College Days

When I was in college, wow, almost 47 years ago, that's almost half a century!, I remember writing a paper on the consequences of automation in our industrial world.  What would happen when robots took over the work force?  Wow, was I pretty dumb, way beyond naive, just a dumb college kid.  I was an idealist and a bit of a romantic, not at all the cynical hard nosed guy I have become!  I had imagined a return to the Renaissance, a resurrection of literature and the arts, real live theater in every town and huge libraries everywhere.  We were given the best gift of all:  time, and I had hoped we could have put it to good use.  I had imagined wonderful schools teaching us the languages of the world, poetry, theater and the arts.  All kinds of things because we had the time.  I thought we could return to building great buildings and bridges, structurally sound and full of art.
   I imagined a far shorter work week, an earlier retirement, greater advances in medical care, an end to world wide strife and poverty and a blossoming of the human race.  In fact, no race at all.  Machinery could now bear the brunt of labor and people, finally rising above survival necessities could thrive with the better part of what makes us human.
   Remember this was a long time ago.  My father was a History Professor and made a salary of $900 a month with no benefits, no medical insurance.  Minimum wage was about $1.25 an hour and a boss, the CEO of a corporation made about six times the wages of his hourly workers.  I bought my house when I was making less than two dollars per hour, working at a local factory where the big bosses might have made three of four dollars per hour.  Oh we had supper rich people back then too, maybe the lumber mill owner, especially if he also owned thousands of acres of forest land to feed his mill.  Back in those days we had a graduated income tax and fair or not if you made over a million dollars a year you paid a lot of taxes on money over this amount.
It seemed like this system worked.  The divide between regular working people and well off people with really good jobs was three times the money and this was a hurtle and horizon, an obstacle that was conquerable.  I put myself through college with a part time job, working less than 15 hours per week.
   Initially robotics and this post modern industrial revolution made things much cheaper.  Modern manufacturing and conveyor belt construction with robots on the line could keep a five cent candy bar at a nickle.  What happened?  Why was I so very wrong?
   The government gives us so much more than they did in the old days and modern industry gives us much less.  Some CEO's make six hundred times the money of their average worker, some make six thousand times that much!  The distance between the average worker and the the wealthy with their great paying jobs have become an abyss; reasonable hurdles have become insurmountable obstacles.  The tax structure has changed so that people like Mitt Romney pay less than half what a regular worker would pay.  I was naive to have thought that this new found wealth created in the post modern world would have been shared.
   The problem for Society, as I see it, isn't that some have a great deal of wealth and really, they do not pay their fair share, it is that we have created a divide impossible to get across, a chasm so deep as to be impenetrable.  We lose our values of working hard because that experience is meeting with defeat and our dreams now are tied up with lottery tickets, the government approved way to wealth!
   It was a good essay; I got an "A" on it.  It was just so very wrong.  But, it coulda been! 

Keep the One Percent!

