The BB-LiA had a problem: it didn’t have what it wanted.
1 – So in the 80′s it developed the notion of Trickle-Down Economics, which made a lot of sense to armchair economists.
2 – In the 90′s it pushed for free-trade agreements, opening the door to cheap labor opportunities.
3 – And then it hired Rush Limbaugh and FOX News to control the conservatives and divert blame to the democrats.
Now the BB-LiA is happy … it stands for the Big Business Lobby in America.
In the beginning the BB-LiA was just another lobby in Washington DC, plowing through congressmen to get policies that favored its existence (Big Business Lobby in America).
The organization got its trickle-down favoritism, and then got its NAFTA-type agreements (imbalanced foreign business relationships). It put a lot of effort into these campaigns, working the congressmen at golf courses, ski resorts, social affairs, and then selling these ideas to people.
But in the 90′s the BB-LiA realized something: why waste our time on the congressmen … we should lobby the people.
At this point all Americans were fair game. But any good strategy team will analyze cost/return equations. They realized that highly-educated, secular-leaning people (typically these are democrats) were too pragmatic to influence easily; but that the conservatives, who were gullible (gullibility is a by-product of trusting, which is a by-product of faith … the gullibility of conservatives is a sacred feature and should not be exploited), would be easier to influence.
Of course you can’t call up 100 million conservatives and invite them to a vacation retreat in the Hamptons to make your case. What you need is a large scale marketing component, such as a media source or two. Rush Limbaugh was hired; FOX News was put together.
Rush Limbaugh and FOX News are merely the media component of the BB-LiA’s campaign to lobby America’s simple folk, to get them to do the BB-LiA’s bidding in DC through democracy channels. And now you have religious conservatives teaming up with fiscal conservatives, two sub-groups that should be polar opposites.
Was Jesus being an emotional sap when he told the rich man to give all of his wealth to the poor person (Mathew 19:21)?
…OR…
Was Jesus hinting at a fiscal policy?
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To find out we have to take Jesus literally, and build a legislative rule around his suggestion: JR-7473: Rich guy must give wealth to Poor guy … now let’s see what happens:
scenario 01 – The rich man, we’ll call Aaa, follows the rule and gives all his wealth to the poor person, we’ll call Zzz.
scenario 02 – But now Zzz is rich, and Aaa is poor; so Zzz must follow the rule and give all his (new found) wealth back to Aaa.
scenario 03 – The cycle continues: Aaa and Zzz keep handing the money back and forth indefinitely.
For me, what I see here is an Economic Circulation Pattern.
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Of course, the money is meaningless to both Aaa and Zzz if they do not spend it. So let’s try a different scenario set, allowing them each to spend money while they are in possession of it:
scenario 11 – Aaa follows the rule and gives all his wealth, $1,000,000, to Zzz.
scenario 12 – Zzz, who is starving, goes out and buys a loaf of bread and a Porsche.
scenario 13 – But now Zzz must follow the rule and give his wealth to now-poor Aaa … but what to give? The bread does not constitute ‘wealth’ (at least not in appropriately modest quantities), but the Porsche is clearly excess and so it is ‘wealth’ … therefore Zzz must hand over the Porsche and remaining cash (assets + cash = $999,997) to poor Aaa.
scenario 14 – Aaa receives the Porsche and cash. He is psyched about the Porsche, but quickly realizes that JR-7473 will not allow him to keep it, so he trades it in for a Ford Taurus. Also he buys some groceries.
scenario 15 – Aaa then gives his wealth to the poor person. The current value of the wealth is $979,977 (the Taurus was about $20k).
scenario 16 – Aaa and Zzz continue the cycle, each time getting the basic things that they need. The wealth slowly dilutes until at some point neither has excess wealth. The cycle stops.
In other words, Jesus’ rule, if followed literally, leads to a middle-class society of economic equality … interesting.
