Starvin Larry

US manufacturing output may well attain new highs, but manufacturing employment probably won’t.

After World War II, US industry and manufacturing reigned supreme. Most other countries’ industrial infrastructure had been destroyed and their economies were in ruins. Detroit and its car companies were emblematic of the time. General Motors was the world’s largest corporation, the big three dominated the US and many export markets, workers in their unionized workforces made wages that could sustain a family in middle class comfort, and Detroit was the third largest American city. This was the halcyon period that commentators invoke when they talk of a “rebirth” of US factories and restoration of manufacturing jobs.

But can there be a rebirth of something that never died? While the number of manufacturing jobs has been in a long-term decline, the output of manufactured products has not. U.S. factories produce twice as many goods as they did…

Zoos are among the saddest places on earth: magnificent but confined creatures on display for gawking crowds, prevented from living out their biological destinies, fed their daily rations, and domesticated beyond where they could ever return to the wild. You have to feel pity and sorrow for these innocent prisoners; they’d flee in a heartbeat if they could.

Humans have made themselves inmates—whether of a zoo, prison, or asylum is hard to say, likely a combination of all three. Animals earn our admiration because they resist losing their freedom. Humans occasionally do too, but usually surrender theirs for promises and trifles. The promises are broken and the trifles grow more trifling as humanity for the most part gives up. Keep people amused and make sure the rations don’t stop and no outrage rousts them to try to reclaim their birthright. When they visit the zoo, the animals stare back at…

Often among those new to Survivalism, Prepping, and all things on the more self-reliant side of communications, it becomes pretty important to define the exact role your communications equipment will play and what you expect to accomplish with it, all in an attempt to best suit your package to your needs. This is a really important, especially for the majority of us who are on budgets and have a definite need to justify what at the outset is expensive gear.

Take the kit pictured here. My most oft-used portable station setup, revolving around the much-lauded-by-me jack of all trades (and master of several) Yaesu 857, its LDG tuner, 14 AH battery, and CF-19 toughbook, altogether runs a good large chunk of change. Then again, I’m also an Extra Class Amateur who runs his equipment a lot because it’s something I like to do, and it’s taken me a…