I remember the pollution alert level once being 5, in the early 70s.
Then, soon after, they raised the level to 30... Sure, sure.
Are you not finding New York's unique local weather system to be
clearing out the bulk of the pollution like it once did?
Here's the result of the chief preoccupation for 99.9% of the rich, from
Mother Jones:
By Kevin Drum <http://motherjones.com/authors/kevin-drum>
| Thu Jun. 30, 2011 10:56 AM PDT
So who's benefited and who hasn't from the current recovery following
the Great Recession? I think you know the answer already, but just to
make it official, here's a report from researchers at Northeastern
University's Center for Labor Market Studies:
<http://www.clms.neu.edu/publication/documents/Revised_Corporate_Report_May_27th.pdf>
Between the second quarter of 2009 and the fourth quarter of 2010,
real national income in the U.S. increased by $528 billion. Pre-tax
corporate profits by themselves had increased by $464 billion while
aggregate real wages and salaries rose by only $7 billion or only
.1%. Over this six quarter period, *corporate profits captured 88%
of the growth in real national income while aggregate wages and
salaries accounted for only slightly more than 1% of the growth in
real national income.* The extraordinarily high share of national
income (88%) received by corporate profits was by far the highest in
the past five recoveries from national recessions.
http://motherjones.com/
On 7/6/2011 9:28 AM, Ray Harrell wrote:
We have an air-quality alert today in NYCity. Compliments of the
rich. They cut back on air quality standards all over the country and
now we have it here even though we have decent laws. As a
culture, the Midwestern rich care little about the environment or
their own environments except for status and fear of human pollution
(germs). If they didn't have servants to clean they wouldn't
clean and that is obvious when they lose their wealth and their
apartments stink and are filled dust mites. They promise big but
rarely come through with the thought that stimulating someone else to
give and riding for free is the meaning of life.
If they didn't have doctors to keep them alive, and the beach in the
summer, they would be unhealthy with all of the travel they do.
They are afraid to touch any of us who live in the world and have
decent immune systems. They have the means to have superior tastes
but their tastes run to the old tried and true and a decent
conversation about the purpose of things, and life, is out of the
question. They replace active musical instruments like pianos,
organs etc. with pool tables, tennis courts and sound systems in their
palatial estates. They don't need more than one classical radio
station so they sell the rest for junk entertainment and keep the
profits. The same for their Metropolitan Opera that gobbles up
more money than all of the rest of the companies in North America
combined and is twice as prosperous as any European company.
Games and passive listening. It's an old story Dumas fils wrote
these same observations in "Camille." Or like Poe's character said
about the creep that had just died, "he had good teeth." And then
there is the poetry of William Blake and Dickens novels. We've
been here before.
It's about culture and the making of a society. Not competition and
winners and losers. There are some good people who have money but
they are constantly giving it away to create a better society not just
a government that will subsidize them further and they refuse to take
a hand out and would never claim poverty for a tax break or be the
psycho-logical underdog for profit. They understand that their
money is a problem for their children's significance. They have a
real sense of pride and don't prey on others. They have a strong
sense of the purpose of money is to provide capital for good works
that benefits the whole world and not just their family. They
remember and are grateful.
They are the one tenth of one percent of the upper one percent.
REH
*From:*[email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] *On Behalf Of *Keith Hudson
*Sent:* Wednesday, July 06, 2011 9:16 AM
*To:* RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION; Robert Stennett
*Subject:* Re: [Futurework] Who wants to live forever? Scientist sees
aging cured
At 13:07 06/07/2011, Barry wrote:
On Jul 6, 2011, at 2:52 AM, Keith Hudson wrote:
At 21:22 05/07/2011, Barry wrote:
It is perfectly obvious to me that the biomedical longevity treatments
will be reserved for wealthy Americans, and for those in the rest of
the world who have single-payer medical systems (lucky Canadians &
Brits!). The rest of us will be left to fight for scraps among
ourselves until we starve to death, succumb to one or another plague,
or are eliminated in one or another of the resource wars.
No! The longer the rich live the more likely it is that they'll be
increasingly bypassed by the young. Medical science may well be able
to keep their bodies alive for longer but not to rejuvenate their
brains. The vast bulk of innovative ideas (90%+) arrive in the rapidly
developing frontal lobes of the young, tailing off fairly rapidly
after about 25-30 years of age.
Keith
And yet, with an increased life expectancy, the wealthy will be able
to only increase their strangle-hold on the productivity gains of
those younger creative individuals.
They may be well able to do so in the case of their own younger
associates and employees but not of the young who breeze into the
market place from the outside. Of recent years, think Microsoft,
Netscape, Apple, Amazon, Google, etc -- all bringing swathes of
destruction to previous dominant firms. (And, to anticipate the next
point, all started by young people.)
And, current thinking is that creativity doesn't necessarily drop off
after a couple of decades. For many, it simply changes focus and
direction.
There's some confusion here. There's been a revolution in neuroscience
in the last ten years or so in that it was then believed that a child
was born with all the neurons he will ever have. It is now realized
that although major culling takes place between birth and puberty (in
the rear cortex), millions of new neurons are created in the frontal
lobes at puberty, ready to establish new networks for the adult world.
This very largely finishes by about 25-30 years of age. However, there
has been a subsequent realization that this creation never completely
terminates and that new learning (and even new ideas!) can take place
into even advanced old age. But the learning of brand new skills
takes place with increasing difficulty as one gets older, and the
creation of new ideas with diminishing frequency. It still remains the
case that the really innovative ideas occur almost exclusively among
the young.
Keith
Cheers!
Barry
On Jul 5, 2011, at 4:08 PM, Mike Spencer wrote:
A biomedical gerontologist and chief scientist of a foundation
dedicated to longevity research, de Grey reckons that within his own
lifetime doctors could have all the tools they need to "cure" aging
-- banishing diseases that come with it and extending life
indefinitely.
In another foray to bridge C.P. Snow's cultural divide, I suggest
Bruce Sterling's _Holy Fire_, a novel that projects the economics, the
society and the concomitant psychological landscape were this research
to come gradually to fruition.
Pace Keith, the matters of overpopulation and resource depletion are
(I would assume intentionally) avoided in order to address the
implications of extended life technology.
- Mike
--
Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada .~.
/V\
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
/( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/
<http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0>^^-^^
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http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2011/07/
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