Ed, Huge cuts could be made in our military budget which is bloated, wasteful and largely redundant. (I was a USAF Officer and speak with first hand knowledge).
That alone would make an enormous difference. Try and get Congress to approve it! Fat chance! Mark Goldes Co-Founder, Chava Energy CEO, Aesop Institute www.chavaenergy.com www.aesopinstitute.org 707 861-9070 707 497-3551 fax ________________________________________ From: Edmund Storms [stor...@ix.netcom.com] Sent: Saturday, January 26, 2013 12:16 PM To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Cc: Edmund Storms Subject: Re: [Vo]:Another article about the impact of automation on employment On Jan 26, 2013, at 12:45 PM, OrionWorks - Steven Vincent Johnson wrote: >From Ashfield: > ... The referenced article was rather unimaginative in places but > noted the basic question: “who is going buy all these nice goodies > if they are unemployed?” Precisely. <personal rant> IMHO, too many politicians are focusing on a misguided belief that balancing the national budget is the most important thing, above everything else, that must be tackled. What most fail to realize is the fact that "money" is nothing more than a contractual representation of the exchange of goods and services between individuals and legal entities. No Steven, what you say is not the issue. The issue is that money has been lent to the US in various forms and by various people and they want their money back eventually. Meanwhile they want to be paid interest. The US is rapidly approaching a level of debt such that if the interest rates rose to normal levels, we could not pay the interest without shutting down significant parts of the government. The US is presently printing dollars to cover this expense. As a result, the debt is growing because this money is borrowed from the Federal Reserve, which is a private bank owned by individuals who want to be paid. At some point in the near future, the debt will be so large, it simply can not be paid. At that point, the US is in default, and the financial system of the world collapses. This means starvation and civil strife. The problem is serous and can not be solved without great pain, which means further loss of jobs. The fools in Congress over the last 20 years have created a no win situation that very few people understand. Ed Most don't like to ponder the realization that "money" is quite ephemeral in nature, despite all attempts to back it with a representation of limited physical resources like gold and silver. In a sense, I think this is false advertising of the worst kind. It's worshiping the value of "money" over the value of the actual work & labor that creates said goods and services that "money" attempts to accurately represent. It's as if "money is being worshiped as a false god. It's putting the cart before the horse. IMHO, politicians need to focus more on whatever it takes to create environments that allow people to go back to work (or remain working) so that that they can start (or continue) acquiring enough of these symbolic representations of goods and services that they can cash in for themselves. I don't think one can accomplish that by constantly slashing national budgets in a misguided belief that doing so will stabilize the value of "money", which in turn will somehow miraculously cause businesses to automatically flourish so that they will automatically start employing more people... many whom may end up being hired at minimum wage. But Hey! It's a job! All that national budget slashing... the national budget employs a lot of people too, just like out in the private sector. If massive amounts of them lose their jobs due to forced budget cutting and are forced into the unemployment lines, it's absolutely no different than private companies firing it's employees because it has insufficient "money" to pay them for their services. Everyone suffers as fewer goods and services are being generated which, in turn, devalues the value to "money". We need to stop finding scapegoats to blame (i.e. national budget), and start focusing on ways to make sure everyone has a chance to continue to make valuable contributions to society. In the end, allowing enough people to continue to make valuable contributions to society is the only real way of saving the value of "money". I don't think one can accomplish that by, in a draconian manner, slashing the budget. </personal rant> Regards, Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com<http://www.OrionWorks.com> www.zazzle.com/orionworks<http://www.zazzle.com/orionworks>
