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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
"You fear the man who has a dollar less than you, that dollar is rightfully his, he makes you feel like a moral defrauder. You hate the man who has a dollar more than you, that dollar is rightfully yours, he makes you feel that you are morally defrauded. The man below is a source of, your guilt, the man above is a source of your frustration. You do not know what to surrender or demand, when to give and when to grab, what pleasure in life is rightfully yours and what debt is still unpaid to others—you struggle to evade, as 'theory,' the knowledge that by the moral standard you've accepted you are guilty every moment of your life, there is no mouthful of food you swallow that is not needed by someone somewhere on earth—and you give up the problem in blind resentment, you conclude that moral perfection is not to be achieved or desired, that you will muddle through by snatching as snatch can and by avoiding the eyes of the young, of those who look at you as if self-esteem were possible and they expected you to have it. Guilt is all that you retain within your soul—and so does every other man, as he goes past, avoiding your eyes. Do you wonder why your morality has not achieved brotherhood on earth or the good will of man to man?
The more than a few letters that say "don't worry" are disappointing. While we may not get another great depression, there is little evidence to claim we aren't headed in that direction (as Leonard points out, if we want to get there, let's stay on our current path).
Richer than we were in 1929:
This is bullshit. Advanced degrees are a dime a dozen around the world and whole swaths of the planet that were not industrialized back then are now. The GDP portion garnered by our current steel production -- and just about everything else -- is a) overvalued; and b) not going to count for squat when global growth grinds to a halt. The US produces nothing the world needs and can't produce on their own, cheaper (do you think any country is going to pay us royalties on movies, software and drugs once the shit hits the fan?).
Social safety nets causing the problem:
Bullshit. Social Security pays for itself and is the only reason grandparents don't rely on their kids to house and feed them like they did in 1929, 1829, or any other time before WWII. It's a lot more cost effective in staving off starvation than possibly any other government program.
People seem to think that their own life experience (one in which there was no great depression) is somehow evidence that it won't happen -- no different than the optimism of a tadpole hatched into a puddle after the rainy season has ended.
Economists muse about whether this will be a long or a short recession (in large part to kick the falling dominoes down the road), but the real question is: what's going to turn things around?
Short of a radical shift in how we live (all move to city centers, ride bikes, develop local economies of food and other necessities), there is no magic bullet. Everything we have exists on borrowed money and time (from the poor people's flat-screen tv's to all of our corporations). As another poster pointed out, once oil is switched from dollars to euros (one of the more plausible reasons for Iraq's Hussein falling out of favor with the US -- he wanted to switch off dollars), it will spell the death knell for the dollar, which is already on life support.
There is no big safety net. Our whole economy is built on a house of cards. We produce nothing that sustains large employment -- and nothing at all that will last after the dollar collapses.
Consider this: the dollar collapses and interest rates skyrocket. Most people have no access to credit. No one eats out anymore (millions of shit jobs gone). No one buys electronics (shipping and retail businesses gone). No one travels (hotels and airlines go under). Banks start collapsing and cash money people thought they had just disappears. Inflation runs rampant even while no one has money because goods and services are so scarce. This is not new. It's happened before. Just because we can't remember it doesn't make it fanciful.
To those who say this is unwarranted fearmongering, I ask you: what will turn this around? What will the US start producing that a collapsing global economy will buy?
As I read the eloquent letter written by our fine upstanding linguist, I was sucked in. I am a middleclass father of 3 that works 2 jobs just to stay afloat. I never have extra money to go and do the “fun” things in life…I don’t even have cable! It looks as though the author of this article has done his homework with all the numbers and quotes. My goodness he sounds smart. But let’s look at common sense for a moment and get back off the land of the loonies. I went to the oracle, otherwise known as Google, and asked, “Who pays the most taxes?” From About.com, Robert Longlev writes, “In 2002 the latest year of available data, the top 5 percent of taxpayers paid more than one-half (53.8 percent) of all individual income taxes…” And he continues to say, “The top 1 percent of taxpayers paid 33.7 percent of all individual income taxes in 2002. This group of taxpayers has paid more than 30 percent of individual income taxes since 1995. Moreover, since 1990 this group’s tax share has grown faster than their income share.” Now where have I heard that 1% number before? Oh yes, that pesky same 1% that earned all of that extra money. But wait…there is more! “Taxpayers who rank in the top 50 percent of taxpayers by income pay virtually all individual income taxes.” Now who is this guy and where does he get his info? Let me see, oh yes here it is…Source: U.S. Treasury, Office of Tax Analysis. For those of you still not getting it, let me lay it out in words that can actually be understood. Those that make a ton of money, pay all of the taxes. We who do not make a ton of money really don’t pay ANY taxes after our precious rebates. So while people complain about the rich getting all of the breaks and the poor getting screwed, the American Dream is being tarnished. Come on people! This is America. We work hard, we strive to make money. Some of us make it, and others of us struggle. It is life. And for all of the writers that love to stir the pot, why don’t you do something? I could be wrong, but I am willing to bet my measly salary that our wonderful artist of words that wrote “The Great Depression: The Sequal” makes more than his average reader. Maybe he should start his dream of equilibrium by forking over a chunk of his salary to you his faithful reader!
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
