Ed Firmage Jr.Confessions of Another Guilty Bystander
We wonder whether…the paradoxes of our time are not finally mounting to a conclusion of ridiculousness that will make the whole structure collapse. For the paradoxes are becoming so great that leaders of people must be less and less intelligent to stand their own leadership.
John Steinbeck, The Log from the Sea of Cortez (1941)
If Steinbeck, writing this over sixty years ago on the eve of World War II–the whole structure was in fact, if only temporarily, about to come crashing down–what would he say today? Could he have believed that we were then just beginning to explore the territory of paradox? In the gilded age of George W. Bush, arguably the most incompetent and venal president in our history, the term “paradox” hardly suffices to describe the absurdity of American life. What we are engaged in is in fact, in the best American tradition of making war on things, a war waged upon ourselves. And the blackest part of this dark comedy is that we’re doing this for the sake of corporate masters we don’t even like and for their political stooges who inspire only our cynicism. In the first part of this essay, I explore the nature of our insanity, in the conclusion I suggest a remedy.
As was the case in Steinbeck’s day–the quote dates from just after the Grapes of Wrath and the systematic, state-supported exploitation of the Okies it chronicles–many large American employers feel no compunction about abusing workers. These companies attract, and are profitable in part because they attract those who are unable to fight back. Wal-Mart, America’s largest employer, with some 1,000,000 people on the payroll, refuses to give most of these a living wage or health insurance. In its relentless race to the bottom of the economic heap, it demands price concessions from its suppliers that American businesses that do treat their employees fairly cannot give. So American jobs go oversees. Wal-Mart muscles its way into communities, often in the face of vocal opposition, and drives small, local competitors out of business. Wal-Mart perfectly embodies the American corporate war on small business and small towns. Yet American consumers, as well as workers, flock to Wal-Mart.
American agribusiness, represented by such companies as Monsanto and Archer Daniels Midland, feeds like a parasite on family farmers by developing hybrid crop strains that require the yearly repurchase of seed. It sues farmers whose fields become infected with genetically engineered species for theft, and sues dairies that dare to advertise that their milk contains no antibiotics or growth hormones. It destroys the health of land and bodies alike, and puts the safety of our entire food chain at risk by substituting monoculture for the diversity and resilience of the products of the independent family farm. But the buying habits of American grocery consumers are by and large what they were in our parents’ day.
The energy that powers our machines at the beginning of the 21st century when we know better and have the means to do otherwise still derives almost entirely from fossil fuels. To secure unchallenged access to these, we have fought two wars in the Persian Gulf, one of them as I write this, has dramatically destabilized the Middle East and radicalized much of Islam against us. And for the privilege of such a decrease in world prestige and security, the present administration has asked Americans not only to give their lives–two thousand plus and counting–but also to pick up a tab that may even now amount to $2 trillion.
For oil, then, we’re apparently willing to bankrupt our kids and kill those desperate enough to sign up as hired guns. For coal, which in the era of George “Nothing Too Dirty for Me” Bush is enjoying an unanticipated comeback, we are willing to poison them as well. The chief environmental source of mercury, which is dangerous even in microscopic amounts, is coal-fired power plants, and our state-sanctioned power monopolies and their private partners will put these anywhere someone is dumb enough to take them. Take the people around Richfield, Utah, for example. It doesn’t matter to them that the power from their proposed new coal-fired plant will go to California while they get the pollution. Nor does it matter that people from around the world enjoy coming to this part of Utah because it is one of the few places left where you can get away from dirty skies. Nope, for a few measly jobs, they’ll sell their grandmother and their kids and not bat an eye.
Thanks to our apparently endless engineering know-how, we now have still another potential source of dirty power: oil shale. To get oil from rocks (!)–yes, that’s right, we’re going to squeeze it from rocks–we of course have to destroy the rocks, and the mountains that are made up of those rocks, and everything living on those soon-to-be-ex-mountains. Under the leadership of such energy warriors as Senator Orrin Hatch and the Utah State Legislature, we are making plans for a strip mining campaign on a scale that will make even West Virginia envious, in one of the last pristine wildernesses of the country, Utah’s Book Cliffs.
The Fossil Fuels War, which is in fact a world war not just a bit of American or Utah stupidity, is far more deserving of the epithet “Great” than the half-hearted exercise in collective suicide that Europe’s monarchies tried in 1914. It’s more and greater because we’re not only making war on each other, which after all does have the side benefit that the occasional stupid leader also dies, but because our enemy now is the planet itself. For cheap energy, we are manifestly willing to ignore the melting glaciers of Glacier National Park, the Tetons, and the Wind Rivers (it’s all just wilderness after all). We don’t seem to mind that snow melt in the Rockies, which feeds the Colorado River which in turn feeds the American West, requires, in the last analysis, snow. We are undaunted by the prospect of building massive levees around the entire coastline of the U.S. to keep the former polar ice caps from entering our urban living rooms. And, the fact that scientists worry about the massive effect global warming will have on climate is, when all is said and done, a reflection of the fact that they have pointy heads, right? If they were real men, men of the stature of our president, our Congress, and our state legislatures, men of the stature of the town council of Kanab Utah, then they’d know that there’s no problem we can’t fix. Why, if God hadn’t intended us to use all this coal and oil, then he wouldn’t have given us the brains to fix the problems they cause. Right, pardner?
Many other battlefronts in this war on ourselves deserve attention, but where do you draw the line with so may options to choose from? Still, the essential pattern of behavior ought to be clear enough. I say ought to be, but the sad truth is that most of the pawns and victims of this war don’t yet realize they’re in one. It’s like the phony war with which WW II began in France. Not that Wal-Mart workers trying to unionize think there’s anything phony about the battle they’re fighting, or that mining families in West Virginia take the loss of their husbands and sons lightly. What people generally in the U.S. and especially here in Utah have yet to wake up to is the fact that what’s happening in West Virginia and Baghdad are not unrelated, that the disappearance of Glacier National Park’s glaciers and the “necessity” of having Ford Expeditions and Chevrolet Suburbans to haul your brood of eight to church are also not unrelated.
What all of these battles in America’s war on itself have in common is the way that we duck responsibility for what we do by externalizing the costs. We externalize the cost of making products cheap by abusing poor workers in third-world countries. We externalize the cost by letting poor communities in Mexico deal with the toxic waste, air and water pollution that Americans will no longer tolerate. We externalize the cost of using fossil fuels by leaving that cleanup to our children. We externalize the cost of bad foreign policy by letting Vietnamese, Cubans, Iranians, Afghanis, Panamians, and Iraqis (mostly) die for our mistakes. Modern America is a culture based upon denial. The problems we can’t deny, we ship overseas so that at least we won’t have to see them.
