. . .
L “They say that 70 percent of economic growth is driven by consumer spending. Yet the consumer is spent. So many consumers borrowed money (at substantial interest rates) from tomorrow to consume yesterday. Today, the consumers must borrow from the day after the day after tomorrow to pay for necessaries.”
. . .
M “What will they do when they can’t consume?”
. . .
Bumper sticker of the week:
Work Buy Consume Die
. . .
C “A system that cannot go on forever will not go on forever. The System in its current incarnation cannot go on forever. Thus, the debate shifts fundamentally from ‘if’ to ‘when.’ The syllogism suggests that fundamental change is in store. Do we have the stores?”
D “‘When’ not ‘if’ and also ‘what.’ Plan B is by definition less desirable than Plan A or presumably it would be Plan A. The most desirable plan is failing. What is Plan B?”
C “The other systemic challenge is weather. That problem like the financial machinations is also substantially man-made and man-modified. Mother Nature allocates every region a specially-tailored natural catastrophe. Florida and the Southeast get hurricanes, the Midwest gets tornadoes, the West Coast gets earthquakes, other regions get typhoons and cyclones. And Mother Nature is shifting the script so that some areas get floods and some get drought. The jet streams and the gulf streams are working in tandem to change things on the ground.”
D “Leaves you wondering what is Plan B?”
. . .
C “The script never varies. The public Emergency Preparedness offices provide detailed lists of necessary supplies and valuable advice yet always unfailingly avoid even hinting that a gun, even one for hunting squirrels or pigeons, is a wise and prudent investment. Some of them are reluctant even to mention acquiring a knife other than a pocket knife or perhaps a scalpel.”
D “And the private sector prepper sites go to the other extreme and focus the entire discussion around guns and ammo and ammo and guns and guns and ammo. The alpha, the bravo, the charlie and the delta of preparation for the Great Omega.”
C “Get a gun. We have a moral duty to protect our family and friends. And get an LED flashlight. And extra batteries.”
D “And beans and bullets. My personal Plan B combines public and private sector suggestions.”
. . .
C “Going it alone is a failure from the start, yet desperately few humans have the intellectual and emotional software to engage others cooperatively. Finding others who have resources, skills and tools is not promising.”
D “At heart, the most prudent preparation is to restrain the dragons in our soul to free our mind.”
. . .
[And this past weekend, earthquakes in Nepal.]
[National PrepareAthon! Day on April 30 is a grassroots campaign for action to increase community preparedness and resilience.]
[See the e-commentary at Beans and Bullets (April 6, 2009), We Ain’t Ants; We Are Grasshoppers (April 9, 2012), On Community (June 3, 2013) and On Roiling And Rolling Collapse (March 9, 2015).]
Bumper stickers of the week:
Get a garden rake, get a gun, get a grip
“If you want to awaken all of humanity, then awaken all of yourself; if you want to eliminate the suffering in the world, then eliminate all that is dark and negative in yourself. Truly, the greatest gift you have to give is that of your own self-transformation.” Attributed by some to Lao Tzu, but who knows.
. . .
A “‘Quantitative Easing’ sounds so academic and antiseptic and . . . surely sound.”
B “And nebulous enough to fool a frightened public that does sense that something is wrong.”
A “When you cannot do anything positive and you feel a compulsion to do something, should you do something negative?”
B “It is doing something.”
. . .
A “The Federal Reserve has been ‘printing’ more money and passing it to the wealthy for a half-dozen years. The money is not making a demand on resources right now, so there is no systemic inflation yet other than rises in the prices of basic necessities. The general public does not have enough money to make substantial demands on resources, so some prices are even heading down. The Federal Reserve ‘electrons’ are driving up the stock market and leading some to conclude that all is good in the land. When the money meanders into the economy and begins to make demands on resources that also may be in short supply, prices will go up.”
B “Limited deflation then inflation if not hyperinflation. Coming to a nation near you.”
. . .
A “When someone discovers that printing money is the problem, how will the Federal Reserve react?”
B “‘Print’ more money.”
. . .
[See the “Intergenerational Financial Obligations Reform Act” (INFORM Act) discussed at http://www.theinpformact.org/.]
