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Teenaged Angst

One of the hardest things to execute is leaving a bad-tempered teenager alone when they are in a bad mood.

The younger is playing football this year and he is finding out just how little coaches care about those unannointed who play on the second team.  A sophomore on varsity is an accomplishment, but you are a long-term project and not to be confused with the money-in-the-bank starters.  Good sound management by the coaching staff, but the sophomore in question is not amused and throwing off bad vibes like only a wounded teenager can sulk.

So I am sitting downstairs getting ready for the end of summer and getting one boy into college and nursing a wounded ego through his first intimation that he is not in fact the center of the universe.

I should have gotten dachshunds.

Feeling Uninspired

I have been writing last minute posts a lot lately.  I want to say that the problem is lack of inspiration is behind the problem, but the truth of the matter is that I want to present a decent set of proposals to go along with the problems that I outline.  It appears that the problems that I am seeing do not really lend themselves to a palatable solution.

So right now I am just writing a  way to take a break in place.  Sometimes a short bit of writing clears out the pipes.  Solutions can come out of framing the problem properly and then thinking about it for a while.  I think that if Marx would have done this and waited around to come up with a better solution set than his written plan, we might have had a better chance at coming up with a mature solution

The superlative framing of the problems proffered by capitalism is Marx and Engles brilliant contribution to human culture.  The precise and cogent description of capitalisms failings and end points are the long-lasting draw of this political philosophy.  It is just such a pity that their solutions are so damn lame.

Mostly I can’t trust either of the candidates.  Not that I have anything resembling trust for any of the politicians that serve themselves here in my native land, but the two major party candidates are even less worthy of trust than the usual crop that grows up every four years.  I have been noticing a remarkable decline in quality of late.  The democrats have become even more pathetic than republicans of late.  But the difference in lameness and sneakiness is miniscule, measured in picograms and femtomoles

 

But Romney creeps me out.  He is every sleazy glad-handing, piece of mormon trash that I grew up with in Utah.  I like and respect Mormons as a general rule, half of my family has converted and I love them dearly, but that religion produces the creepiest, slimiest, greediest and most immoral “businessmen” that you can possibly imagine.   

 

I don’t know why this is. 

Why is it?

The VA just began providing WiFi in the waiting rooms.  Now when it is down, people come in and yell bloody murder.

 

Where is it written that provision of Internet is a responsibility of an organization?

 

Churn (Partie Deux)

So, Nohype sent this little nugget the other day in another post.

I'm not sure you're going far enough down your decision tree. GDP is a macro measurement of churn -- that is, how fast we can turn over our capital base. This measurement system rewards those who can figure out how to create the shortest possible product lifecycles with the lowest input costs (i.e.: maximum externalization of costs).  

If we measured actual standing wealth, the entire paradigm might shift. Durable goods might actually become durable. As such, the economy would be based on servicing and maintaining existing capital, rather than churning it as fast as possible in to landfills.

So that got me really thinking about how the way we tax, spend and value in this country has become completely ass-backward in the past thirty years.

The core of the problem is the idea of the income tax itself.  By it's very nature, this kind of tax is regressive.  The Romney's and the Bushes sure as hell don't pay a significant amount of their wealth to the state.  Nope, it is the same as the gabelle of the ancien regime.  A simple way for tax collector to make sure that the little folks are thoroughly sheared while the big folk guard their wealth.

We look at the churn of the GDP and the income taxes.  These are measures of "churn" as Russell so eloquently phrases it.  It is not a measure of productivity of capital, it is a measure of money moving through the system.  This country has significantly less productive capacity than it did in my youth, yet our moving our factories overseas, outsourcing our work, and going in debt up to our eyeballs has led us to have a higher GDP than when I was in my salad days

I think that a much more fair way to deal with the tax issue is to tax wealth.  There are folks out there who pay a no taxes or minimal percentage of their net worth every year because they have huge amounts of investments, savings, and land.  But you mention taxing wealth and making the wealthy shoulder their share of the load and then you have a huge roar of outrage.

You see, taxing income is just a way of saying that we are going to stick it to the little folks.

Now this is going to ruffle a few feathers

http://defensedistributed.com/

Hmmm   I can't really say what I think just yet.

This posted has been lying around in my blogger lumber yard for quite some time now.  So this gives you some insight into my thought process.  The quote and post is from Russell over at Reflexiones Finales. 

