Saturday, April 21, 2012

SAR #12112

There are many truths, but only one reality.

Inertia: A lot of attention being paid to income inequality in the US, as though that were the problem. It is not. Our income inequality is a symptom; the disease is the control of the government and the political process by the rich. it is unrealistic to think that politicians bought and owned by the rich, by Wall Street, and by the corporations would turn on them. It's not going to happen. There is no democratic way to reverse the conditions that now prevail. There probably is no peaceful way, either.

Redundancy: The question was “is it sensible to have nine lawyers decide what sort of health-care payment system the nation should have?” Well, no. But the current system was selected by a group of 500 or so lawyers in Congress. Does that make any more sense?

The End of Innocence: By the end of June, 700,000 former workers who have been unemployed for over a year will lose their extended unemployment benefits. As time passes, millions more will lose what little income they have been relying on, as extended unemployment benefits end. Good thing the recovery is going to start any day now.

Dystopia: 15% of the American population - 20% of all households - are now receiving food stamps. What does it mean when 46.5 million Americans cannot afford to buy food for themselves and their children?

Lose/Lose: In America, losing your job means losing your health insurance. That's why last year over 17% of working-age Americans were without coverage for a year or more.

Separation Anxiety: About 2.3 million children in the US have lost their homes due to foreclosure. Another 3 million are living in homes in some step of the foreclosure process. 3 million more live in rental houses that are on the foreclosure merry-go-round. How do you think these kids are doing in school? Bonus question: How many school age children are living in cars or culverts? Where's the NCLB program for this group?

Paperwork: The economy may be in the toilet, but corporations keep cutting costs, cutting payrolls, and increasing profits. In the last year, toilet paper sales were flat, yet profit margins grew 4%. Making the rolls narrower helped.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dystopia: ...

Just like Finance where fraudulent products are called "investments", our industrialized food system calls its processed, chemicalized, GMOd, standardized output "food". It is no more food than robosigned, MERSd mortgages are "investments".

Thus, Food Stamps are not about food at all but about fraud and subsidizing America's Too Big To Fail Agribusiness, a nice bookend to TBTF Finance.

Time for Americans to educate themselves about real food as well as Finance. And stop calling industrialized crap food.

Gegner said...

Inertia: Thank you! That had to be said.

Charles Kingsley Michaelson, III said...

No, thank you, Gegner, we aim to please.

Well, actually we don't; but sometimes serendipity happens by.

ckm

kwark said...

Re "Dystopia": So are Food Stamps as Anonymous says, just one more way to shovel money to corporate America? Well, yeah, but seems to me food aid is also about keeping people quiet. Starving people have a way of getting restive. The PTB don't like "restive". Refer to "Inertia".

Charles Kingsley Michaelson, III said...

Keeping with the general theme here, if you've not read Ignorance of things past I recommend it highly.

ckm

Charles Kingsley Michaelson, III said...

Sorry - Ignorance... is by lewis Lapham. my bad.

ckm