I was thinking today about the way that anarcho-capitalists, Adam Smith fans, Cato Institute libertarians, and other assorted “free market” types might be guilty of idolatry, at least according to a careful reading of the Bible.
These people have an absolutely unshakeable faith in the so-called “free” markets, which they imagine as a force that will ultimately create jobs, reward hard work and punish sloth, protect true believers against the loss of any wealth that they have earned by their own inventiveness and cleverness, and guard against creeping socialism. And all we have to do is worship it, say only nice things about it, venerate it at every gathering of men, and smite down any big-gummint meddlers who want to restrict or hinder its wonderfulness.
They remind me of the rats who used to fawn around the Trash Heap in “Fraggle Rock.”
Wikipedia has a lot to say about “idolatry,” but this section seems to sum it up best:
“In addition, theologians have extended the concept to include giving undue importance to aspects of religion other than God, or to non-religious aspects of life in general, with no involvement of images specifically. For example, the Catechism of the Catholic Church states: "Idolatry not only refers to false pagan worship...Man commits idolatry whenever he honours and reveres a creature in place of God, whether this be gods or demons (for example satanism), power, pleasure, race, ancestors, the state, money etc."
Or the Invisible Hand of the free market. Am I right or am I wrong, Dude?
Now I realize that many of the same Bible belt types (who like to ridicule Democrats, progressives, and liberals as Muslim terrorist Communist Nazis) would say that Catholics are idolaters anyway, because we have statues in our churches. Or just because they don’t like Catholics. But the Catholic definition seems pretty close to the one that Jews use. So it’s good enough for me, since the Bible Belters like to take their versions of Old Testament interpretations on subjects like homosexuality (but not adultery, apparently, so relax, Newt).
Anyway, I think it’s kind of funny that it’s OK to worship the great and powerful Hand, and never OK to doubt it, but this doesn’t strike any of these guys as idolatry.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Monday, April 11, 2011
School Lunches and Hulk Hogan
I was reading about the book recently published by David Sirota, Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live in Now. I heard him being interviewed on the radio and a lot of what he said rang true. My sad realization was that while a lot of this cultural programming was going on, I was busy (as I put it) working nights and washing diapers.
Recent events have started to solidify a perception in my mind, much in the manner of David Brooks’s pieces in the New York Times and his books (which take brilliant insights on his part – at least he thinks they’re brilliant insights - and attempt to turn them into universal truths, when it’s really just kind of his opinion). So I express this so-called brilliant insight with the caveat that it’s just my perception. So take it with a grain of salt.
What got me started was reading a story in today’s Chicago Tribune about a principal at a Chicago public school who made a rule that children may not bring their own lunches (unless they pass nutritional muster, but it wasn’t clear exactly how willing the principal would be to allow that). Instead, the children would eat the lunches provided by the school, which are provided by a company called Chartwells-Thompson. It mentioned that the school has more lunches provided by the Federal government because it does not allow the children to bring lunches. The section that caught my eye was:
“Any school that bans homemade lunches also puts more money in the pockets of the district's food provider, Chartwells-Thompson. The federal government pays the district for each free or reduced-price lunch taken, and the caterer receives a set fee from the district per lunch.”
Hmm.
The comments section following the story was filled with the usual right-wing rants about “big government” and the “nanny state” telling people what to eat. Instead of reacting, I Googled Chartwells-Thompson and found that they are part of the biggest foodservice conglomerate in the country (Compass Group). They popped up in another story in which healthy produce grown in the gardens tended by Chicago Public School students could not be served in the lunchrooms because of the contract with Chartwells- Thompson. So is this about stopping kids from bringing unhealthy lunches, or is it a food service monopoly issue?
Turns out that the purveyors of school lunches, such as Chartwells-Thompson, are heavy users of government-subsidized foods (what we used to call “government surplus.”) This means that farmers are paid by the government to grow and produce these foods, which are promptly bought by the USDA in order to keep from driving the market prices of these commodities downward. This was originally set up as a way to help the small family farmer stay in business when commodity markets became so institutionalized. But nowadays, these farm subsidies go overwhelmingly to support large agribusiness. So the school lunch businesses buy this cheap food and serve it to kids while pocketing the profits, while the people who produce the food are being paid by the government to produce it. By my reckoning, the taxpayers are paying for these “free” school lunches three times: First, in farm subsidies, second, in “surplus” food discounts to the purveyors, and third, in tax money to pay for preparing and serving the actual lunches. And where does most of this money wind up? In the pockets of business. And what do the kids get? Menus based on whatever food is available and cheap, rather than on nutritional guidelines. Lots of ground beef and cheese. Lots of cholesterol. And (allegedly) a few dozen cases of food poisoning thrown in for good measure.
So how does a reader of the original story get “big government” out of this, and feel entitled to vent rage against the Democrats? Well, I’ll tell you how. By being trained by the WWF. No, not the World Wildlife Fund. The World Wrestling Federation. Now known as the “WWE.” Let’s go back to those 1980’s that spawned Gordon Gekko and Top Gun. Remember Hulk Hogan and Stone Cold Steve Austin? (Actually, I guess they spilled over into the 1990’s as well). But one hallmark of being a watcher of WWF television was that you learned to get really emotionally worked up about rivalries and narratives that were completely phony. Everyone knew that the whole thing was phony, from the issue of who were good guys and who were bad guys to the issue of where Hulk Hogan got those pecs. Everything was phony. Crowds learned to yell and scream while wrestlers hit each other with chairs and threw each other onto folding tables. We all knew it was fake, even the kids. But the kids learned to get all worked up and yell and scream as well. Sometimes we had to tell the kids not to try it at home (“…all you little Hulkamaniacs.”) But mostly the kids were able to hold these two opposing beliefs in mind at the same time: (1) Someone set this up for their own reasons and controls the whole story. (2) In spite of point 1, you have permission to get really worked up about it and scream and yell at anyone who disagrees with you.
Fast forward to 2011. A group of Dodger fans beat a Giants fan into a coma outside the ballpark. Or was it a group of Giants fans who beat a Dodger fan into a coma? It doesn’t matter. What matters is that we have been trained and conditioned to react to manufactured loyalties and manufactured threats as if they were real loyalties and threats. Our fight or flight instincts, developed when human beings lived in tribes and had to defend their tribe against the one down the road, are ready to kick in and drive us to passionately defend our own position (or the one that we’ve identified with) and to attack anyone who doesn’t take our own position.
David Brooks actually addressed this in his recent book about emotion. He came up with the conclusion that emotional reactions are necessary to keep us from getting perpetually stuck at top dead center and therefore to get anything accomplished. At least that’s what I gather from hearing him talk about his book. I haven’t read it, and I don’t think I want to. Because it sounds like he’s weaving in a strand of the same narrative that allows the Tea Partiers to control our national dialogue. People like what they hear, label themselves as being on board with it, and denounce anyone who doesn’t swallow the same narrative hook, line, and sinker. Emotion rules over reason and pragmatic solutions are swept aside. The best that someone like Obama can do is act as if he’s not engaging in the same game, which renders him completely helpless in the face of the onslaught of demands that we rig the system to favor those who control the narrative.
Recent events have started to solidify a perception in my mind, much in the manner of David Brooks’s pieces in the New York Times and his books (which take brilliant insights on his part – at least he thinks they’re brilliant insights - and attempt to turn them into universal truths, when it’s really just kind of his opinion). So I express this so-called brilliant insight with the caveat that it’s just my perception. So take it with a grain of salt.
What got me started was reading a story in today’s Chicago Tribune about a principal at a Chicago public school who made a rule that children may not bring their own lunches (unless they pass nutritional muster, but it wasn’t clear exactly how willing the principal would be to allow that). Instead, the children would eat the lunches provided by the school, which are provided by a company called Chartwells-Thompson. It mentioned that the school has more lunches provided by the Federal government because it does not allow the children to bring lunches. The section that caught my eye was:
“Any school that bans homemade lunches also puts more money in the pockets of the district's food provider, Chartwells-Thompson. The federal government pays the district for each free or reduced-price lunch taken, and the caterer receives a set fee from the district per lunch.”
Hmm.
The comments section following the story was filled with the usual right-wing rants about “big government” and the “nanny state” telling people what to eat. Instead of reacting, I Googled Chartwells-Thompson and found that they are part of the biggest foodservice conglomerate in the country (Compass Group). They popped up in another story in which healthy produce grown in the gardens tended by Chicago Public School students could not be served in the lunchrooms because of the contract with Chartwells- Thompson. So is this about stopping kids from bringing unhealthy lunches, or is it a food service monopoly issue?
Turns out that the purveyors of school lunches, such as Chartwells-Thompson, are heavy users of government-subsidized foods (what we used to call “government surplus.”) This means that farmers are paid by the government to grow and produce these foods, which are promptly bought by the USDA in order to keep from driving the market prices of these commodities downward. This was originally set up as a way to help the small family farmer stay in business when commodity markets became so institutionalized. But nowadays, these farm subsidies go overwhelmingly to support large agribusiness. So the school lunch businesses buy this cheap food and serve it to kids while pocketing the profits, while the people who produce the food are being paid by the government to produce it. By my reckoning, the taxpayers are paying for these “free” school lunches three times: First, in farm subsidies, second, in “surplus” food discounts to the purveyors, and third, in tax money to pay for preparing and serving the actual lunches. And where does most of this money wind up? In the pockets of business. And what do the kids get? Menus based on whatever food is available and cheap, rather than on nutritional guidelines. Lots of ground beef and cheese. Lots of cholesterol. And (allegedly) a few dozen cases of food poisoning thrown in for good measure.
So how does a reader of the original story get “big government” out of this, and feel entitled to vent rage against the Democrats? Well, I’ll tell you how. By being trained by the WWF. No, not the World Wildlife Fund. The World Wrestling Federation. Now known as the “WWE.” Let’s go back to those 1980’s that spawned Gordon Gekko and Top Gun. Remember Hulk Hogan and Stone Cold Steve Austin? (Actually, I guess they spilled over into the 1990’s as well). But one hallmark of being a watcher of WWF television was that you learned to get really emotionally worked up about rivalries and narratives that were completely phony. Everyone knew that the whole thing was phony, from the issue of who were good guys and who were bad guys to the issue of where Hulk Hogan got those pecs. Everything was phony. Crowds learned to yell and scream while wrestlers hit each other with chairs and threw each other onto folding tables. We all knew it was fake, even the kids. But the kids learned to get all worked up and yell and scream as well. Sometimes we had to tell the kids not to try it at home (“…all you little Hulkamaniacs.”) But mostly the kids were able to hold these two opposing beliefs in mind at the same time: (1) Someone set this up for their own reasons and controls the whole story. (2) In spite of point 1, you have permission to get really worked up about it and scream and yell at anyone who disagrees with you.
Fast forward to 2011. A group of Dodger fans beat a Giants fan into a coma outside the ballpark. Or was it a group of Giants fans who beat a Dodger fan into a coma? It doesn’t matter. What matters is that we have been trained and conditioned to react to manufactured loyalties and manufactured threats as if they were real loyalties and threats. Our fight or flight instincts, developed when human beings lived in tribes and had to defend their tribe against the one down the road, are ready to kick in and drive us to passionately defend our own position (or the one that we’ve identified with) and to attack anyone who doesn’t take our own position.
David Brooks actually addressed this in his recent book about emotion. He came up with the conclusion that emotional reactions are necessary to keep us from getting perpetually stuck at top dead center and therefore to get anything accomplished. At least that’s what I gather from hearing him talk about his book. I haven’t read it, and I don’t think I want to. Because it sounds like he’s weaving in a strand of the same narrative that allows the Tea Partiers to control our national dialogue. People like what they hear, label themselves as being on board with it, and denounce anyone who doesn’t swallow the same narrative hook, line, and sinker. Emotion rules over reason and pragmatic solutions are swept aside. The best that someone like Obama can do is act as if he’s not engaging in the same game, which renders him completely helpless in the face of the onslaught of demands that we rig the system to favor those who control the narrative.
Monday, March 28, 2011
Performance-based
The Chicago Tribune had an editorial yesterday or today (I don't know anymore, since I stopped subscribing) praising the new law in Florida that ties teachers' job security and pay to test scores. Of course the Trib, true to their traditional Colonel McCormick stance on such matters, thinks Illinois should do the same thing. They don't quite come out and say that teachers' unions are making our kids suffer so they can get rich, but they mention the unions in the last sentence as being among those who would oppose such "reasonable" measures to improve our educational system. The Tribune is good at sounding "reasonable." Collective bargaining is so 1950's. It's outlived its usefulness.
A blog called "Crooks and Liars" featured this story and pointed out that a job where your performance is judged on factors outside of your control is a recipe for burnout and failure. (That's why I always identified myself as an "angry operations guy" whose life was being made impossible by those people in marketing!) In this case, some tiny little things like poverty, hunger, and lack of community stability might be considered to be outside the teachers' control. Not to mention things like school boards making them teach creationism and other crap.
But one of the commenters who calls himself "cafeenman" made an even better point, saying that he works in mental health, and wonders if the next step will be to base his salary and job security on whether the mentally ill people he works with get better. He then adds, why not pay police based on the incidence of crime? But his last rhetorical question was the best: "And politicians don't get paid until the country has a booming economy and there is no war."
Why not? Let's propose to all the newly minted angry young Tea Partiers that their job security and pay should depend on whether most people in their district are actually better off in terms of quality of life, freedom from fear, and other real measures. Not, mind you, whether they're "better off than four years ago," because that really means whether Joe can buy a new flat screen TV, which the early 2000's showed us is fairly easy to manipulate by making EZ credit and Chinese goods available. We need to measure quality of life in the community by factors that make sense: freedom from anxiety, hopelessness, incivility, violence, fear, hatred, and ignorance. While we're at it, let's reward those elected representatives that have demonstrated a track record that shows they respect human rights (which, as of 1948 and the UN statement on Human Rights, included the right to organize for better working conditions).
Let's show them some of that "performance based pay and promotion" instead of letting our elections be dominated by who can smear their opponents the loudest, the most often, and the most brainlessly.
Well, guess what? We can already do that. All we have to do is, as John Prine said, "Blow up your TV, throw away your paper," and stop listening to campaign ads and editorials. Instead, look online or in your library and see what you can learn about what the issues really mean and what the candidates actually stand for. League of Women Voters is a good start. WorkingAmerica is good. Don't forget FactCheck.org.
I used to trust the Tribune to be fairly impartial, but as they get broker, they seem to get stupider. Maybe they, like the politicians, have concluded that the way to succeed in 21st century America is to cater to the lowest common denominator.
We need people to point out when politicians are gaming the system so democracy is actually impossible Lke the trick of counting a lack of a vote as a "no" vote, as Delta Airlines wants to do, or the shenanigans of the Wisconsin Tea Party crew last month. Which they are now following up on by trying to stack the state Supreme Court. I love how conservatives can hijack a narrative. Aren't they the ones who railed against "Activist judges"? Well, I guess they think that no one will notice.
We need to retrain our politcal candidates to actually think for themselves and not be afraid to depart from the party lines. We need to reward problem-solving and pragmatism, and punish ideological rigidity. We need to shame blaming, and blow the whistle at ad hominem attacks. We need to dust off our logic books, and take a refresher course in critical thinking. I believe we can do this. I don't think society is sliding down a greased chute to oblivion. There are plenty of caring, thinking people out there. We can do something.
A blog called "Crooks and Liars" featured this story and pointed out that a job where your performance is judged on factors outside of your control is a recipe for burnout and failure. (That's why I always identified myself as an "angry operations guy" whose life was being made impossible by those people in marketing!) In this case, some tiny little things like poverty, hunger, and lack of community stability might be considered to be outside the teachers' control. Not to mention things like school boards making them teach creationism and other crap.
But one of the commenters who calls himself "cafeenman" made an even better point, saying that he works in mental health, and wonders if the next step will be to base his salary and job security on whether the mentally ill people he works with get better. He then adds, why not pay police based on the incidence of crime? But his last rhetorical question was the best: "And politicians don't get paid until the country has a booming economy and there is no war."
Why not? Let's propose to all the newly minted angry young Tea Partiers that their job security and pay should depend on whether most people in their district are actually better off in terms of quality of life, freedom from fear, and other real measures. Not, mind you, whether they're "better off than four years ago," because that really means whether Joe can buy a new flat screen TV, which the early 2000's showed us is fairly easy to manipulate by making EZ credit and Chinese goods available. We need to measure quality of life in the community by factors that make sense: freedom from anxiety, hopelessness, incivility, violence, fear, hatred, and ignorance. While we're at it, let's reward those elected representatives that have demonstrated a track record that shows they respect human rights (which, as of 1948 and the UN statement on Human Rights, included the right to organize for better working conditions).
Let's show them some of that "performance based pay and promotion" instead of letting our elections be dominated by who can smear their opponents the loudest, the most often, and the most brainlessly.
Well, guess what? We can already do that. All we have to do is, as John Prine said, "Blow up your TV, throw away your paper," and stop listening to campaign ads and editorials. Instead, look online or in your library and see what you can learn about what the issues really mean and what the candidates actually stand for. League of Women Voters is a good start. WorkingAmerica is good. Don't forget FactCheck.org.
I used to trust the Tribune to be fairly impartial, but as they get broker, they seem to get stupider. Maybe they, like the politicians, have concluded that the way to succeed in 21st century America is to cater to the lowest common denominator.
We need people to point out when politicians are gaming the system so democracy is actually impossible Lke the trick of counting a lack of a vote as a "no" vote, as Delta Airlines wants to do, or the shenanigans of the Wisconsin Tea Party crew last month. Which they are now following up on by trying to stack the state Supreme Court. I love how conservatives can hijack a narrative. Aren't they the ones who railed against "Activist judges"? Well, I guess they think that no one will notice.
We need to retrain our politcal candidates to actually think for themselves and not be afraid to depart from the party lines. We need to reward problem-solving and pragmatism, and punish ideological rigidity. We need to shame blaming, and blow the whistle at ad hominem attacks. We need to dust off our logic books, and take a refresher course in critical thinking. I believe we can do this. I don't think society is sliding down a greased chute to oblivion. There are plenty of caring, thinking people out there. We can do something.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Something's not right...
The earthquake and tsunami that devastated large areas of Japan and killed thousands are terrible events. They're still unfolding, and the situation in Japan's financial markets is understandably chaotic, I'm sure.
But what is going on in the United States? The markets have now lost everything that they gained in the year so far - in less than a week. The experts blame the usual suspects in addition to Japan's markets: the crisis in Libya which threatens the oil supply, the stubborn rate of unemployment, the fact that housing prices are still not coming back (gee, do ya think it might be because the banks are sitting on tons of that cash we had to give them, instead of lending?). Blah blah, woof woof, as Jimi said.
But one line in the story yesterday about the stock market caught my eye and kind of got me a tiny bit upset. They said that the traders were "taking profits" while they could, driving the market down further.
Now, I'm not an economic expert. I tend to think of money in terms of the checkbook, where you either have it or you don't. I don't get derivatives, and hedges, and credit default swaps, and all that stuff. To me, those are bets. And currency trading and all that stuff - Treasury bonds and all - is like vapor. It seems to be at least half illusion, as things vary and drive other things up or down. I'm sure it's a lot of fun for those guys with sixteen computer monitors on their desk and a nose full of cocaine, but for me, it's not real.
But I come back to one thing. A lot of the hard-earned money I made over the past ten years went into a 401(k) and a 403(b). That was real money. I worked an hour for each hour's pay. So when the stock market goes down, it isn't like I can see it as "unrealized gains or losses." That money disappears as far as I'm concerned. My money. Gone.
And someone took it. Anyone who "took profits" yesterday and in any way helped the stock market fall is a thief, as far as me and my retirement savings are concerned. Same for the guys who bet on the decline, And the guys who bet on the volatility of the market and happened to profit on the decline. The short-sellers. The option putters. All those guys. You know why?
Because they have a lot of money to begin with, and they are doing this because they choose to. I put my money into a 401(k) and a 403(b) because I had to. It was either that or pay taxes on it. Savings? You can't get a frickin' toaster these days, much less keep up with inflation. The banks forgot what their job used to be in the 1950's and 60's: Keep my money safe and have the benefit of using it to loan to other people who need it, for a price, which they'd split with me. Now they want to charge me ten dollars a month just to keep my savings that earns a few pennies a year.
And pensions, which were supposed to be our reward and security for a lifetime of hard work, and which our government vowed to keep safe, became ridiculous antiques, like black-and-white tube TV's. That was part of the plan, see? They brainwashed us into believing that defined-contribution plans would be better for us in the long run, because we could control our investments! And they would benefit from the booming markets! Why settle for a lousy 3% on a CD when you could make 30, 40, or even 200%, especially if you were a savvy playah?!
And we frickin' fell for it! We sat there and picked out those stupid funds from the little charts and graphs while the guy from MetLife or the Hartford sat and nodded wisely and showed us our nifty "risk tolerance" profiles. Well, guess what? We shouldn't have been doing that! ZERO risk is the only risk that's acceptable when you're talking about your old age!! So what did we get to "control?" We got to "control" whether we got cheap lousy aluminum siding or cheap lousy vinyl siding! Whatever we chose, we got cheap lousy siding!! The only reason we took 401(k)'s was because that's the only way we could do ANYTHING to save for our retirments without getting screwed on taxes and fees.
So we had this little recession thing in 2008 when the house of cards the big boys built collapsed like most people knew it had to. And suddenly our money was GONE. Not just "lessening its return." Fuckin' disappeared. Two-thirds of it. WE watched and hoped and started to feel a little bettwe when it clawed its way back, even though the value of our houses kept free-falling until even those of us who'd been paying for 25 years on our houses were heading underwater. Everything that they told us to feel good about - our "net worth" - was revealed to be so much particle board furniture.
So now when we hear about a teacher or cop who still has a defined benefit plan - especially one that wasn't properly and lawfully funded by politicians who loved to play "turn out the lights and scream" every election - now we're all supposed to feel like they're on "the gravy train," or they're "freeloaders."
This is unethical, sinful, and if you want my opinion, a violation of human rights. Just because I get a statement every quarter doesn't mean I'm not being economically exploited, just as surely as some poor guy in Bahrain who has to live in a cardboard house while the big boys have gold toilets.
