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3. Government at all levels will devote increasing resources to revenue collection; new laws giving the State (all levels of government) new powers to strip-mine private assets will be passed with strong support from government-dependent special-interests.

4. Government at all levels will assign or create domestic intelligence assets to the search for additional tax revenues.

5. Cities which were previously considered immune to the "recession" will declare losses and huge layoffs.

6. Local governments outside of the Rust Belt will start aggressively taking over abandoned houses as banks fail and ownership of the properties becomes ambiguous.

7. Local government fines, fees, permits and other business-related licensing will plummet, decimating what was once considered a "safe" revenue stream.

8. State and local government services will rapidly devolve: twice-a-week trash pickup will devolve to once a week; fire stations, libraries and schools will be consolidated; other services will become sporadic.

9. State and local government hikes in fees to use parks, park downtown, drop junk at the dump, get a building permit, etc. will backfire: people will stop going to parks, stop shopping downtown, start dumping junk at night on quiet streets now that the dump is too expensive and start remodeling without permits. Contrary to government expectations, revenues will actually drop faster after all these fees are raised.

10. State/county attempts to openly raise taxes will increasingly trigger tax rebellions and demonstrations; the trickle of residents leaving high-tax states and counties will grow to a flood.

The political propaganda which infuses every moment of our lives tries to maintain an artificial distinction between our Tweedledum and Tweedledee political parties: The Dees are all for using the power of the State to "help the little people" while the Dums are all for unleashing the power of "free enterprise," a.k.a. the 1% who control the capital and 2/3 of all productive assets in the nation.

The truth is that the State and the Plutocracy are two sides of one coin; each rules with the support and complicity of the other. The distinction drawn between them is a useful distraction, somewhat like drawing a distinction between professional sports teams who swap players in the off-season. "My team" is an abstraction which serves the goal of enriching its owners; "fan" loyalty draws smirks from everyone in the know even as they proclaim "fan day" and "fan appreciation day." (The cross-town rival team is of course "the hated enemy.")

As we watch devolution in action over the next decade, observe how it is managed so the hapless frog won't jump from the pot. That is what the State and Elites are counting on, of course; a devolution passively accepted by a media-duped, gadget-addicted, self-blaming, depressed, drugged-out populace which leaves the Powers That Be fully intact.

Model 3: The 1960s as Global Model of Social, Economic and Political Innovation, Experimentation and Transformation

In the course of this analysis we've looked at various historical events to deepen our understanding of the present. Each of these eras--the 13th century, the Great Depression of the 1930s, the end of the Soviet Union and the devolution of the Roman Empire--has features which parallel our own era of interconnected crises.

Even periods of history which seem to have little in common in terms of economic challenges can offer telling parallels in cultural and conceptual devolution.

Thus it seems to me that the period of global cultural and conceptual ferment, the 1960s and early 1970s, may provide us with a largely unappreciated model of devolution: as trusted institutions are revealed as hopelessly corrupt and compromised, as official lies and deceptions which served as foundations of State policy are exposed, then "belief in the system fades."

This institutional betrayal of public trust and the violation of the principles underpinning common interests then triggers anger: