Just maybe we are in for an unconventional turn of events in the on-going saga about the world economy. Just as Ground Hog Day is used as a predictor of how much longer winter will last past February 2nd, it now seems that how high women’s heels are is no longer a measure or reflector of how well the economy is doing. In an article I just read in Daily Finance (http://www.dailyfinance.com/2011/11/21/low-heels-will-spike-this-winter-countering-recession-trend/) historically, high heels would “spike” during recessions, but this winter, they will go flat according to this article. Did they spike traditionally out of hope, in order to provide a longer view, in order to suggest to the stock market that it too should spike instead of redline? Who knows? What we do know is that the projected lower profile or center of gravity for women’s shoes must be a harbinger of something. In fact, it not only is a reflection of new developments on the horizon, it is very much a precipitous event that will set in motion a chain of events of global proportions.
Perhaps it is merely a reflection of the subconscious acceptance by fashion that the world is becoming flat, as Thomas Friedman predicted in his book, The World is Flat. Or perhaps it is a forecasting indicator that the haves are lowering their profile and preparing to be more like the 99% of the rest of us. Will the “one percenters” still wear spikes, or will they lower themselves and their expectations and regain their humanity in some way? Will they be shamed into being less extravagant in order to appear more modest, even if they keep their 90 percent of the wealth? In any case, low heels are in. Whether or not the well-heeled follow the trend remains to be seen. As F. Scott Fitzgerald said in ‘The Rich Boy”: "Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.”
All of this may seem absurd on the surface, and no one wants to be measured by a heel let alone become one. Yet, there is something “freakonomic” about the whole idea. It is taking one aspect of human behavior and trying to apply it to a whole other context. Given the ideas and fears that send the stock market skyrocketing one day and augering in the next, a connection between the height of heels and the economy is not so far-fetched. What it suggests is the human tendency toward cause-effect as the default way secular beings “reason” when we really do not know. Religious beings simply turn to God or the “chosen text” (Bible, Koran, etc) for an answer. In any case, it will be interesting to see how many of us heel to this theory and whether or not it signals any healing in the economy.
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Greek Mythology Cannot Hold a Candle
It is no wonder the Greeks are in trouble financially. It all began with ancient Greek civilization and their belief in polytheism. They had all sorts of gods like Zeus, Apollo, Hera, and Poseidon. They were not perfect gods by any means and often imitated human behavior. In other words, they were projections of human beings on a screen writ large and given immortality to boot. Lately, the Greeks turned their will and their lives over to the care of politicians who promised them an Elysian Field full of benefits they could not pay for, and now the Greeks are going to suffer drastically for their folly.
Why is it we humans invite gods into our lives and then allow them to rise and take over our lives? Here in America today we have allowed the development of titan corporations and banks that appear to be headless when you look at them but nonetheless are more powerful than any gods the Greeks could conjure up. America’s gods are real, and they are allowed to run rampant over our thought-processes, our values, and our well-being.
Much of this can be laid at the feet of monotheism. By proclaiming that there is only one true God, we have lain ourselves open to allowing corporations to become real gods in our midst. We cannot see them as such because of our predominant belief system. We cannot believe a corporation could possibly become a god. There is no such thing because there is more than one corporation and there can be only one god. It’s a beautiful set-up for corporations. They can go about the business of gobbling each other up, shipping their profits off-shore, finding cheaper workers in other countries, and swallowing politicians from both parties because corporations have been declared legal persons and therefore are human, not god-like. We cannot see the gods they are because of the human label we have bequeathed.
We have made some of them gods in another way by proclaiming them “too big to fail.” If that isn’t a sign of man-made immortality, then it is a sign that we bow before titans of our own making. Save the god or we’ll all suffer.
We are taught daily, even hourly, to worship the products of the corporate gods. Some of us may go to church for an hour each week, but we spend much more time in front of a TV screen (over four hours each day on average) being told incessantly that we cannot live without product X. You name it: drug, car, beer, cereal, or car insurance, we are taught over and over that we should believe certain products will restore our health, our happiness, our sense of self-worth, and our social net worth. In other words, these corporate products will do for us directly what that church god many Americans pray to will only occasionally if ever do for them.
Some corporations have divvyed up the national politicians according to industry, in some cases, while others buy both sides of the isle to ensure they have influence no matter what. Oil and gas corporations tend to purchase Republicans while Wall Street of late has favored Democrats. Our national and even local political scenes are controlled and marketed by corporate lobbies that barrage the TV networks with “enemy attack” and “pro-industry” advertisements in the guise of what once were public service announcements.
Unions that once championed the working poor have risen to match the god-like power of the corporations and have become self-serving gods in their own right. The NEA, for one, stands in the way of genuine reform of public education in America by protecting bad teachers from being replaced by good ones. Gods have a way of inspiring opposition to match, but it only creates more gods, not fewer.
So the next time you turn on your TV, computer, iphone, or ipad, look for the gods in your life, recognize them for what they are, and begin to think of ways to reduce their influence in your life. The Greeks may have been early to god creation, but America has produced the most powerful titans ever created, and they are very much in our midst today.
Why is it we humans invite gods into our lives and then allow them to rise and take over our lives? Here in America today we have allowed the development of titan corporations and banks that appear to be headless when you look at them but nonetheless are more powerful than any gods the Greeks could conjure up. America’s gods are real, and they are allowed to run rampant over our thought-processes, our values, and our well-being.
Much of this can be laid at the feet of monotheism. By proclaiming that there is only one true God, we have lain ourselves open to allowing corporations to become real gods in our midst. We cannot see them as such because of our predominant belief system. We cannot believe a corporation could possibly become a god. There is no such thing because there is more than one corporation and there can be only one god. It’s a beautiful set-up for corporations. They can go about the business of gobbling each other up, shipping their profits off-shore, finding cheaper workers in other countries, and swallowing politicians from both parties because corporations have been declared legal persons and therefore are human, not god-like. We cannot see the gods they are because of the human label we have bequeathed.
We have made some of them gods in another way by proclaiming them “too big to fail.” If that isn’t a sign of man-made immortality, then it is a sign that we bow before titans of our own making. Save the god or we’ll all suffer.
We are taught daily, even hourly, to worship the products of the corporate gods. Some of us may go to church for an hour each week, but we spend much more time in front of a TV screen (over four hours each day on average) being told incessantly that we cannot live without product X. You name it: drug, car, beer, cereal, or car insurance, we are taught over and over that we should believe certain products will restore our health, our happiness, our sense of self-worth, and our social net worth. In other words, these corporate products will do for us directly what that church god many Americans pray to will only occasionally if ever do for them.
Some corporations have divvyed up the national politicians according to industry, in some cases, while others buy both sides of the isle to ensure they have influence no matter what. Oil and gas corporations tend to purchase Republicans while Wall Street of late has favored Democrats. Our national and even local political scenes are controlled and marketed by corporate lobbies that barrage the TV networks with “enemy attack” and “pro-industry” advertisements in the guise of what once were public service announcements.
Unions that once championed the working poor have risen to match the god-like power of the corporations and have become self-serving gods in their own right. The NEA, for one, stands in the way of genuine reform of public education in America by protecting bad teachers from being replaced by good ones. Gods have a way of inspiring opposition to match, but it only creates more gods, not fewer.
So the next time you turn on your TV, computer, iphone, or ipad, look for the gods in your life, recognize them for what they are, and begin to think of ways to reduce their influence in your life. The Greeks may have been early to god creation, but America has produced the most powerful titans ever created, and they are very much in our midst today.
Friday, November 18, 2011
A Confederacy of Dunces?
You would think that the Republican Party would put forth a varsity line-up capable of winning a national election. Alas, they are, shall we say, more democratic than they would like to admit. They have allowed just about anyone to run for the highest office, not just some hand-picked lot screened for basic intelligence, general knowledge about the world, and common sense.
