Mr. Rawles,
). I'm looking to buy a main battle rifle (
). My rifle collection currently consists of a few .22 rimfires and a [Federally exempt antique Model] 1893 Mauser, which I purchased on your recommendation from
. It seems as though most of the [firearms design] features one would look for are restricted (if not outright banned) here [in California]. My question for you is, what would you suggest for a California resident's MBR?. Thanks, - C3 in CA.
California does have some almost unbearable "assault weapons" restrictions. OBTW, I'm fond of saying that the only "assault" going on is against our Constitutional rights.
Unless you plan to move out of the state soon, I'd recommend that you buy one or two
. This was a very robust post-WWII semi-auto rifle design. Most FN49s have fixed 10 round magazines that are filled from the top, via stripper clips. The ideal choice would be the detachable magazine Argentine Navy variant chambered in 7.62mm NATO. These are presently around $1,200 each. But if you are on a budget, FN49s were also made in several other calibers including .30-06, 7.65mm Argentine Mauser, 7x57mm Mauser, and 8x57mm Mauser. The latter were made for an Egyptian contract are the least expensive variants. These can sometimes be found for around $750. An 8mm Mauser, would of course also give you cartridge commonality with your Turkish contract
Mauser. Regardless of what you buy, be sure to
before purchasing a military surplus rifle. Many of the Mauser cartridges and
were made with corrosive priming, which causes bore pitting.
. Unfortunately, they have recently become quite collectible and prices have jumped up to the $1,000 to $1,500 price range. Spare parts have also become quite expensive. My advice to Californians: If you can find an M1 Garand with a nice bore for under $900, jump on it!
James:
In a recent Odds 'n Sods item, you cited a article published by
The New York Times: You stated:
"A key data point mentioned in the article: 'The median household [in the US] earned $48,201 in 2006, down from $49,244 in 1999, according to the Census Bureau.' "That's from changing population dynamics and more careful surveys of low-income families. For comparable populations, income has risen as you ought to expect.
Consider the results for "Worked Full Time, Year Round, Both Sexes, White"...
For
1999 income:
Persons in this group: 81.7 million
Mean income of all persons in this group: $44,854
For 2006 income:
Persons in this group: 88 million
Mean income of all persons in this group: $55,176
, adjusted for US retail price inflation to 2006, is equivalent to $53,781.
Adjusted for US wage inflation, the number is $53,622.
This is only barely better than staying even, but that's a lot better than the conclusion you drew from the
New York Times article, which is that the median income has somehow declined 23% in constant dollars. Since when did you start trusting everything you read
in the New York Times? In this case, the [New York Times] author went out of his way to make a clearly false claim: "Most American households are still not earning as much annually as they did in 1999, once inflation is taken into account."
Based on the actual facts he presents as his source data, that just isn't true.
From the
CIA World Factbook, the US
GDP was $9.26 trillion in 1999 and $12.98 trillion in 2006, a 40.1% increase. Tom's price-inflation calculator says $9.26 in 1999 is equivalent to $11.10 in 2006, so the
real growth was about 17%.
According to the Census Bureau, the population of the United States grew about 7% in those seven years, leaving us with roughly 10% of growth in per-capita GDP. So that's consistent with the other Census data, and it's reasonable to conclude from these analyses that average individual income did in fact increase faster than inflation during this time. - PNG
JWR Replies: Like you, I am dubious about statistics complied by governments. Journalists with an axe to grind--such as the
New York Times writer that you mentioned do indeed distort statistics even further, so this is cause to distrust press accounts of "official" statistics.
I only saw any credence in the claim that real incomes have declined because of my personal experience. At the peak of the
dot.com boom in 2000, I was working as a technical writer for a start-up high tech company and making $105,000 per year (plus full benefits). That is the equivalent of $129,543 in 2007 dollars. When the
dot.com bubble burst, I was laid off and I scrambled for the next three years, alternately living on my unemployment insurance and taking short term technical writing contracts, without any health insurance benefits. My income plummeted to just $22,000 in 2003. Late in that year, I finally found salaried work as a technical and proposal writer, but it was at just $55,000 per year. I eventually decided to launch SurvivalBlog, (starting in September of 2005), and in the Spring of 2006 I quit my salaried job and started living on much less--from just my blog and book income. This change also allowed me to move my family to a remote, lightly-populated area that is much like where we lived in the early 1990s. This has taken some belt-tightening, but given the local low cost of living, we live fairly comfortably on my earnings. But it will surely be a
long, long time before I ever again make as much as I did in 2000!
Now, getting back to "official" statistics: In many cases, government statisticians are solving equation with
multiple missing variables, so their results are an admixture of mathematics, conjecture and voodoo. Inflation statistics are case in point. The official figures on consumer price inflation have become almost laughable. The "core" inflation rate excludes "volatile" food and energy costs. This makes the "official" consumer inflation figure just about useless to me, since my family's three biggest budget items are insurance, groceries, and gasoline.
Money supply figures cannot be trusted. The figure for electronic "bankers" dollars are perhaps fairly trustworthy, ut figures for printed paper dollars are unreliable, at best. There is no way to account for how many dollars are squirreled away in mattresses, or are in the hands of foreigners. (Although if foreigners have half a brain, they are currently scrambling to exchange into a more stable currency.) One key statistic,
the M3 Money Supply Aggregate, got so embarrassing that in 2006 the government stopped publishing it. At least one web publisher,
ShadowStats, has attempted to reconstruct the M3 figure, independently. (They charge for access to most of their data and reports.)
Government unemployment figures are also highly suspect. By their own admission, the Bureau of Labor Statistics undercounts the chronically unemployed. Once someone has been unemployed long enough to have their state unemployment insurance benefits run out, they simply drop off the radar. The unemployment statistics also do a poor job of accounting for
underemployment. For example, they would in the aggregate count an out-of-work stockbroker (that formerly made $250,000 per year) as "full time employed" if he out of desperation takes a full time job as a waiter, for minimum wage, plus tips.
Census figures cannot be completely trusted. The US Census has become a political football. Most notably, it has become a
cause celebre for both homeless advocates and illegal alien advocates. These advocates can be found both inside and outside of government. They have attempted to manipulate data for political ends. How many illegal aliens are there in the US?
Nobody really knows. The estimates that I've read range from 10 million to 22 million. But again, it is guesswork.
The bottom line is that "official" statistics are not be trusted. I'll close with an unattributed quotation: "Most people use statistics the way a drunk uses a lamp post, more for support than enlightenment."
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