So now they want to do the same thing with Social Security. It's been coming for years. Now the politicians will play another round of "turn out the lights and scream" so they can scare people or con people or just wear people down into agreeing to this scam too. The Charles Krauthammers of the world; the guys who suck up to the Rupert Murdochs and David Kochs of the world. They keep screaming that "We're broke!" and "We have no other choice!"
Listen, assholes. That is MY MONEY just as much as the hard-earned money I paid into these tinshit 401(k)s was MY MONEY. You take it from me to play with AT YOUR PERIL. (I am talking about at the voting booth, lest you think I'm threatening someone.)
The system was set up to work properly, and if the politicians hadn't played games with it, it would be just fine. So instead of scrapping the system or squeezing retirees into working longer and getting less, they should CORRECT THE PROBLEMS they caused by using the Social Security fund as a cookie jar for their friends. They need to do what they should have done with the pensions: FIX IT and LEAVE IT ALONE. Play by the rules. Go gamble with your own money.
The only consolation I have is that not too many people these days are likely to fall for the pitch that they'll be better off putting their Social Security into the markets. The big boys pretty much killed that illusion. But I fear that they're going to operate on fear instead of greed.
But what is going on in the United States? The markets have now lost everything that they gained in the year so far - in less than a week. The experts blame the usual suspects in addition to Japan's markets: the crisis in Libya which threatens the oil supply, the stubborn rate of unemployment, the fact that housing prices are still not coming back (gee, do ya think it might be because the banks are sitting on tons of that cash we had to give them, instead of lending?). Blah blah, woof woof, as Jimi said.
But one line in the story yesterday about the stock market caught my eye and kind of got me a tiny bit upset. They said that the traders were "taking profits" while they could, driving the market down further.
Now, I'm not an economic expert. I tend to think of money in terms of the checkbook, where you either have it or you don't. I don't get derivatives, and hedges, and credit default swaps, and all that stuff. To me, those are bets. And currency trading and all that stuff - Treasury bonds and all - is like vapor. It seems to be at least half illusion, as things vary and drive other things up or down. I'm sure it's a lot of fun for those guys with sixteen computer monitors on their desk and a nose full of cocaine, but for me, it's not real.
But I come back to one thing. A lot of the hard-earned money I made over the past ten years went into a 401(k) and a 403(b). That was real money. I worked an hour for each hour's pay. So when the stock market goes down, it isn't like I can see it as "unrealized gains or losses." That money disappears as far as I'm concerned. My money. Gone.
And someone took it. Anyone who "took profits" yesterday and in any way helped the stock market fall is a thief, as far as me and my retirement savings are concerned. Same for the guys who bet on the decline, And the guys who bet on the volatility of the market and happened to profit on the decline. The short-sellers. The option putters. All those guys. You know why?
Because they have a lot of money to begin with, and they are doing this because they choose to. I put my money into a 401(k) and a 403(b) because I had to. It was either that or pay taxes on it. Savings? You can't get a frickin' toaster these days, much less keep up with inflation. The banks forgot what their job used to be in the 1950's and 60's: Keep my money safe and have the benefit of using it to loan to other people who need it, for a price, which they'd split with me. Now they want to charge me ten dollars a month just to keep my savings that earns a few pennies a year.
And pensions, which were supposed to be our reward and security for a lifetime of hard work, and which our government vowed to keep safe, became ridiculous antiques, like black-and-white tube TV's. That was part of the plan, see? They brainwashed us into believing that defined-contribution plans would be better for us in the long run, because we could control our investments! And they would benefit from the booming markets! Why settle for a lousy 3% on a CD when you could make 30, 40, or even 200%, especially if you were a savvy playah?!
And we frickin' fell for it! We sat there and picked out those stupid funds from the little charts and graphs while the guy from MetLife or the Hartford sat and nodded wisely and showed us our nifty "risk tolerance" profiles. Well, guess what? We shouldn't have been doing that! ZERO risk is the only risk that's acceptable when you're talking about your old age!! So what did we get to "control?" We got to "control" whether we got cheap lousy aluminum siding or cheap lousy vinyl siding! Whatever we chose, we got cheap lousy siding!! The only reason we took 401(k)'s was because that's the only way we could do ANYTHING to save for our retirments without getting screwed on taxes and fees.
So we had this little recession thing in 2008 when the house of cards the big boys built collapsed like most people knew it had to. And suddenly our money was GONE. Not just "lessening its return." Fuckin' disappeared. Two-thirds of it. WE watched and hoped and started to feel a little bettwe when it clawed its way back, even though the value of our houses kept free-falling until even those of us who'd been paying for 25 years on our houses were heading underwater. Everything that they told us to feel good about - our "net worth" - was revealed to be so much particle board furniture.
