Bankruptcy!

Bankruptcy is like beginning a whole new game of Monopoly but with slightly different rules.  The I-O-U's get thrown out and the "Get out of Jail Free" cards are dispersed with a great hope that the game can begin anew!  Individual people do this all of the time.  It was our solution to over crowded jails due to debtor's prisons.  It has been the answer to overwhelming medical expenses and other unforeseen events and just careless spending above our means.  Now it is the wave of the future for entire cities!  Stockton, San Bernadina and a third city in California have recently filed for bankruptcy and there have been other cities in the United States doing the same.  California itself, the entire State could be headed that way!
   Why are they doing this?  and what does it mean?
   Simply, there is not enough money on the board.  Money needs to circulate for the system to work.  As you "Pass GO" you collect and land on certain properties, you pay.  If you can't pay, they cannot collect and the game is over.  The money is still there.  The fat cats have it or the bankers have it but it is not being circulated.  You bought Park Place for every single piece of value you could scrounge only to discover it was not worth so much!  So you begin to skip some payments.  Then the banks don't get it, the grocery stores don't get it, the worker at McDonald's doesn't even get it and soon the game is over.
   What makes the situation a little worse is past games.  In past games the winners were awarded with a kind of annuity, a lifetime income for a game well played.  Not everyone got this, just the winners, but they did pretty well, receiving lifetime payments as much as their yearly salaries while they worked and lifetime health insurance for a game well played!  This debt to past players (the winners only!) amounts to Trillions of dollars and with no money circulating on the board, it is difficult to come up with.
    This means that school teachers, city and government workers, policemen and firemen and others thinking they had won the system and could live out their retirement years with a good pension and benefits have all of a sudden found themselves with nothing!  Bankruptcy.  No more checks.  This initially solves the problem for the City, the debt has been wiped clean but it has taken even MORE money OFF THE TABLE!  This is how Greece is attempting to play this game and it has not worked well for them.  California cities and others are following failed states in a feeble attempt to play this game.
    There is another solution but it would require all of the players to agree and to put forth the best interests of the Nation as a whole and not individual players.  We could create more jobs!!!  The world is in such a dismal economic turmoil that people, corporations and countries will loan us money at NO INTEREST!!!!
because America is still the safest place to bank.  Now would be a perfect time to rebuild our infrastructure, our waterways and highways, our bridges and airwaves, our transportation and airports.  We used to devote 7% of our GPD towards this rebuilding and now it is less than 2%.  More jobs is more money in circulation, more for everyone.
    If we do not do this now maybe we should be thinking of a different game to play?  Maybe "Prison Dodge Ball"?

It Is Raining...

It Is Pouring, actually with thunder and coming down in torrents.  It is not good for my garden.  I watered just yesterday, a day full of sun and promise, then, fickle like a school girl, the weather changes and now all is wet.  I think the rain went all the way to New Mexico and put the fires out.  That is what I hear, soggy ashes, flash floods and no longer a fire.  Nature at its best, putting fires out and at its worst, drowning my tomatoes.
Some people pray for rain and other's for no more rain and at some point all prayers are answered.  Too late for a single tree and plenty of time to save a forest.  Sometimes.  I wonder how it all works?
   Do you listen to speeches?  I do and wonder about them too.  It is coming down to two philosophies, each side admits that there is a problem.  Reagan economics was a top down trickle theory and for awhile it worked pretty well.  It is the credo of the capitalists saying wealth generates wealth and as the rich spend it, it trickles down and other's reap the benefits of those spending money.  That sort of worked until they quit spending money in our town!  When they began outsourcing, sending the jobs overseas and then putting their money in off shore accounts, the trickle down went elsewhere and the well here at home dried up completely.
   I am not sure that trickle down ever really worked.  The "other philosophy" is expanding the economy from the middle out.  As a percentage of the population the United States used to have the largest middle class in the world.  Our middle class has lost 40% of its wealth in the last 20 years.  What are we doing to get it back?  It seems to me that we are zeroing in on those "just above us" on the pay scale.  Instead of increasing our position we want to strip those just  above us of theirs.  We go after the Union Workers, we go after those with pensions and health benefits, we go after Government workers.  We are like pirhanna in a fish tank and are eating each other!
   Is no one analyzing how we became "Middle Class" in the first place?  How a raise in Union wages could increase everyone's wages?  The role of Government in building our roads, bridges and infrastructure?
We will not get back on track by stealing money from someone else.  That never works.  Eventually they will run out of money to steal.  But there are things we could do.  It is embarrassing and stupid that China has a better railway system than we do, that we have allowed our bridges to fall down and the roads to deteriorate , that we rely on a sewer system that in some cases is over 100 years old.  Our infrastructure is falling apart and there has never been as good a time as now to repair it.  Money has never been cheaper to borrow.  We have the workers.  We need the jobs.  That is something that would trickle down!  God forbid if our Congress did anything to make our President look good!  We are willing to destroy America, anything it seems, to make his job as difficult as possible.  Why can't we all just get along?