How would you delete the ultra-rich? REH
-----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of pete Sent: Sunday, August 14, 2011 1:48 AM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION Subject: Re: [Futurework] Reminescent of what we used to say on Futurework list. Why does Germany continue to do well? It's current problems are just about being the Euro purse responsible for propping up limping EU members, but on its own, it is thriving. Why is Canada doing well? Yes, smart legislation allowed us to dodge the sub-prime banking scams, and yes we've got resources that people will buy, but that's hardly the whole story. The thing we have in common with the northern europeans that has kept us in better shape, is our smaller degree of income inequality across the society. This means there is more available money to spend, and a middle class able to spend it. There's a lot of money in the US, but as long as it is sequestered by the ultra rich, there will be no resurgence of consumerism. You can't have a consumer society when you've obliterated the consuming class. Gross's three points are not insignificant, but they are not the key point. Not by far, and the absense of that recognition renders his article absurd. While commentators like him ignore this fact, they are doomed to talk nonsense. They would be far better off if they were to conduct their analyses by first deleting the ultra rich, and all their money, from the problem, and looking at the remainder as the nation in question. They would then have a far more realistic basis from which to work. Money which is more likely to travel the world without ever leaving any footprint of any kind at home is best left out of calculations. -Pete On Sat, 13 Aug 2011, Ray Harrell wrote: > Pete, what are you conflicting with? Are you saying that robotics and > technology has nothing to do with it? How about the recording > industry in the Arts where one orchestra can do the work of hundreds? > How about a mine where automation can do the work of 3,000 miners and > replace them with less than a hundred mechanics for the machines. > What about dark factories with a few mechanics and no workers and that > work 24 hours a day? > > I don’t' know what your rant was about? It's unclear to me what that > has to do with being American? On the other hand the hyper > individualism that makes everyone responsible when there is no capital > IS one of the problems. The question is whether the system is using > the three elements of the article or whether they are foundational. > > This seems to be a problem that runs throughout systems design. We > destroy the Arts because they have no utility but they are human > infrastructure in the development of human psycho-physical instruments > and not mere evolutionary cheesecake. We move everything off shore > because a free market is the best system but the free market destroys > your consumers. We hear politicians comparing national governments to > households and then destroying them across the world through the world > bank. > > Is this not an engineering flaw? Is this not the confusion of large > scale systems with small scale systems that have parallels but are in > truth vastly different in complexity and the necessary knowledge to > make them work? Is not the same "virus" true of the cultural systems > that make all cultures work? Are you saying that we do not, in the > West, set them off against each other rather than balancing them > sensibly? > > China has a culture system's virus as a result of their inability to > deal with religion that is currently at one tenth of their national > population. Even the Communists are having trouble dealing with large > scale systems with 19th century systems ideas. > > I'm not an engineer but I work with large scale art forms and the > rules are different based in scale. Orchestrating a string quartet > like a symphony just shows that you don't know anything about the > rules of symphonic orchestral form. There are parallels but a > trombone is not a violin even though the tuning requires the same > intonation for both with a wildly different tessitura. > > Making wildly different groups, genders, cultures, professions, etc. > the "same" has been a Western cultural terminal provinciality for as > long as there has been a "Western" world. That reality is the root of > the word chauvinism from the French embodied by a particular > individual. > > Have a good day. > > REH > > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] > [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of pete > Sent: Saturday, August 13, 2011 12:59 AM > To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION > Subject: Re: [Futurework] Reminescent of what we used to say on Futurework > list. > > > > On Thu, 11 Aug 2011, Ray Harrell wrote: > >> Opinions Washington Post >> >> >> America’s debt is not its biggest problem >> >> >> By Bill Gross, Published: August 10 >> > > [...] > >> >> But while our debt crisis is real and promises to grow to >> Frankenstein proportions in future years, debt is not the disease — >> it is a symptom. Lack of aggregate demand or, to put it simply, >> insufficient consumption and investment is the disease. Debt has been >> simply an abused sovereign and private market antidote to sustain it. >> We and our global market competitors are and have been experiencing a >> lack of aggregate demand for several decades. It is now only visibly >> coming to a head, as the magic elixir of leverage is drained and >> exhausted. This potentially fatal disease of capitalism is a result >> of several long-term secular phenomena: >> >> (1) Aging demographics, where boomers everywhere spend less, in >> contrast to their youth, as they approach retirement; babies, houses >> and second cars shift to the scrapbook of memories as opposed to >> future spending power. >> >> (2) Globalization, where 2 billion new competitive workers from Asia >> and elsewhere take jobs and paychecks from complacent and ill-trained >> 40-somethings in developed markets. >> >> (3) Technological innovation, where machines and robots displace >> human labor, resulting in corporate profits but declining wages. >> >> The debt crisis as it crests ultimately gives way to these >> growth-inhibiting, spending-contractionary secular forces. > > What idiocy. A lack of consumption is a direct result of an absense of funds > to finance consumption. If you want the people to consume, you don't chisel > away their wages for forty years while concentrating all wealth at the tiny > tip of the top of the wealth distribution, which is no longer a pyramid, but > more like a trumpet bell. Globalization may have some effect in retarding > wage growth, but no where near enough to be responsible for the current > situation, and really there is nothing but willful venality preventing a far > saner wealth distribution which would inspire an exuberant economy. Strangle > your society, and you reap what you deserve. > > Well, as Churchill said, the americans can always be relied upon... > > -Pete > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Futurework mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework > > _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