But, as the insurgency in Iraq is teaching us (didn’t we get enough of nation-building in Vietnam?), and as global warming is about to show us in ways we’ve scarcely begun to imagine, you can only run this kind of Ponzi scheme for so long. Eventually the raped and the ripped-off get wise to you and come looking for revenge.
Our culture of denial is the shadow side of a quality that in better days, but harder times, endeared us to the world: our sense of mission, of being set apart, of being special, of being able to do things others hadn’t or couldn’t. Such pride, manifested as a can-do attitude, has its place, but becomes neurotic when it isn’t counterbalanced by a sense, not of what you cannot do, but of what you may not. Our democratic impulses, it seems, tend to stop at the nearest significant border. That border may be the state line that separates Nevada’s gold mines from Utah. But that doesn’t stop their mercury emissions from turning the Great Salt Lake into the nation’s most mercury-toxic body of water. That border may be the boundary that separates Zion National Park from rapidly-growing and increasingly hazy St. George, but that doesn’t prevent smog from ruining the desert air for the three million tourists who visit Zion every year. That border may be the razor fence that surrounds the Guantanamo prison, whose inmates have learned only too well the depth of America’s commitment to human rights. And the American boys who receive their civil rights training at Guantanamo, who return to become the heads of American businesses, mayors, and fathers, what will boundaries mean to them?
The most insidious form of this feeling of separateness from other beings, however, has nothing to do with the artificial political borders we erect around ourselves to facilitate just this sort of externalization of costs and criminality. It is the way in which we separate ourselves from the rest of life. It’s an attitude that says that our wants trump the needs of other species. It’s an attitude that says that humans are not subject to the natural laws that govern the rest of life. And it’s an attitude that justifies its hubris, characteristically, by claiming a divine manifest destiny. God, in this view, has given us the world to use as we see fit.
Self-evident as this attitude may seem to many, especially in my own community, who like to think they know a lot about God, in fact it cuts against the grain of feeling that lies at the heart of our deepest religious experiences, experiences that I would prefer to call spiritual. Steinbeck explains:
“…it seems apparent that species are only commas in a sentence, that each species is at once the point and the base of a pyramid, that all life is relational to the point where an Einsteinian relativity seems to emerge. And then not only the meaning but the feeling about species grows misty. One merges into another, groups melt into ecological groups until the time when what we know as life meets and enters what we think of as non-life: barnacle and rock, rock and earth, earth and tree, tree and rain and air. And the units nestle into the whole and are inseparable from it. Then one can come back to the microscope and the tide pool and the aquarium. But the little animals are found to be changed, no longer set apart and alone. And it is a strange thing that most of the feeling we call religious, most of the mystical outcrying which is one of the most prized and used and desired reactions of our species, is really the understanding and the attempt to say that man is related to the whole thing, related inextricably to all reality, known and unknowable. This is a simple thing to say, but the profound feeling of it made a Jesus, a St. Augustine, a St. Francis, a Roger Bacon, a Charles Darwin, and an Einstein. Each of them in his own tempo and with his own voice discovered and reaffirmed with astonishment the knowledge that all things are one thing and that one thing is all things–plankton, a shimmering phosphorescence on the sea and the spinning planets and an expanding universe, all bound together by the elastic string of time. It is advisable to look from the tide pool to the stars and then back to the tide pool again” (The Log from the Sea of Cortez).
I’m amazed to think that Steinbeck wrote this in 1941, eight years before the prescient Aldo Leopold completed A Sand County Almanac, and almost three decades before our ecological movement, inspired by Leopold among others, came into being! Follow ecology to its root and you’ll find true religion. Of course, any self-respecting Native American could have told you this a hundred and fifty years ago. I suppose every generation, and every person, must discover this truth for itself, himself, or herself.
The euphoria of this sense of connectedness to life is tempered by the realization that our way of life, our American-Mormon-middle-class-self-satisfied way of life needs changing. I need changing. I, directing Wendell Berry’s characteristically searing words right at myself, need to learn how to live more poorly. I need not only to learn how to do more with less, as all poor people do, but to live more richly at the same time.
I’m still learning how to walk this walk. The first and biggest step so far has been to leave a high-paying career in Silicon Valley to pursue a life that is about something other than making money. Shortly after setting out to make my way as an outdoor photographer, I came across a wonderful sentence in Edward Abbey’s semi-autobiographical novel, The Fool’s Progress. “I’m tired,” Abbey’s fictional alter ego, Henry Lightcap, says at the beginning of a quest to rediscover his roots, “of doing what I don’t want to do to live the way I don’t want to live.” This is a good starting out point.
I know now how I want to live: independently, self-reliantly, richly. I don’t want to depend on companies like Wal-Mart, that value neither craftsmanship nor craftsmen, for ANYTHING. Their like I boycott on principle. In fact, the less I depend on COMPANIES for anything the better. The smaller the businesses with which I do essential business the better. The more of our food, energy, and entertainment our family can produce for itself the better. The closer the makers of what we do buy are to us the better. The closer all of us, makers and consumers of things, are to the earth, the better.
At the root both of our family’s new domestic economy and of our new spirituality is the idea that we as a family must live within our means. In that notion is the essence not only of good money management but of all responsible living (aka family values, aka ecology), for it means that we cannot shift the burden of our life to those living in another place or time. Implicit in this idea is that we shall judge the fitness of our little domestic economy not on the largeness of the gross familial product but on its smallness, for living within your means MUST involve a shrinking of them. It is not enough simply to avoid the obvious forms of indebtedness, challenging as that is for most Americans. The hidden debts are both larger and more insidious, because these are the debts that never show up on a balance sheet. The greater the amount and extent of our economic activity the more of this hidden indebtedness we incur. To depend, for example, as I still do, on a fuel-inefficient, gas-powered vehicle is to incur indebtedness to those who must deal with the acid rain and global warming I contribute to, the costs of which no one right now puts on a balance sheet. This is just one of many forms of indebtedness I aim to eliminate, with patience and time.
