With all the talk about stimulating the "consumer" economy, I can't help but question the basic assumptions behind this approach.

At heart, modern capitalism is designed to devour the lower tiers of society without mercy. Capitalism only cares if you have money, materials or labor. This can be simplified as the ability to create products or to purchase them. The needs of society and its members are moot, literally inconsequential to the process of acquiring capital resources. Or rather it is only important as it affects labor or the consumer ends of the equation.

Humans have a few very basic needs to merely survive from day-to-day: nourishing food, clean water, adequate shelter. Coming close on those is social interaction/community, basic health care, meaningful work and some leisure time. (Some might contest the necessity of leisure time but I'd argue that without it many people lose something intrinsic to their humanity.)

US society is exceptionally artificial and alienated from the natural world in many ways. The vast majority of Americans live in urban centers or the sub-urban communities surrounding these centers. This affects those basic needs.

A prime example of is food. No urban center is able to feed itself. Think about that for a moment. There is no farmland to speak of in an urban center. No significant livestock. Because of this, if there was a significant disruption of our transportation system, cities would begin starving almost immediately. I'm not talking a terrorist attack. Just an increase in the price of gas to affect truckers would do it. The peak price of gas last summer created a crisis for truckers.

While the Cold Warriors have been busy congratulating themselves about the collapse of the Soviet Union, we've been placid about the problems of capitalism. No society or economic system is so prosperous and perfect that it can't collapse catastrophically.

I'd like to see a society that provides for the basic needs of its people. The USA isn't doing this.

Labels: capitalism, economy, needs

The week between Christmas and the turning of the calendar on New Year's Day is often a time of reflection, of gathering the strands of the past year, of planning for the future. It is a time of resolutions, a time of renewed determination, a time to envision change.

The inexorable collapse of the US financial system is perhaps a sign for us, all Americans, to rethink our priorities on a personal basis. As a society, we're used to consuming impulsively, to reflexive pleasure-seeking.

Our economy is not predicated on the well-being and health of the citizens or meaningful security of food and shelter. Instead, our capitalism consumes us, selling us fantasies on TV, entrancing us with empty celebrity news. We live other people's lives on "unscripted dramas" and we give little thought to creating a sustainable way of life. The captains of industry grow rich and use us, discarding the vast majority of Americans in the name of profit.

One report I saw recently estimated that half of the US bailout dispensed to banks so far went to shareholders of the banks, not to increase reserves or loans. Of course it's difficult to know because there is no way to check how the money is used. No requirement for the institutions to report how they are using the bailout money. Now the banks are saying they have no way of tracking how the money is used. Banks that don't have a way of tracking money that comes in and goes out? Now there's a fable for modern America.

Qui bono? Who benefits? It doesn't take a brilliant flash of "Eureka!" to see that the wealthy benefit. The system is set up that way. The poor-but-patriotic go off to fight a war and the majority of workers live in fear of job loss in an instant.

As usual, the supporters of the financial bailout say the benefits will trickle down to the workers, to "Main Street," eventually. I've heard this before. Actually, it is the continual refrain of American capitalism to the vast majority of workers: "You'll get yours in the sweet by-and-by."

So we are learning to watch the scrambling, the sliding of wealth down the drain. We are waking up to a new vision, a new awareness of where our money comes from, who our work benefits.

There's a bumper sticker that reads "Think Globally, Act Locally." There is a wisdom in that epigraph.

Labels: economy

I find myself feeling distinctly irrational tonight. The calm marshaling of argument, the ordering of points in support of a thesis, the use of supportive documentation and links... These are all tools beyond me at the moment.

Bleak cynicism grips me. American democracy strikes me as casino gambling, the odds always inevitably weighed in favor of the House. Structured to resist drastic change, we still pretend that the outcome of elections will bring substantial change.

It. Will. Not. Bring. Change.

I genuinely believe an Obama/Biden administration will be better for the country than McCain/Palin. Co-existing with this belief is my fundamental certainty that Obama's hands will be tied in many different ways if/when he gets into office. Many rhetorical and political promises will come up empty in the ensuing years. "Change" will turn to the long wait, to delay, to the study of myriad options. Congress will balk, always with reasonable explanations as to why action is ill-advised.

These are the days of dust and tears.

These are the days of terrible lies.

These are the days of political abuse coated with sugared words.

I'm tired of pretending that rational public discussion and debate will change the actions of politicians. In the vast majority of cases, it does not.

Constituent calls to Congresscritters on the US$700 billion economic bailout bill ran hundreds to one against passing it. (One Representative I heard actually said it was 1000:1 against it in his office.) Yet, despite this enormous public outcry, five days later it was passed.

America runs on money and power and influence in lofty circles. The vast majority of us live in the land of the screwed, the scrimping and scrounging wage-slave beggars, at the mercy of the vast economic forces of Capitalism. Those in power need only put on the appearance of care and concern. Only exceptionally overreaching illegality is caught at that level.

