Original text and editing by:
A G Kaiser
email to
agkaiser1@gmail,com
When we’re all rich and live on our investments no one will have to work. There will be no poverty or slums. We’ll all have a PH.D. What a glorious vision it is! If hunter gatherers had envisioned the service economy 20,000 years ago the human race would have achieved its glorious end long before any of US were born. . . .
"A good slave works for food alone."
Volume V Issue 05:
The first law of God and Nature is: "Thou shalt survive!". Survival is augmented by the equally strong Social Instinct. We band together to help assure mutual survival and common well being. If the parasitization of the community threatens the survival of all, as it seems, then each individual must decide, based on immediate circumstances, how best to achieve success. The primary law and its augmentation are instinctual. All we have to decide is how best to obey them when confronted with a threat. If you are lucky enough to find comprehending others, there is strength in numbers. There is no hard and fast rule to guide survival. But bad choices have terminal consequences.
In the earliest times on Earth we were free. In the early and middle days of history we were subjugated by main force. We had no choice but to be the slaves of the rich. Since the enlightenment, many of US have the power of self rule. But we have consented to work for the profit of a small fraction of the population of the Planet Earth. In the end, unless we work for ourselves and own unmortgaged property, I don’t see how we’ve really been freed by democracy. Sure, there exists the freedom to become one of them and put the community to work for the profit of an individual. Then one of US becomes one of them and is no longer of the we, who are US. And what percentage of the people can profit greatly by the work of others? It’s a moot question. That’s not the direction we’re going. Wealth is being concentrated not spread. The only way to become wealthy is to take more from the community than you give. But we still believe we are free. We still believe in opportunity-- to share in the looting of the community. This is the worst crime attributed to socialism but committed by capitalists. It’s like trying to live by eating yourself. What are the odds? A smaller not a larger fraction of US all are wealthy. The chances are probably better to win a lottery than to become a star or a Bill Gates or even steal it like a Bush, Cheney or an Enron Executive. The greatest irony and our last best hope is that the successful plunderers of the community are not free from dependence on US. They need US to support their useless existence. No one gets rich by hard work. The rich can only exist by profit on the work of others-- the community. If we refuse to work for them, they will have nothing.
A couple of months after inauguration, the middle class Wall Street sheep had been sheared for the first time in the 21st Century. [predicted by this writer on 2/10/2001 (1);(2)] After this initial accomplishment it was time to move on Clinton’s 1.2 trillion budget surplus, that had been projected over the next ten years. Using the surplus to pay down Federal debt was unthinkable. To do so would undermine the undermining of social security whose own surplus is tied up as a significant portion of the public debt. Rich bankers and political contributors would have no way to earn interest on their excess cash. The "peoples" money had been borrowed to fatten the already obese corporate masters through the contracting process (privatization of government, especially the treasury-- see FED). It was paramount that social security remain only tenuously stable (less credibility for government bonds, but not too much less) because that loot wouldn’t be ready to plunder irrevocably until the second term. In early 2001 the brilliant plan was hatched that allowed the tax money collected chiefly from the middle class to be given to the rich, first through tax cuts [signed 6/7/01] then by borrowing another trillion or so to give them the same money again. The double dip treat was unprecedented, as was the size of the serving. Elimination of the Estate Tax and the current assault on Social Security will make the transfer of our wealth to the economic elite of the Bush League a permanent redistribution. They get the money. We get the debt: both public and private as we borrow back our money again, just to live. [Note the increase in lending ads and that Exxon/Mobil has 25 billion in excess cash that they can’t move, according to Fortune Magazine.] This kite falls when debt saturation weighs it down.
(1) "Q: How soon will the Wall Street Sheep be sheared? A: Harvests took place in 1929, 1987 and during other mishaps of abstract economy. When can the middle class expect to be despoiled for the first time in the new millennium?"-- Volume I, Issue 3; 2/10/01- agkaiser.
(2) "By the end of the first quarter of 2001, the stock market bubble of the late 1990s had burst. Compared to a year earlier, the Dow Jones had dropped 10%, the S&P 500 23%, and the NASDAQ 60%" --"What the Crash Means for Your Retirement"- by Christian Weller
The sheep haven’t bid the stocks up enough for an efficient shearing cycle: another round of plundering of America via the stock market, by our owners. That’s why the market needs the trust fund. They already have all the rest of the money and we can’t borrow enough more to please them. Wage and salary increases are, of course, out of the question. And what’s really sad is that half the American people believe the spin and rationalization about competition and inflation that supports the fraud. We’re afraid that our masters won’t be able to compete for the consumer dollars we don’t have and worry that future inflation will occur if our incomes increase. No one seems to notice that interest inflation is already killing US. Incredible stupidity! What’s worse, the neo-con artists who play this game believe their own lies. I don’t know who is more stupid. In the end they’ll say Social Security must go or they’ll have to raise taxes on US to feed the monster they’ve created to steal our money in the first place. Will anyone notice? You won’t hear enough about it in the corporate media to break the hypnotic spell cast by the latest entertainment news sensation. I can safely predict that. And they said socialism would reduce US all to the lowest common denominator. Apparently capitalism does it better. A more detailed journal of the neo-crimes of Bush is available at: wageslave.org
As we know, the tax cut portion of the give away of our money was the first step. At first it was supposed to give Americans back the [projected] surplus that was to accrue over ten years. But instead of giving the money to the middle class it had been collected from, they gave most of it to the peers. Then they borrowed 1.2 Trillion, much of it from our social security. (Bush said SS needed reform on 01/20/01, in his first inaugural address. He knew, because he was planning to complete its undermine from day one.) Most of the plunder went to rich stockholder/owners of the corporate looting machines we call government contractors. Now they tell US social security is broke. They ought to know. They broke it. And if we want it fixed we’ll have to pay more taxes to replace the social security taxes they stole or buy some of the rich’s stock at inflated prices so we can be sheared again. Since they won’t give back any of the money they ripped off, we’ll have to cut benefits to spring loose the cash to give to Bush and his class. But we’re too stupid to understand their simple minded scam. Or is it just intimidation or doublespeak that confuses US.
The neo-con artists are counting on our stupidity and complaisance. There’s a good chance that, in the time proven conservative way, they’ll succeed in projecting their own stupidity onto US. It is they who don’t understand that their pyramid scheme economy has always been working towards self destruction. They don’t know that the money they create is not wealth. It’s merely a token. The more of it they make, without making material goods, the less it is worth. They all see their individual profit by abstract mechanisms, all of which resolve to usury. None see the destructive cumulative effect of their individual greed for the produce of the community. None see that they live as parasites on the work of the community. Few but the most careless and callous of the demimonde and none of the wannabees and sycophants, see that the more of them there are or the more the wealth is concentrated, the sooner the flawed structure must fall. They are an insupportable burden on the community. But most of them believe themselves to be beneficial or at least symbiotic. They are delusional. Sure, we’ll all be rich investors and no one will have to work. Someone else will work for you, me and everyone. That logical absurdity is the ownership society glorious leader sees in his puerile rummy vision.
That’s the World Community we’re talking about, in an environment of globalization. In the brave new world order, most Americans are downsized. The few who make more money by the management of our increasingly abstract domestic economy, are the exception, not the rule. Many white collar jobs have been outsourced already. Middle income skilled workers such as carpenters, plumbers etc. will have little to do when there is no building market because the rich have all the money and we can no longer make the payments on what we’ve already borrowed. There’ll be no one to buy your house when the mortgage company forecloses. No one in America, except a few CEOs, politicians and the rich stockholders who own them, will have money to buy anything. Like a casino, that’s how an interest earning abstract economic system works. The usurers end up with all the money and no one else can buy anything. It’s not meltdown. It’s economic lockup! The money will be stuck up at the top of the pyramid. Will your service job of last resort, if you can get it, make your payments? How will you look in your beanie at the fast food place?
Outsourcing of manufacturing to create greater profits when the goods are sold in the existing market is a compounding of stupidity that is transcendent. The more it’s done the more they say they must do it to compete and the less money downsized consumers have to buy the products. Eventually all our credit will be maxed out. In the 19th century definition, an idiot was one so consumed by his or her own inner workings [the id] that he or she was unaware of the reality of the world about. By their obsession with the id of economic complexity, their tight focus on individual [corporate] profit, the controlling rich stockholders and their CEOs and subsidiary politicians fail to notice [are unaware of] the world of cumulative effect about them. The idiots are destroying the economy we and they depend on for life. And we are so taken in by their lies, distractions, diversions, moral rationalizations and propaganda, that more than half of US actually support the mass suicide their idiotic quest for profit disguises-- even to themselves, the perpetrators of this crime against humanity.