Living within one’s means is also the beginning of real spirituality, for it is at heart simply a manifestation of honesty. It is to accept one’s true poverty. To shrink one’s need to consume things is to find an inner peace, an inner satisfaction that is what we seek in consumption but do not, indeed cannot, find there. Paradoxically, in poverty, at least relative poverty, I’ve found a form of indebtedness that I like. I’m indebted, for example, in ways that I can scarcely acknowledge to the beautiful places in which I work. To enjoy these, however, unlike the things I buy to satisfy an inner emptiness, I must empty myself. The emptier the self, the more room there is inside for the beauties that will come my way unbidden, unforced, and unforeseen. The world in this sense belongs to the poor in spirit, and only in that spirit does it belong to anyone.
March 8th, 2006 at 11:29 pm
Well written Ed. - When will the powerful economic interests realize that a big strong middle class will make them even richer for longer? Our most powerful economic drivers are focused on next year’s profits.
Its the short-term thinking that is sucking the bottom half the American middle class into poverty.
We are starting to look like Germany well into her years after WWI. An ever worsening economy destroys labor, unites people and classes, sometimes just not for good, especially when there is a popular charismatic lying bigot with his finger in the air..
March 9th, 2006 at 8:19 am
As Einstein proclaimed; doing the same things over and over again, and expecting a different result, is the definition of insanity.
Welcome to our madness.
and yes, it is our fault. glenn
March 9th, 2006 at 9:00 pm
Ed, it seems that you are arguing for a return to an agrarian lifestyle. Do you see such low-density living as a benefit to the environment? It certainly sounds lovely, but I’m not convinced it is workable. You don’t like big companies. Can a small company afford to built a computer chip fabrication plant at 1 to 3 billion dollars a pop? So much of the good that we enjoy comes from large companies–we should be cautious in arguing for their elimination. Painting with a broad brush doesn’t leave room for important details, both positive and negative.
Tasha, I’m not sure what you were hoping to add to a thoughtful conversation with your Photoshopped image of the president.
March 9th, 2006 at 11:23 pm
Bush was admitedly kidding around when he gave the finger on film just prior to giving his state of the nation speach last year. That still is from real unfabricated video which is widely available as video on the web. I’ll find it and post it for you if you insist on repreating you false assumption again here.
March 10th, 2006 at 9:28 am
Bradley raises valid concerns. Let’s start with the biggest and most important. Just how agrarian should we be? Having everyone on their own family farm doesn’t seem practicable in a world of over six billion. That, however, is not what I’m advocating. It is possible even now, right here in SLC, to take one average American example, for an ordinary family to raise quite a bit of their own food. All that’s required is to replace the Kentucky bluegrass with fruit trees and a garden. From that partly symbolic, partly real (the best symbols of course are always REAL) act the ripples of change move outward. What I can’t raise for myself, I try to get from local sources, the more local the better. What I can’t get from those, I get from a non-local, i.e., national, source such as a grocery chain. There’s plenty of room here, though, for a very significant reduction in our consumption and in the cost of that consumption.
But, as in all things ecological, you can’t look at the problem of how we support ourselves in isolation. It hangs together with all of the other problems. It would be possible, for example, to raise a bigger percentage of our own food if our family were smaller. So, one corollary to my be-as-agrarian-as-you-can idyll is that we can’t go on having families of eight or ten or twelve kids. From the very beginning, population control has been a big part of modern environmentalism, and rightly so.
Another corollary is that we can’t go on consuming the way we do and expect to be able to support ourselves. The basic point of my essay was less to praise a by-gone, agrarian lifestyle than to say that we’re living way beyond our means and need to cut back. We should and can reduce our consumption across the board. The result will be, not the elmination of computer chip fabrication plants, but the reduction in their number and impact. It means the end of the absurd notion that we can go on growing the economy for ever. So, cities will remain. In fact, I want them to. Civilization is city culture. But they cease to be the forever-expanding cancers that they are now. Computer chip plants will remain. And car makers, and car dealers. What won’t remain, if we wan t to survive, is an expectation that their bottom line will grow at 20% per year. What won’t remain is powering growth through the use of unsustainable means, such as fossil fuels.
The bottom line of my essay, I guess you could say, is that what we need to move back to is less an agrarian life than one governed by the principle of subsistence. Instead of thinking about how much profit we can make, we embrace the challenge of seeing how little we can get by on.
Is this unrealistic? Probably. But if we don’t go this way, nature will impose her own curbs on our presumption.
March 10th, 2006 at 9:52 am
It is the characteristic of declining cultures not to notice the raw decline. We race headlong to the scrapheap. In an SUV. Powered by foreign fuel. Never considering that we have no possibility of being “green” in our current form.
I see most americans as green alright, mostly green with envy for all the crap they want, not knowing what the consequences of having it really means. They are willing to go along with corporations that effectively enslave whole populations to build useless items for us. Not understanding that BURN=HEAT, makes filth, not to mention the social consequences of such an “economy”.
It’s like we’re babies, we don’t like laying in our own offal, but don’t know yet how to live without soiling our bed. Unfortuantely there is no one to change our diaper.
As lead pipes were for the Romans, internal combustion engines will seemingly be one reason for our decline.
March 10th, 2006 at 10:59 am
Tasha, It turns out you are correct about the image of the president. It is from an actual video which, according to this site, was taken during his term as governor of Texas. My point was not really about the authenticity of the photo. (There are plenty of similar images which are fabrications.) It was to say that adding the photo to your post didn’t do anything to further a useful discussion.
I was really reacting (though I didn’t say so) to your statement that, “Its the short-term thinking that is sucking the bottom half the American middle class into poverty.” According to this acticle at National Review Online, “Over the past 40 years, per capita income in the United States has doubled. On top of that, Americans are enjoying more leisure time. According to a study published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, the number of hours per week dedicated to leisure rose from 31 in 1965 to over 35 in 2003, an increase of 15 percent.”
I know those statistics don’t tell the whole story, but I don’t think it is helpful to pretend our poverty problems are worse than they are for partisan advantage. Our economically free society isn’t all roses, but we’re alot better off than we would be under any other economic system I’ve ever seen tried.
March 10th, 2006 at 11:14 am
Ed, the photo in your post is gorgeous. Thanks for sharing it. I essentially agree with the point you made in your comment above. We do consume too much! I think many people are living beyond their means. As a country, we are clearly living beyond our means if our national debt is any indicator. And I believe that we do have a stewardship over the earth and a moral responsibility not to exploit others.
I’ve grappled with this issue a lot: when are we living too extravagantly? I drive through some neighborhoods and look at the gigantic homes and think, “It is too much. It is too wasteful. You’ve spent too much on your own pleasure. You’ve squandered your stewardship.” Then I look at my own home. It is a modest home by US standards. But by world standards, surely I also have too much! I think, “Do you need to have long distance telephone service right in your home? Do you really need an always-on connection to the Internet? You have a washer and dryer for your own personal use? Extravagance!”
Then I realize that “extravagance” is all about perception. The extravagance that bothered me so much is an engine that creates a lot of wealth for a lot of people. The rising tide of American prosperity has lifted EVERYONE. In an imperfect world, sometimes we need to settle for “better” while we work towards “best.” Our standard for working conditions don’t prevail around the world as we hope they might, but something is better than nothing, right?
The title of your post is good. We all can do more, but I’m not sure the fact that we haven’t yet arrived makes us “guilty.”
March 10th, 2006 at 12:17 pm
Thank you Bradly for your response.
My comment are not motivated by a desire for partisan advantage, but rather by a sense of responsibility to the advantage of society. Under Bush over a million Americans slipped into poverty and average household income has effectivily dropped since 2003.
I believe the Bush adminsitration is responsible. If that is partisan, it is also true. Whichever label you chose for me is up to you.
March 10th, 2006 at 12:24 pm
Re: Bush’s use of “the finger”.
It seems all Americans consider character to be an important factor in a president. Given that there is a great deal of evidence that Bush’s character includes lying to the American people on matters of life and death, war and peace, and is thus unsuited to be president, I believe it is important that people have all the evidence we can provide them to make up there own minds.
March 10th, 2006 at 12:27 pm
Bradley, it is as you say a work in progress, and very few of us escape some guilt. But I’m less concerned with guilt and blame than I am with finding ways inwardly to live more richly. One of the things that makes our profligate lifestyle so bad is that it isn’t just wasteful but a cheat. Our lives are full of things but empty of meaning and purposefulness. Materially, as you say, many of us have prospered, though I wonder what our apparent prosperity would look like if we removed personal and national deficit spending. And, as I said in the first salvo, our prosperity is bought at the expense of others, whose standard of living is not improving. But are those who are materially better off also spiritually richer, and if not, what really is the point of the material comfort? If life’s bottom line is sitting with an empty mind and heart in the midst of your material splendor, what have you gained? For this reason, I’m suspicious of our constant appeal to the standard of living. It is perhaps a tired old cliché but true nonetheless that once our essential needs of shelter, clothing, and food are met, how much we have is irrelevant to the enjoyment of life. THAT seems to be more a matter of how much we enter into life as participants as opposed to consumers. If I can make my own music is that not better than consuming someone else’s?
These days, for example, I’m asking myself a lot whether it might not be better to get rid of our TV and devote the time, admittedly pleasant, spent in watching it to, say, learning again how to play the piano or the guitar? It isn’t that what I watch is BAD in any way. I have nothing but good things to say about Northern Exposure, Jeeves and Wooster, or BBC productions of Shakespeare plays. On the other hand, I think about an experience I had while serving as an LDS missionary in Austria. One of the most magical experiences of my two years there was going up one Sunday with a member of the local ward (parish) to the home of his neighbors who owned a farm at the top of a hill overlooking the gorgeous Salzkammergut. The Salzkammergut, like the Lake District of England, is full of little lakes surrounded by hills and mountains. On this Sunday, we sat on the hillside of their strawberry farm eating a picnic lunch and watching a summer thunderstorm approach over the the hilltops. When it finally hit, we fled inside their sheepherder’s wagon. As we continued to watch the storm through the big open door, my friend pulled out a guitar, his friends pulled out their recorders, and everyone started singing folk songs. They invited my companion and me to sing some American folk songs, but neither of us knew any. Ours is not a culture that, for the most part, values folk anything. Neither could the two of us contribute by playing something on the guitar or the recorder. Although at the time I could have hummed any number of classical melodies, or even the odd rock tune, I felt the poverty of my musical culture. And I felt the poverty of my personal incompetence as a maker of music.
What this experience conveyed to me even then, over twenty years ago, was a sense of how wonderful it would be to be the maker of my own entertainment, the singer of my own tunes, the maker of my own art. And, after those essential needs of shelter, food, and clothing are met, this is perhaps the most important thing in life. Here again, I see the impoverishment of our inner life and our skills for making this life that our material success has brought. Instead of learning how to play that guitar, I whip out my iPod and listen to Beethoven sonatas. Once again, I’m a consumer, a consumer, admittedly, of something indisputably wonderful in this case, but something that I can enter into only as a bystander. Hence the BYSTANDER part of GUILTY BYSTANDER.
It seems that we can have things or we can be things. And part of what I’m advocating in the piece, for myself first and foremost, is to have less and be more.
March 10th, 2006 at 12:48 pm
Bradly Ross. I hope you will consider submitting something for top posting on OneUtah. We all have biases including me, bubt I do not want mine to dominate. My hope is the OneUtah will belong to the community.
Your comments are well-thoughout and appreciated. I will need a photo, and short bio.
March 10th, 2006 at 4:09 pm
So look I am not here to pick a fight, can you please point me to what agency or report that shows the lower income class has grown significantly. I am curious to see the hard numbers.
When it comes to Wal-Mart, all too often people get too wrapped up in the surface arguments as seen here in this blog thread. I have read much of this blog you folks come off way to smart to fall for that trap. To begin Wal-Mart was once a small company that has grown to this enormous success. The American Dream, and true like in The Simpson’s line of Bill Gates, “I didn’t get rich by writing a lot of checks” typically holds true. Does Wal-Mart pay high wages to most of its employees at the stores, not really. Does it offer Health Benefits’ to those employees? No. These are downsides to that company and one day hopefully they will change. In the meantime, lobby Congress and the state legislature to pass legislation that will require a higher level of health insurance, lobby to help bring down the cost of health care, lobby if you want to raise the minimum wage. But to blame Wal-Mart isn’t totally just. They offer what is required of them. Is it positive to offer the bare minimum, not really.
Nobody forces people to shop at Wal-Mart; this is a healthy choice that consumers make on their own. Now I personally don’t shop there, I don’t because most things are cheap and well I believe you pay for what you get. I see Wal-Mart as the new K Mart. Wages didn’t increase in this country based on the Federal Government made it so, it took people to stand up for better treatment, better wages, better hours, and so on. The big struggle between Unions, Employers and Government has got us where we are today. Far too often the arguments I see against Wal-Mart and other companies like them are usually Keynesian, and well in a free market (or as close to one as we are going to get) this is the result.