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I personally believe that in a real functioning society that this is not realistic, but I do think that there can be systems in place to foster this type Economic Circulation Pattern, specifically I think Bubble-Up Economics via Productivity-Oriented Social Programs does it, although Productivity-Oriented Social Programs do go against JR-7473, which required nothing of the recipient, whereas Productivity-Oriented Social Programs do require something. Read more: P-OSP
Productivity Oriented Social Programs solve a lot of problems:
1 – reduces crime
2 – rebuilds families
3 – reduces the economic gap
4 – slows the economic erosion caused by Trickle-Out
5 – replaces the welfare state
6 – relieves the costs of Unemployment
7 – reduces the costs of law enforcement
8 – fosters long-term global competitiveness
9 – re-ignites individuals
Not all unemployment numbers are the same … after WWII unemployment spiked because the Wartime Effort came to an end, but the recent unemployment numbers are due to a Global Recession.
However, over the last 64 years, Reagan was the only Republican who had a net improvement over his presidency (the improvement did not occur until his second term).
And over that same period every Democrat has had an improvement, except Carter who broke even.
It’s dangerous territory to pick a verse from the Bible and try to build an argument from it, especially if the verse is taken out of context or is used to serve an agenda … but never-the-less:
2 Corinthians 8:14-15 (Paul) – “(14) At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. Then there will be equality, (15) as it is written: ‘He who gathered much did not have too much, and he who gathered little did not have too little.’”
The way I read this is that 15 basically says ‘those who make the big bucks need to help out those who don’t make jack so that they will have enough’ (notice that both groups do work (‘gather’), though some workers have little return for their efforts). 14 explains why doing this makes sense: in helping out the poor, you are actually not depriving yourself, because they will be in a position to return the favor, etc. (what goes around comes around).
If this doesn’t make sense to you, consider the aquarium metaphor, with oxygen-rich water circulating throughout.
Trickle Down Economics is an example of a Circulation Theory, but it fails because of the trickle-out problem. But Bubble-up Economics (via Productivity-Oriented Social Programs) solves this problem, ensuring that the poor get their opportunity BEFORE the money disappears.
Also, notice that Paul doesn’t say, ‘those who have little are screwed, they should get a better job – it’s their own problem, not mine’. Ex: Without your trash men, your neighborhood would be overrun with disease and filth, so give them the respect they deserve … and paycheck too.
Also, notice that Paul describes this ‘economic circulation’ as ‘equality’!
If political parties were computer systems… who would be what?
The conservatives would be a database: ask them a question and they repeat to you what is stored in their database.
The liberals would be a processor: ask them a question and they throw all the variables into their algorithm and say what ever comes out, indifferent to either the variables themselves or the result that is produced.
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That’s not to say that liberals are necessarily smarter. After all, imagine this: 5 apple seeds + 1 desert = green future. That is clearly not correct (you’ll need some water, right?). But if you have enough liberals working together then you will probably get a solution that is meaningful.
And understanding conservatives as a database, just repeating their mantra tirelessly over and over, helps to explain one of the great riddles of the modern conservative movement: why do business conservatives and religious conservatives ally themselves in the republican party? Shouldn’t they have opposite motivations and agendas? The answer is in the fact that they all, as individual people, process the world around them in the same way, like a database query system and this like-mindedness is the lubricant in their unnatural relationship. And because they do not have processing power, they are unable to figure out that they are supposed to be enemies.
February 14′s article, State Inspectors Searching Children’s Lunch Boxes, made several rounds through my facebook feed. The idea, I must say, does wreak of heavy-handed socialism.
We all sort of know where the problem came from: snack food companies targeting their marketing efforts at kids, for generations.
Coke, for example, has realized great profits by creating an association between their product and world peace, good times, coolness, etc. And of course Cheetos, McDonald’s, and all the rest, it’s no wonder that kids opt for a small bag of potato chips and a Sprite rather than an apple and a grape juice (which doesn’t even sound exciting). In a unicorn-happy world these companies would prioritize ethics and health rather than profit.
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Let’s have a small lesson: what’s the difference between marketing and hyper-marketing?
Marketing is:
I made some shoes; they have good arch support.
Hyper-marketing is:
I made some shoes; they have good arch support; girls will take your pants off.
Hyper-marketing is at the core of hyper-consumerism (which is at the core of pop-culture, which is at the core of pop-politics … oh, and obesity).
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Our very-free American marketplace fosters hyper-marketing, even though it has the ability to do so much damage. In a perfect world, average people would be insightful and strong-willed enough to resist the messages of corporate America. But keep in mind that the marketing agencies employ sociologists and psychologists to customize messages for various consumer sub-groups, and they work to build messages that are irresistible.
