Friday, July 22, 2011

Depressing

Greetings good citizen,

What do you call a ‘representative government’ where you can’t talk to your representative?

Which is to ask why YOU should surrender YOUR RIGHT TO CHOOSE to somebody that REFUSES TO TALK TO YOU!

Wouldn’t it be more ‘reasonable’ if you voted directly on the laws? (Fuck this middle man bullshit!) Oh, and talk about your ‘original intent’, there weren’t any ‘full time’ legislators for the first hundred years of this (now failed) experiment.

Which is to point out that the need for full time lawmakers coincides with the development of technology that would enable us to eliminate a ‘go-between’ altogether!

Naturally, if we eliminated, er, ‘representatives’ they would be unable to sell ‘your’ vote to the highest bidder (for perfectly legal ‘campaign contributions’ which they get to pocket when they retire from ‘public life’.)

Think I’m being ‘harsh’ good citizen? I suspect nobody would be more surprised than the founders that their original ‘contrivance’ lasted this long!

Which is to ask a more measured question, how long do you think the average ‘social contract’ is good for?

The current dumbfucks seem to think ‘forever’ but a lot has changed since colonial times…

Some would opine that the social contract was ‘re-written’ as recently as the 1930’s and that the conservatives among us, despite being a decided minority, want to ‘undo’ that last re-write, which would leave us where, good citizen?

Well, you don’t have to scratch too hard to find people who ‘imagine’ things were better in the friggin’ Dark Ages (strictly because people were more devoted to God than they are now, fuckwits!)

Said the man who thinks the current bunch are plotting to throw us all into our own cesspool (by forcing the supply lines to collapse…for those of you who always suspected JIT had a ‘dark side’…)

And believe you me, ‘cesspool’ is an UNDERSTATEMENT!

Um, the, er, ‘beancounters’ defend their actions by saying we haven’t had a ‘disaster’ in the past thirty years…which is more accurately stated as the US hasn’t had a disaster since JIT was implemented, elsewhere, not so good.

But let us return to the center ring where the dismemberment of our civilization proceeds unimpeded!

The disappearance of unemployment from elite policy discourse and its replacement by deficit panic has been truly remarkable. It’s not a response to public opinion. In a recent CBS News/New York Times poll, 53 percent of the public named the economy and jobs as the most important problem we face, while only 7 percent named the deficit. Nor is it a response to market pressure. Interest rates on U.S. debt remain near historic lows.

Yet the conversations in Washington and Brussels are all about spending cuts (and maybe tax increases, I mean revisions). That’s obviously true about the various proposals being floated to resolve the debt-ceiling crisis here. But it’s equally true in Europe.

On Thursday, the “heads of state or government of the euro area and the E.U. institutions” — that mouthful tells you, all by itself, how messy European governance has become — issued their big statement. It wasn’t reassuring.

The whole article is one of Mr. Krugman’s better efforts, well worth the time to click through if you haven’t already.

Not only does this whole ‘deficit dance’ look like a distraction, th question nobody is asking is what we are being distracted from?

Recent reports of the bleak jobs outlook for the United States brought to mind an eye-opening report for the Council on Foreign Relations by Michael Spence, a Nobel laureate, and Sandile Hlatshwayo. I highly recommend that report, at the very least its summary, “Globalization and Unemployment,” in the current issue of Foreign Affairs. It clearly explains our current dilemma in the labor market.

The authors break down our economy into those sectors whose output is traded across international borders (the tradable sectors) and is thus subject to competition from foreign producers, and those sectors whose output is not traded across international borders (the nontradable sectors).

In the tradable category are manufactured goods, farm products, raw materials and financial, consulting, educational, computing and other technical services. Prominent in the nontradable sector are government, health care, retailing, construction, restaurants and, for the most part, legal services.

Could it be the rapid expansion of the economic desert?

How many of you have considered what it will be like to live in a country where it is unsafe to step outside your door for fear of you or your home being robbed?

If you are one of the millions of ‘newly destitute’, you aren’t too worried about this as you have nothing worth stealing so nobody’s going to bother you.

But what of the, er, ‘blissfully ignorant’ who pretend not to notice anything is amiss?

Worse is how the budget axe will fall on public safety just as heavily as it falls on public education.

So your call to 911 will likely go ‘unanswered’.

How close is this tragic set of circumstances?

Consumers in the U.S. are increasingly using credit cards to pay for basic necessities as income gains fail to keep pace with rising food and fuel prices.

The dollar volume of purchases charged grew 10.7 percent in June from a year ago, while the number of transactions rose 6.8 percent, according to First Data Corp.’s SpendTrend report issued this month. The difference probably represents the increasing cost of gasoline, said Silvio Tavares, senior vice president at First Data, the largest credit card processor.

“Consumers, particularly in the lower-income end, are being forced to use their credit cards for everyday spending like gas and food,” said Tavares, who’s based in Atlanta. “That’s because there’s been no other positive catalyst, like an increase in wages, to offset higher prices. It’s a cash-flow problem.”

Rising costs of food and gasoline are leaving Americans less money to spend discretionary items, slowing the pace of the recovery, Tavares said. Household spending accounts for about 70 percent of the world’s largest economy.

After-tax income adjusted for inflation fell 0.1 percent from January through May, according to figures from the Commerce Department. The drop came as Labor Department data showed energy prices rose 8.2 percent and food climbed 2 percent during the same period.

While I have warned repeatedly about the ‘dire implications’ of putting ‘ordinary expenses’ on cards that charge upwards of 30% interest, it seems people are desperate, stupid or both.

Has anyone else noticed how the ‘micro-finance phenomenon’ has come unglued (around the globe?)

Seems as though the rules of creditworthiness and market share haven’t been suspended after all!

The first few did fine but once the market got saturated, the inevitable occurred.
And, surprise, nobody saw it coming!

Well I did and I assume a lot of you did but hey, what do I know?

Didn’t chucklehead win a fucking Nobel Prize for the idea? Goes to show you what one of those is worth!

But I digress, it is unfair to pick on what is just one of a multitude of examples of capitalist failures!

Which is to point out if you aren’t frightened you should be!

We’ve got some class A loons running the show and they’re intent on running it right off the cliff…so their butt-buddies can walk in afterwards and offer to ‘save’ the survivors.

Naturally this will come in the form of an ‘offer you can’t refuse!’.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

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