Eventually employees at Wal-Mart will realize they are worth more, our Government will need to recognize the games companies like Wal-Mart play, pay employees less so they qualify for Social Programs and not be in a need to offer it themselves. Simply to point out that Wal-Mart is evil and people shouldn’t shop there isn’t going to work, well it hasn’t so far. So shift the fight to the real issues that cause this, as I mentioned earlier, success there will go farther than just dealing with Wal-Mart, rather the next companies that follow in its footsteps.
So my long winded point is that Wal-Mart isn’t the real problem, the real problem are the elements in our country that allows these things to happen. Like I said lobby Congress, State Legislature on the other issues and that will help create change. Personally I believe in Free Markets and the will of the people. When public opinion shifts so will the company behavior, after all they are in business to make money, and if the public demands something, they will provide it.
J.W.
March 10th, 2006 at 5:03 pm
I’d agree with James that there is a bigger problem than Wal Mart. Wal Mart in that sense is a symptom. But it is also a problem, and with 1,000,000 employees and unimaginable market power, it is a BIG problem.
March 10th, 2006 at 5:22 pm
Here ya go James.
http://money.cnn.com/2004/08/26/news/economy/poverty_survey/
I’m always curious about your statements like “Personally I believe in Free Markets”. How far does that belief go? At what point do free markets work against the common good? Should basic necessities be free market? Isn’t there a point at which regulation actually relieves pressure on social services?
Did you know that among the 39 industrialized countries, there is a correlation between taxes and standard of living (higher taxes = higher standard of living)?
Thanks for your thoughtful response. - Cliff
March 10th, 2006 at 9:09 pm
In many industrialized countries there was no income value to tax 20 years ago. Many countries that are now in the global economy are producing more capital and able to pay taxes. Just fifteen years ago countries in S. America were only exporting Bananas and Coffee beans; they are now exporting silicon chips. Investors are investing into various markets in these countries which provide the capital for the building of factories; small farmers are finding buyers in the Global Market place and are selling beyond their communities. With growth and financial gain the standard of living will increase. When a company opens up a new fabrication facility they bring money. They aren’t spending the kind of dough they would in 1st world nations but compared to the income previous, it is a significant gain. These are all factors that add to the increase of the standard of living.
If you haven’t read the book I highly recommend it, “Commanding Heights”, I know PBS did a six hour special on it, the book is way better. For those of you that haven’t heard of it, (I imagine Cliff has) it covers the world economic history from the turn of the 20th century and follows to 2000. It focuses on John Maynard Keynes theory, which is Socialism light, this is where ideas like the New Deal came developed. What Keynes argues is in a recession govt. should employ and spend money, pumping money back into the economy to get people working again. FA Hayek purposed the idea that Markets are efficient and will find the best way to succeed. Greenspan followed a lot of Hayek’s theories. Well except in 1991 when he did the ’soft landing’ of the economy to prevent a serious bubble burst.
There are ups and downs in any economy, China, Russia, the US, Japan, we all have them. The models that closely resemble the Free Markets are the one that perform the best. The US is not a completely Free Market.
I like the two examples of the Air Line industry and the Atkins diet. The Air line industry was completely ran by the Federal govt from 1939 or so up until the late 70s, the only Airlines that seem to do well are the Airlines like Southwest, they had to carve out a living when there wasn’t one to make, when the big carriers had the Feds looking out for them. SWA has had to operate and take small market share and has become a profitable airline. I don’t like their procedure for assigning seats but hey it works.
The other is this Atkins diet, in the course of a couple of years every major fast food chain has introduced Low Carb options to their menus. Even soda, chips, cookies, and the list grows every week. What piece of Congressional legislation require these guys carry these options? If it went through Congress it would still be buried in committee, and millions of lobby dollars would have been spent to kill every session. These options have popped up due to market demand. Carl’s Jr. was losing sales in burgers and wrapped theirs in lettuce. Ingredients have become better quality in many items as well. This wasn’t done by corporations because our health is important to them, it was due to the fact they are losing sales and they are here to make money. Free Markets don’t work against the common good, they work towards the demand, and the demand becomes the common good.
It is easy to go on, in fact I think this was too long for a blog post, but hey if you read the whole thing, wow I am impressed. I became a Free Market believer, living and being involved in Oregon Politics. That and I studied Economics in a school that believe that Keynes was 100% correct.
J.W.
March 11th, 2006 at 11:35 am
Walmart has also been busted twice hiring illegal aliens directly and through contract services. This Federal felony for which they are responsible, and have been found guilty for, has cost them 11 million in fines.
Yet they continue to do this. A company as large as walmart and capable of paying the 11 million needs more of a beating than 11 million. Those responsible in the know should be jailed. The costs extended to the deportation of the 300 illegal aliens in the case right down to every nickel granted them for social services should be billed to them with interest and penalties. The nonsense would stop overnight.
As a company that represents interests that largely manufacture their goods in china, it is no surprise that the outsourcing of American jobs to illegals by this smily faced company.
This kind of economy overall is killing America, and empowering Nations that have limited environmental considerations in making our junk. Like china, land of the brown cloud. We have outsourced the costs of making filth in our own Nation. The fact that china is arming herelf to the teeth with the money made is only not noticed because the United States alone is responsible for more military material than the rest of the world combined.
Consider that china is still a communist totalitarian nation. Where are the rich getting their replacement organs in some cases? That’s right, chinese dissidents and criminals. If sentenced to die the govt. will kill you and part you out in a van that comes to your home, so to speed the organs to western buyers for cash. Still want to go shopping? Someday go out to the internet and read what crimes constitute capital offenses in china. It’s rather stunning.
Given these considerations I can hardly consider walmart anymore some Mom and Pop done good. American Dream Freddy Kreuger style
The expense of living in a a safe and clean environment come to mind as a cost that we are dumping on the Chinese people, who live with terrible environmental degradation, to build our junk. Have to see it to believe it. This alone, if I were Chinese would lead to some resentment towards some of their fellows for getting rich, and Americans who are largely the initiators of the dirty sweatshop factories anyway. Let’s not forget the American public, who utilizes the cheap stuff at the brand outlet (wal-mart) for this form of economic imperialism.
March 11th, 2006 at 10:47 pm
This link will show that there was no decrease from 2003 to 2004, and will show that unemployment claim decrease from 2003 to 2004.
http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/income_wealth/005647.html
I am curious to see what the data will show from 2004 to 2005. What I learned from studing economics is something called Political Lag. There is a lag from when a President puts in to act a Economic Policy or tax policy to when it actually has an effect on the economy. You can chart down/up turns in the economy with changing of Presidents and changes in Economic Policy. Typicall you see a lag of 2 to 4 years depending on the the extreme change or little changes. For example Johnson’s spending and tax cutting to Nixon taking office.