People, in general, lie a lot. When they are placed in a situation of where there is an inequality or asymmetry of information or knowledge, you tend to see a lot of lying.   For example, in construction specialists often have unique knowledge about pricing and methods.  They have an incentive, and the system tends to work toward reinforcing that incentive, to use that information to their advantage.

Since the world is a big and complicated place, and most people would rather not take the time to learn much about it, there is an advantage to feeding them dross.

I was originally going to dress up this quote with a blast against the banks and the banking industry.  Fertile ground there.  But after a while, the bile just wasn't flowing....I left it in the "drafts" folder and thought about it some more.

Then I was going to take it to Obama and the way that information trickles out of the government.  But then I got to thinking about the nature of the presidency, the structure of the separation of power, and the need to parse syllogisms a la Alcibiades in order to maintain some kind of power in a structure deliberately designed to cripple the participants.   Getting colder there.

So, a couple of cups of tea later, I lit upon the actual professional government "barony" that controls the individual departments of the government.  These aren't the political place-man that occupy the Office of the Secretary, but rather the "Senior Executive Service" of the FedGuv Ranch.  

These are the folks with their hands on the physical levers.  They fight viciously for budget, and their pay and power derive from the incremental growth of their fiefdoms.  This is where the revolving door in and out of industry lies.  This is where the bloated budget numbers and mission creep begin.  This is the area that will be last to be shown the door.

The truth about the murky nature of government is that it will always end up being a desperate clutching at power by people who are trying to rise to the top.  The ones at the top are pretty easy to monitor.  Obama, Bush, Clinton, Bush, etc are in their place to draw the eyes away from the men playing with the levers.

Do you really think that Obama chooses the drone kill targets?  No, there is a person out there with a knowledge of secrets and access to power that allows him to slide the names across the desk for signature.  

Those are the folks that do the bulk of the lying and dissimulation.  It is their one and only hold on power.

If I had one book to recommend right now, it would have to be Simon Schama's chronicle of the French Revlution “Citizens”. It really is an important read because of the way that the US has come to closely resemble to idiosyncracies of Ancien Regime France.  When you read this book around the same time as you reread "A Tale of Two Cities", you really begin to get an idea of what a complete nutbag turn a revolution can take.  

The aristocracy that was so blatant in 17th and 18 century France has as its analogue here in the US a hidden upper class of wealth and prestige which has spent the thirty years since the “Reagan Revolution” solidifying it's perquisites and power. Reagen told them theat Gordon Gecko was right. Milton Friedman created an ersatz intellectual basis . Bill Clinton, Larry Summers and Robert Rubin drove a stake in the heart of the American middle class and set up the looting of the country by a class swollen with wealth and self-importance.

Now, I am not saying that the working class in the US has anything like the misery and the grinding poverty of the French peasantry, but I think that what we have to deal with here is the loss of percieved prerogatives, relative loss of wealth and status, and the blatant disregard for their complaints by a disaffected majority.  

  

The Common Clay

So, I'm driving home yesterday at rush hour on I-5 out of Portland.  We have a vanpool, five of us pitch in and rent a subsidized van from the local bus company so that we can save some coin and get to work (The VAspa in Portland is notorious for it's parking problems).  There is no bus available as all of us have to get to work before 05:30

On the way home, stuck in a slowdown by the I-5 bridge, a singleton SUV (one of the huge Fords from the mid-90's) pulled up next to us and gave us an earful about the tax dollars we were wasting and how parasites like us were the problem with the country.  Guy was probably fatter than I was, the bumper of his SUV was covered with bumper stickers excoriating liberal causes.

Sometimes I just wonder.

Long time coming, long time gone

I think that we have made some decidedly good choices here in the land of the free.  They just have long term digestion cycles.  And we are having some unintended consequences and a bit of indigestion in the process.

Most of these choices are of recent origin.  I think that the sixties are when we began to make the changes which caused the whole series of conundrums that we are now facing.

It was an odd decade for certain.  Folks my age like to point out the freedoms that we gained.  I will even grant them that point.  The end of the Jim Crow laws and the entry of women into the greater world was a big plus.  The opposition to the Vietnam war brought the close to a poorly thought-out and poorly managed piece of stupidity.