So tonight I'm just bitter at the whole degenerate mess of politics. Reason is lost to disgust and distrust.

The impulse to foment revolution begins to seem attractive and desirable.

Cosmetic change is not real change; it is the illusion of change that placates, calms, gentles the populace.

Someday, the hypnotized will wake on fire and wonder when it began. I don't want to wait that long.

Labels: cynicism, debates, economy, politics, Presidential race 2008

The bleak economic news continues to rattle around. Investment firms falling like dominos, stock market quakes, the US$700 billion to prop up Wall St., etc.

I'm somewhat removed from direct effect of these events (no investments, no retirement fund, minimal savings, an annual salary barely above poverty level) but it strikes fear into me. A crisis of such enormous proportions will eventually hit me where I live. My mother has some investments and I have no idea what's happening to them.

I'm reminded of the Great Depression. I think of expanding our garden but that won't do much good as we head into the Fall season in New England. What would it take to have chickens here? What is the minimal amount of electricity needed to run our household necessities?

The fear reminds me what is important and essential: food and shelter. Everything beyond that can be let go if necessary. I look toward dropping my minor acquisitive vices: books, CDs, and magazines. Satellite TV? I'd probably be better off without it. I start to view the internet as a tool, not a form of entertainment.

What grows is not quite an ascetic view but certainly a leaner approach to my life.

Will things get as bad as the Depression? No telling at this point but it wouldn't surprise me. On the whole, Americans have gotten too used to prosperity, too used to disposable income, too used to abundant shallow entertainment. "It couldn't happen here!" is the saddest of refrains, the ejaculation of the stunned and disbelieving. Yet we are being reminded that there is so much out of our control, that oligarchy is the true governing system of the US and the corporate elite live fat on the sweat of the majority of American workers/people.

I suggest you start planning now for a new future. The old one is looking shaky.

Labels: Depression, economy, gloom, misanthropy

I continue to be amazed at the limitations of US politics and the narrowness of acceptable solutions by politicians. To use an entirely overworn metaphor, our political options remain in a box controlled tightly by the media and "elites".* Solutions "outside the box" are usually dismissed without serious consideration and usually without ever even seeing the media light of day.

So it is with our current economic crisis. Instead of acknowledging the flaws in our policies that led to our current problems and acting to correct them, we are left with applying emergency fixes in a crisis. Thus we have bailouts of huge private economic linchpins allowed to grow unregulated until our economy is dependent on them. De-regulation of areas of financial markets turns into the sub-prime fiasco.

Yet we hear from many pundits that it is those people who got these sub-prime loans who are to blame for poor fiscal responsibility, for getting loans they knew they couldn't pay back. What's lacking in this analysis is the economic optimism encouraged by American society since WWII. Until relatively recently, Americans were used to thinking of themselves as continually moving up the economic ladder. Hard work leads to advancement and increased pay.

This hasn't been true for a long time but the attitude remains a core value and assumption for many American workers. Never mind that wage stagnation has been the rule for many years, the future's so bright I need sunglasses, right?

So what solutions do we hear proposed? Crisis band-aids and studiously forgetting the role money managers might have played in creating the problem. Top management keeps its billions of dollars in pay and bonuses despite their evident culpability while homeowners lose homes for want of a few thousand dollars.

We live in a kind of pyramid scheme called Capitalism. Where do those wealthy top 1% get their money? Conventional thought is that it comes from their bold investment of money with the risk of loss on a large scale. In other words, what most people do all the time when they make large purchases like an automobile or a home. The difference is that when those at the bottom of the pyramid make a poor decision, it is personally catastrophic.

One pundit recently said when some people end up defaulting on mortgages, they just put the keys in the mailbox and walk away, leaving the bank with the problem. I find that a fascinating perspective. I have to wonder how many people in today's society can actually just "walk away" from a bad debt. Unless they somehow have a new identity waiting, debt tends to follow someone around for a long time in one form or another. People don't just get disapproving looks for bad debt; they get phone harassment, revoking of credit lines, raising of credit card interest rates, and much more.

I seem to have strayed far from my initial subject but perhaps not too far. Our politicians seem bound by political expediency and fear of upsetting the big ticket contributors to their campaign coffers. So don't say the problem is de-regulation and overdependence on complex shuffling of paper money. The problem is the borrowers because the borrowers have all the power in the situation, right?

When the house of cards comes down, we are left wondering why our politicians didn't see it coming years ago. In a way, they did. Their solution was to focus on the "War on Terror". Iraq. Afghanistan. Because we still live with the post-WWII prosperity idea that wars benefit our economy. And wars did help our economy when we produced real goods. In a services economy like we've got today, not so much.

Wars do distract the population, though, keeping them from demanding too much or the right things.

*I use "elites" here to mean practically all national politicians and 98% of the "authorities" seen on any TV news or commentary.

Labels: debt, economy, elites, jobs, politics, war