Your point is well made but I would add that you are talking about less than 1% of our population in these figures. To put it mildly, it's tricky being an artist here. The only way I've kept my sanity is by teaching and being my own entrepreneur. Making them need me for their instruction more than I've needed them but it has been limiting in what I could get done for American music and American Opera and Art Song. Still, I've refused to enter the NYState theater since they sold out to the Koch brothers and stuck David Koch's name on the theater. A man who hates the Arts but loves the status and calls himself a scientist.
REH From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of D and N Sent: Wednesday, July 06, 2011 2:50 PM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION Subject: Re: [Futurework] Who wants to live forever? Scientist sees aging cured 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] /( )\ http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/ <http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A 0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0> ^^-^^ _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2011/07/ _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2011/07/ _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
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