But what came with these "wins" was a series of changes that temporarily crippled our society and will take generations to repair, but that repair is possible.   The changes were the right thing to do, but the execution and the downstream effects still hang on.

Banishment of the Jim Crow laws were morally correct.  But the desire to disenfranchise the recipients of this change will take another fifty or so years to fully implement with all the concomitant pushback we continue to see.  The folks that were granted political equality will continue to struggle for social equality.

Women's rights were necessary and just, but we will have to take some time to debone the changes to the industrial workforce and come to grips with the undershoot and overshoot of the differing aspects of this change (eg sexual and reproductive issues, fully implemented equality etc.).  A lot of the employment issue that we see today wouldn't exist  under the old system of male at work/female at home.   But I would like a smart woman working next to me rather than a stupid male.

Ending the war in Vietnam was the first cracks in the empire.  We keep trying, but having seen the problems in Vietnam and the long-term uselessness of the war allows us now to better address the continuing attempts at empire by the elite.  We have learned much about how to challenge our government, they have learned much on how to defuse that challenge.

We haven't failed at any of these things.  We just haven't succeeded yet.  The doing will take another couple of generations.  The rich and powerful will fight back bitterly at any challenge to the perquisites, privileges, and prerogatives.  The poor and unequal will try to take what is rightfully theirs.

Keeping the lid on while we come to a working solution will be a lot of work.

churn

So, Nohype sent this little nugget the other day in another post.

I'm not sure you're going far enough down your decision tree. GDP is a macro measurement of churn -- that is, how fast we can turn over our capital base. This measurement system rewards those who can figure out how to create the shortest possible product lifecycles with the lowest input costs (i.e.: maximum externalization of costs). 
If we measured actual standing wealth, the entire paradigm might shift. Durable goods might actually become durable. As such, the economy would be based on servicing and maintaining existing capital, rather than churning it as fast as possible in to landfills.

Mish and other such

Mike Shedlock has always been a sort of bete noir for your humble correspondent.  I read his blog every day and use it to simultaneously increase my knowledge of the world around me and to replenish my overstock of bile.

Recently, the lovely and talented Russell**, reviewed an article written by Mr. Shedlock, and the article got me to thinking about the way that things are looked at in this country.

Mish in the article bemoans the lack of manufacturing jobs and the surfeit of government jobs.  First and foremost, this country is absolutely awash in manufactured shit.  A trip to the dump lets one see firsthand the amount of shit that we throw away.   A trip to the store lets us see all of the manufactured shit we have available to buy. 

My feeling is that adding more manufacturing jobs will just add to the pile of unnecessary that currently defines our lives.  Yes, we can bring back the manufacturing jobs of iPads and salad shooters from China.  We can bring back the call center jobs from India.  But what precisely will this do?

All of the jobs that we want to bring back are the jobs that no one here really wanted in the first place.  I have worked in factories in China and those folks put up with crap like you haven't seen.  They are aid squat wages and are treated like crap.  Assembling your iPad or iPhone is not a job that anyone in America will do for the pay required to adequately pad Apple’s bottom line.  The pollution and environmental damage that China willingly imported from us would have to come back here to your hometown.

So, really what we have here is a decision tree.  If we want full employment in the manufacturing sector, we have to bring back with the manufacturing a whole plethora of environmental and societal issues brought about by environmental degradation and low wages.  If we keep the current structure, we will have to keep a high ratio of government employment to fend off unacceptable rates of overall unemployment.

Really, what Mr. Shedlock, and his market-based panacea offers us is a return to the age of the robber barons.  Low wages, small government services, grinding poverty and the rise of the new plutocrats.
What the current model offers us is a steady decline into a banana republic, with crippled manufacturing, overweening government controls, and steady erosion of living standards among the general populace.

I am hoping that we will manage to come up with another alternative, but the political setting seems to be headed to a showdown between these two equally distasteful alternatives.  I wish that it wasn't so, but it sure looks like that is the way that it is going to roll.

It is important to remember that Mr. Shedlock writes to a defined market segment.  He speaks openly of returns on investment, stock purchasing strategies, and the nature of the current economic structure.   His blog is written for the rentier class and those who aspire to it.  The needs and desires of the people for whom the blog is written for are not coincident with those of the greater majority of people who inhabit this country.

** the picture is a tribute to one of Russell’s endearing habits