I’ve been asked why I don’t have faith in free market forces to pull US through. We’ve all had that signal propagated through the corporate media, schools and parents who’d been indoctrinated before we were born. Didn’t I get the message? Words and images are a way to describe reality. But we know it by sensory experience. Communication among people is always an imperfect description of reality. You can’t depend on what you’ve been told, by anyone. How is your faith bolstered by the imploring salesman who says, "Trust me?" Let’s take a look at some of the market forces at work.
Outsourcing and wage depression has led to an underfunded consumer base. The money is stuck at the top. Look at all the ads for second mortgages, home equity loans, credit cards etc. How much more debt can we absorb before we are saturated? The belief that privatization and competition improve anything but parasitic profit is absurd. The only thing that grows is the number of poorer and poorer people and the prices of lower quality products.
Concentration on finance has made US, in conjunction with outsourcing, a nation dependent on the consumer production of other nations. More and more of our wealth of real productive capacity is sold abroad for short term profit every day.
The American medical industry is becoming increasingly dysfunctional for most of US. Resources are allocated by the ability to pay for them. Profit motivates the selection of specialties, like cosmetic surgery, while there are not sufficient practitioners and resources available for 45 million Americans. Many are drawn to med school by the lure of high compensation, prestige or family tradition. Many highly qualified applicants, who sincerely desire to be healers, are excluded. Triage by bank account results in an irrational mis-allocation of medical resources. Those who need it most may die but Buffy will have her implants. Worse, more of the high cost of medicine is attributable to the profits of the Insurance and Pharmaceutical industries than to the doctor’s Mercedes. And more and more doctors are on salary to HMOs, where they’ll make less than in private practice. So much for the market theory of superior medicine. Maybe that’s why Cuba has a lower infant mortality rate than America.
I mentioned that Exxon/Mobil has 25 billion they don’t know how to move. I saw a commercial recently that said energy is not an abstract product. "Energy is a real material substance." That, of course, is true. But that’s not necessarily true about energy corporations. They may only be energy brokers like Enron. It’s likely that the traders make more profit than the actual producers. [Although Dubya managed to lose a twenty-five million dollar Saudi investment in his company by 1984, I guess those who can’t run a business should rum [stet] the country.] I believe Exxon still refines most of it’s petroleum products. But to the extent they are involved in trade, and oil refined overseas is a financial market undertaking, they are making abstract and parasitic profit. They do not, in that case, produce their own product. They are an unnecessary burden on real economy. Their free market activities contribute unnecessarily to the high cost of gasoline, as does the 25 billion they’re agonizing over not being able to loan to anyone or use to capitalize there own operations. The free market can only exacerbate the problem when the money gets stuck up. Adam Smith wasn’t an idiot. He’s just had his thoughts picked over by fools.
Just as a casino must end up with all the money of all the people who stay and play long enough, so must all the wealth end up in the control of the industry of usury. Inheritance performed the function in feudal times and was still a major player 170 years ago when de Tocqueville noted its tendency. But today, even if we recycled all the property of the dead, the immortal [financial] corporations must end up with all the money and the wealth it represents due to the percentage they skim from every human endeavor. Just like casinos, in the end, only the financial houses can win. They are dissipative to the economy that supports human life. They are destructive to our culture and our existence. This is the fundamental flaw in the theory of free market capitalism. It can’t be repaired but the flow from the base to the top of the pyramid can be reversed occasionally. Capitalism was temporarily put in remission and the system saved by FDR. But that’s a little deep for Dubya. People like him believe that liberty means their freedom to have the rest of US work like slaves, so they may profit at our expense. Their principle is greed and they value only money. They never learned there are limits.
If you wish to help, contact me:
agkaiser@yahoo.com
Greg Kaiser
Please, copy the "The Times" to an e-mail composition or print it out. Send or give it to ten people. Unlike our economy, this is a pyramid scheme that can work. If this has been forwarded to you and you wish to be added to the list to receive direct notification of the posting of new issues, put Collector Request in the subject and e-mail to: