To avoid the distraction, you could simply be optimistic about all the political platforms, energy, the environment, and the whole future of the world. That pretty much derails more than half of those discussions, and feels good too.
rScotty
The problem is that a lot of those discussions are related to direct negative impacts on those people and what it is doing to their family's opportunities.
It is hard for people to be optimistic when their paychecks are not able to buy the food it did in the past and the impact to their children's happiness when they can't go to the places they did in the past to enjoy things that they did in past.
The constant drone of the news telling them that they are oppressed or privileged, or not being treated or treating others fairly adds to the distress. To that, increased crime and where I live illegal immigration impacts.
I get being
optimistic but, when you have no faith in the fairness of the current political system of racial and gender politics, equity pandering, public schools, congressional member enrichment (i.e. unfair access to financial benefits), and, similar issues that is a pretty hard
aspirational goal for many people to meet.
In my case, my pension has been significantly devalued which is a direct impact on my optimism for the future and why I am working to capture equipment to supplement my retirement income. Bees and Tilapia won't do it alone but, bailing hay and related custom farming type work appear to be better options for me to do something I will enjoy and can do in my retirement years. Storm damage cleanup for people is something I want to be able to do as well since that is a recurring problem around here with high winds and tornados and frequent tree damage.
I am optimistic that I will be able to work with state and county officials to
prevent my neighbors from flooding my lower pasture and destroying the public roadbed from the raised water table. I am also optimistic that the county animal welfare control will continue to stop two neighbors from animal hoarding and that I will have enough ammunition to
kill the calf and chicken killing dogs they breed. I am also optimistic that I will be able to continue working with a retired Marine to
kill the feral hogs in sufficient numbers to keep both our properties damage free.
At the moment, I am not so confident I can deal with the downed tree storm damage on the back of my "home" property in a reasonable timeframe with my current CUT
L4600. The tree that is most concerning has a diameter of >50" and is partially buried in wet soil.
Things like this are encouraging me to buy a much larger ag tractor. This is also some of the reasons for declining SCUT and CUT sales because people like myself realize that SCUT and CUT tractors may be super handy for a lot of chores but, they simply don't work well for a lot of the work we do because they take too much time to complete or simply can't do what we need them to do.
SCUT and CUT tractors are different options for those people moving out from the larger cities that want a tractor to help them do things around the house and their relatively small properties. As noted, some of them are having various health-related issues so, a small front-end loader and other attachments make their little homesteads a lot easier to maintain.
As people feel the impacts of high inflation rates, there will be some reluctance to buy a relatively expensive "toy" for those same retirees who are feeling financial pressure in the current state of affairs. So market saturation of SCUT and CUT tractors and reluctance for new people to jump on to this trendy rural retiree homestead luxury.
All that being said, my
B2601 isn't going anywhere anytime soon! The reality is that at some point, I am apt to sell that lovely tractor and pay someone to mow for me around the house! Someone like that will put pressure on the SCUT market pretty hard and as noted lead to declining new sales.
