The next Hurricane: financial tsunami

The housing bubble which has started to burst will have wide ranging implication, not just for individual home owners with "toxic" loans but all of us taxpayers especially at the local level since many municipal jobs will be on the line. There has been many hiring based on high tax income based on ever rising property taxes but once the appraisals start coming down, there will be drop in income and that means that many cities will face serious financial crisis. San Diego is forced to face unfunded pensions and they're just getting started with the housing bubble deflation.

Once the cities start going bankrupt [lowered tax income while getting hit with higher subsidy requirements for pension funds and constant need to pay for bloated government employees], the city employees will be too busy protecting themselves and their neighbors, not their assigned job locations. Which will mean much similar to the post-Katrina scenario where no help was to be found in the poorer neighborhoods.

The best thing to do now is to be prepared and learn to protect yourself [and your family] from:

1. Vandals: get arms and learn to use it and/or take self-defense training [Aikido seems like a good start, to me]
   
2. Fire: get appropriate gear to fight real fire [garden hose isn't enough] and learn to use it properly [I don't know what it is but I'll start looking into it soon].
   
3. Medical emergency: take EMS courses, esp. the wilderness EMS kind. [I have looked into buying ultra sound equipment but seemed pricey even for a used portable kind.]
   

But really, you should be prepared regardless since you can't count on any of the above services to come soon enough, even in normal peace time. Remember, police does not have to protect, according to a recent Supreme Court ruling.

Copyright 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.