Bumper stickers of the week:
Quantitative Easing: Coming (Back) To A Nation Near You
Quantitative Easing 4 = Money Printing (4th Edition) ?
Print, baby, print
. . .
H1 “So she said we had to set aside some time for a conversation. I knew it would get bad.”
H2 “You don’t get to say anything.”
H1 “Except when spoken to. So she said she had to confess that she was thinking about someone else while we were in medias res. And she said that she was now happy to have gotten if off her chest. I said that was fine. She could be thinking about Mr. Magoo if it will get us through the night. From my perspective, if I can handle the kitchen remodel, junior can get braces. But it ended up not being fine. I should have been upset. She was upset that I was not upset. I was beginning to get sort of upset that she was upset that I was not upset.”
H2 “Nothing about Gina Lollobrigida.”
H1 “She would have exercised the proviso ‘til death do us part’ and parted with me.”
. . .
H2 “She asked if I noticed that she had put on weight. I had not noticed, so I told her that I had not noticed. I am thinking that I get 100 points for candor and honesty and being a great guy and for being a little oblivious. Maybe an MVP award and a hall pass.”
H1 “And she was upset that you were not upset. And it was Katie bar the door with Katie showing you the door.”
H2 “I didn’t get a pass. I told her that once she made the cut and was on the team, things like that did not really matter.”
H1 “And she parsed every phrase.”
H2 “‘Made the cut’ and ‘on the team’ are two separate concepts. Saying that it is like two wrestlers who make weight and then each go off and have bacon cheeseburgers did not assuage her anxiety.”
. . .
H1 “We conversed with a counselor who opined about psychological affairs versus physical affairs and provided few insights to address our financial affairs.”
H2 “Do you think he was safe?”
H1 “She is sure that we only talk about sex.”
H2 “Safe by a mile. Replay is clear.”
. . .
[See the latest sophistry from the Supreme Court that vitiates the Fourth Amendment. http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/13-604_ec8f.pdf. An illegal stop is an illegal stop and not a legal stop.]
[See the commentary at “Henrietta And Henry O, Two Young Lovers: The Contemporary Gift Of The Magi (December 27, 2010).”]
Bumper stickers of the week:
“Honey, would you rather I were making love to him using your name, or making love to you using his name?” Annie Savoy, Bull Durham (1988)
Russian Exceptionalism > or = or < American Nationalism
The COMEX is instituting trading collars for the sale of gold and silver. And the answer to Will Shortz’ “Sunday Puzzle” seeking the correct anagram for “Comex” is . . . “Fraud.”
. . .
1 “Two books do offer more insight. But that is just me.”
2 “Three if you have a spare three-day weekend.”
. . .
1 “Former Chief Justice William Rehnquist often said that his world view was strongly influenced by a book he read as a young man, The Road to Serfdom, by Friedrich von Hayek. The best-seller was published in 1944 during the last days of World War II.”
2 “I can see why Fred’s missive captivated the young private from Milwaukee. He was conscripted by Big Government to fight other privates conscripted by other Big Governments. Fred warned of the dangers of what he called collectivism and big government and predicted that the path to socialism, the ‘road to serfdom’ of his title, would eventually collapse. The world sure looked like it was collapsing.”
1 “My original edition notes that the printing has been redesigned by the publisher to conform to the government’s request to conserve paper during that War. Government making reasonable requests?”
2 “The government was right, we tattoo far too many fallen trees. My copy warns the reader right on the cover that Fred may not have any idea what he is talking about. The publisher warns the prospective purchaser that Hayek got the Nobel Prize in E-con-omics.”
1 “What if Rehnquist had stumbled on a book that warned of the dangers of raw selfishness and big corporations and predicted that the path to corporatism and kleptocracy, the ‘road to serfdom’ of the new publication, would eventually collapse.”
2 “Fred lived during a period of time when the governments of many world powers, at the direction of their military and financial elites, marketed much evil and inflicted great pain, grief, and violence on the world. His distrust is not unfounded but myopic.”
