[responing to the strange reversal of values on Facebook, which allows what amount to exploitative images of women, but balks in what someone called "a frat boy mentaltiy" at images of breast feeding or aboriginal women conducting ceremonies]
Somehow all our politicoreligious histories are tied together here, as being influenced by Englisch emigrants. I often remark when there are examples of gratuitous American prudery that many of the original settlers here, the Puritans in particular, left a remarkably sexually repressed England because for them it wasn't repressed enough. Of course on arrival here on our East coast they settled within five miles of a colony of libertines. This kind of set the stage for the interplay of the moral genes of American public thought and private behavior and has been a basic theme with some sprinklings along the way of some other exotic flavors up to the present day.
As Heinlein outlined in his many explorations of possible sexual mores, the chief counterforce to alternative behaviors and styles in this Country has been the inevitable Ms. Grundy in her incarnations as various kinds of moral outrage at anything interesting or even perhaps useful. She brings out the Calvinist decorated lash at any hint of moral turpitude, her judgment being based on an ideology of inexperience and shortsightedness regarding practical realities which only deep religious conviction can bring.
This parochialism can poison life experience well beyond only the sexual matters which are contended. The story comes to mind of the woman who refused to learn a second language when it would have been of great advantage to her. "God writ the Bible in English, so its good enough for me!" she exclaimed when asked about her refusal. And this ignorant refusal is a characteristic of conservatism in general and manifests as the obstruction of anything progressive to the point of heavily promoting one's own detriment. The American Congress and dangerously psychotic clown car of Republican presidential candidates is a current example of going too far down this road.
But the chief problem with this puritanical stance is that it backfires, causing and aggravating the very thing it is meant to prevent. For example, when I was living in Arizona there came on the news one night a story about a Catholic pastor in Norwalk, Connecticut. He was up in arms about the church parking lot being used by the patrons of the nudie bar, the Zebra Club, across the street. He raised such a fuss in a short time about his moral inconvenience regarding the use of his parking lot that it had become national news, and I was hearing about it two-thirds of the way across the land. And there's no doubt that the story reached the opposite coast as well.
As it happened, I moved shortly thereafter to Stamford, CT for a job operating a small printing press. I had friends who lived in Norwalk, and on my way there one day I drove by the site of the contention storied on the newscast I saw in AZ. I was amazed at the number of vehicles around the club, and in the church parking lot. It was a weekday afternoon, so the cars in the parish lot hadn't brought their occupants to Sunday mass. But what struck me, beyond the number of cars, was the number of out-of-state plates on them! There were plates from at least seven adjacent and nearby states! I thought to myself: if the owner of that club has any sense of decency he would give the pastor of the appurtenant church a tithe for his excellent and very productive free advertising!
And thus it is with much of public moral revulsion. Yes, while there are heinous things that deserve our intelligence to be used to quash them, my experience is that most such public hoopla as is aimed at sexual behavior or other moral matters backfires in that it draws more attention to the problem, thus promoting it, as did the good pastor in Norwalk. Here, in nearby Placerville, there are even picketers yet protesting a situation which has been legally and economically gone for months! Such is the ideological mind, one which tends to operate on fear, rather than the circumspect assessment of actual facts and the understanding of human nature as such.
This misplaced furor of moral outrage is often centered on the wonderful phenomenon of women's breasts, which in their biological capacity are a kind of innocent bystanders in the contention surrounding them and how they are used or when they are seen or why. Such silliness extended to their uncovered wonders being of no contention in NatGeo to requiring pasties on images of statuary depicting white women. In the meantime, toddlers and school children feasted on the real thing as they passed them in the towns of Europe so blessed with public art.
We now know that after spending over a trillion fighting the marijuana cartels in Mexico, all we had to do was make it legal here. Now that part of the cartels hardly can do business. And we benefit here with the income that used to go there staying local and we also enjoy the indisputable health benefits of the plant where applicable. And while the main reason for banning weed was economical, its demonization was fueled by emotionalized propaganda. This kind of
"morality" is expensive on many levels.
So is the puritanism surrounding women's breasts. It is symptomatic of a much larger problem, the one manifesting as economic and other inequalities. But mostly it is symptomatic of a pathetic public immaturity about the biology and psychology of sex and relationship. Ultimately it is a failure in self-awareness, and therefore, social awareness, and above all a failure to love. We are not by any means a civilized people. Yes, we have toys, especially of destruction and consumption.
But we have not, on a public scale, the emotional and spiritual maturity to have a sense of proportion about things. We will make a public furor about seeing a breast, and not nearly a large of one about sex trafficking or genital mutilation, or the horrors of child bridery and the raping of women and children in war zones. As is often the case with this kind of false morality, the public priority is bass ackwards. It diverts from actual, real, and urgent issues. The exposure of women's breasts, feeding babies, or in pictures for information or pleasure is not the cover-up we need to be concerned about.
