New Hampshire Granites

[Dreepa]

That is a great description of  Concord.

I love downtown Concord.  The main street reminds me 'of the old days'. (Which I never saw- you know tv memories).


Concord probably has about 10-20 Porcs by now.

[Russell Kanning]

America is in the jam she's in, to a significant degree, because her people can think of a whole lot more ways to spend money than they can figure ways to produce things or avoid spending money altogether.  That's a fairly broad generalization, and it may not even apply to most of the people reading this post, but the fact remains that America -- and Americans -- are debtors.

It makes sense for us each to produce more than we consume.
Just because other americans and the government spends too much does not mean that we will all go down with the ship. I am not going to pay for the governments debts or other people's.

[PowerPenguin]

LOL  Concord is a city of around 50,000 that desperately hopes it gets to stay a small town.  (Witness:  law here stipulates that NO new building can be built taller than the Capitol, which puts everything at about 3 stories or under).   Concord is charming and quirky and fairly expensive, as places to live go, rather pedestrian-friendly but choking on traffic.   We have a law school here as well as a 2-year technical institute, but Concord does not come across as a "college town".   If you're looking for urban, Manchester or Portsmouth might be more to your taste. 

Thanks for the info, Marcy. I'm saving up for the move in a few years, but  I won't have tons of money being just out of college @ that point. What's the cost-of-living situation like in Nashua and Keene?

[tracysaboe]

I don't mean to be contrarian, especially because I'm still a bit new here and this is my first post of any length.  However, seems to me that if the whole culture is getting ready to hit the wall at a high rate of speed with expected and disasterous consequences, one might do best to walk deliberately in the opposite direction. 

America is in the jam she's in, to a significant degree, because her people can think of a whole lot more ways to spend money than they can figure ways to produce things or avoid spending money altogether.  That's a fairly broad generalization, and it may not even apply to most of the people reading this post, but the fact remains that America -- and Americans -- are debtors.   It doesn't matter whether that started from the top down  (manipulations of fiat money, intrerest rates and energy & foreigh policy) or the bottom up (a population hooked on Starbucks and Circuit City, the latest twist on bread and circuses).   The result is the same.  We spend as much as or more than we earn -- and we don't save.  Doesn't matter if you demoninate that reality in granites, liberty dollars, FRN's, silver coin, euros or glass beads. 

People are traders and yes, we will always need to buy (and sell) things.  The kids will always need new shoes.  We don't grow wheat, oranges, spices or coffee in NH -- and even if we grew everything else we needed to eat in NH, we'd have to pay hard money for those things.  Electricity, prescription meds, mortgages, these things will probably all need to be paid with the prevailing scrip (FRN).   

When the fit hits the shan -- and we can all see that coming down the road -- people in the habit of spending little and saving much will ride out the storm much better than those living paycheck-to-paycheck.  We'll see some very squirrelly things happen to fiat money, so it will probably do well to preserve savings by having a healthy chunk in silver.  However, if fiat money goes down the tubes, the country will be in such a state of crisis -- and rattled nerves -- that few people will want to trust a new and relatively unknown currency.  Hoping they will do so is a little like trying to cinvince people used to gold and silver that wampum -- or paper money -- is a good idea.  Difficult at best, and impossible in a crisis.

There are many ways one can walk deliberately away from the direction the country is headed.  Saving money and preserving it in precious metals seems to me a better way to do that than creating anoother kind of currency.

Just my opinion.



It is impossible for an empty sack to stand upright.       -- Poor Richard

A lot of the culter of buy now pay later is spawned by government manipulating the interest rates -- which does have a lot more to do with things then just the fact that it's denominated in FRNs.

But FRNs, are subject to inflation, which gold, and silver, really aren't that much. Because of that, it's makes economic sense to buy it now with an FRN, because 2  years from now it's going to cost a lot more.

The inflationary FRN's do discourage delayed gratification -- that which you say is the cause of these problems.

Great post by the way. I think that they sort of reinforce each other. Government easy money policies, encourage buy now, pay later instant gratification mentalities. (Government school do that too, BTW.) So they develope those mentalities, and they'd probably continue at this point even IF we did go b ack to a heavy mettal standard of some sort. In fact, because of the mentalities theire's even more pressure on the government to be even looser with it's monitary polilcies.

It becomes a cycle. We need to break the chain.

Tracy