This often happens, and the general population is unaware of the lag. For example, Clinton took office and within a short time the economy had begin a healthy recovery. The best indicator of where the economy was going was to pay attention to Greenspan. Ever since he did the Soft Landing in 1991, that really showed that his actions were the key to what was to come.
The article hit on the decrease of Hispanic income, now I would love to jump into the fine details of the this study and see what data they used for that information. Having some close ties into construction here in Salt Lake City, and industries in CA, and OR that typically us hispanic labor I can tell that a good portion, (not all) have multiple SS #. They will work at one employer under 1 SS#, right about the time they get close to earning above the Poverty line for income, they will switch employers and use a new SS #. This way they have multiple files that all qualify for the tax incentatives at that level. So they artifically inflate how many actual individuals earn below the poverty income line. Now not all do this, but enough that would alter the Census and Employment data.
I may have missed this in the article, but typically when incomes decrease, can be linked to a change in the Job market. If an industry has more than usual qualified applicants, that will lower the income amounts, since the employer has a deeper pool to choose from. As well as if there are more people looking for a job in general the employer has ever more people to choose from and can lower the benifits package, and salary offerings. In 1999 countless reports were release predicting a shift in the job market to do just that, based on projects of College Grads, and people looking for work, and the less positions available. These things happens in cycles.
This information doesn’t include how many people are currently working and looking for a new job. Which the numbers are much higher. If you were able to go into a typical office and check the history list on employees’ IE you would see a good number would have Monster, or hotjobs in the list. Marketing data release from Monster ( I am looking for it) is much greater than the reports released claiming how many people are looking for jobs. This all adds to a bigger pool for employers to choose.
The book, “What Color is Your Parachute” has interesting data on how big our job market really is, and how many jobs out there that are available. The way the author breaks it down is simple and easy to understand, (for those of you who begin to nod off whenever economics is mentioned).
J.W.
March 12th, 2006 at 12:17 am
James - I’m not sure what your point is, but whatever statistics say, popular sentiment is often the best guage of reality.
Recent polls show an unusually high concern about jobs and the economy.
http://www.pollingreport.com/prioriti.htm
If the lag theory is true, the tax cuts to the rich haven’t worked. Bush has had almost 6 years to find out.
Among those who have studied “trickle down”, the vast majority agree it doesn’t work. We knew that before Bush took office, but we also know that the trickle down policy comes with a huge political windfall from the not only the rich and politically influential, but also more recently and unexplicably, from blue collar folks in Kansas.
March 12th, 2006 at 12:54 am
I didn’t argue that Bush Tax cuts worked, too be honest Bush Admin was going one way economically, the economy has gone a different way, and the Fed has been busy apply brakes and giving gas a long. The economy has been in recovery since 2002, and has been getting healthier ever since. Trickle down theory does have it points, allow those who hold financial recourses to use them, invest, build factories, build/expand business and they will create new jobs. That part of the theory is proven true. Give someone more money, or the illusion they have more money (Reagan changes on taxes) and they will spend, either in consuming in the market place, investing or paying back loans. It all makes it way into the economy and increases growth and health. In economics general perception will create and end recessions as well. If the general public is worried a recession is on its way, they will spend less, the stores will order less, the factories will produce less and begin to lay off its work force. The domino effect rolls from there.
The reason or point to my last post was in response to your article which was dated in 2004 for information in 2003. I felt we needed to see what the result was in 2004 and when I find it or is available 2005 economic data. Bush Administration has followed in steps of the Johnson administration. Johnson cut taxes, funded the war in Vietnam and funded his Great Society. He pumped a large amount of money in the economy. This caused serious economic problems down the road (combined w/ other conditions). I wanted to point out that there is more at work than what was simply presented in the article and the data it referred too. That is where we should begin, and find the best economic policy to help this country.
I enjoy the content and flow of this blog, other one tend to be strongly once sided and not interested in outside opinions or differing point of views. We all have an idea of where our community should end up, we may differ on how to get there, but we have the same goal.
March 12th, 2006 at 4:50 pm
Hoefer, when Immigration captures an illegal alien working here from Mexico they deport them back right? Did you know that if the illegal has a CDL they will not take that away. A friend of mine in Oregon, his sister married and illegal alien who is a truck driver with a valid CDL. He was picked up and returned to Mexico, at tax payers expense. Once in Mexico he visited family, his wife came down and they entered the US through Texas. He walked right though displaying his CDL as proof of citizenship. So the US govt paid for him to take a two vacation back to visit family and came back to the US returned to work no problem. Now why would the US Govt not take back the CDL making it harder for him to return to the US and conitune his employment.
Jobs being exported from the US is not going to stop, it will continue. Whether people in our workforce adapt to this conept or not is entirely up to them. Education should be a life long commitment. To stay competitive in this global economy, you must keep sharp, learn new skills, learn new technologies and be able to adapt to the changing world. We can bash NAFTA and blame companies and Congress for taking jobs overseas, it is still going to happen.
Who did we blame for our working conditions before the early 1900s? Where we are today has taken hundreds of years. It took workers to realize and demand that they are worth more, it took our educational institutions to evolve and offer more to more of the population. Workers in third world countries work long hours for little pay, however they are making more money at their standards than before theses jobs arrived into their country. They may have been workingin a field before for $25 a month and now work in a factory for $200 a month. That is a huge step for earnings. Sure the condidtions are poor and no American would accept to work for that pay under those conditions. Someday they will too, and they will demand more and they will find more educational oppertunities that will help them do more. What we are seeing is what life was like for Americans and Europeans a hundred years ago. Maybe one day Jimmy Hoffa will be born again in one of these countires, stand out on the docks and convience them they can do more and better.
And as far as your comments on Communist China, it is a communist goverment, and is ruled with Iron fists. They also charge families for the bullets used to enforce capital punishment. Should the US take that policy too, by your rational, our society should pay for the price of the crime they commited and the punishment to be carried out. They also don’t have due process, and well thanks to Gideon, they don’t have the right to an attorney or a fair trial. And well, Organs come from all places on the black market, there is some sick stuff in this world.
Eventually the chinese people will deicde to no longer be ruled by a Communist Govt, given their history of being ruled by Emporeors this may take a while. The events that led up to Tienanman Square in 1989 will show that people will only give so much before they want reform. It is only a matter of time, well I know we have some D’s on the far left that believe Socialism is the best way to live. I for one would never live in a truely socialist country, the US is close enough.