I watch these protesters from the comfort of my easy chair.  I certainly don't venture forth into the cold to join them and it has been over 20 years since I have slept in a tent.  I don't disagree with all they say but I wish they could find leaders, someone to vocalize their anger, refocus their efforts and be a little more rational in what they want.  I see so much anger there when in most cases they are the cause of their own problems.
It is really easy to get back at the 1% if that is what you want to do.  Quit supporting them.  Don't go to Sam Walton's stores.  Throw away your Ipod! and, only if you are pretty enough, take off your foreign clothes!
   I like the 1%.  Walmart has done some good things and I am sure they are listening now.  That is how they got to be the 1%, by listening and filling a need.  Walmart offered us the $4 dollar prescriptions, cheap eye glasses, and they are beginning to provide local produce and an organic section to their food departments!
Steve Jobs was a multi gazillionaire, selling telephones basically!  How cool is that?  I like Bill Gates and the whole group that make up this 1%
   I don't even want their money, not much of it anyway, not enough that they would notice much.  I think the Democrats are after just 3% on money made after the first million dollars!  Do you really think this would cripple Microsoft?  I doubt it.  It certainly won't equal the playing field and that is probably a good idea.
   I wish Politicians were forced to study Economics.  I wish they knew our own History and I wish they could find countries on a map, at least, say ten of them.  It would be nice if they knew that Africa was not a country.  There are "laws of economics" and I wish they understood these.  Sometimes opinions and emotions can be destructive of what we are after.
   There is a food chain and as killing the sharks disturbs the ecosystem in the oceans, destroying the 1% would probably have disastrous effects all down the line.  Someone else would just replace them.  There will always be 1%.
   Our Congress can't even agree on vegetables for school lunches!  That is right, that measure failed.  It was an Obama backed measure and, god forbid, passing it might have made him look good!  So we will continue with pizza and french fries and cold corn dogs because we can't agree on anything!
   20% of our population is taking mood altering prescription drugs!  25% of women do this!  Probably 50%
are on non-prescriptive drugs, alcohol and marijuana!  It is a ship going down and unlike the Titanic we are not even dancing!  Like rats caught in a maze we are reduced to eating each other!
   Our National Debt is about 62% of GNP.  Italy's is 118% and Japan's is over 200%. I do not know what is acceptable, reasonable and ordinary.  I do know the fear, the anger,the finger pointing, the emotions of it all are preventing any kind of reasonable solution.  I know that we shouldn't implement reforms and see what will happen.  It is not necessary.  We know what will happen.  You can look to recent history and see what will happen, look to Greece, to England and Ireland, look to what will happen soon in Spain.  Look to what happened in Germany when their money was so devalued that a worker was paid three times a day, devaluing a hundred times in a matter of hours.
   There is a science to this and an historical precedent. It would be nice to have leaders who actually read books.

My Art, shop and garden are HERE

United States Savings Bonds

I remember buying them in grade school as a youngster, twenty-five cents a week I think I spent.  If I remember right $18 would buy you a twenty-five dollar Bonds, worth that much if you kept them long enough.  I lost all of mine over the years, maybe a hundred bucks worth.
   Savings Bonds of course are our National Debt, that is how we get the money.  62% we owe to ourselves and the rest to foreigners, mostly China.  Bonds are a hot commodity, easy to sell.  We are still a good investment.
   It was 1958, Sputnik just went up and our Freeway Systems were being built all across the United States, the old Route 66 was being abandoned.  We were a growing, busy, industriaalized nation.  Lots was happening everywhere.  The government needed money for all of this, the roads, outer space exploration, the Korean War, fighting the commies and building industry.  They sold bonds to school children to pay for it all.
   National Debt is not a crime.  What makes it bad is when it is used to pay electric bills and day to day expenses.  Like living off a credit card this is not sustainable.  The money owed should be divided into two separate catagories.  Money betting on an optimistic future is a good investment.  Money spent on education, roads, freeways, bridges, all of our infrastructure, clean air to breath and water to drink is betting that times will improve, is offering our children a positive future.  This money spent also provides jobs and immediate results.  A sight to the future needs to be bet on and paid for.  I would buy Bonds for this.
   Most Recessions have lasted less than two years, some much shorter and are considered "market adjustments".  This one is in to its fifth year and has seen over 15,000,000 Americans without work and 25 million without health insurance.  More homes have been lost than during the Great Depression.  All of this means that the government isn't collecting taxes.
   Businesses hire when there is a demand.  It is as simple as that.  And so very complicated to fix it.  More than anything we need to know that there will be a tomorrow and it will have the potential of being better and brighter, something worth working for.
   Austerity measures have not worked in other countries.  They are bleak, depressing, desparate measures that offer soup kitchens and despair for their citizens.  When every day is a little worse it is difficult to find ambition and strength and all of this create a downward spiral just making the situation worse.  We do need inspiration, we need that "hope" we were promised that never came to be.
   In the meantime Christmas Season will be here soon and you can think about what you will give as presents.  No bobbles and cheap tinny crap from Walmart, please, nothing imported please.