We have far more serious work to do. And it has to do with what wounds have been inflicted on the hearts and minds of millions by our ignorance and greed. We have not yet faced our actual enemy, projecting that on to another gender, Party, or country. Yet we discourage the kind of education and thoughtfulness that would lead to a resolution, an actual way forward, by engaging in mock skirmishes around diversionary bonfires lit well past the periphery of the actual battleground.
Tuesday, March 15, 2016
Tuesday, March 8, 2016
Arbor Economics and Your Taxes
I'm what might be called and arbor economist. That means that my understanding of economics comes from the nature of plants, trees in particular, as they were planted by my company in the desert. I came to this way of seeing the economy as a function of understanding that trees, like humans, are a circulatory life form.
Very briefly, what I came to understand is that the tipping point of whether a tree or any other plant made it, and beyond that remained healthy, was what I called its "poverty line". At a tree's poverty line it was no longer taking things up from the roots and was doomed. This was true even if the pretty leaves and flowers stayed green for a while. You see, the leaves feed the roots, as well as the roots feeding the rest of the tree. But if nothing comes from the leaves or the soil, which is part dead leaves giving up their nutrients, the entire tree dies.
Since we knew this, we always ensured that the roots got the bulk of the money invested in the planting of a tree. That always paid off, because that strategy gave the tree the wherewithal to make itself strong in the ground and do its job of transpiring what was needed upwards. As long as there was nourishment there, the tree prospered. You see, we had discovered the hard way that in proportion to the poverty of the roots, the whole organism suffered. It may not have looked for a while like it was suffering, but suddenly it all went bad if the situations wasn't corrected.
Is it any wonder, then, that even Adam Smith, the Guru of capitalism, said in his "Wealth of Nations" that there must be a mechanism to return wealth, cash, to the lowest levels. If that wasn't done, and too much accumulated at the top, the system becomes unstable and in danger of collapse. But no one is going to go first in an oligarchy (democracy?? Phffffffttt......) like ours. This is why there must be regulation and even a proportionally large government that many conservatives fear on misconstrued grounds.
So the tipping point of the health of the "National" tree could be said to be the poverty line. That is because that is where the stress which can topple the tree occurs. Why? because the most expensive thing to be in this economy is to be poor. And as a corollary, the most expensive thing in terms of the economic health of the rest of the tree is at the cost of the middle class, the trunk of the tree. While few seem to think of it this way, the cost of maintaining poverty is far greater than simply addressing it and taking care of it. How is that done? Several ways.
First, stop taking away the means that the poor could use to sustain the economy where they are. In other words, stop taxing anyone who is say 10% above the poverty line and below. That way they can, because hey *must*, spend their money locally. And of course, that money almost invariably goes up. Had the bail-out money of recent time gone to the poor, in short order it would have ascended to its actual recipients through the paper economy as people paid off their mortgages.
The benefit would have been that the collateral damage of the now defunct middle class wouldn't have happened due to the money passing trough their hands one way or another on is way up, constituting circulation. Circulation is radically (look up the root of that word) different than accumulation, which the bailouts functionally were. And as bailouts they were used not to repair the transport system within the Nation tree, but to parasitically suck life from other trees by means of tap roots in the worst sense of the word. While this may seem to work for a while, what it actually does is ensure that eventually not just one tree, but the entire forest goes down.
So another thing that can be done is to simply "give" everyone a living wage balanced against a guaranteed basic income equal to poverty + 10%. While it sounds expensive, we know that say giving small houses to the homeless is far cheaper than dealing with them on the street, in hospitals and in jails. Why? Because even with the small number of inevitable freeloaders the cost is far less than maintaining the services and dissonant attitudes surrounding their being on the street.
Many might decry giving anyone "free" stuff, but if they had the presence of mind to run some numbers it would be obvious that less would come out of the public pocket, ie taxes, for this than for deliberately maintaining poverty. The "free stuff" is cheaper because then all the things necessary for personal wellbeing and job possibilities come into play, like having an address, communication, and cleanliness.
Very briefly, what I came to understand is that the tipping point of whether a tree or any other plant made it, and beyond that remained healthy, was what I called its "poverty line". At a tree's poverty line it was no longer taking things up from the roots and was doomed. This was true even if the pretty leaves and flowers stayed green for a while. You see, the leaves feed the roots, as well as the roots feeding the rest of the tree. But if nothing comes from the leaves or the soil, which is part dead leaves giving up their nutrients, the entire tree dies.