So now when we hear about a teacher or cop who still has a defined benefit plan - especially one that wasn't properly and lawfully funded by politicians who loved to play "turn out the lights and scream" every election - now we're all supposed to feel like they're on "the gravy train," or they're "freeloaders."
This is unethical, sinful, and if you want my opinion, a violation of human rights. Just because I get a statement every quarter doesn't mean I'm not being economically exploited, just as surely as some poor guy in Bahrain who has to live in a cardboard house while the big boys have gold toilets.
So now they want to do the same thing with Social Security. It's been coming for years. Now the politicians will play another round of "turn out the lights and scream" so they can scare people or con people or just wear people down into agreeing to this scam too. The Charles Krauthammers of the world; the guys who suck up to the Rupert Murdochs and David Kochs of the world. They keep screaming that "We're broke!" and "We have no other choice!"
Listen, assholes. That is MY MONEY just as much as the hard-earned money I paid into these tinshit 401(k)s was MY MONEY. You take it from me to play with AT YOUR PERIL. (I am talking about at the voting booth, lest you think I'm threatening someone.)
The system was set up to work properly, and if the politicians hadn't played games with it, it would be just fine. So instead of scrapping the system or squeezing retirees into working longer and getting less, they should CORRECT THE PROBLEMS they caused by using the Social Security fund as a cookie jar for their friends. They need to do what they should have done with the pensions: FIX IT and LEAVE IT ALONE. Play by the rules. Go gamble with your own money.
The only consolation I have is that not too many people these days are likely to fall for the pitch that they'll be better off putting their Social Security into the markets. The big boys pretty much killed that illusion. But I fear that they're going to operate on fear instead of greed.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
"Solidarity Forever" - Read it and think about it.
I looked up the Wikipedia article about the song. "Solidarity Forever" which was written by Ralph Chaplin in 1915 and sung to the tune of "Battle Hymn of the Republic." I expected that it would be a dated, embarrassing bit of historical anachronism with little application to our modern situation. Well, guess what. It's pretty damn timely. Especially the line, "They have taken untold millions that they never toiled to earn / But without our brain and muscle not a single wheel can turn."
Kind of makes you think about the rich getting richer and everyone else getting poorer... about derivatives, subprime mortgages, bailouts, and broken promises to help distressed homeowners in the midst of a staggering unemployment rate caused by Wall Street greed and maintained by browbeating our lawmakers to avoid reform.
Reform is Big Government. We can't have that. That's Communism, you know. It "kills jobs" (as if making thousands of federal and state employees lose their jobs is all right).
Meanwhile the consumer is blamed for the sluggish economy. We need to get our "confidence" back. Well, recall that "confidence" is the basis of the word "con."
Maybe we ought to add a few more verses to cover our current situation. I'll suggest a line: "They tell us it's our job to spend to keep us all afloat, while they take the wealth to buy themselves another fancy boat."
Kind of makes you think about the rich getting richer and everyone else getting poorer... about derivatives, subprime mortgages, bailouts, and broken promises to help distressed homeowners in the midst of a staggering unemployment rate caused by Wall Street greed and maintained by browbeating our lawmakers to avoid reform.
Reform is Big Government. We can't have that. That's Communism, you know. It "kills jobs" (as if making thousands of federal and state employees lose their jobs is all right).
Meanwhile the consumer is blamed for the sluggish economy. We need to get our "confidence" back. Well, recall that "confidence" is the basis of the word "con."
Maybe we ought to add a few more verses to cover our current situation. I'll suggest a line: "They tell us it's our job to spend to keep us all afloat, while they take the wealth to buy themselves another fancy boat."
Monday, March 14, 2011
Bradley Manning...
Much digital ink is being spent on the topic of Bradley Manning, but let me just put in my two cents.
- Bradley Manning is a political prisoner, that much is pretty clear to me. Of course, that's just, like, my opinion, man.
- From what we've been told, he did not give any help to the "enemy," except to the extent that the enemy is us. Let's assume he did give classified military information to Wikileaks. The stated mission of Wikileaks is to expose the truth, not to give anyone a military advantage. (in fact, quite the opposite. They believe that information needs to be shared in order to prevent abuses). It may be that someone in the military was put at increased risk by some of the information that Manning transferred. Then again, that may be purely guesswork. The most striking thing we did learn was that the US military was revealed to be killing civilans and laughing about it.