Cut and Paste

We have a Super Committee, a group of Republican and Democratic Senators who have been charged with the impossible task of reducing our National Deficit and their time is running out.  It is an interesting problem and they are in a "do or die" situation.  If they fail to reach agreement then the reductions will automatically come out of Social Security, Medicare and the Military.  Even if they reached agreement it is still not final.  There would be a vote in Congress and whatever was decided still needs to be signed by the President.
   All of this is of importance to Artists because we are people too.  We get old, we get sick, we pay taxes.
We have been in this recession for over four years.  Schnitzer Steel Stock is less than $50 from it's high of $117 four years ago.  Not all but most of the stock market is this way.   Housing has taken a beating and we have lost much of our equity there too.  We are unemployed, uninsured and soon to be hungry.  More people are on food assistance than ever before.  This "new normal" is pretty sad.
   To fix it you have to be a betting person, a bit of a gambler.  You could have the attitude of despair, that it is all going to come down crashing upon us like a house of cards.  We must hunker down and pay the piper,
take what suffering that will occur, pay down the National Debt and suffer the consequences.  This same reasoning will want the creation of jobs at any cost.  The cost could be dear indeed.  Get rid of Government rules and regulations, abandon the clean air policies and pollute our waterways, fracture the Earth in the name of industry.
   One could have a more optimistic attitude.  We could bet that there will be a  future, that these are not the "last days on earth", not Armageddon.  We will continue and decide what kind of world we want to live in.
It seems to me that the biggest difference in these decisions between the Republicans and the Democrats
come down to tax revenues, environmental concerns and who would be more able to stimulate the economy,
private enterprise or the government?
   I am sure cuts will be made and they will be more political than economic.  They won't be about fairness but about power.  Why 99% of us can't get the richest 1% to pay an additional 3% in taxes OVER a million a year is all about power.
   It wouldn't be easy to be on that committee, someone will hate you.  One third of Medicare's budget is spent on the last one year of a person's life.  I am not sure that is a good investment.  I think I miss the days when a person could just die in peace and not be carted back and forth to the emergency room and suffer heroic efforts.  Personally I like an Eskimo tradition of being placed on an iceberg or in a small canoe paddling after that last sunset.  The isolation of our society says to put old people in nursing homes and our guilt for this requires huge investments in last days medical care.
   I am sure there is tons of waste that could be cut, probably easily 10% across the board.  We have a country of Government Workers who all have pensions supported by tax dollars.  Pensions that we do not have.
  Our military is huge.  Much bigger than all the rest of the world combined!  Can you even imagine this?
   As a businessman cutting a budget can be a dangerous thing to do.  Some expenditures make money and are necessary.  Rebuilding our Nation's infrastructure is one of these.  We need roads, bridges, trains or commerce will come to a grinding halt.  To invest money there seems like a good idea to me.
   It is all pretty complicated.  First the banks were bailed out and as expensive as that was it was necessary. They represent "the system", our faith in money, our belief that when we get a check it will be cashable, and when we write a check or use a credit card, it will be honored.  This "system" is not perfect and there is a lot of abuse but it is easier to fix it than tear it down.  I think.
   Now it is "Main Streets" time and the question is what to do?

