do you

all pay taxes that's also contributing to every problem the government is but the alternative is

losing your livelihood both can be true and this person and I think this is massively important

to says the upper middle class investments are such a small share of the overall stock market

the top 10% of households own 93% of the stock market the top 1% own roughly half the stock market

the 10% is a household making around 250k a year unless you are a millionaire you are not contributing

to the capitalist do machine if anything we are all cogs in the system wage slaves with no rights

and no freedom the reason that I bring this up is as you know I've I've talked about this a

couple of times in my own sort of moral quandaries in my own trying to figure out what how you know

how to invest in my family in my future in our security and what's right and wrong but also what's

you know safe and not in all these things and I think this was a good reminder to read through

this thread and recognize that even you know even just talking about the upper middle class they

make such a small dent in the stock market that vast vast majority of those who have all their

money in the market are millionaires already if those of us who are making less than a quarter

million dollars a year according to this comment are contributing to the 401k we could all stop

right and the market would barely barely budge it's not like we're funding these companies or

we're funding the billionaires we're simply trying to keep ourselves afloat and give our families

some hope at a you know a chance of retirement or financial security but seeing this posted in

the collapse subreddit just maybe think of that quote that says you know who needs enemies when

you have friends like this and we just got to watch out for each other you know we're all aware

of of what's happening in the world and doing our best to cope with it and I think most of us

deserve some amount of mercy and grit and grace and understanding and I hope that we're offering

that to each other except for billionaires screw those guys all right thanks for being here

see you tomorrow. Howdy howdy ho and welcome to fantasy fanfellas I'm Hayden producer of the

fantasy fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things sanderson and I'm Stephen your

bookish internet goofball but you can call me the smash daddy and we are currently deep diving

Brandon sander since fantasy epic misborn but here's the catch Stephen here has not read

misborn before that's right hey hey so each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every

single chip and along the way we'll do character deep dives magic explainers and Stephen will even

try to guess what's next spoiler alert he'll be wrong news flash I'm never wrong episodes come

out every Wednesday and you can find fantasy fanfellas wherever you get your podcasts hey it's

howie mandel and I'm inviting you to witness history as me and my how we do it gaming team take

on gillie de king and wallow two six sevens million dollars gaming in an epic global gaming league

video game showdown four rounds multiple games one winner plus a half time performance by multi

platinum artist travey macoy watch all the action and see who wins and advances to the championship

match against neo right now at global gaming league dot com that's global gaming league dot com

everybody games hey cori here if you are listening to the back catalog of breaking down collapse

thank you those episodes are so vital they're so important but I also wanted to let you know that

I am now doing daily episodes yes that's right here on the podcast daily episodes so if you are

enjoying the back catalog great please also feel free to zoom forward to the most recent episodes

catches daily they are quick little episodes and I think you'll enjoy them thanks