Corporations Aren't Our Friends

With the pending bankruptcy of Delphi, GM's spin off, we are reminded of how little corporations care about anything but the bottom line.

Corporations, like drug addicts, never think passed the next score.

America has a de-evolving economy, soaring personal and national debt, and a declining purpose in the world other than to make foreign countries economies work.

Years ago when I first heard the phrase "Service Economy" I railed against it as a put down to the spirit of America, but then our corporate leaders went ahead and focused on making profits from the "service industry."

Service Industry?

Industry produces product, basic foods, clothes, cars, buildings, airplanes, space ships.

Service is about serving. Waiting on tables, offering advice, washing clothes. A good example of a service economy is the trade that built up around the Gold Rush towns. Miners mined gold. (Productive work.) General store owners sold them gear. Saloons sold them booze and sex. Washer women washed their clothes. Bath houses opened up to bath and shave the miners. Now that's service.

America's means of production has been shipped off shore for years. There are many things we cant' make anymore because we don't have the abilities. We lose what we don't use.

I constantly see editorial cartoons mocking space industry. Yet this is one of the few areas America can still be competitive in, though not for long.

America, corporate, political, and body politic needs to wake up to the idea we must restore our economy. We won't do it by trade restriction. We'll do it by out performing everyone else, like always.

A New Export: Debt

Well I was excited to see today's paper describing our Treasury Secretary's advice for China's growing economy.

Improve their access to other people's money. Let the populous go in debt to buy more stuff. That's his advice to improve their economy. And to improve ours.

Such an improvement it would be, Oy! The communist government, if it truly cared about its people would outlaw usury for personal debt. If, instead and as expected, the communists want absolute control over their people's lives and thoughts and actions, allow them to go into debt over things they think they need. Then they won't dare rock the boat, revolt against the government or propose alarming reforms. Because they might lose access to the wonderful world of credit.

I wondered immediately whether this debt monster isn't the reason our own population is so passive about the complete lack of moral fiber in our government at the highest level? When its all you can do to make sure the bills are paid and the collectors aren't on the phone at 7:30 in the morning, who cares if the president is a liar or a womanizer or a thief?

Does anyone remember the song "Sixteen Tons"?

"You load Sixteen Tons and what d'ya get?
Another day older and deeper in debt.
Saint Peter don't ya call me, cuz I can't go.
I owe my soul to the company store."

The mining industry used easy credit to make sure the miners showed up to work and didn't strike. With no savings and all debt they needed the revolving credit to feed their families and keep their house. Nothing else could matter.

Except the miners did revolt.

Maybe we should too.

Welcome to My Nightmare

With apologies to Alice Cooper, this thought block is on debt and finance.

Credit card or unsecured debt is one of the greatest burdens on consumers. From the view point of personal responsibility, my feeling is don't take on what you can't payback. That makes good common sense.

However, what do you do when you defer common sense to corporate America? The credit card corporations become the heroin pushers of the financial world. They jolly you into the idea that "you should get the credit you deserve". Then corporate America charges usurious interest rates for propelled of putting you in debt.

Nice.

Since our society and government is all about prohibition and since credit card debt is ruinous to the fabric of our society and economic foundations of our country, why don't we require the government to cap all unsecured debt at 1/2 percent below prime rate. Debt payment would be required in one to two years with no additional debt accumulated.

One of the first reactions I have to this suggestion is that no credit card company or bank could stay in business at those sort of rates. And I don't have a problem with that.

Our economy can only thrive if it is based on productive value added. Usury is non productive. Sales commissions are non productive. Social services, except in times of desperation, are non productive.

So what happens to all those people who have gainfully employed donning debtors and holding back payments at the credit card companies and banks? With all the productive capital suddenly freed up by the relief from usury new jobs should flourish.

We need clever people to create a renewable energy economy that pays for itself. We need honest politicians and journalists. We need science as the mainstream product of our country. We don't need debt.