- Any assumption that Manning's actions gave someone (some "enemy", which we haven't yet defined in a way that satisfactorily justifies all the loss of life and expense of two wars) a military advantage over us therefore contains the further assumption that the US military should be able to kill civilians and keep it hidden. What that says to me is that he mainly embarrassed the brass and let the American people know that we're not always noble, ethical, humane, or right. As if Abu Ghraib didn't tell us that already.
- His treatment in detention had better conform to the Geneva Conventions, or else we're sending a pretty bad message to the rest of the world.
- His reported treatment in detention sounds like torture to me. At least psychologically. If he was suicidal, this kind of treatment certainly doesn't appear to serve the purpose of making him less so.
- Obama's acquiescence on this is instructive, in that it indicates the extent to which the military still wields a big stick in this government.
- All of this is extremely unsettling when it comes to our country and its conduct. And it should make us extremely ashamed. Especially when a State Department official has the courage to call it what it is, and then has to be fired for it. Although I suppose we should be glad he wasn't "disappeared" instead.
Friday, March 11, 2011
A comment I placed on a Mother Jones article
I was reading a great piece by Kevin Drum in Mother Jones online, about the long and dreary rise of the plutocracy (and the decline of the labor movement) in America. It draws from another piece ("It's the Inequality, Stupid") about the growing and almost ludicrous disparity between the ever-smaller few people controlling the ever-larger share of wealth in America.
So I was prompted to write the following comment, which I feel bears repeating on its own:
Old doc 15 minutes ago
The funny thing is how the conservatives use a false fear of "government" to influence people to allow them to have their way with us. But hey... Government is us. Didn't they teach us that in grammar school?
People in this country have the numbers. The AARP showed how a group with a huge footprint can exert huge influence, whether you always agree with their positions or not. We need something similar for working Americans. The AFL-CIO affilaited group (workingamerica.org) that's set out to do that doesn't seem to have gained any steam, possibly because it's so tarnished by its connection with organized labor. But we need to give people hope that the system is NOT rigged for evermore against them.
Sure. The hippie movement didn't play well with organized labor, and that's too bad in hindsight, but now those people are grown up and the old union folks are retired. Let's pool our wisdom, figure out our goals, and start to build some unshakeable alliances that can stand up to lies and pessimism. We're smart people, and our kids and grandkids expect and deserve better from us than sitting passively while the wealth stagnates like bad blood, the power is left to the people with personality disorders, and we watch "Survivor."
We need to reform the way we elect our politicians at all levels, and to stop accepting the excuse that we can't change anything, because it's politics as usual and they're all the same. We had a false populism with the Tea Party; how about a real populism? A decent fair shake for working people would be a very attainable goal. We must get people to feel a sense of self-efficacy again, and we can do that, if we can start to let the wealthy know that we will hold them to their side of the social contract of a civilized society. And we need to mean it, and we need to make it clear that won't be intimidated, lied to, pacified with big screen TV's and Angry Birds, or turned against each other. Esepcially not turned against each other.
So I was prompted to write the following comment, which I feel bears repeating on its own:
Old doc 15 minutes ago
The funny thing is how the conservatives use a false fear of "government" to influence people to allow them to have their way with us. But hey... Government is us. Didn't they teach us that in grammar school?
People in this country have the numbers. The AARP showed how a group with a huge footprint can exert huge influence, whether you always agree with their positions or not. We need something similar for working Americans. The AFL-CIO affilaited group (workingamerica.org) that's set out to do that doesn't seem to have gained any steam, possibly because it's so tarnished by its connection with organized labor. But we need to give people hope that the system is NOT rigged for evermore against them.
Sure. The hippie movement didn't play well with organized labor, and that's too bad in hindsight, but now those people are grown up and the old union folks are retired. Let's pool our wisdom, figure out our goals, and start to build some unshakeable alliances that can stand up to lies and pessimism. We're smart people, and our kids and grandkids expect and deserve better from us than sitting passively while the wealth stagnates like bad blood, the power is left to the people with personality disorders, and we watch "Survivor."
We need to reform the way we elect our politicians at all levels, and to stop accepting the excuse that we can't change anything, because it's politics as usual and they're all the same. We had a false populism with the Tea Party; how about a real populism? A decent fair shake for working people would be a very attainable goal. We must get people to feel a sense of self-efficacy again, and we can do that, if we can start to let the wealthy know that we will hold them to their side of the social contract of a civilized society. And we need to mean it, and we need to make it clear that won't be intimidated, lied to, pacified with big screen TV's and Angry Birds, or turned against each other. Esepcially not turned against each other.
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