Oddly clueless

I wonder where Paddy Chayefsky is today?

I spent some time at a tea party get together.  I was bored.  I have never seen such undirected anger over the world's state and direction.  Everyone there was thoroughly and completed cheesed off about the economy, their retirement (or lack of the same), falling home prices, rising taxes, unemployment, etc. etc. etc.  None of the folks there really had any idea about how to solve the problems other than we should go back to the way things used to be and to "get government off our backs".

When I went around afterwards, trying to talk to folks about ideas, they were remarkably unwilling to talk about concrete ideas.  For the most part, they devolved into various groups of folks with a common recreation interest.  The fishing crowd was more interested in boats than ideas.  The hunting crowd was more concerned about guns than programs.  I found the off-roaders nearly incomprehensible.

Most of these folks just want their no-care, wrinkle-free lifestyle back.  They are all taking it in the shorts right now.  But the biggest reason they will fail isn't because they aren't angry, it is because they are bored with the give and take of politics.  They don't realize that all of this mess is a result of our democratic process, they just see the mess and want it to go away so that that they can return to their petroleum-fueled lives of recreation.

I think that the decisions that need to be made are beyond a lot of folks in this segment of the population.  They are not really interested in the democratic process.  They are interested in the preservation of their perceived perquisites and the maintenance of the status quo that has allowed them their status symbols.

Hence they are easy meat for those who are the biggest enemy of our liberties and our society.  These are the Sarah Palin's of the world.  Simplistic and ego driven, they pander to an inchoate demographic like the tea-baggers.  Simplistic solutions that will never work but are focus group tested are trotted out and turned aside just as quickly.

That is what I see happening next, these unsophisticated recro-commandos will buy into some manipulative, power-hungry demagogue who will promise them a return to the world that they want.  There will be an attempt to subvert the government to get more power.  It is my belief that the checks and balances of government may well be enough to hold off the attack, but they will be sorely tested.

Fall is here

I spent yesterday in a funk.  Got a bottle of red wine and spent a couple of hours on the phone talking to family.  As usual, this helped.

I think that it is normal this time of year.  Yesterday was a great indian summer day, so part of you is out in the sun, soaking up every erg of sunshine and trying to see how much of your daily supply of vitamin D you can manufacture.  Part of you needs to get inside and start the preparations for the fall and winter.   So the day was spent doing a little of both.  Neither were accomplished to my complete satisfation.

I just noticed that it is time to restock the freezer.  Gotta get some burgers and some more pork.  Might do me some good to get more frozen vegetables and if I read this article correctly, I might need to stock away a couple of cans of coffee.  I also need to stock up on malt for the winter brews so necessary for football season.  

So this next week I will probably be posting the fall cheapskate recipes.  Gotta fuel boys and myself in the fall.  There are things to accomplish.

When you don't want to write, other people seem to say what you want to say

Old Fat Man

I'm there.  Not all that pleased about it, not all that concerned either.  Whether I like it or not, I am not going to live forever, and from what I can see, the best days are far behind me.  

Bullshit on the idea of golden years.  We have created a mythos where old folks are somehow immune from the vagaries of the world, where they are to be protected by years of savings and a benevolent government.  The truth of the matter is that most folks didn't

• bother to save in the first place, choosing instead to live in the now.
• couldn't save, as they didn't make enough money to get by and salt stuff away.
• Life blindsided them with deaths, divorces, bad business deals, unemployment and other such things which drained them.
• any number of other reasons.

So now we have the standard life.  Where old folks gotta scramble harder than the other folks.  Now, in the mythical past, a lot of these would be taken into multi-generational households, where they would have a valued place that they could deal with, even with their physical limitations.  But that is past, state lines and a society that has atomized families has removed that option for a lot of folks.  

So, I think that a lot of us boomers better get used to the idea of working 'til we drop.  Oh some of us will retire according to the Madison Avenue dream world.  I raise my glass to these folks.  They are extraordinarily blessed.  

The Stone

The power structures that govern the world lives at a level far above us. I think that folks would be well served to plow through Ferdinand Braudel's magnum opus:

Civilization and Capitalism 15th-18th Century

The Structures of Everyday Life
The Wheels of Commerce
The Perspective of the World

The higher level structures are the flow of large-scale money. When we complain on these corporate-sponsored pages, we are flies circling an elephant, complaining about the shit that comes out of the animal.

We need to keep our eyes on the elephant. We really do have to do this. The elephant can crush us at any time, and we are meaningless to the elephant. This is why I think folks are getting so nervous, our individual actions mean nothing to the elephant, the elephants actions can directly affect us.

So, we have to watch the money flows at the level of capitalism. We must pay attention to the capital outflows in the stock market. We will have to monitor the price of oil and the supply of this essential. We will have to watch the shenanigans of the health care oligarchy and figure out how to slide by without feeding the insurance goons.

The overarching structures have become exceedingly complex. They are increasingly unstable and dangerous. Their failure will have real effects on our lives.

The only way that I can see through this is to simplify more rapidly than the rest of the world. The elephant will thrash around as it dies. Simplification will allow us the speed to react to the world that is fleeing away from us and adapt successfully to the new one that is rushing toward us.

All of the things that middle America has chosen as it's symbols are levels of complexity which will slow you down. Debt is nothing but chains attached to the stone. You must rid yourself of this surplus.

Time to get down to it.

You know, sometimes I just want to tell people to piss off.

Suppose that instead of handing out free money to 9.2 million unemployed, we hire them at minimum wage to spit at the moon.

 Mike Shedlock

This one is a bit of a rant.  Yes, I realize there is some inconsistency with past writings, but hell, the situation is so damn complex, with so many facets, I really can't keep it all in my head.

I was unemployed for around sixty months a couple of years ago.  I was an overqualified, fat, old man who was well-used to making big coin.  Needless to say, this is not the optimum way to  way a approach a job market.  But I am used to working, and having two ex-wives and a couple of teenage boys means that I need to work.  My social security sheet that they send me every years shows that I have been pretty good at it too.

So I drew my unemployment check.  Searched for jobs in a big way, took the first job that got offered.  At 40% of my old pay rate.  Sixty weeks into unemployment   The folks who walked out the door the same time as I did are still looking.  They mocked me at the time for taking a job beneath my station.  They recently ran out their 99 weeks.

So, that being said.  If an overqualified guy with nothing but excellent reports on work ethic and effort takes over a year to get a job paying well below what I made before, I would say that the data shows that the job market is complete shit and there aren't jobs there.

So reading Mike (Mish Shedlock) is never a way to make me amused.  Truthfully, this guy probably goes into a bathroom each and every night with a copy of Atlas Shrugged and pulls out the vaseline.  My God.  there are something like 11 million fewer jobs than there were in 2007.     Our factories are now in other countries.  There are scads of folks that would jump at any job offered.

So, while Wikipedia isn't perfect, it isn't all bad.

Cyclical or Keynesian unemployment, also known as deficient-demand unemployment, occurs when there is not enough aggregate demand in the economy. It gets its name because it varies with the business cycle, though it can also be persistent, as during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Cyclical unemployment is caused by a business cycle recession, and wages not falling to meet the equilibrium level. Cyclical unemployment rises during economic downturns and falls when the economy improves. Keynesians argue that this type of unemployment exists due to inadequate effective aggregate demand. Demand for most goods and services falls, less production is needed and consequently fewer workers are needed, wages do not fall to meet the equilibrium level, and mass unemployment results.

Some consider this type of unemployment one type of frictional unemployment in which factors causing the friction are partially caused by some cyclical variables. For example, a surprise decrease in the money supply may shock participants in society.

With cyclical unemployment, the number of unemployed workers exceeds the number of job vacancies, so that if even all open jobs were filled, some workers would remain unemployed. This kind of unemployment coincides with unused industrial capacity (unemployed capital goods). Keynesian economists see it as possibly being solved by government deficit spending or by expansionary monetary policy, which aims to increase non-governmental spending by loweringinterest rates.

In contrast, Austrian economists argue that government spending and policies are the root cause of economic cycles and cyclical unemployment and should be reformed or removed.

Classical economics rejects the conception of cyclical unemployment, seeing the attainment of full employment of resources and potential output as the normal state of affairs.^{[citation needed]}

Mish is an Austrian dude.  That means he is a Calvinist among economics.  The bad people (read here lazy unemployed) are to be shunned.  They have not pleased the God of money and must be made to suffer.  The people with jobs and income are the chosen, they have pleased the god of mammon and are allowed all things good.  They get to keep their tax breaks.

But, answer me this.  Mish is a stockbroker and a photographer of magazine covers.   When was the last time he looked for work in an economy where there are 10-11 million fewer jobs than three years before and 30 or so million other folks competing for them?  Has he ever seen an hungry kid while snapping his pictures of suburban gardens?  Has he ever stared at a bottle and wondered if he could stay away from hopelessness another day.

