On The Money; What’s Wrong With Economists

On The Money;

Economics for the 99%

What’s Wrong With Economists

Most economists write for policy wonks, not regular people. While they study consumer behavior and worker productivity, they have little, if anything, to say to consumers or workers. They might have something to say to voters, but only because they endorse a policy favored by a particular candidate. Economists write their books for the candidates, the political think-tanks, the rich and powerful and their advisers, but not for us, the 99%.

 

While economists may have some respect for you as a voter, as a worker, producer and consumer, you are simply a pawn to them. Something to be pushed around by fiscal policy, corporate coercion, and government taxation. Your life, energy, time, creativity and spirit mean no more to them than so many barrels of oil, tons of molybdenum or bushels of corn, and they don’t write economics books for bushels of corn.

 

To economists you are just a commodity to be bought and sold, consumed and discarded, just another anonymous drone, toiling away at meaningless work, in an empty life that you fill with pointless consumption. They don’t want you to read their books. They want you to go shopping, and let them, along with Americas smartest and greediest, worry about what’s best for the economy.

 

As a result, we now have an economy engineered entirely to help the richest and greediest acquire more. This economy demands that the rest of us sacrifice more and more of our lives, and our planet, every year, for their benefit. No, economists don’t want us to read their books, they want us to spend more time at work, more money for housing, and more money for health care. They want us to accept lower wages, give up job security, and to get used to being disposable.

That’s how they save “the economy”. As soon as we get used to working longer and harder for less, accept the destruction of the environment as a necessary evil, and learn to step around the human garbage left in their wake, the economy will be fine. Isn’t that great! As long as we’re willing to sacrifice our lives for it, the economy will be just fine.

Yet, too many of us still worry about “the economy”. Is it growing? How fast is it growing? Are prices rising? How’s the stock market? Who worries about us?

Why does it cost so much, just to have a place to live? How do the long hours I spend at work affect my family? How much of my current lifestyle would I choose, were I not economically coerced into working full time? How will global climate change affect my quality of life, or my children’s? Mightn’t I appreciate a clean environment more, if I had more time to enjoy it? Should I participate in a system in which I have no value, except as an exploitable resource? Why should economic growth trump all of these real human concerns? Whose job is it to think about these things? Not economists, that’s for sure.

How can you leverage maximum productivity from employees? How will environmental regulation effect energy prices? How does depression and suicide effect corporate earnings? That’s how economists look at these problems, and that’s why economists suck.

In On The Money, Economics For the 99%, I take the radical position that economics is about people, and how they interact with each other and the environment. Instead of simply looking for ways to help the rich and powerful increase, and accelerate the flow of money into their own bank accounts, On The Money; Economics for the 99% exposes the fundamental flaws in the capitalist system that have led to the gross inequality, and catastrophic environmental destruction that define our time. On the Money; Economics for the 99% shows you how to reclaim your life and liberate the world from the greedy clutches of the 1%, one step at a time.

Occupy Wall St., The Opportunity of a Lifetime

Occupy Wall St., the Opportunity of a Lifetime

 

I really want to acknowledge the amazing phenomena that started on Wall St.,but is now spreading all over the country. I support the 99%, 100%. I think the Occupy Wall St., and Occupy Everywhere campaign are great ideas, both conceptually and tactically. Possession is 95% of the law. Wherever you stand is liberated territory. So, I think its great to take back this land by occupying it.

 

I think this is also a great tactic for people confronting foreclosure crisis. There’s a good chance that your bank cannot prove they own the home you have stopped paying for, in which case, it is now rightfully yours, free and clear. Don’t walk away from it now, just because you got some threatening letters. You might be sitting pretty, right where you are, in a couple years, if you stand your ground now.

 

If you are under water in your mortgage, find out if your bank can actually produce the deed, if not, stop paying and call it yourn. If you don’t have a place to live, take your tent and tarp to the Occupation taking place near you. Liberate some territory and occupy it. You have as much right to inhabit the space beneath your feet as anyone, so stand your ground.

 

I know nobody gives a fuck what I think about tactics. I just think these protesters deserve some attention and appreciation right now, and I encourage everyone to support them any way they can.

 

Now, I’ve seen protest movements come and go, but there’s something different about this one that makes me think that they may succeed where others have failed. For one, I like the fact that no one single issue dominates the discussion.

 

What are they protesting? What have you got? Wars, government corruption, dirty elections, racial injustice, environmental collapse, gender inequality, unemployment, housing, health care, wages, the wealth gap and corporate capitalism for starts. They recognize that all of it is important, and all of it is entwined in one rotten system, and they have finally focused on getting to the root of it all. That looks like a major step forward to me.

 

Another major change in the Occupy Wall St. movement, is the protesters themselves. If you went to any of the big anti-war marches just before the start of the Iraq war, or just about any protest rally, anywhere in the country, you saw the same fading has-been baby boomers who have protested everything since the Vietnam war.

 

When you get them all together, they are the most insufferable bunch of louts that ever walked the face of the earth. Between their nostalgia for “the ’60s”, self-congratulatory attitude, and complete obliviousness to class issues like soaring housing prices and sinking wages, these gray, baby-boomer hippie-fascists do more to crush young people’s spirits than they do to smash the state.

 

Fortunately most of the boomers have gotten too old and creeky to sleep comfortably in a tent for weeks at a time, and they have not yet added RV hookups to the occupation at Foley Square. At least so far, you don’t see too many of them skulking around in their tweed jackets handing out copies of Plowshares Magazine.