Now kids are getting so unhealthy that they are coming down with diabetes in their youth. Lawmakers, afraid to touch corporate America, are instead trying to fix their mess by regulating people’s behaviors: corporate America gets a free pass, we get regulated. And, remember, if we don’t get the oversight, we end up fat and costly to the insurance companies and the system in general. We cannot be allowed to get so fat.
So what to do?
Choose ONE:
A – regulate the marketplace (don’t brainwash my kids, I wont brainwash yours).
B – regulate the people
Today while listening to Charlie Daniel’s Simple Man on youtube I developed a new theory. That song identifies a classic pattern: historically, good honest workers revolt against
A) crooked politicians,
B) over-reaching capitalists, and
C) society-destroying criminals
.
But today it seems that they are only revolting against Obama and Democrat-politicians … so why is the pattern different?
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Here’s my theory: With the implementation of trickle-down policies in the 80′s and then NAFTA+ in the early 90′s, the American economic environment began to heavily favor the tycoon-capitalists over the common working men (tycoon-capitalists are not the same as mom-and-pop-capitalists) .
Historically in these types of environments two phases follow:
1 - society splits into an aristocratic class and a peasant class,
2 - then the peasant class (usually a combination of the Working Class -to power the revolt- and the Intellectual Class -to steer the revolt) collectively rises against the aristocratic class (usually a combination of the Politicians and the Wealthy).
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And because this pattern is so identifiable, any political historian back in 1995 could have predicted the outcome of the, then, setup: within 2-3 decades the common man was going to revolt … So what to do?! …
… develop a propaganda machine to manipulate that fate, of course.
(At this point it is important to recognize that partnerships between the Working and Intellectual classes make for strange bedfellows … the tycoon-capitalists will identify and exploit this!)
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They decide that they need to get control of the Working Class before the forecast revolt will begin one day, and, most importantly, before the Working Class partners with its old ally-in-revolt, the Intellectual Class. And so were born FOX News and Rush Limbaugh.
Yes, those are good ol' trusting, Family-Values Americans dancing a jig.
Rush Limbaugh and FOX News, the voices of the tycoon-capitalists’ propaganda machine, would be used to:
1 - gain the trust of the Working Class,
2 - direct them against the Intellectual Class.
And so once the revolt would finally happen (as history predicts), the Working Class would NOT go after the power class, but rather would go after their historical ally, the intellectuals. And this is the polarization that we have today.
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Some will argue that the tycoon-capitalists would not do this because in deflating the lower and middle classes, they would be shooting themselves in the foot by effectively impoverishing their consumer base. But that is only in a closed society where they necessarily need the American consumer. But America is in a global marketplace, and America’s 200 million potential consumers is small in comparison to the worlds roughly 3 billion in developed and developing countries.
Capitalism does a lot of wonderful things but it does have a dark side: poverty. Because capitalism is a competition there will be losers.
Capitalism has many positive offerings, but it is a competition. And in a competition there will be losers.
It is the roll of a civil society to ensure a mechanism to re-charge those that lose. America has employed trickle-down policies, but because so much money has trickled out, the lower-middle class and lower class have been stranded, with each successive generation degrading.
Bubble-up economics is a solution that re-charges the lower class directly, ensuring vibrancy at the base of the economy and improving the possibility of ‘upwards mobility’. Read more: productivity-oriented social programs.
Hi. I’m Rush Limbaugh … and I have been misleading decent people for nearly 2 decades.
Thanks to me, you have no idea what is real and what is not.
Not listening is wrong in a society where speech is considered to be a vital component of stability and growth.
Freedom of speech is meaningless if no one is listening.
And it is impossible to listen (I mean truly listen) if you are already set in your ways, predetermined to respond to the speaker regardless of what they say.
So I figure it is unconstitutional to not listen and consider what your opposition has to say. And the good news is that if your idea is actually the better, it will still come out on top.
Isn’t that dog cute?
Years ago I had a girlfriend that played a game known as 6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon, a game where kids would try to link something with Kevin Bacon through a series of direct and indirect associations.