Take a good look at the graph that I lifted for John Williams "Shadowstats" website.  Just remember that each of those percentage points stands for 1.55 million souls.

Best I can figure, cuz the PTB and the blogarati don't put things in easy numbers, there are around 135 million job positions out there for around 155 million folks who want to work.  There are around 15 million of the current jobs that don't pay enough to make ends meet (part time or just plain really shitty).  There are around 6 million folks who have given up looking.

So Shedlock's view is that we cut off all government and all support for everyone and the market will magically fix everything.  Hose all current employees.  Cut off all government programs.  Baby goes out with the bathwater thank you very much.

That is the real trouble with reading the economic blogs.  They talk about the stock market and the bond market.  They speak of Keynesian schools and Austrian schools.  Stimulus versus shock therapy is all the rage over canapes.  They have the coin, that proves they are virtuous.  The rest of us poor trash can suffer because that is our lot.

The rest of us work. Or starve

Just to piss folks off, the Muslims are even above Mish in this one.  Muhammad was speaking of orphans in this one, but I am reasonably certain that the thought carries over

"To improve their lot is best; if you have any dealings with them, [remember] they are your brethren. God distinguishes the plunderer from the improver."

So..thinking that health care isn't a part of the government

First take a peak at this:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703946504575470001733933356.html?mod=e2tw

And then, consider this definition

In antiquity, publicans (Latin publicanus (singular); publicani (plural)) were public contractors, in which role they often supplied the Roman legions and military, managed the collection of port duties, and oversaw public building projects. In addition, they served as tax collectors for the Republic (and later the Roman Empire), bidding on contracts (from the Senate in Rome) for the collection of various types of taxes. Importantly, this role as tax collectors was not emphasized until late into the history of the Republic (c. 1st century BC). The publicans were usually of the class of equites.

At the height of the Republic's era of provincial expansion (roughly the first and second centuries BC until the end of the Republic) the Roman tax farmingsystem was very profitable for the publicani. The right to collect taxes for a particular region would be auctioned every few years for a value that (in theory) approximated the tax available for collection in that region. The payment to Rome was treated as a loan and the publicani would receive interest on their payment at the end of the collection period. In addition, any excess (over their bid) tax collected would be pure profit for the publicani. The principal risk to the publicani was that the tax collected would be less than the sum bid.

Now, consider the recently passed Affordable Health Care Act.  But, be aware, I am opposed to this act, but not for the reason most folks hate it.  I like Canada's system.  I also like Britains system.  I also have no problem whatsoever with telling folks they can't live forever and we can't fix that.  I also want to break up big Pharma and its bastard stepchild diagnostics and medical equipment.  And don't get me started on that convocation of whores called the FDA.

No, Why I hate this damn thing is that it formally sells the right to tax farming for health care to the insurance companies.  Americans are forced to give them money (read here: TAX) and what makes it even sweeter for the folks who bought this bill is that the guvmint will pony up for those who don't have the ante.

Poor Babies

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/can-a-family-of-four-survive-on-a-middle-class-income-in-america-today

Give me an F%^$*& break. If you can't get by with $4K clear a month, you are a spoiled shit and you are living beyond your means.

When I read crap like this, I just want to explode. What this is saying is that all the material crap that folks gauge their “lifestyle” around is good and right and fair. It is none of those things.

Look folks, the generations that count here, the boomers, and the x-ers and the nintendo kids and whatever they call the new one are of the opinion that the world can't change around them. The world doesn't care what they think. The world has changed. The boomers set up the deal so that they would live a gilded lifestyle. They passed on that thought to their kids. It just ain't true.

I for one could get on nicely on $50,000 a year. Matter of fact, I would be living large and salting away for the cold times. Jesus, I even have two teenagers and can do it.

Labor Day

Getting into Labor Day is always a bit of a problem for me. Especially when I haven't really had a vacation that year. That is where I am right now.

But sometimes you just don't get no steenking vacation. This is one of the really sucky parts of life. A lotta folks, including yours truly, had better come to grips with this one. Unless you go camping and live just like you do at home, the idea of jetting off somewhere to live the high life for a week or so is probably going to go the wayside for the greater majority of those around us.

Oh, don't for a minute get me wrong here, I don't dislike vacations elsewhere. But unless you are pretty damn well off, you just probably won't be able to afford them. Cruises, motels, airline travel, all that kinda stuff are disposable in a pinch. It really is a luxury.