Here are some of the latest fumbles, dropped passes, and fouls by various members of the team:
Gingrich……turns out he was paid between 1.6 and 1.8 million dollars by Freddie Mac, a government-sponsored mortgage company he has criticized;
Bachmann…..still hollering about brain damage from HPV vaccine;
Cain……………doesn’t know Libya from Dubya; catches the brain freeze epidemic apparently running rampant through the team; will have trouble attracting women;
Paul……………wants to make friends with Iran;
Perry………….has a brain freeze about one of the three departments he would eliminate if elected;
At this point the two Mormons, Huntsman and Romney, are looking like the epitome of clear-thinking, grounded, science-based, rational pragmatists, even if their chief religious text is the playful target of a sold-out musical sensation on Broadway.
Ever since the Democratic Party moved right of center under Bill Clinton and started taking huge donations from Wall Street to compete with Big Oil donations to Republicans, the Republican Party has had to move even further to the right in order to seem pure and, well, righteous. Actually knowing something has lost its luster. Gone is nuance. Gone are actual facts. It is all about ideology, theology, and strict interpretation of two documents: the Bible and the Constitution.
Ultimately this orthodoxy will enable an actual political centrist like Romney or Huntsman to overcome their peculiar religious orientation and be accepted as mainstream. The nuts on the current team will make the pair look like disciples of Descartes.
What about Santorum, you may ask. His problem is his name. It sounds like an old potion like Geritol or even worse, a toilet bowl cleaner. It also rhymes with forum, and the country has had enough of political forums like the super-committee where nothing gets done. His name is just too chemical/political sounding.
There is someone else I am missing. Ah, yes. The former governor of New Mexico…what’s his name…Johnson. “Send in Johnson” is hardly a battle cry. It simply does not carry. The country is screwed already. We don’t need any more Johnsoning.
Obama, at this point, could be Alfred E. Newman of “What? Me worry?” fame and still win. There is no contest at this point. Maybe when the dust settles, the GOP selection is made, and the real battle begins, we’ll see some rational distinctions to vote on. Meanwhile, the GOP is providing the best entertainment around, except, of course, for that sold-out Broadway musical called “The Book of Mormon.”
Here are some of the latest fumbles, dropped passes, and fouls by various members of the team:
Gingrich……turns out he was paid between 1.6 and 1.8 million dollars by Freddie Mac, a government-sponsored mortgage company he has criticized;
Bachmann…..still hollering about brain damage from HPV vaccine;
Cain……………doesn’t know Libya from Dubya; catches the brain freeze epidemic apparently running rampant through the team; will have trouble attracting women;
Paul……………wants to make friends with Iran;
Perry………….has a brain freeze about one of the three departments he would eliminate if elected;
At this point the two Mormons, Huntsman and Romney, are looking like the epitome of clear-thinking, grounded, science-based, rational pragmatists, even if their chief religious text is the playful target of a sold-out musical sensation on Broadway.
Ever since the Democratic Party moved right of center under Bill Clinton and started taking huge donations from Wall Street to compete with Big Oil donations to Republicans, the Republican Party has had to move even further to the right in order to seem pure and, well, righteous. Actually knowing something has lost its luster. Gone is nuance. Gone are actual facts. It is all about ideology, theology, and strict interpretation of two documents: the Bible and the Constitution.
Ultimately this orthodoxy will enable an actual political centrist like Romney or Huntsman to overcome their peculiar religious orientation and be accepted as mainstream. The nuts on the current team will make the pair look like disciples of Descartes.
What about Santorum, you may ask. His problem is his name. It sounds like an old potion like Geritol or even worse, a toilet bowl cleaner. It also rhymes with forum, and the country has had enough of political forums like the super-committee where nothing gets done. His name is just too chemical/political sounding.
There is someone else I am missing. Ah, yes. The former governor of New Mexico…what’s his name…Johnson. “Send in Johnson” is hardly a battle cry. It simply does not carry. The country is screwed already. We don’t need any more Johnsoning.
