The Business of America

[Cary]

Never a day goes by that I am not utterly amazed.

Although so much has changed since Calvin Coolidge uttered his famous 1920s statement, the fact that the business of America is business is today more salient than ever.

Back then agriculture had lost value by being commoditized, and the profits were in industry. Today industry has been super-commoditized, and value is in service. As we read this service is rapidly being commoditized.

So where is the value? As best I can tell, if you have more goods and services being produced by fewer and fewer people, under our system who is going to buy the goods and services?

Seems to me the real value today is held by, ironically, consumers. Yet our philosophical underpinning of our current rulers in this country is anything but pro-consumer.

Bankruptcy is pro-consumer, because it gives consumers a fresh start that enables them to resume consumption. Making it harder to get that fresh start means fewer consumers.

Outsourcing high-paying jobs in favor of lower paid workers in India is good for India, but bad for consumers here.

Having a health care system that is out of reach for consumers not only creates fewer health care consumers by at best not letting them consume and at worst, killing consumers. It also keeps these people from consuming other things they might consume. Moreover if they do manage to recover, physically, they can no longer get a fresh start.

Depriving Social Security beneficiaries of their Social Security benefits helps them consume? I think not.

Taking reservists from high paying jobs and keeping them on active duty--helps or hurts?

Tax cuts for people who already have more resources than they can use in a lifetime (which is really a cover for increasing the relative tax burden of the middle class) . . .?

Offering less help for middle class students to get their education, effectively shutting them out or saddling them with huge student loans. . .?

I could go on. What can I say, except that I'm utterly amazed. Something has to give somewhere. Doesn't it?

[tom_paine]

1. Ues something has to give. How long it takes is an experiment

in the efficacy of Orwellian Totalitarian Propaganda can keep the Sheeple in denial.

[Cary]

2. Not sure what you mean, but I fail to see the point of

"Orwellian Totalitarian Propaganda." It just seems like a lot of trouble in the long run, toward what end?

So you control a bunch of Sheeple. Then what?

[tom_paine]

3. No, you keep them in denial of the problems right in front of them

Think about it: Stuff like the Stock Market is essentially a big cattle herd. Spook the cattle enough and you have a big sell-off. Sppok more of them harder, you have a Crash.

Apply that outward to all facets of life, so much of which depends on the mood and perceptions of the human beings in it.

Something has to give, yes. But the longer you can keep the sheep from realizing what is going on and where we are heasding, the more you can steal and the longer you can keep the Ponzi Scheme afloat.

get it? Like a con man keeping the rube dumb and happy until he splits down with his suitcase full of cash.

And that is the effect of the Orwellian Totalitarian Propaganda I am speaking of, applied to all 285,000,000 of the Imperial Subjects of Amerika, collectively.

[Cary]

5. I'm not quite that cynical.

The correct answers seem so obvious to me. Enable consumers and they will consume.

At the end of the day, other than certain heinous activities, who cares what they do?

[Orsino]

4. This ends in just one way.

There will be the class of people who live inside the dome, and there will be those who stay outside. Those who live outside will have only the faint hope that they will one day be lucky enough to join the ranks of the third class--those who make delivery runs and clean toilets inside the dome.