March 14th, 2006 at 9:30 am
This article is crap. Its statistics games. What was the poverty level in 2004 and 2005. Then look at actual inflation.
The issue pushing a whole bunch of people into poverty is probably energy costs alone. But add up these numbers as well. 45 million people in poverty (how many people are there in the US - less than 300 million). For all we know this is a demographic change based on hispanic immigrants having more children then pushing up the number in poverty.
There are a hundred different ways to play and spin it.
March 14th, 2006 at 1:21 pm
Foxtrot - Your use of words like “probably”, and “for all we know,” suggest your preference is to validate the way you would LIKE things to be, rather than a desire to actually know.
May I assume you would like to believe that the economy is cranking along just fine? That Americans are not falling into poverty at an increasing rate, that we are not falling behind the other industrialized countries in terms of standard of living, infant mortality, access to healthcare, education, crime, incarceration, murder by hand guns, and a whole lot of other areas.
Let me guess, you also think that we are the greatest nation on earth? What evidence do you have of that?
March 14th, 2006 at 1:37 pm
As I point out in my last post, the article provided by Cliff was dated info, the recent link I provided was to data that was for the following year, which showed no decline except in the numbers of Unemployment. Since Cliffs post I have been anxiously awaiting the release for the 2005 data to see if it showed improvement, which would be my prediction.
The Economy isn’t cranking along just fine, it is growing and is healthy. One indication is the FED looking at increasing Interest Rates. Their concern is to not let the economy grow too quickly or too big, otherwise we have another bubble burst. I think what FOXTROT was hitting on regarding the Hispanic population is the growth which can through the numbers in directions that aren’t acurate. This pops up with issues like the Census and states losing Congressional seats.
March 14th, 2006 at 1:49 pm
Tasha, the use of those words are definition of my ignorance. Statistical data is thrown around and used to make a variety of points that may not be accurate. If you look at the cost of fuel increases and the inflation rate you WILL see a direct result. As well as, many people who sit around the poverty line, whether they are their legitimatly or by playing income tax games, they will be affected by this increase that would push them into this group of growing poverty. Seniors will be affected by both cost of heating oil and cost of medication they will be affected in this way. Not by the Bush Administration Tax Cut Policy.
I notice some folks on this site would like to put this in a neat little box and point to the current administration and say “SEE!” When it comes to the economy its not a neat little box, the value of dollar can affect these numbers, the cost of oil, the cost of prescription drugs. Jobs that are being exported, yet we don’t hear about the jobs being imported, for example just the other day CNN’s website had an article on Kia building its first planet in North America, Georgia to be exact. The economy is in flux all the time and using this Kerry, Liberal Left of the Democratic Party talking points are going to get very far. Dig deeper, find out what really causes these things and use that, the race for both parties is the moderate middle. Arnold the Terminator was stumping on the fact that the Republican Party needs to take a couple steps to the left, like the Democratic Party needs to take a couple of steps to the right. And yes Kerry was wrong when he said if the Democratic party moves to the right all you will do is create a 2nd Republican Party. That is just ignorant and dismissing the large middle that is untouched by both sides.
March 14th, 2006 at 5:20 pm
I didn’t mean to suggest that the Bush administration is responsible for the unprecidented budget deficit, national debt, job loss, high oil and drug prices or downward trend of nearly every economic factor you can measure, except production. But since you brought it up, I would recommend putting some effort into studying this issue, because most experts agree that the current republican regime has been a disaster on every front really.
This is hardly the vehicle for you to become convinced. Again, you a are sounding a little bit defensive. Why do you feel so compelled to defend Bush? Do you know him? Do you think he cares about you?
At some point, you may have to accept the fact that Bush betrayed your trust under the guise of being a religious man. I know the bible warns us about such men.
But don’t take my word for it. Read your bible and talk to the smartest people you know. Here’s a start.
http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/webfeatures_econindicators_income20050831
May God Bless Us All!
March 14th, 2006 at 5:32 pm
Umm, where did I say I was in support for bush? http://www.federalreserve.gov/ is the best website to go to for economic data, not http://www.democrats.org/. See this is the problem with the D party today. Someone steps up with a differing message, doesn’t argee down party lines and immediatly I must be a Ultra Conservative Bush loving idiot. Well, how to put this term for you….WRONG!
Budget deficits are all about the Bush administration, I don’t believe I have said anything otherwise. He is following the same path as the Johnson Administration, and it will be up to a smart FED to keep from what happened in the early 70s and well again in the late 70s from repeating.
Job loss? according to the lastest information released by beige book studies, jobs have been on the rebound for a little while. There are more jobs created, and more jobs sitting empty than jobs leaving the country. This number is growing every year. To sit there and site Kerryonomics or Dean’s babble, is most likely beaneath you and should aspire for more indepth, intellegent thought.
I haven’t been defensive, I just get a little eager when I meet people like you, why must the DNC come out of your mouth is beyond me, you ask if Bush cares about me, I don’t really care, his but is gone in Jan. 2009, and well do you think DNC cares about you? They would sell you out and your values to just grab hold power. See we are arguing over two evils and like I said, just because I don’t agree down DNC party lines doesn’t make me a Republican. People like you make me a Republican.
March 14th, 2006 at 6:02 pm
Fox - you said “…Not by the Bush Administration Tax Cut Policy.” and “I notice some folks on this site would like to put this in a neat little box and point to the current administration and say “SEE!â€
It’s not hard to tell you are emotionally involved. It sounds like you are backing away from Bush (who wouldn’t), and thats a good sign, but you clearly have some anger toward us libs. The anger thing for the sake of it seems to be a constant with you guys.
Thats the sadest part about what Bush did to this country. When did anyone start HATING the other party before Bush?
I never mentioned the DNC.
But more importantly, now you are defending the job climate? No where in your defense did you mention a comparison to historical job growth. The economy is always growing, but comparing unfilled jobs with those leaving the country is rather unorthodoxed. Sounds like Hannity or Limbaugh crap.
The good jobs have left the country, and unfortunatly, you can’t name one act or policy of this adminstration to stem that tide, while I can list many democrat proposals and policies.
You can hardly ask a father of 4 who’s used to make$48K with benefits in a skilled union job, to go take a job in a fish processing plant for 6.50/hour.
“People like you make me a Republican”. There’s a great basis for political affiliation. Do you hate half the country, or just the ones with conviction based on reason rather than guns, God, and gays?