Obama, at this point, could be Alfred E. Newman of “What? Me worry?” fame and still win. There is no contest at this point. Maybe when the dust settles, the GOP selection is made, and the real battle begins, we’ll see some rational distinctions to vote on. Meanwhile, the GOP is providing the best entertainment around, except, of course, for that sold-out Broadway musical called “The Book of Mormon.”
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
When the going gets tough, the tough get going*
If there is an American adage, this is it. The saying is meant to imply that when times are tough, those willing to try harder will succeed. The American creed is about doing and doing it better, faster, and more powerfully.
In World War II General Patton was able to surprise the Nazis time and time again with his superhuman expectations of his troops and their superhuman delivery on those expectations. His Third Army moved faster, covered more ground, surprised more enemy and conquered more territory in less time than any army in history.
When those troops who survived came home to America, they put that work ethic to work rebuilding our economy. Today, American troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan have less opportunity to find jobs because expanding American companies have become multinational entities and have shipped jobs abroad that our returning troops might have gotten in the good old days of post-WWII America. While the troops stay loyal to America and continue to risk their lives for our freedom, our largest corporations have abandoned loyalty for profit. Wherever corporations can make profit by lowering labor costs, that is where corporate America goes, and calls it euphemistically a “business decision”; as if that label excuses any hint of abandonment, disloyalty, and lost opportunity for American workers.
The motto of the 21st Century corporation is a corollary to Vince Lombardi’s famous line: “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” Today multi-national corporations seem to have adopted the notion that “profit isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” Once you no longer belong to a country, I guess you lose your loyalty. That’s why so many corporations seek tax shelters off shore.
Whatever happened to corporate civic responsibility? Here is what happened: Corporations got larger; pleasing stockholders became a short-term rather than a long-term goal; labor became expendable rather than honored; and economies became global rather than national. The local company in the local community became obsolete.
While factories were being exported, schools were turned into factories producing athletes and scholars, and the rest be damned. If you were not on a college track either through athletics or academics, you were left behind to pick up skills on your own or you were taught skills that were obsolete by the time you got to the work place.
Meanwhile, the workforce doubled without counting immigrants or population growth. Women entered the work force with the zeal and determination of first generation immigrants, the kind of work ethic we see most noticeably among Mexican and Asian immigrants today.
At the same time, traditional labor jobs disappeared, service jobs exploded. Brains replaced brawn, and women, by and large, fit the bill better than men. Today the American male, by and large, faces a bleak future. Sixty percent of college degree earners at all levels are women. Young men, in many cases, are left behind to hang around sports bars, drink beer, and behave foolishly as TV sports ads teach them to behave.
Unless corporate America starts taking serious responsibility for the unintentional but nonetheless devastating neutering of the average American male, we will be headed for disaster as a culture. Black males are the canary in the mines. They are already in dire straits in great numbers. The rest of the male population is not far behind.
I call on the Republican politicians to stop deceiving America and themselves by preaching the problem will be solved by lower taxes. Lower taxes will not solve unemployment if the educational system is broke and broken already and there is a large pool of unemployable (skill-less) folks out there in America. Lowering taxes is the economic equivalent of blood-letting.
I call on Democrat politicians to stop deceiving America and themselves by preaching the problem will be solved by more spending. We are in debt up to our gills and headed for default if we don’t change the trajectory of our debt toward a soft landing somewhere in a definable future.
I call on the Tea Party to stop deceiving America and themselves that suddenly shrinking government and so-called entitlements is a solution to our debt crisis. That is like trying to land a jumbo jet on an aircraft carrier. It won’t augur well; it will auger in. A long runway and a soft landing is the only way to land massive flying machines.
I call on the Wall Street to come up with a new derivative that makes civic responsibility and loyalty to Americans a foremost priority in investment. Instead of measuring success selfishly in terms of dollars earned, why not start playing a game that awards bonuses to those investment bankers who have done the most good for Americans and America in a given year as measured by a panel of foundation presidents who assess those values. Maybe that will be enough incentive to tip Wall Street back in the direction of “doing God’s work” in a real sense rather than a cynical one.
