The scale of it is what amazes:

Earlier today the Kersten Institute for Governance and Public Policy highlighted an updated pension study, released by the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, which revealed some fairly startling realities about California’s public pension underfunding levels. After averaging $77,700 per household in 2014, the amount of public pension underfunding for the state of California jumped to a staggering $92,748 per household in 2015. But don’t worry, we’re sure pension managers can grow their way out of the problem…hedge fund returns have been stellar recently, right? Stanford University’s pension tracker database pegs the market value of California’s total pension debt at $1 trillion or $93,000 per California household in 2015.

So it basically added $15,000 per household – in a year – and that rate will increase now exponentially, year to year. By the time the collapse comes in a decade and a half or so, this could be $500,000 per household and it will hit just as the economic collapse wipes out most wealth.

And that is just state pensions. From national debt, to municipal debt, to corporate debt, to credit card debt, to student loan debt, to auto debt, to personal debt, to federal entitlements, it goes on and on. By the time all is said and done, everyone could owe a million dollars per household or more – just as all wealth evaporates.

Intellectually I know resources are limited, and yet even I have a tough time imagining these pensions needing to be paid, and not being able to just have the State vote to take a loan and write the checks. And yet, that is what is coming. That is K-selection – a state we have never truly seen.

I hate to admit I am so r-selected myself it boggles my mind when I think about it. I want to say, “What do you tell people?” and yet in reality we will probably all be unable to even glance away from our own struggles for survival to console others.

It will be a long road back once we start down that path.

r/K Selection is the only hope for avoiding the Apocalypse, because it shows that it is the rabbits who are the problem.