 

“Thank God” I say. These people haven’t had an original idea in thirty years, they remain as effete and ineffectual as ever, and they get uglier every day. If those old boomer protest-vermin have any presence in the Occupy Wall St. movement, people have had the good sense not to photograph them.

 

Instead, who do we see at Occupy Wall St.? Lots and lots of hot-looking young women! You can imagine how much more attractive a movement crawling with hot chicks is, compared to one full of wrinkled, liver-spotted baby boomers. This movement looks more like a Tori Amos concert at Spring Break than any protest march we’ve seen in recent decades.

 

Take my advice. If you are a single young guy, Occupy Wall St. may well be THE BEST TIME OF YOUR ENTIRE LIFE. Standing up to authority is a huge turn-on for these women. Right now, a lot of guys are discovering that taking a stand can get you laid. They are learning, right now, why all of those baby boomers are so nostalgic for “the’60s”.

 

These women don’t care whether you have a job, or a degree. They don’t care whether you have a car or an apartment. They are hot for revolution, and you can be a revolutionary. So, get yourself a tent, a tarp and a box of condoms and head for Zuccotti Park. to join the “girls gone wild” Occupation.

On The Money, Double-Dip or Banana Split

On The Money

Financial Advice for the Working Class

“Double Dip” or “Banana Split”

I read an article by Paul Krugman recently. In it he expressed the opinion that a “double dip” recession is almost inevitable now. I think, however, that we should go for the “banana split” instead.

 

Paul Krugman’s predictions did not surprise me. What surprised me, was that the guy who played Oscar Madison on The Odd Couple, and Quincy, on Quincy, is now a Nobel Prize winning economist. The guy has won Emmys, played an Oscar, and now he’s won a Nobel Prize. What a guy!

 

So, according to Quincy, the US economy will almost certainly slide back into recession later this year or early in 2012. I can understand why bloodsucking capitalists might fret about this, but it sounds like good news to me.

 

For one thing, people turn into assholes when they think the are rich. The whole housing bubble turned a lot of people into assholes. The downturn in’08 really put a stop to that epidemic, but another downturn could really help build character.

Unfortunately, we have bigger problems than stupid assholes who think they are rich. So many of the real environmental problems in the world are linked to the economy. As the economy slows, we burn less oil, generate less emissions, produce fewer toxins, cut fewer trees, mine fewer minerals, and destroy less habitat. The best part of all, is that the slower the economy goes, the easier it is to stop it altogether.

 

The “smart banana” knows that without the global economy, even war becomes a manageable problem. Of course we’ll still hate each other. We just won’t be able to pay people to fight, nor will we be able to afford bullets, bombs, airplanes or missiles. Without the big budgets made possible by the global economy, war becomes a lot less attractive and draws fewer participants. This makes war a much more intimate personal experience geared towards truly motivated enthusiasts. I think everyone would agree that this would be a major improvement.

 

So this economy turns people into assholes and everything else into poisonous garbage, why on earth did we invest so much in this economy to begin with? I think most people would say that the single most beneficial achievement of the modern economy is an elevated standard of living. Running water, flush toilets, houses with thermostatically controlled heating and two cars in the driveway, because the garage is full of stuff, that sort of thing.

 

40 years ago, a guy with a high school diploma, could afford to provide that standard of living for his whole family. His wife had time to wash his clothes, cook his meals, clean the house and take care of the kids, because she didn’t need to work to help pay the bills. The whole family had full medical coverage, including dental, and no one knew what a co-pay was. He had a pension, and could afford to send a kid to college, or bail them out of jail, or a little of both.  Of course we all know that was a totally unsustainable lifestyle.

 

The jobs sucked. They were dirty, loud, repetitive and dangerous to your health. Long work hours often involved working overtime or graveyard shift. The houses mostly sucked too. They consumed too much energy, and required too much maintenance. People worked harder for their homes than their homes did for them, but they at least had homes.

 

Today, most workers with a high-school diploma, can’t afford an apartment, let alone a home. So you live in a room, that you don’t own, or a van that you do. If you have a girlfriend, and you both work, you can maybe afford an efficiency apartment. You can’t afford to get married, even if you want to. You have no pension plan, no savings, and no job security. If you have health insurance, a big if, you probably have a large enough copay that you can’t afford to go to the doctor anyway, and the jobs still suck. If you have kids, you probably get food stamps, but please don’t have kids.

 

Because, if we don’t stop this economy in its tracks, right now, while its down, its going to be ten times worse for the next generation. When your parents or grandparents decided to invest in the economy, they got something for it. Capitalists figure that you’ll continue to go through the motions, just like your folks did, even though you aren’t getting anything for it, because they think of you as a Pavlovian dog with a lifetime of conditioning that they paid for, and a weak brain.

 

Clearly this economy is a bad deal, and its only getting worse. When they talk about austerity plans, entitlement reform and belt tightening, the smart banana says”fuck the belt” and gets rid of the pants. Corporate capitalism is a loud pair of plaid bell-bottoms, that never fit well and couldn’t look more stupid. They have to go.

 

Every day we go to work we drive another nail in our own coffin. Every dollar we spend gives them one more bullet to use against us. So, don’t fret about the double dip, just make like the smart bananas, and split. A better world is just around the corner, you just have to walk away from this one to find it.