it's true. by this time next year, the lucky ones will be living in burned out mcmansions while those of us less fortunate will kill for a night's sleep in the trunk of an abandonded bmw. post-apocalyptic half-man half-robot wraiths will scour the scorched countryside for fresh corpses to devour. global warming will instantaneously render 90% of the world's terra firma unlivable, driving the few million surviving and diseased americans to shanty towns on the high plains of nebraska. martial law will give way to complete ultra-violent anarchy, with artists and architects turned to first for forced martyrdom when communities run out of firewood and need fast combustible sources of heat for cooking. the sky will bleed red acid, mutilating our children as they scamper painfully across the jagged remains of our earth's crust.

All this because the quality of transmissions has improved enough that Ritchie was no longer needed as much at your local Aamco shop?

Most likely because an illegal alien is willing to work for half the pay as ritchie.

or..
unlike ritchie, you will accept the pay cut, your adjustable interest rates will jump to a level that your newly bought house will be in jeopardy of going to county hall steps, bustling architects offices will get quite and smell of the new carpet will be more appearant. even though the desk next to yours is empty, it will stand there with the empty task chair, unused. new graduates of architecture schools are going to look for a architecture job long time to come. 2 nd hand trade will boom for a while until the last available money is depleted.
loan sharks will thrive. tensions will rise. nasty shit. most people in this web site has not experienced something like this in their adult life. it is survivable, but sets you back a little and what goes down slowly comes back up even slower.
fuck'n ritchie..

i was there in the late 80's early 90's i remember seeing only one column of adds in the NYT for architects, but i also remember being in school and thanking my lucky stars i wasn't out trying to get work. i also remember clinton in 92 and the world changed.....time to go and my nursing degree, someone will always need bed pan cleaning....

ArchAngel, you are partially right on.
Most likely because 'a citizen' is willing to work for half the pay as ritchie.

I buy the argument that there are major tough times ahead but I don't think it has anything to do with Ritchie and someone willing to work cheaper than him.

It has everything to do with a consumer society we have built up on inflated prices and mountains of debt. My only satisfaction is knowing that once the USA goes down the entire world goes down because everyone relies on our spending to survive. The global economy is great until the global consumer gets a cold.

Buy gold because paper will always be paper - and gold will always be gold.

I wish the best for Ritchie, but Aamco has done him wrong.

My dumb-shit brother in law dropped out of high school, took the GED stoned, and works as an auto mechanic for a car dealership making as much as me and my wife combined.

Tell him to go to work for a dealership. Planned obsolescence still has room for repair men.

"My only satisfaction is knowing that once the USA goes down the entire world goes down because everyone relies on our spending to survive."

wow, you're a pretty pathetic fuck.

uhm, let's not get extra nasty

I had an experience like that. I lived in a space that had been a garment shop in a building full of garment shops that fed off a knitting plant across the street. The garment workers were mostly South American and didn’t speak English and we didn’t cross paths much anyway but this lunch wagon thing used to pull up every morning just when I was supposed to be leaving for work and beep its horn. The lunch wagon was driven by this totally rad Columbian woman named Beatrice who spoke perfect English and ended up being a very pleasant friend to wake up to buy a hot donut from as I trudged off to the shop I worked down the street. I knew that the building owners were trying to fill the building up with people like me and then condo it and kick us out in favor of yuppies looking to buy lofts.

A couple of the shops began moving out. The one day I came down to a Beatrice trying to chill out a crowd of very disturbed garment workers. She explained to me that they had just been informed that there would be no more work after this week. I felt kind of bad and I wanted to help out so I called the Garment Workers union and got some numbers for re-training programs but no real help (they didn’t want illegals and couldn’t find work for the members they already had). Beatrice thanked me for my efforts and said she’d pass the numbers on but she had already passed word along her route and found another collection of shops that were hiring.

That weekend the shops disappeared, leaving piles of debris. My neighbor got a still functional industrial sewing machine and I got a lifetime supply of brightly colored thread but the garment workers never got their last pay checks. Then the knitting plant sold their machines a couple months later and they were gone. Then Beatrice stopped coming and the building filled up with a few yuppies and a huge number of dumb-shit art school kids. Then I left and went to grad school.

I guess there is less of a moral to that one. I still feel like blaming George Bush though. He’s at least a much at fault as I am. I think we’re okay for a few years though, Beatrice is trying to get her kids into college and she won’t let America go down until she’s done that.

To Arch and abra.....Your placing blame on how this country functions on people who only come here to improve their situations, and, who more importantly give more than they take back shows incredible ignorance and a myopic view of the world. I pity you jerks.

mous, you have to read carefully what i wrote, which does not require too much english. i would not say anything 'jerky' about immigrants, for myself being one. do not jump to conclusion before you finish reading the whole sentence. or, your buildings will be real bad..!

well in case i misunderstood your first post, thanx for this one. Nice one the "too much english" you racist prick. And I did read carefully and 'a citizen' is a nice touch. Way to keep it politically correct.

nomous, go to nearest bathroom and let it out whatever.

Just say what you mean, and mean what you say
tough guy

Back to issue at hand...."A" has a point in noting the trends of over consumption and its resulting mounting debt were inevitably to lead to problems. Coupled with energy needs rising, peak oil, and the belief that we don't have to be sustainable in our lives because we can always go over and bully natural resources from an other country under the cloak of "democracy", the future is looking bleak for ritchie and all of us.

it's really funny actually, the position seems to be either the sky is falling or hide your head in the sand, i am thinking with all of the doom sayers i think the reality is somewhere in the middle......

i just talked to ritchie who was moving his personal tools out of aamco. reality is, he does not have the 'new job' for sure. good thing is he has only himself to support. maybe his rejection of the pay cut comes from that he can always get by supporting only himself. most workforce have family to feed and will take whatever they can get to make sure they don't go hungry.
i am not talking about the doomsday, there are economists who talk about that these days.

My father was a doom and gloomer. He bought lots of gold, food, emergency equipment, etc. back in the 80s, moved out to a farm in Pennsylvania to raise his own food, etc. The apocolypse didn't happen, lots of money was made in stocks, and I have a huge student loan debt because his pessemistic investment strategy ruined all his savings.

I worry about the economy, but the answer is not to go buy lots of gold. Gold, like paper, is essentially worthless unless there is a demand for it. And unless there is a huge increase in the number of Guidos in the post-crash economy fueled by gold-chain purchases, its going to be as wortless as anything else.

he'll do better