March 14th, 2006 at 8:44 pm
Job markets and economies are complicated things, anyone side can bring to a point A. We lost jobs and the economy isn’t doing great or B. The economy is growing and we have more jobs than we are losing. It goes both ways and each party is good at using it to their advantage.
I have to say Tasha and Cliff the data you used is old and out dated. A lot of that post Tasha sounded a lot like Kerry’s Economics Bashing; well he was using dated info then. The worst part of the D and R parties is they keep blaming the other side, pointing fingers and saying that they are the ones to blame. The turn off is that they are talking about Americans. Some of us are socially and Fiscally Liberal, some are fiscally and socially Conservative. Then there are the ones stuck in the middle, Socially Liberal and Fiscally Conservative. There are things wrong with both parties and I find I have to choose the one that isn’t as bad as the other. I could just join the Libertarian Party but I want to be involved and in a two party system if you have to pick a side if you want to truly be involved. I will tell you in 2004 I voted for Bush, not because I believed he was so great, because he’s not. I just didn’t find Kerry to be that convincing. Everything Kerry said he wanted to do, he could have done as a US Senator over the course of the last 20 years, esp. when there was a Democrat in the White House. Kerry wanted to be President for the sake of being President. I don’t believe in Nationalized Health Care, and he stance on the war ended any chance he had with me.
He blamed bush for the war and the problems there, when it came time to vote for more supplies for Troops he voted no. This was his Protest against Bush and the war. That was wrong. It is one thing to make a statement, but you don’t vote to prevent supplies that will keep our troops safe whether you believe we (our troops) should be there or not, they are there and the things in that bill would help them be safe and come home alive. If you want to make a statement about not being there, introduce legislation that would bring them home. He picked the wrong place to fight that battle. That reflected on his leadership. Yeah I know the bill passed, it’s the point he was making that killed it for me. When they wheeled out the footage of him speaking to Congress in the early 70s, I saw a guy that was spending his life to become Presidents, and that was really ugly to me. I don’t like the fact that my choice was Kerry or Bush, and long for a real leader, like everyone else. I don’t look at party affiliation; I look at the candidates language in order to make up my mind. If I see a candidate that has been doing things to make himself look good and doesn’t show an original thought, even against popular opinion, no thanks I’ll keep my vote.
In Oregon I was not welcomed in the Democratic Party due to my stance on fiscal issues, even though socially I was right there, even a little more left most. If I didn’t follow Party line, then I was welcomed. So I went to one of the more prominant Repulblicans in the state (who was far right conservative) I told him where I stood on all issues. He looked at me and said “Welcome to the Big Tent, you should talk to…..” though I don’t agree with them socially, I was welcomed opinion at the table and gained respect for my values and commiment to them. I was even there when the Oregon GOP held debates on removing Same Sex Marriage and Abortion from the Party Platform. Yeah that’s right, they are working on dropping them altogether, their meetings consisted of issues and what’s voter opinions. When I was in the D party, they talked about how to get those Republicans, everything had negative tone, and if you didn’t agree then….well that’s another post I guess. This is kind of where you went Tasha on that post in response to FOXTROT13. He didn’t say he was conservative, but you assumed he was part of that crazy hated left.
March 14th, 2006 at 9:58 pm
I mean crazy hate rigth.
March 15th, 2006 at 1:11 am
Kennedy, You make several false assumptions.
#1 - Kerry did not vote against supplying the troops. That was classic right wing propaganda. Kerry voted against some appropriations bills because they included outrageous pork appropriations for obsolete weapons systems we do not need.
#2 I’ve never hear the term “socially and Fiscally Liberal” Over the last 40 years, turns out democrats have been more fiscally conservative than republicans. You are listening to folklore rather than fact. What Kerry did in the 70’s was put his behind on the line against the prevailing political culture effectively conceeding any hope of acceptance in the mainstream political world.
March 15th, 2006 at 7:21 am
No he didn’t, he took advantage of public oppertunity and said the right things. He spent his life working on sitting in the Oval office, and that isn’t how it is done. That’s not character thats greed, and though I don’t remember the Bill number that he voted against, I didn’t hear it through the GOP machine, I got it straight from the Democratic Party Propaganda, its so great he took a stand. And the attitude of if we registar more people they will vote for us. That’s assuming that people wouldn’t decide to vote GOP on their own. Having more voters turnout isn’t a sign that people would vote D. Which is what we saw on election night. Please don’t refer to me by James as you did in the post. A couple of us the same email for posting, and well when James is ready he will post, which will use James, not TKL.
Thanks
March 16th, 2006 at 10:43 am
For TK’s Liver
http://news.goldseek.com/JamesTurk/1142438460.php
March 16th, 2006 at 2:42 pm
James Turk has a nice Resume, however he dosesn’t have his education above a BA from GW, this is his opnion based on facts as he sees them and well thats all well in good, I don’t listen to Lex Luthor, I mean Soros everytime he opens his mouth. Nice article on Economic Dooms day. Its an opnion based on how he intrupts the facts and where it is going to go.
You know many people belived the world was going to crash when we were relying on Whale Blubber. Somehow we managed to over come that issue. During the 1980s a lot of the same was said during Reagan, and well due to the break up of the phone company, advancement in Miltitary Technology and wealth moving around, we ended up with the largest Boom in US history. Well, I am not convinced with Turk’s column, it is something along the lines of a Economics Professor who believes that Govt. inolvement is the way to go and forget about free markets.
Thanks though.
March 17th, 2006 at 11:35 am
Yeah I guess it takes a Ph.d to rob the total spectrum of people blind without anyone noticing, or better yet complaining. Get it right out in the open.
His credentials weren’t my interest, the data was.
There is nothing free in our current incarnation of markets. That can be demonstrated by the EU’s recent victory over the US with regards to subsidies that we give our industries, competeing on the “free global market”. We have been ruled against and the tariff penalities are to begin shortly.
March 17th, 2006 at 1:03 pm
[...] In an earlier post, Confessions of Another Guilty Bystander, I suggested that the root of our environmental and social problems today is the way we duck responsibility for what we do by externalizing the costs. We have an endless appetite for cheap consumer goods, for example, and let Wal Mart pass on the real cost of that cheapness to the Mexicans and the Chinese. We’re addicted to fossil fuels, and pass on the costs of their long-term damage to our kids and grandkids. But, despite our best effort to avoid them, the consequences of our unsupportable lifestyle are catching up with us. The three wars we’ve fought in the Middle East are an example. The first one we fought for oil; the second two we’re fighting because we fought the first. [...]
March 17th, 2007 at 8:51 am
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