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.

A New Day for America

Well folks, Obama is going to be president and the world thinks it's marvelous we elected a black man.

I think it's marvelous we elected an intelligent and literate man who reasons with his head instead of his duodenum. Imagine actually researching Lincoln for a philosophy on building a presidential cabinet.

I'm very glad for my brothers of color who can see someone they identify with in as president. The fact that he is a man of reason and learning is more important, and relevant, to me than his skin color.

With 'W' as our poster child, I'd rather not talk race. Let's talk about how learned people are the best hope for finding our way out of this mess. Reason, intellect and the willingness to look at more than the personal interests in the problem are the ways to solving our current Crises.

From the Middle of th Road

I am quite fed up with pundits and spin and the rhetoric of 'political realities'. Politics is supposed to be the science of self interest, so let's review where our self interest lies.

The current administration has provided tax breaks and lucrative contracts to well connected corporations. It has presided over a war that has increased the profits of oil companies by billion's of dollars. It weathered the worst natural disaster in US history since the San Francisco earthquake by ignoring the plight of the economically dispossessed. It has overseen record foreclosures and home losses.

Now we need to ask ourselves a few questions:

Have we benefited in any way from the Republican party's aggressive pursuit of profit?

Is the pursuit of profit at the expense of the well being of the majority of the people in the United States in our best interest?

Is the the pursuit of political ambition worth the dismantling of the greatest all volunteer Army in the world?

Sometimes I wish we could go back to the turn of the century where we were faced with a choice between the 'righteousness' of the Republican candidate as opposed to the licentious legacy of the previous administration. Given the results, if I had to make the choice over again, I'd choose fellatio over sodomy.

Reach Out and Touch someone

It's hard to know if we're a country of psychopaths or pussies. Today's horror in Virginia where a single man guns down thirty people is insane. No rational mind can see value in the taking of so many innocent lives. (As opposed to taking guilty lives? Our society is bi polar on this issue too, since we don't want to kill the guilty...)

How can one man hold thirty people at bay while he systematically shoots them? According to one eyewitness he wasn't even a good shot. (The living witness said the man shot at him five times from a distance of 30 to 35 feet and missed. Much to relief of the witness).

The only thing that holds people in that condition is fear.

Fear of what? we ask.

Of getting shot.

So they get killed. Anyway.

All right when something unexpected and awful happens people normally do the wrong thing. Without training or forethought they freeze. The brain shuts down and if they can't run away they quiver in terror as the madman rampages and kills them all systematically.

So I guess we need to think these things through. The psychos will rule the world if we let them. Being passive and waiting for rescue is usually not an option. We need to plan on how to fight back. How to keep the wacko's from treating us as playthings.

I like to think I might have charged into his fire with a desk for a shield, crushed the killer against the wall and wrestled the gun from his hand. Especially if he was reloading.

On the other hand, and in reality, I would likely have been cowering under a desk in a puddle of my own piss when he put a bullet in my head.

But I'd rather go out fighting than laying in my own fear. Hopefully this doesn't happen to me or you, but if it does? What would you do?