What I do is HERE

Wall Street Protests

I wonder whether anyone listens to anything any more?  How Loud do we have to be?  The World is laughing at our political system, once admired and the envy of  all nations.  The Republicans have sworn an oath, not to do what is best for this country, but to thwart Obama at any cost.  Barely a year from another election, they will do nothing that might make him look good.  In fact, if they can blame it on our President, they will pull this country much further down this slippery slop we find ourselves on.  That is their plan.
   Rich people do Not pay their fair share of taxes.  They pay 15% after every slimy deduction while a working person pays closer to 35%  Over 60% of Americans think this isn't right and I suspect the other 40% just aren't thinking at all.
   The top 2% of Americans are getting richer and richer in these troubled times.  It is not hard working people who are buying newly foreclosed houses.  It is giant real estate corporations, the wealthy getting wealthier, taking advantage of tough times.  Corporations are not creating jobs; their net value has increased 15% as the rest of us suffer.  They are sitting on over One Trillion Dollars, cash reserves building up and up.
Living wages are disappearing and we are supposed to be grateful for $10 an hour with no benefits, no insurance.
   We don't feel as though we are "all in this together", fighting a common enemy, all willing to sacrifice equally, all willing to work harder to get us back to a firmer ground.  We don't feel this way because it is not this way.  It is some other way and we know it.
   Congress is so broken it is pathetic.  Conflicting goals:  destroy Obama or help America?  They have given up on attempting to achieve some kind of equal taxation where we might all pay the same rate.  They can't even get a bill through to tax money OVER A MILLION DOLLARS at a mere 5%.  That single thing alone would raise 450 Billion Dollars, the price tag on the Jobs Program to kick start our economy.
   It is nuts.  We are all at a card table and we are all playing different games!  No wonder nothing gets done!
   So, for now, we will protest peacefully.  We will camp out at Wall Street and financial institutions all across American.  When more and more and more people are working for $10 an hour and the richest people are sitting on over a Trillion Dollars and getting rich beyond our ability to count and NOT paying taxes on their money, something is wrong.
   This is not Robin Hood.  It is not taking from the rich and giving to the poor.  I am not after that.  Only an equal playing field, all at the table and all playing the same game and all of the cards on the table.
   There has never been a better time to rebuild our infrastructure, repair our roads and bridges.  We need it
and we have the people to do it.  It would be far simpler to fix this economy if we wanted to. But that might not really be the agenda, huh?

My art stuff is HERE

STEEL SINKS!

My $5,000 "Retirement Fund" in Steel Stock is now worth less than $3,000.  The Stock Market "Crashed" yesterday and is nose diving again today and I wonder what all this means?  Where is the $2,000 that I lost?

I wonder who got that?  I wonder how hard they had to work to get it?

   The Stock Market "Lost" over a Trillion dollars yesterday.  One day.  I wonder where it went?

   What was supposed to happen with our credit down grade is money should be harder to get.  A little higher interest and money would become scarce.  No one would loan us any.   In theory that should make existing investments more secure, old money better than new money.

   That is not what happened.  The Bond Market (people loaning us money) went nuts!  Lots of money entered the Bond Market and Stocks plummeted.  Now, what the hell could this mean?

   Bonds are often "long term investments", meaning over five years, often ten.  I remember buying them in grade school, a left over from WWII.  We would buy them at .25 cents a week and $17 dollars would buy you a Bond with a face value of $25 dollars ten or so years later.  Yes, Bonds are loans and they are based on faith.  In ten years things will get better.

   Stocks have become a "right now" investment, more closer to gambling than investing.  With computer generated buying and selling and day trading lots of money changes hands hourly and a great deal of money is lost or won in an hour.  Today the economy is in the tank and stocks are more like lottery tickets, pretty unusual if you should win.

   Nothing is related to any of this.  In the last three years Schnitzer stock has seen a high of $117 and a low of $23 and sits at $40 now, going down still.  The price of steel keeps climbing, always inching upward and never in retreat.  Buying steel stock in not the same as buying steel.

   America should have a quadruple AAAA+ credit rating, no, not because our industry is so great and not because of our banking system.  We need to improve those.  We should have the highest credit rating simply because we are the only "dream on the table".  In this game of Monopoly it is our best card to play.  The world knows this even if we have lost that card in the shuffle.  They still want to loan us money.

   I will keep my steel stock.  I like telling people that "I own Schnitzer Steel".  I think my little ownership of the corporate world gives me license to be critical of it.  And voting gives me the right to be critical of my own country and our complaining bickering political system that drove us into this mess.

   There is no second choice, no one else at bat, no other political system, no other country, no other economy.  Now is not the time to fold 'em, not yet time to count your cards.  We are the only game in town.

My garden and art stuff is HERE