1 “He intuits that big is often bad, but he only got half the story right. We do not have a market economy. Today, Big Government is Big Business; Big Business is Big Government. Sit down and analyze the major industries in America. Each one of them is monopolized. The business is the industry; the industry is the business. In this Internet era, when someone concocts a new application or gizmo, that person has a monopoly on the application or gizmo.”
2 “We are racing down the road to serfdom. Yet the guvmit, not the private sector, has always enforced speed limits.”
1 “The government is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the monopoly corporations. There are now no limits and no governors.”
. . .
1 “Let’s say that someone is deeply and genuinely concerned about the road to serfdom. Would the concerned citizen support a higher minimum wage or not? The folks who have minimum wage jobs today are serfs. They are at the end of the road to serfdom in a hopeless cul-de-sac. If the rate is raised, some folks will lose some of their serf status and yet a few may lose their job.”
2 “What I have noticed is that the opponents of a minimum wage increase do not give a hoot about the workers and only seek to do everything to cut the costs for the Owners.”
1 “Now that you mention it, Fred surely would support an increase in the minimum wage to avoid the nefarious road to serfdom.”
2 “What happened to Bill along his journey?”
. . .
1 “In The Age of Turbulence, Alan ‘Easy Al’ Greenspan describes the influence that Ayn Rand had on his intellectual development. So many young men are distracted by shiny objects.”
2 “So many things in life just are not a surprise.”
1 “Raw self-interest is not genius, but it sure does appeal to our baser instincts.”
2 “And it advanced her and his financial interests.”
1 “But not ours. I do not hold her exclusively responsible for the economic violence that he unleashed on the world, yet she is at the top of the list.”
. . .
1 “Think about the folks who look to the Good Book and only the Good Book for insight and inspiration. At one time, a person could only carry one gun, one knife, one bed roll and one book. That book was dubbed the Good Book. The struggle to exist limited one’s time to contemplate one’s existence. Space only allowed for one book and time only allowed for reading one book that had to provide all the answers.”
. . .
1 “Those who have access to more resources need to get a life. And scan a second book.”
2 “Asking someone to read two books is a lot to ask. Life is short.”
. . .
1 “When the smarter gender takes over, Nancy Drew will reign supreme.”
. . .
[Banned Book Week – September 21 – 27]
[Search the name “Carmen Segarra” on the Internet. She should receive the Profile in Courage Award for 2014, but it will likely go to someone like Greenspan or Bernanke. See the previous e-ssay at Profile In Cowardice Award (May 12, 2014).]
Bumper stickers of the week:
Scan a book, don’t ban books.
Read a second book; get a second opinion.
What we really need is a moment of science in the public schools.
. . .
1 “And the private sector solution.”
2 “Without a minimum wage, the government is providing massive subsidies for the workers laboring at major corporations that only provide sixty or seventy percent of the minimum livable wage. The employees are required to subsist on food stamps and other government subsidies and programs. If the minimum wage is instituted, more of the cost of production is internalized by the corporation rather subsidized by the tax payer.”
1 “There may be some lost jobs. However, all the large corporations have deployed their most cunning technicians to find ways to eliminate as many human jobs as possible already.”
2 “Reducing monthly government payments requires some foresighted policy at the outset. It is a no-brainer, but it requires an extraordinary brainer to understand.”
. . .
1 “The great debate over national health care fails to acknowledge that the United States has implemented the most inefficient national health insurance program in the history of human kind in Title 11, the Bankruptcy Code, rather than in Title 42, governing Public Health and Welfare.”
2 “The solution is simple. The public shall receive the same health care coverage as the Congress.”
. . .
1 “The Norwegians will not reward that notion with their Nobel in E-con-omics. If they do not reward that notion, the professional e-con-omists will not propound the notion.”
2 “We should go to the International Court of Justice and seek an injunction against the Norwegians and use the Nobel money for some other virtuous public purpose.”
1 “I am on board. How could a concerned member of the public organize a public boycott?”
. . .
Bumper sticker of the week:
The Minimum Wage: The Market Solution And The Private Sector Solution
. . .
A “You can now add Bezos to the legendary ‘CDEs’ of exploitation – Carnegie, Disney and Edison – who made their fortunes exploiting others.”
B “And the kingpins of exploitation – the Waltons. As humans, we seek to enslave and to colonize, not to nurture and to develop.”
A “Take one’s liberty and take one’s property. It’s the human way. We established a Constitution to protect life, liberty and property.”
B “He too seeks to enslave. Amazon has become the CyberWalmart.”
A “Like Walmart, the prices are very low and allow some shoppers to afford to make it through the day. Some of the customers may be the same employees who cannot subsist on Walmart wages. The Amazon prices are usually lower and the guarantee is objectively better than the guarantees offered by locally owned businesses that may be going out of business in part because of Amazon’s competition.”
B “By contrast, Costco pays a living wage and offers health care and retirement to its employees while offering very low prices and an unconditional guarantee to its customers.”
A “Walmart is a Red State company headquartered in a Red State. Costco is a Blue State company headquartered in a Blue State. Amazon is an anomaly – a Red State company headquartered in a Blue State.”
B “Look at the state they leave the employees in when a company pays slave wages. Slaves don’t make profitable consumers.”
A “If there are no consumers, you can’t have seventy percent of economic growth fueled by consumer spending.”
. . .
[The author has no financial interest in Amazon, Costco or Walmart and has shopped at all three institutions.]
[Pete Seeger – May 3, 1919 – January 27, 2014]
[“Almost half of the world’s wealth is now owned by just one percent of the population, and seven out of ten people live in countries where economic inequality has increased in the last 30 years. The World Economic Forum has identified economic inequality as a major risk to human progress, impacting social stability within countries and threatening security on a global scale.” http://www.oxfam.org/en/policy/working-for-the-few-economic-inequality.]
Bumper sticker of the week:
To Enslave And To Colonize. Hey, it’s who we are.
. . .
C1 “America makes nothing but monetizes everything.”
C2 “And makes things up.”
C1 “We make up fake money, but we cannot make up fake energy. We need to energize not monetize. We need to measure the energy inputs and environmental outputs before we do or make or consume anything. Money is not the measure and sends the wrong signals.”
C2 “Even by their own terms, money and markets are far too broken to work either efficiently or equitably today.”
C1 “We aid and abet the rich players taking money electronically from the poor and middle class.”
C2 “Everything is an accounting hijink and a legal mirage concocted by the accountants and the lawyers.”
C1 “And the e-con-omists. Everything is virtual; nothing is real.”
. . .
C1 “Now they are proclaiming that the great American heartland will be saved by the construction of new factories and a renaissance in manufacturing. However, the typical factory does not actually employ more than two employees who turn on and monitor the machine.”
C2 “And billions are spent to keep those two employees from receiving a slightly higher minimum wage.”
C1 “Economic slaves make unprofitable consumers.”
. . .
C1 “The response in Boston is another display of the militarization of society. The town was invaded by American storm troopers who dressed and acted like they were invading Fallujah or Kandahar.”
C2 “We lost the race years ago. The camo armored personnel carrier replaced the black and white Crown Victoria Police Interceptor. The .308 replaced the .38. Kevlar® replaced khaki.”
C1 “The old saw says it all: ‘A YouTube video is worth ten thousand words.’ The vignettes told the most harrowing stories as the militarized police broke into houses and pulled citizens out of their homes. A few folks were shocked, a few were outraged, and a few were disgusted, yet there was an undertone of acceptance and obeisance.”
C2 “We are lost. We are neutered and anesthetized.”
. . .
C1 “We are the Etch-A-Sketch® society. Nothing is real or permanent.”
C2 “We are the Play-Doh® people. No spine and no substance. Malleable as clay. There is no there there.”
[See the “e-ssays” titled Minimum Wage and Maximum Earners (July 31, 2006), Racing Backwards; Moving Forward? (July 27, 2009), Occupy America: The “Bonus March/Chicago Police Riot/Kent State” Of 2011? (October 17, 2011) and Men In Pink: Today’s Sensitive New SWAT Togs (August 20, 2012).]
Bumper stickers of the week:
Too much information, too little insight
Everything is virtual; nothing is real
Energize don’t marginalize
We need fewer folks chasing fewer flora and far fewer fauna
The cup is one sixteenth full
In the end, the physicists always triumph over the e-con-omists
e-commentary 