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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Gemlaoshi who wrote (103507)	10/30/2013 2:36:54 PM
From: elmatador	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 218090

Peak wine? The metrics is 24-bottle case Global wine shortage looms, says report Published October 30, 2013 FoxNews.com Here’s a sobering thought for you. A global wine shortage may be around the corner. According to a report released this week by Morgan Stanley Research, there was a global undersupply of about 300 million cases of wine in 2012, the largest deficit recorded in almost 50 years. A major reason is because wine production in Spain, France and Italy--the world’s three largest wine-producing countries making 60 percent of the world’s wine--has sharply decreased as less land is being used to grow grapes. Meanwhile, wine consumption worldwide has increased 8 percent since 2000. The report finds that wine production peaked in 2004 and has been steadily declining ever since. “The data suggests there may be insufficient supply to meet demand in coming years, as current vintages are released,” the report concludes. While Europe produces a majority of the world’s wine, consumption is decreasing in old world countries like France, Spain, Italy and the U.K. But the decline in European consumption is greatly offset by an increased demand in countries like the U.S. and China. According to the report, both countries are projected to consume over 400 million cases of wine each by 2016. The U.S. guzzles roughly 12 percent of the world’s wine and has doubled its per capita consumption since the start of the century. In China, wine consumption has increased almost 150 percent in the past five years. There is some good news in all of this. Another report released this week by the International Organisation of Vine and Wine suggests that there will be a global increase in wine production in 2013. However, the report also states that the world’s vineyards are shrinking and it will be hard to make supply keep up with demand in the long run.

To: Gemlaoshi who wrote (103507)	10/30/2013 2:46:51 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 218090

The changes underway are a lot bigger than that: <I'm just surprised that anyone is still surprised by the structural changes that the American economy is going through! Twenty years ago (1993), Peter Drucker identified the structural shift from a capital/labor intensive manufacturing economy with a well-paid blue collar middle class to a "mobile capital" model based on knowledge and skills. > Ignoring the Cyberspace revolution in extra-somatic intelligence and sticking with humans, there are something like 7 billion of us. Every single one of us, and of all living things, can confidently state that for hundreds of millions of years, not a single one of our ancestors died before they passed on our dna which was handed down over all that time, being blended with that of other ancestors in a big jumbling and winnowing process which left us in the here and now. If any of us don't have children, we will be the first ones ever up our line of ancestors over all those eons who did not successfully reproduce. 99.99999999% of all who lived before did NOT succeed in continuously having off-spring and their lines died out. So it's impossibly improbable that we made it through all those hundreds of millions of years without even a single time having the chain broken, but we did and here we are to prove it. If just the human of us follow our chains back up the line, those of non-African background will reach a man who left Africa about 25,000 years ago who went on to be the father of all non-Africans. His Y chromosome is that of all non-Africans. All other non-African Y chromosomes died out. Genghis Khan did fairly well, but he was a rank amateur compared with that man. In fairness, that world champion breeder had another 25,000 years for his descendants to take over. Maybe Genghis Khan's descendants will go on to displace all over Y chromosomes world-wide and he will in fact turn out to be the all time world champion. Or maybe they will all die out and in fact my Y chromosome will turn out to be the all-time world champion. If we follow our maternal lines back up the line, we have to go back to about 90,000 years ago to get to our common non-African woman who left Africa. Males have a lot more survival challenges than do women, which is why the male lines die out faster - males traditionally murdered each other en masse to take over neighbouring women and lands. Now for the gory bit. Of all those 7 billion alive now, they can't adapt, just as chimps couldn't adapt and become New Yorkers or Londoners. The nasty truth is that 99.99% of those alive now are unfit for adapting and integrating with the Cyberspace realm even in the short term. We are evolutionary dead-enders. We are in good company because we can look back over our biological history and see the 99.99999999% failure rate. Now for the nice bit. We can just quietly die off in old age. There's no need for any hideous Malthusian mess of genocidal conflict as was the solution for all of time gone by. But now for the nasty bit. People being more like chimps than the sort of people who are required, they will probably go jihadist on each other as is happening in Syria, and happened in Mao's maelstrom, Stalin's Ukraine, Adolf's Holocaust, Rwanda's genocide, Turkey's Armenian ethnic cleansing, Pol Pot's population reduction. But here's the hopeful part. Cyberspace is already so smart that with the population stable and already falling in some countries, we can all be provided our basic creature comforts and go quietly to our demise. Peak People in 2037 should not be a nasty scene. Enough of the people with the right stuff will be left to service Cyberspace and live a symbiotic life with It until It is old enough to "leave home". But there are always nasty surprises. My 2020 foresight showed [in 2008] reglaciation or maybe just Little Ice Age returning in 2020. Genghis Khan did well during the medieval warm period. The Little Ice Age put paid to his empire. Everyone might have to move south to the Middle East, Sahara, Arizona, or maybe squeeze in to the South of France which has yummy baguettes, camembert, tomatoes, lettuce, olive oil, tapenade, nectarines, apricots, figs. OMG the figs! Mqurice

To: Gemlaoshi who wrote (103507)	10/31/2013 1:56:02 AM
From: Snowshoe	1 Recommendation Recommended By KyrosL Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 218090

>>I'm just surprised that anyone is still surprised by the structural changes that the American economy is going through<< This is a "doom, gloom, collapse" thread so there's a fair amount of chatter here about the impending downfall of Team USA. We regularly hear predictions about riots, anarchy, refugees fleeing to Canada or HK, and schemes to hide out on remote islands with piles of gold and survival gear. Personally, I prefer structural adaptation over the doomsday scenarios. Smaller homes, smaller cars, reduced driving, and more economical food are easy time-honored adjustments. For example, I live in a suburban area that most consider beyond walking distance to the nearest shopping and restaurants. A local developer recently got special zoning permission to build a mixed unit development nearby that includes six townhouse apartments and a bistro. It's designed with a small parking lot to attract mainly local neighborhood folks who will walk over there to have coffee and quiche, beer and pizza, etc. As an added touch, it's a timber frame building using recycled wooden beams from an old fish cannery. Imagine that, Americans are going to walk somewhere! ;)