This, to me, is a lot like the association between a capitalist’s drive for profit and eco-destruction. Example: company’s drive for profit leads to some business decision which leads to some procedure that leads to some environmental consequence.
The set of decisions that gives way to eco-destruction can be accounted for within one understanding: there is built into capitalism the necessity to please the consumer (this is not the same thing as the necessity to create good products).
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Take as an example grocery bags, whether paper or plastic. Both of these products are rendered to the marketplace for the purpose of convenienc-ing me which is a course towards profit for the store.
A store would lose my business to a competitor if it did not provide to me bags to carry my groceries (unless no stores offered bags … hmmm). The damage of billions of bags is documented: the production of, the delivery of, and the disposal of.
Compare that to the common practice in Europe where people bring their personal grocery bags with them. This practice is leftover from their pre-1990 communism. However, with the advent of aggressive competition and the necessity to please customers to beat competitors, grocery stores began to offer plastic bags to their customers in the early 2000′s, and with all of these new European plastic bags, the environmental damage increases.
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Take as another example, automobiles. I lived in Atlanta for nearly 15 years. For 5 of those years I drove a 50-mile round-trip commute … even though MARTA was available.
Chevy did not have to try hard to convince me that having a car of my own is a good thing. They, in the name of profit, built a product that appealed to me, regardless of the repercussions of pollution, etc.
And again compare this to Europe, where until just recently nearly everyone used buses and trains, company execs, dirty coal miners. This trend is coming to an end though, trains are very empty now. Why? Because they are adopting the American-style consumerism, which is a variation of capitalism.
Remember back to your freshman astronomy class and the discussion of the event horizon that surrounds black holes. It is the distance from the black hole’s core such that for any particle that goes beyond this point, it will never be able to come back out … it has become trapped in the black hole … it has fallen beyond a critical point.
The only opportunity for the trapped particle is if some magical external grabber reaches into the black hole and pulls it back out.
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Water also has a concept of ‘critical point’ associated with it, but instead of this critical point being based on distance – like the event horizon – it is based on temperature. When water falls below 32F, the molecules become trapped in solid form, incapable of moving … kind of like the particles that fall into the black hole.
And the only opportunity for the iced molecules is if some external agent injects warmth into the system thus freeing them again.
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There also exists a critical point in human psychology … for all of us.
And once you or I or anyone falls below it we are no longer capable of functioning and behaving as would a normal, healthy individual. The only opportunity is if some external force helps us.
random picture of a black hole
I think that most of the lower class in our country are actually just individuals, entire neighborhoods, that have fallen below this critical point.
In the meantime all the healthy people sit around and express their doubts about the members of the lower class: they’re lazy, they’re drug addicts, they’re criminals … but we have only observed them in their sub-critical-point psychology state, and we have done so from our own healthy state point of view. They struggle to function.
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Bubble-up economics has the potential to fix this, to directly inject positive influences into the difficulties that the lower class faces. It is a system that attempts to re-invigorate the lower class via productivity-oriented social programs, an array of types of programs, each with the similar expectation to benefit the struggling individual but also the taxpayer paying for the program through an applicable ROI.
The theory of trickle down is a solid theory, and should work in a closed, isolated economy or in a balanced-trade economy.
Trickle down works if the upper class does their part.
But America is neither of these … and so a lot of the money that the upper class receives in the form of tax favoritism to invest into trickle down programs (read: jobs) actually trickles out as the upper class invest, outsource, and relocate into foreign markets, thus stranding the lower and lower-middle classes.
Remember the Bad News Bears? It did not help them to get a pep talk at first.
What helped them was getting uniforms, which gave them dignity. What helped them was getting training and coaching, which gave them skills and self confidence. What helped them was getting gas money to travel to the games, which gave them access.
With all of these assets in place, it is now a great time to give them a pep talk. Now they will be able to appreciate it, absorb it, and use it for inspiration. Otherwise it would have just fallen on deaf hopeless ears.
Without the appropriate assets the Bears would have never won ... the pep talk was helpful too.
Though the Bears fail to win the championship game, their story gains attention, and Walter Matthau is able to get a return on his investment as his reputation improves in the local sports community (maybe spring boarding him to a solid coaching position at a high school … who knows).
There are many different subgroups within the conservative population. Primary among them are the capitalists, and within the capitalists subgroup there are further sub-sub-groups, chief among them are the silver-spoon capitalists.