I don't think that folks are ready to drop these just yet, they have a bit of legs to them still. You see, folks still see themselves as needing rewards and down time. Vacations provide this. They also need to feel that they are worthy of pampering and feeling important. The service industry created around this mirage has provided young hotties their tips and restaurant kitchen cocaine and marijuana for years now. But the edifice is cracking.

This kind of stuff has always been disposable. It is a luxury appropriate to good times. We really aren't there anymore.

I will miss the room service.

Beyond Cool....I gotta build One

I have been wandering into this place for over two years now, they just keep coming up with cooler and cooler ideas.

I really don't know how things will shake out in the not to near future, but being able to build something like this is maybe something that will help you.  Even if the world marches off to a bright and shiny future, the act of building something like this lets you make something concrete in a world of ephemera.

Couple this with a garbo plant and you might be onto something.

http://openfarmtech.org/weblog/2010/08/steam-engine-prototype-1-design/#more-2415

An Ominous Sign

Indeed my friends, these are portents of doom.

Claudius brought these to my attention.  The Palin phenomenon has always been appalling to me, and the reality show scene is odd beyond all belief.  Trashy bimbo with more ambition than sense meet man-ho from Jersey.  

This cannot be allowed.

Linked below, Gawker stories about Bristol Palin and Jersey Shore's "The Situation" appearing together on Dancing With The Stars. As I said, I feel the Palins and Jersey Shore are two separate bubbles of unreality that should never overlap, and I fear their coming together in this way could disrupt the fabric of the universe in ways no one can foresee. 

 http://gawker.com/5622734/bristol-palin-will-dance-with-stars

 

http://gawker.com/5619919/the-situation-is-a-walking-cash-machine

Circuses

Now we need to talk about something important.

We have always had bread and circuses. I don't think that it is in the best interests, but, such is life. So todays tangent has to do with the circus aspect, In particular, American football (or, as I speak of it, real football, not a bunch of femmy little eurotrash scoooorrrrriiiinnnggg). American football is a circus worth watching, it really is one of my great loves.

I think that the Raiders will make the playoffs this year. You have to give me 2:1 odds. $5.00 only.

I will also accept bets at 14:1 that they will be in the AFC Championship Game. Again $5.00 only.

I will also accept bets at 120:1 that the Raiders will play the Forty-Niners in the super bowl. $1.00 bets only.

Bet will only be accepted from folks who have left a comment on this blog in the past, I ain't a damn bookie, merely a fool.

Go Raiders!

Hors de Combat

So I have been pondering the way that we treat government employees (like a protected fiefdom) and I have come to the conclusion that we have a time-tested means of dealing with the problems we are facing there.

I really think that the core of the problem is considering government employment to be a lifetime affair. Truth be known, this approach really can't work. The government will wax and wane as part of the greater cycle. The needs of the government will change as time and history change around it.

Government has become bloated through mismanagement. That much is certain. But the people within government, with their permanent status and their unrealistic perceptions of protection and workload have become part of the problem. In a nutshell, government sinecures, once achieved, have become a right, not a privilege and a responsibility.

The armed forces have always had a means of dealing with this problem. Fixed-length re-enlistment contracts allow the military to get rid of folks who aren't up to snuff. I cannot tell you how many folks I know who absolutely hate this system. They are also the people who the military has chosen to reject.

But, the truth of the matter is, you do not have a right to permanent employment in the government, either the military branch or the civilian branch. It really doesn't matter what you think your rights are, if you don't fit anymore, if you don't provide a needed service, you get to leave. Your opinions about your performance and suitability are in no way important to the needs of the people.

Above all, government service is and honor and a duty. You are there because you serve the needs of the people. Your needs, wants, and plans are, and forever must be, secondary to the needs of the people you serve. In 99.9% of cases, your worth is directly related to performing your assigned tasks in a manner that allows the law, as written, to be well-executed.

If your retirement plans are going to bankrupt the rest of the populace, your retirement plans must change. If your need for security keeps you in a job which is no longer needed, your needs must take a rear seat.

The Republic is in jeopardy. A person who lauds a soldier for sacrifice while unwilling to accept that their petty wants may be hors de combat in times of the Repubic's need shows that your really don't understand the nature of service.

So, I think that all government positions be placed on four-year enlistments. A re-enlistment may be refused at any time. It is time to end the permanent status of all government employees.