The average man and woman in America have been told repeatedly to spend, spend, spend. After 9-11 remember the admonition to get back in the skies? How we were told to go on vacation and make purchases to "Not let the terrorists win."? Well, the big boys not only didn't get that message but they have played their cards closer to the chest than ever in these difficult economic times. While the American public is fearing the "double dip" recession, the folks with the cash to get our economy going again sit pat, waiting for the prices to drop further, those of us that work for a paycheck to get even more desperate, or for the govie to extend them sweet deals that will maximize the buying power of their fortunes.
To try to understand the vast amounts of money being kept out of the economy, it helps to divide by the number of people in our country to understand how much money would be in circulation per person if the wealthy would just spend what they are holding on to. 4 Trillion (cash on hand) divided by 360 million (Americans) comes to $11,111.11 per person. Roughly half of this money is held by banks and about half is in the hands of the rest of the fortune 500 companies. My bank, who I reluctantly pay over $1,000 per month, stands to make a quarter million on my house that is actually worth less than $100,000. I have put over $30,000 into repairs so that this home will retain as much of its value as possible into the future. However, if I refuse to put money into it from now on, I will surely squander what little equity might accrue over the life of my loan on the property.
Imagine what just dividing the four trillion amongst all of us might accomplish. In our home, that would represent nearly a year free of mortgage payments. For many, this would be equivalent to half a year of working for an income. It could pay the lion's share of childcare costs so that a young family might get ahead from work outside the home rather than just "getting by".
11K per person is more than enough money to set up grid tied solar electric on every home in America, which would be a fine way for industry to begin to give back to the public for defiling the environment. I think that putting this money into the economy would cover the difference in cost between the cars of the future and the gas guzzlers that most Americans drive today. This money has so many possible benefits that it is unpatriotic to just hold it and the whole economy hostage while the ultra wealthy wait for the stars to align and for their power to increase further. The refreshing thing that I am seeing is that the people on the bottom of the economic scale are learning to reign in their waste generation. They are buying more local, which has been the admonition of environmentalists since the eighties, and slowly, very slowly, our collective average carbon footprint is edging down. In very real ways our cutting back has led to reduced emissions from fossil fuel use and as the cost of energy continues to rise, we will be forced into making even greater efforts to reduce our bottom line.
What must it be like to never suffer from want or to desperately need to reign in our desires, or try to deny our needs? Just look to the ultra wealthy to understand what it is really like. I have recently had several republican reactionaries tell stories of folks buying lobster with food stamps. I have less problem with someone making those choices than the well-heeled financing mergers and acquisitions with corporate welfare. "Creating jobs" in the right jurisdiction can pay better than the labors of workers. This sort of government waste is not only delusional, but just plain wrong. As we know, the person in poverty overspending their food stamps gets a nearly immediate result from their less than perfect spending habits. If they want to eat lobster one day, by the end of the month they will be living on oatmeal. For the filthy rich, their bad decisions are either insurable losses or they can be assured that the government will bail them out, as long as they can claim to be "too big to fail."
Long ago, I worked at a marina, fixing boats. We saw routinely what a pitiful price is paid for wealth. Many folks experiencing new money buy a bigger boat than they need, to show off. The first few times out they make a mistake or two and end up crashing into the dock or some other immovable object and the boat is removed from the water for service. Fees start to accrue and repairs may, or may not be made, but then as we used to say, a newish boat will come on the market for a fraction of the cost. Now, we are seeing the same thing being done with the entire economy, one of the largest on the planet. The Reagan Revolution that swept in did create a new elite. These were nearly all new money folks who sailed the ship of state into uncharted waters. The rewarding of greed and over-consumption wove the fabric of our society into a Mobius band of wealth accrual. The dollars, rather than trickling down circulated back into the same hands time and time again. With the help of tax breaks for the rich, the combined efforts of government to "deregulate" and "privatize", the few protections that the lower classes had come to reasonably expect have been eviscerated. There is just one shattered hull lying on the shore today, it is our still steaming economy that has provided over four trillion dollars worth of cash to the suit wearing elites that decide what we will do for a living.
As with all revolutions, ours will be fought over who will decide our fates for us. If you want to tip the scales toward those who already hold the power, just stay with the fanatics who claim that industry and the economy are inherently benevolent. for those of us that want our lives back and the freedom to decide for ourselves what waters we feel comfortable sailing into, get off the couch or away from your keyboard and let others know where you stand on the issues of the day. It is not the time to be waiting in the wings, our entrance is necessary to push the story to the inevitable resolution. Forcing the hand of the ultra wealthy will not be easily accomplished. Getting many of these folks to act responsibly may turn out to be the hardest thing we have ever done as a nation. Failing to do it, however, will assure the global economic collapse that the ultra-wealthy are counting on to secure and concentrate their wealth further. Each and every gallon of fuel we purchase puts half the money we spend for it in some rich bastard's hands. The real cost of burning that fuel is approximately double when you factor in government subsidy and perhaps triple when you factor in the environmental damage associated with mining, refining, fabrication, assembly and distribution of the vehicles and their fuels.
