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There are two ideas of government.  There are those who believe that if you just legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, that their prosperity will leak through on those below.  The Democratic idea has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous their prosperity will find its way up and through every class that rests upon it.

William Jennings Bryan,  in an address to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, July 9, 1896

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We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.

-- Arthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher (1788-1860)

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When I was young, I was amazed at Plutarch's statement that the elder Cato began at the age of eighty to learn Greek.  I am amazed no longer.  Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.

--W. Somerset Maugham

Grand Kids

Gracen at 8 mos.

She waves hi.

She thinks she's a big kid because she can crawl into the kitchen.

I went to school lunch today with Hunter.

Class Warfare

Whenever it is suggested that the rich should pay more taxes and share more of the burden of recovering from this deep recession, Republican/Teaparty politicians claim that class warfare is being waged against the rich. My question is: Who is waging this war against them? Is it the middle class? I don’t think so. If the middle class had declared war on the American plutocracy the bankers who ran their businesses into the ground and took the economy with it would be sitting in prison. The politicians who were willing accomplices to the Wall St. miscreants would be sitting in a cell beside them. If the middle class had fought against the corporatocracy they would not have allowed their jobs to be outsourced to other countries.

Class warfare has been a part of American life, especially since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, but it has been waged by the upper classes against the working people. Most readers of this blog can remember a time, just after WWII when the economy was booming. Having a job meant staying with a company for a lifetime and receiving retirement and other benefits. Home ownership was within the grasp of most workers. Automobiles were affordable. A college education was inexpensive. So, what happened? Did the carpenters get too greedy and bring it all down? The teachers, policemen, and factory workers? Did unions get so powerful that they ruined the economy with their demands? During those post war times rich people were taxed at higher rates than they are now, but they were doing well. They certainly weren’t suffering. But, if you are rich enough to buy a congressman or two, you can legislate your way to even greater riches. Financial practices that were banned in the banking reform of the 30’s are once again legal although still just as unethical and immoral.

Corporate and government leaders are now telling us that entitlement programs such Medicare and Social Security have brought us to brink of national bankruptcy. They say it’s necessary to outsource labor to stay competitive in the world market place. Are they telling us the truth?

According to a study done by the Brookings Institution in 2008 the citizens of Canada, France, Germany, Spain, and Australia as well as the Scandinavian countries are living the American dream as Americans are failing in the attempt. What do all these countries have in common? They all have high taxes, universal health care, generous social services and well maintained infrastructures. So I ask this question: Who is waging class warfare against whom?

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I like spring, but it is too young. I like summer, but it is too proud. So I like best of all autumn, because its leaves are a little yellow, its tone mellower, its colours richer, and it is tinged a little with sorrow and a premonition of death. Its golden richness speaks not of the innocence of spring, nor of the power of summer, but of the mellowness and kindly wisdom of approaching age. It knows the limitations of life and is content. From a knowledge of those limitations and its richness of experience emerges a symphony of colours, richer than all, its green speaking of life and strength, its orange speaking of golden content and its purple of resignation and death.

--Lin Yutang

quote of the day

"You know, Paul, Reagan proved that deficits don't matter".

--Dick Cheney (To Paul O'neill  the former Secretary of the Treasury after the Secretary warned the vice president of the danger of running large deficits. Mr. O'neill was fired a month later.)

what I'm reading now

I read Slaughter House Five  a few years ago so I thought I might try Breakfast of Champions.  The reviewers had much praise for this novel, calling Kurt Vonnegut a genius at black humor and satire. I didn't like it. It had enough pull to keep me reading to the end, but I thought the story line was too disconnected. The lives of a car dealer and an unkown author seem destined to cross the same path and that meeting results in utter chaos. That's it.  There's some commentary by the author about pollution, politics, religion and sex, but no cohesive story that takes you for a ride and lets you off at a destination.

what I'm reading now

This is the second book I've read by Gary Zukav. It's a curious meld of evolution and reincarnation. Although I was able to glean some valuable insights from the book, I just couldn't grab onto the concept. 

supply or demand?

   
I recently read a magazine article that said the leading economists here in America are still scratching their heads wondering what caused the 2008 financial melt down. That came as a surprise to me because both political parties depend on these economists to give direction to their monetary policies. The ideologies of each political party hang on the economic theories that give expression to their world view. That leaves me scratching my head and wondering if these people have no clue as to what happened then who does?

I’m not an economist but like every other voter and tax payer I have my own opinion and it is based on what I have observed in the political arena and the books and articles I have read. So here’s my take:

Throughout history there have been many schools of economic thought. Here in America those theories seem to have been narrowed down to two: Supply side economics and demand side or Keynesian economics. Supply side economics proposes that economic growth can be achieved by tax cuts and deregulation of business. It also maintains that lower taxes will raise revenue by improving the economy making it possible to collect taxes from a broader base of working people and businesses who were able to make more money in a lower tax environment. It is also called trickle down economics because its proponents claim that as the rich get richer the poor are eventually helped as the benefits of a growing economy trickle down to them. John Kenneth Galbraith says that it would be more aptly called the horse and sparrow theory: “If you feed the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows." Supply side economists claim that the tax cuts of the Reagan administration lifted the country out of the 1981-82 recession, and increased tax revenue. Those who disagree claim that if you factor in the effects of inflation there were no actual increases to tax revenue. One thing is true: record setting deficits were left behind by the Reagan presidency. The Congressional Budget office has recently informed us that if the Bush tax cuts were allowed to extend past the 2010 expiration date it would add 1.8 trillion dollars to the deficit over the following decade. And yet, President Obama signed a bill to extend those cuts for two more years.

Demand side economics asserts that the combined demand of consumers, government, and businesses are the power behind a healthy economy, and that it is necessary for the government to take measures (such as deficit spending) to stimulate demand and insure full or near full employment. One historical example of Keynesian economics was during the Great Depression. Herbert Hoover, a laissez faire Republican had decided to take Adam Smith’s advice and let the “invisible hand” of the market place bring the economy back to health. That didn’t work and led to the election of Franklin Roosevelt. Roosevelt put into place public jobs programs and regulations to oversee the banking industry and Wall St. The Glass-Steagall act was signed into law and ended some of the financial practices by banks and Wall St. that led to the collapse of 1929. The economy began to grow again from 1933 until 1937 when we slipped back into a recession. WWII provided the impetus for the massive government spending that ended the depression and brought about a thriving economy that lasted until 2008. (There have been recessions in the intervening years but the trend has always been toward growth.) Some say that what is needed is a massive spending program of the scale of WWII to increase demand, put people to work and revive commerce. But, we’ve been fighting two wars at the same time for the better part of a decade and the eventual cost is projected to be 3.7 trillion dollars. The military-industrial complex President Eisenhower warned us about has been billing the government for the cost of war for decades and we now spend more than all the other countries on earth on defense. With the debt we are carrying there is not much room for additional extreme spending of the scale needed to jump start an economy as large as ours.

So, supply side, demand side. Which one is best? The supply siders say that lower taxes increases government revenue, but there is no historical evidence of a sustained increase that strengthened the economy. I don’t like paying taxes but I see the necessity of revenue sufficient to operate the government services and social safety nets that make our nation a civilized place to live. Another claim the supply siders make is that government regulation of business is a job killer and a drag on the economy. Let’s look at how federal oversight has benefited us. Remember the Glass-Steagall act mentioned above? It kept banks and Wall St. investment firms from participating in the practices that led to the Stock Market crash of 1929. For years the banks had been lobbying for changes in federal regulation and in 1999 a Republican congress passed and President Clinton signed into law the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act which effectively repealed Glass-Steagall and allowed banks the freedom to merge, buy and sell mortgage backed securities, credit default swaps and derivatives; actions which were prohibited by Glass-Steagall. We all know the outcome. Other government regulations that protect the quality of our food, the safety of our transportation and work places are, in my mind, absolutely necessary to the welfare of our citizens.

And now the Democrats and the Republican/Teaparty are so polarized that responsible government is impossible. The Teapartiers were even willing to allow our nation to default on its debt before it would agree to a new debt ceiling, an event that would have triggered a global financial crisis. What do we do? The politicians are not able to govern responsibly. It’s not that they aren’t capable to performing the job. It’s that they lack a heart for public service, more willing to lend an ear to the corporate lobbyists than to their constituents back home. They lack integrity, it’s hard to find an elected official that hasn’t been involved is some kind of scandal. The American public bears a large share of the blame because we keep returning these miscreants to office.

America has seen the last of its glory days. In order to be healed it will take a lot more than our politicians are willing to do. And probably a lot more than American citizens are willing to do.
  

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another musician in the family

Most of the members of my family can play a musical instrument.  Now Marley is taking lessons on the French horn.

What talent!

reunion

Today, Dorothy's family met for a reunion at the Proctor Community Center. Here are the pics.

Dorothy's niece, Paula and her husband Harvey

Samantha and Gracen

Gracen

Our daughter Kelly with Paula

Greetings out front

This is Chris with her daughters, Paula and Kristi and their kids.

Dorothy and I with our brood.

Dorothy's sister Becky and her daughter Juella

second cousins

first cousins, Juella, Paula, Kristi, and Kelly

The siblings that started it all: Bill, Chris, Becky, Dorothy (Gail)

what I'm reading now

I've read Alexandra Fuller's previous memoirs about her and her family's lives in Africa, Don't Let's Go To the Dogs Tonight, and Scribbling the Cat and was delighted to see that she had published another one. Coctail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness is the story of Alexadra's mother, Nicola Fuller, born on the Isle of Sky but growing up in East Africa. It's the saga of a family struggling to exist in the land that they love in spite of the weather, climate, snakes, and war. The Fullers move from Kenya to Rhodesia and then to Zambia in their effort to make a place for themselves. The story is  heart breaking, funny;  a portrait of a woman who endures tragedy and hardship and yet finally flourishes in the beautiful, yet hostile land that she loves.

quote of the day

We've arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements...profoundly depend on science and technology.  We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology.  This is a prescription for disaster.  We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.

--Carl Sagan

Gracen's growing



Gracen is a true Southern baby. She loves her iced tea.

Gracen has a new horse to ride.

                                   When a baby can do this, it's time to buy a bigger car seat.