We are facing tough times. Isn’t it time we saw some trickle down “civic responsibility” on the part of corporations and Wall Street bankers to see who can do the most for America rather than pad the purses of the “already-have-alots”?
* Attributed to Joseph P. Kennedy
In World War II General Patton was able to surprise the Nazis time and time again with his superhuman expectations of his troops and their superhuman delivery on those expectations. His Third Army moved faster, covered more ground, surprised more enemy and conquered more territory in less time than any army in history.
When those troops who survived came home to America, they put that work ethic to work rebuilding our economy. Today, American troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan have less opportunity to find jobs because expanding American companies have become multinational entities and have shipped jobs abroad that our returning troops might have gotten in the good old days of post-WWII America. While the troops stay loyal to America and continue to risk their lives for our freedom, our largest corporations have abandoned loyalty for profit. Wherever corporations can make profit by lowering labor costs, that is where corporate America goes, and calls it euphemistically a “business decision”; as if that label excuses any hint of abandonment, disloyalty, and lost opportunity for American workers.
The motto of the 21st Century corporation is a corollary to Vince Lombardi’s famous line: “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” Today multi-national corporations seem to have adopted the notion that “profit isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” Once you no longer belong to a country, I guess you lose your loyalty. That’s why so many corporations seek tax shelters off shore.
Whatever happened to corporate civic responsibility? Here is what happened: Corporations got larger; pleasing stockholders became a short-term rather than a long-term goal; labor became expendable rather than honored; and economies became global rather than national. The local company in the local community became obsolete.
While factories were being exported, schools were turned into factories producing athletes and scholars, and the rest be damned. If you were not on a college track either through athletics or academics, you were left behind to pick up skills on your own or you were taught skills that were obsolete by the time you got to the work place.
Meanwhile, the workforce doubled without counting immigrants or population growth. Women entered the work force with the zeal and determination of first generation immigrants, the kind of work ethic we see most noticeably among Mexican and Asian immigrants today.
At the same time, traditional labor jobs disappeared, service jobs exploded. Brains replaced brawn, and women, by and large, fit the bill better than men. Today the American male, by and large, faces a bleak future. Sixty percent of college degree earners at all levels are women. Young men, in many cases, are left behind to hang around sports bars, drink beer, and behave foolishly as TV sports ads teach them to behave.
Unless corporate America starts taking serious responsibility for the unintentional but nonetheless devastating neutering of the average American male, we will be headed for disaster as a culture. Black males are the canary in the mines. They are already in dire straits in great numbers. The rest of the male population is not far behind.
I call on the Republican politicians to stop deceiving America and themselves by preaching the problem will be solved by lower taxes. Lower taxes will not solve unemployment if the educational system is broke and broken already and there is a large pool of unemployable (skill-less) folks out there in America. Lowering taxes is the economic equivalent of blood-letting.
I call on Democrat politicians to stop deceiving America and themselves by preaching the problem will be solved by more spending. We are in debt up to our gills and headed for default if we don’t change the trajectory of our debt toward a soft landing somewhere in a definable future.
I call on the Tea Party to stop deceiving America and themselves that suddenly shrinking government and so-called entitlements is a solution to our debt crisis. That is like trying to land a jumbo jet on an aircraft carrier. It won’t augur well; it will auger in. A long runway and a soft landing is the only way to land massive flying machines.
I call on the Wall Street to come up with a new derivative that makes civic responsibility and loyalty to Americans a foremost priority in investment. Instead of measuring success selfishly in terms of dollars earned, why not start playing a game that awards bonuses to those investment bankers who have done the most good for Americans and America in a given year as measured by a panel of foundation presidents who assess those values. Maybe that will be enough incentive to tip Wall Street back in the direction of “doing God’s work” in a real sense rather than a cynical one.
We are facing tough times. Isn’t it time we saw some trickle down “civic responsibility” on the part of corporations and Wall Street bankers to see who can do the most for America rather than pad the purses of the “already-have-alots”?
* Attributed to Joseph P. Kennedy
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