Creating sustainability is well-worth whatever effort we expend to get it. once established, sustainable lifestyles pay back infinite rewards. Imagine, a world of abundance and distributed wealth, not the one we have in which the top 400 folks (calling them wage earners is an obscene lie) in our country make as much each year as 160 million of the rest of us. Imagine a world in which the air and water are not tainted with industrial waste. A world in which cancer rates are dropping rather than rising. A world where education and the wisdom of the aged are revered rather than made to be to scapegoat for those who want to extract more cash for themselves. As I have said before, and thank-you John Lennon, "You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one." I am trying to resist the urge to decorate my car with bumper stickers, but the sentiments of one in particular has been resonating for months, perhaps even years. "The cost of apathy is to be ruled by evil men."-Plato
Of course, if you don't get a bit depressed from time to time, or angry, you are not paying attention. What is necessary now is the wholesale opposition to more of the same when it comes to attempts to solve problems. austerity on the part of government in the face of hard times never works. Cutting back can work within the microcosm of the home, but on a national scale, it only degrades the opportunities for individuals to thrive. rather than cuts, our nation should be spending. To balance the books, we need to tap the unbridled wealth that has accrued to the few during the crisis of ethics that began with Reagan. We cannot let the biggest players walk away from the table with all the marbles. when I was a child, I got in trouble with a bully once for winning all the marbles, then dividing them up and giving them away so that we could play some more. He blamed me for ruining the game. I guess rich people will always feel the same way about money as this boy did about the marbles. I'm just glad that I taught the four other boys playing in the alley that day that there is more to life than greed and if we are all willing to work together, there will always be more to share than if we let our greed obscure the truth of our community.
I speak for those who have not yet found their voice, the trees, who speak a different language and the myriad of organisms that depend on our decisions for their blossoming or demise. I hope that the words that I arrange on these topics are more easily understood than the disingenuous ones put before us by the major media outlets. Expecting the rich to tell the truth about themselves is like asking an organism to survive by eating itself. Money itself and the wealthy who pursue it are not gods. It is time for us to see through their self inflated egos and get down to the business of redistributing wealth so that we might all have enough.
To try to understand the vast amounts of money being kept out of the economy, it helps to divide by the number of people in our country to understand how much money would be in circulation per person if the wealthy would just spend what they are holding on to. 4 Trillion (cash on hand) divided by 360 million (Americans) comes to $11,111.11 per person. Roughly half of this money is held by banks and about half is in the hands of the rest of the fortune 500 companies. My bank, who I reluctantly pay over $1,000 per month, stands to make a quarter million on my house that is actually worth less than $100,000. I have put over $30,000 into repairs so that this home will retain as much of its value as possible into the future. However, if I refuse to put money into it from now on, I will surely squander what little equity might accrue over the life of my loan on the property.
Imagine what just dividing the four trillion amongst all of us might accomplish. In our home, that would represent nearly a year free of mortgage payments. For many, this would be equivalent to half a year of working for an income. It could pay the lion's share of childcare costs so that a young family might get ahead from work outside the home rather than just "getting by".
11K per person is more than enough money to set up grid tied solar electric on every home in America, which would be a fine way for industry to begin to give back to the public for defiling the environment. I think that putting this money into the economy would cover the difference in cost between the cars of the future and the gas guzzlers that most Americans drive today. This money has so many possible benefits that it is unpatriotic to just hold it and the whole economy hostage while the ultra wealthy wait for the stars to align and for their power to increase further. The refreshing thing that I am seeing is that the people on the bottom of the economic scale are learning to reign in their waste generation. They are buying more local, which has been the admonition of environmentalists since the eighties, and slowly, very slowly, our collective average carbon footprint is edging down. In very real ways our cutting back has led to reduced emissions from fossil fuel use and as the cost of energy continues to rise, we will be forced into making even greater efforts to reduce our bottom line.
What must it be like to never suffer from want or to desperately need to reign in our desires, or try to deny our needs? Just look to the ultra wealthy to understand what it is really like. I have recently had several republican reactionaries tell stories of folks buying lobster with food stamps. I have less problem with someone making those choices than the well-heeled financing mergers and acquisitions with corporate welfare. "Creating jobs" in the right jurisdiction can pay better than the labors of workers. This sort of government waste is not only delusional, but just plain wrong. As we know, the person in poverty overspending their food stamps gets a nearly immediate result from their less than perfect spending habits. If they want to eat lobster one day, by the end of the month they will be living on oatmeal. For the filthy rich, their bad decisions are either insurable losses or they can be assured that the government will bail them out, as long as they can claim to be "too big to fail."
Long ago, I worked at a marina, fixing boats. We saw routinely what a pitiful price is paid for wealth. Many folks experiencing new money buy a bigger boat than they need, to show off. The first few times out they make a mistake or two and end up crashing into the dock or some other immovable object and the boat is removed from the water for service. Fees start to accrue and repairs may, or may not be made, but then as we used to say, a newish boat will come on the market for a fraction of the cost. Now, we are seeing the same thing being done with the entire economy, one of the largest on the planet. The Reagan Revolution that swept in did create a new elite. These were nearly all new money folks who sailed the ship of state into uncharted waters. The rewarding of greed and over-consumption wove the fabric of our society into a Mobius band of wealth accrual. The dollars, rather than trickling down circulated back into the same hands time and time again. With the help of tax breaks for the rich, the combined efforts of government to "deregulate" and "privatize", the few protections that the lower classes had come to reasonably expect have been eviscerated. There is just one shattered hull lying on the shore today, it is our still steaming economy that has provided over four trillion dollars worth of cash to the suit wearing elites that decide what we will do for a living.
As with all revolutions, ours will be fought over who will decide our fates for us. If you want to tip the scales toward those who already hold the power, just stay with the fanatics who claim that industry and the economy are inherently benevolent. for those of us that want our lives back and the freedom to decide for ourselves what waters we feel comfortable sailing into, get off the couch or away from your keyboard and let others know where you stand on the issues of the day. It is not the time to be waiting in the wings, our entrance is necessary to push the story to the inevitable resolution. Forcing the hand of the ultra wealthy will not be easily accomplished. Getting many of these folks to act responsibly may turn out to be the hardest thing we have ever done as a nation. Failing to do it, however, will assure the global economic collapse that the ultra-wealthy are counting on to secure and concentrate their wealth further. Each and every gallon of fuel we purchase puts half the money we spend for it in some rich bastard's hands. The real cost of burning that fuel is approximately double when you factor in government subsidy and perhaps triple when you factor in the environmental damage associated with mining, refining, fabrication, assembly and distribution of the vehicles and their fuels.
Creating sustainability is well-worth whatever effort we expend to get it. once established, sustainable lifestyles pay back infinite rewards. Imagine, a world of abundance and distributed wealth, not the one we have in which the top 400 folks (calling them wage earners is an obscene lie) in our country make as much each year as 160 million of the rest of us. Imagine a world in which the air and water are not tainted with industrial waste. A world in which cancer rates are dropping rather than rising. A world where education and the wisdom of the aged are revered rather than made to be to scapegoat for those who want to extract more cash for themselves. As I have said before, and thank-you John Lennon, "You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one." I am trying to resist the urge to decorate my car with bumper stickers, but the sentiments of one in particular has been resonating for months, perhaps even years. "The cost of apathy is to be ruled by evil men."-Plato
Of course, if you don't get a bit depressed from time to time, or angry, you are not paying attention. What is necessary now is the wholesale opposition to more of the same when it comes to attempts to solve problems. austerity on the part of government in the face of hard times never works. Cutting back can work within the microcosm of the home, but on a national scale, it only degrades the opportunities for individuals to thrive. rather than cuts, our nation should be spending. To balance the books, we need to tap the unbridled wealth that has accrued to the few during the crisis of ethics that began with Reagan. We cannot let the biggest players walk away from the table with all the marbles. when I was a child, I got in trouble with a bully once for winning all the marbles, then dividing them up and giving them away so that we could play some more. He blamed me for ruining the game. I guess rich people will always feel the same way about money as this boy did about the marbles. I'm just glad that I taught the four other boys playing in the alley that day that there is more to life than greed and if we are all willing to work together, there will always be more to share than if we let our greed obscure the truth of our community.
I speak for those who have not yet found their voice, the trees, who speak a different language and the myriad of organisms that depend on our decisions for their blossoming or demise. I hope that the words that I arrange on these topics are more easily understood than the disingenuous ones put before us by the major media outlets. Expecting the rich to tell the truth about themselves is like asking an organism to survive by eating itself. Money itself and the wealthy who pursue it are not gods. It is time for us to see through their self inflated egos and get down to the business of redistributing wealth so that we might all have enough.
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