Since we knew this, we always ensured that the roots got the bulk of the money invested in the planting of a tree. That always paid off, because that strategy gave the tree the wherewithal to make itself strong in the ground and do its job of transpiring what was needed upwards. As long as there was nourishment there, the tree prospered. You see, we had discovered the hard way that in proportion to the poverty of the roots, the whole organism suffered. It may not have looked for a while like it was suffering, but suddenly it all went bad if the situations wasn't corrected.
Is it any wonder, then, that even Adam Smith, the Guru of capitalism, said in his "Wealth of Nations" that there must be a mechanism to return wealth, cash, to the lowest levels. If that wasn't done, and too much accumulated at the top, the system becomes unstable and in danger of collapse. But no one is going to go first in an oligarchy (democracy?? Phffffffttt......) like ours. This is why there must be regulation and even a proportionally large government that many conservatives fear on misconstrued grounds.
So the tipping point of the health of the "National" tree could be said to be the poverty line. That is because that is where the stress which can topple the tree occurs. Why? because the most expensive thing to be in this economy is to be poor. And as a corollary, the most expensive thing in terms of the economic health of the rest of the tree is at the cost of the middle class, the trunk of the tree. While few seem to think of it this way, the cost of maintaining poverty is far greater than simply addressing it and taking care of it. How is that done? Several ways.
First, stop taking away the means that the poor could use to sustain the economy where they are. In other words, stop taxing anyone who is say 10% above the poverty line and below. That way they can, because hey *must*, spend their money locally. And of course, that money almost invariably goes up. Had the bail-out money of recent time gone to the poor, in short order it would have ascended to its actual recipients through the paper economy as people paid off their mortgages.
The benefit would have been that the collateral damage of the now defunct middle class wouldn't have happened due to the money passing trough their hands one way or another on is way up, constituting circulation. Circulation is radically (look up the root of that word) different than accumulation, which the bailouts functionally were. And as bailouts they were used not to repair the transport system within the Nation tree, but to parasitically suck life from other trees by means of tap roots in the worst sense of the word. While this may seem to work for a while, what it actually does is ensure that eventually not just one tree, but the entire forest goes down.
So another thing that can be done is to simply "give" everyone a living wage balanced against a guaranteed basic income equal to poverty + 10%. While it sounds expensive, we know that say giving small houses to the homeless is far cheaper than dealing with them on the street, in hospitals and in jails. Why? Because even with the small number of inevitable freeloaders the cost is far less than maintaining the services and dissonant attitudes surrounding their being on the street.
Many might decry giving anyone "free" stuff, but if they had the presence of mind to run some numbers it would be obvious that less would come out of the public pocket, ie taxes, for this than for deliberately maintaining poverty. The "free stuff" is cheaper because then all the things necessary for personal wellbeing and job possibilities come into play, like having an address, communication, and cleanliness.
They don't deserve "free stuff"? How did they lose what they had, these Veterans, these victims of Wall Street, or these people who went bankrupt due to astounding medical bills and expenses that ANYWHERE ELSE WOULDN'T EVEN BE A BLIP IN THEIR LIVES so they and theirs could continue to be productive, instead of being a drag on our wallet. These homeless people are not the problem. They are the result of the problem.
And part of the problem is the ignorance that maintains their poverty in the most financially extravagant way. That's partly why you pay 100 times more federal taxes to support profitable companies than to support social programs which would be much less expensive if we were direct about it all. We are already paying more to maintain poverty than we would with "free stuff" that would actually take care of the problem.
We just need to stop giving the "free stuff" to people already so rich that your middle-class mind can't begin to comprehend it. You may be right about not wanting to give away large portions of your money, but if that's true, you damn straight better understand who you are already bleeding it to. It's not the poor and jobless, not even 1 to 100. The 100 would be to banks, oil, and the MIC. Get it straight. You have *already* taken care of the financial end of the poverty problem; only you have been feeding the wrong end. Try taking care of the roots for once.
And part of the problem is the ignorance that maintains their poverty in the most financially extravagant way. That's partly why you pay 100 times more federal taxes to support profitable companies than to support social programs which would be much less expensive if we were direct about it all. We are already paying more to maintain poverty than we would with "free stuff" that would actually take care of the problem.
We just need to stop giving the "free stuff" to people already so rich that your middle-class mind can't begin to comprehend it. You may be right about not wanting to give away large portions of your money, but if that's true, you damn straight better understand who you are already bleeding it to. It's not the poor and jobless, not even 1 to 100. The 100 would be to banks, oil, and the MIC. Get it straight. You have *already* taken care of the financial end of the poverty problem; only you have been feeding the wrong end. Try taking care of the roots for once.
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