Das Kapital

I had an interesting discussion with my son (the college student) and one of my daughters this evening about the value of money and the control of our economy.

For a while now I've been wondering just what has gone wrong and it is clear (as mud) that the criminals that manipulated the economy into last years collapse were just another set of jokers in the deck, deluded by the illusion of capitalist superiority.

Capitalism states that wealth comes from the investment of money. Money begets more money. Ask any banker if this simple minded truism is valid and he'll hem and haw. Ask him for a loan and he wants his pound of flesh along with every penny he lends you.

Money is supposed to represent our productivity. One unit of measure is our Gross Domestic Product. Madman Junior (my son) claimed that the US would have a negative GDP unless China (who we have an egregious trade balance with) invests in our economy. If China should think this is a bad investment and pull out of trade with us our economy would fail.

My argument to him was our economy is comprised of buying and selling the crap China exports. We aren't producing anything. There fore if China wants to continue to produce they might want to continue to give us the money to buy their production.

Or we could just say no.

This isn't a rant about protectionism. We don't need protectionist trade policies to control our economy. We need to look carefully at who is controlling our economy and where the money goes. Just like in CSI. Follow the money.

The investment community has manipulated the average relative wage and the inflation index for many years. (The inflation index shows signs of manipulation since the early 1980's). OK this is an opinion but I think I can prove it. More to follow on that front. I feel that my relative income growth has not kept up with either my value to the workforce or the GDP.

The number crunchers have taken away the sense of what money is> that is the value of work.

In 1979 my take home was 1200 a month.

today my take home is 4900 a month (roughly).

According to the economics site www.measuringworth.com the measure of my productivity (my wages) has shown a 38% growth in the last 30 years measured against the CPI (or the value of what I spend my money on).

In 1979, $4,903.00 from 2008 is worth:

	$1,652.60	using the Consumer Price Index
	$1,977.82	using the GDP deflator
	$1,476.96	using the value of consumer bundle
	$1,731.24	using the unskilled wage
	$1,176.82	using the nominal GDP per capita
	$869.89	using the relative share of GDP

Against the nomimal productivity of everyone else I've lost ground (Nominal GDP).

But most telling is the relative share of the GDP. There I've lost 30% of my worth. This means someone else has taken my money. And yours. This is a conspiracy theory, but not a wild one. Maybe they're just arrogant.

We shouldn't be stupid.

King Obama Tututkamen

I love bigots and conservative blowhards. They are a cartoon characters when compared to an intelligent man.

President Obama's speech to the Eqyptians strikes at the heart of the middle east trouble. Consider the real history. The original Israelies were conquered by the original Italians (Romans) and driven from their homeland when they rebelled (read this as violent terrorist acts). 1900 years later the descendents of Rome in the guise of the Third Reich tries to eradicate them as a race.

In the meantime the remaining European powers have recaptured the middle east and have been parceling out it's wealth and history, while treating the people, who carried the torch of science and civilization through the barbaric times following the fall of Rome, as though they were somehow inferior, therefore causing deep seated resentment and mistrust.

So our European bretheren, after we ended their great war for them, chose not to accept any of the survivors of the Nazi's 'Final Solution' and sent them back to their original homeland, Palestine, which was now the homeland of a whole other group of people (oddly called Palestinians) who did'nt want a bunch of European immigrants taking over their cities and farms.

I can't imagine why these people should feel bad about being put aside. Didn't they realize that the Jewish people had a God given right to the land? (It's true. Read Exodus. Though I'm afraid the intervening years has destroyed the land of milk and honey).

So here we are today, a group of European immigrants who pushed aside the resident population of 'our' country, to make a great nation, in turn supporting another group of basically European immigrants of Middle Eastern extraction who pushed the resident population aside when they fought against the invasion of their land.

I guess I can appreciate our position. But it's not a noble one. We simply support those who looke at the world the same way we do.

And dear naive President Obama has pissed off the conservative hack machine by telling the world the truth. Our public self image requires us to support the oppressed and make the world a better place for children. Realizing neither side has any place else to go, the president has said let's all get along. Let the evils of the past stay there.

The idea that it's somehow unAmerican to look at both sides of an issue should make the comic book character pulpit pounders that speak for the conervatives look like cutouts of Hitler pounding on his pulpit and espousing the superiority of everything German. Or Brezshnev pounding his shoe on the podium trying to rouse the masses with emotion.

Reasonable thought and discussion should be the watchwords for political discussion. No more of this Madison Avenue hype playing to emotions with cliched images (did anyone see the new GM ad??? Right out of the Advertisers Sure Sell Handbook. Page 63. Look it up.)

God bless free speech, but keep your hand on your freedoms or the Conservative shills will scare you back into the autocratic Bush Cheney dictatorship.