Understanding their viewpoint of the big picture is important. Here is a metaphor that attempts to describe how they view their life experience in relation to the life experience of an impoverished culture.
Understanding the silver-spoon capitalists' viewpoint of the impoverished community is important.
Imagine a drop of H2O, Water, living its whole life in a temperate room. It and other drops of H2O mingle with each other and live a pleasant life. He can easily adapt to new places since he has shape-shifting capabilities, and can easily recover from adversity (such as being splatted by a light hammer) because of its capability to regroup with other liquid droplets.
Water has heard rumors of a drop of H2O that lives differently from himself, Ice, who lives in the freezer of course.
Ice experiences the world differently: he is unable to mingle seamlessly with others, he is unable to adapt to most situations because of his inability to change shape, and when struck by a light hammer his shards are never able to regroup.
This is all good and well, but it does not really matter! … until a compassionate person begins to realize the very different lives that Water and Ice live, and most importantly realizes the very different quality of their lives: Ice is highly stressed; Water is happy.
The compassionate person brings the issue to everyone’s attention. Water says, ‘if they are so unhappy, why don’t they just behave the way we do: learn to recover better from adversities when they occur, adapt to changing situations better?’
Because Water has only experienced reality from his temperate perspective, he was unable to genuinely comprehend the limitations of Ice’s reality, though these limitations have been recited to him several times. Water could just not realize that Ice does not have these capabilities due to the laws of nature, though Ice does wish dearly that he did have these capabilities. The only way for Ice to get these capabilities is if Ice’s environment changes to a more temperate one.
I originally wrote Why do black people feel that white people want to ‘keep them down’ around late 2008, and since then a lot has has happened and opened my eyes. Observing the conservative culture over the last couple of years has been interesting.
It is important to acknowledge that within that culture there are many sub-groups, some of which have very little in common with each other, oddly enough. I will focus on the subgroup of capitalists.
Capitalism does truly offer a lot of great things, and it is a very natural system. If used in a society correctly it can be an engine of vibrancy. But I, personally, see its dangers as well.
Capitalists(per se), on the other hand, relentlessly believe in it, beyond any rationale or concern that it might have dire consequences for the losers. They say that it is the loser’s fault that they have lost, and that they themselves should not have to support the losers. This is where the idea of rich man keeps the poor man down comes from; but notice: ‘poor man’.
For a black population still struggling economically due to the complexities of generational inheritance, it is not completely incorrect to translate rich man keeps the poor man down as white man keeps the black man down, though it is not the whole reality. However, for the capitalists it is not racism literal, but rather ruthless competitiveness in the game of life.
I am amazed by the people that say that they got what they got because they worked hard for it, referring to the demands of their academic experience. And then they go on to say that if poor people would just worked as hard, that they could pull themselves up by their own bootstraps rather than begging at the government coffer.
The Haves have a terrible habit of taking for granted all of the mitigating and supportive factors that have accompanied their life of diligence.
Here are a couple of questions for our mega-diligent college alumni:
1 – did you ever go snow skiing during your college years, or to the beach for spring break?
2 – did you ever have sex with a beautiful girl during your college years?
3 – did you ever take a summer hiatus for three months?
4 – did you believe in your future, did you have a sense of optimism?
The point is that although college can be tough, it is accompanied by an assortment of positive mitigating factors. These reduce the stress level of the academic demands, making the hard work of college much more survivable.
But for people below the Subsistence Threshold (their head is below the water), these mitigating factors do not exist and thus the hard work of a person struggling to get out of their own hole is much more complex and difficult, and as such the odds of success are DECREASED.
The conservatives keep saying, “we don’t want to give them anything, they need to get off their ass and work.”
The liberals keep saying, “but you don’t understand their struggle, we have to help them.”
So what is the right answer? Part of the difficulty in answering that is that we seem to have given ourselves only two options: all or nothing. But are we, and our democracy, not mature enough to look for solutions that resolve this polarity, such that both sides are happy, and more importantly such that the lower class can begin to rise into the middle class upon their own dignity?
Productivity-oriented social programs are one solution that sits in the middle of the polarity. These programs meet the bubble-up economics standard.
