We Need Consciousness, Not Just Political Reform Journalist Faiz Sakir of Think Progress wrote on October 5,2011: “The original “Occupy Wall Street” protest has grown beyond its name — it is no longer solely about the courageous people camped out at Zucotti Park; it is a nationwide movement bonded by a shared refrain: “We are the 99 percent.” This slogan has entered our political and financial lexicon and refers to the 99% , the vast majority of Americans, and their opposite, the 1% who have the exceedingly disproportionate share of the wealth. There is a mounting disgust and anger in America’s citizenry with a political and financial system that rewards the 1 % at the expense of the rest. The Occupy Wall Street protest reflects this by moving outside of it’s original platform as a protest against Wall Street, and has become a nationwide movement that is bringing awareness to ordinary Americans, not just about income inequality, but the declining median household incomes, the growing numbers of people getting kicked out of their homes, increasing numbers of adults and distressingly children falling below the poverty line, the millions joining the ranks of those without health insurance, and the corruption and unjustifiable political influence by greedy banks and corporations in the financial services sector. So far, the proposed solutions of the 99% have been political in nature at the level of national policy and are encoded in a list of demands called “99% Declaration” and a more loosely defined set of [...]
economy
Occupy Wall Street
Evidence Of Our Human Spirit The upheaval that our world is experiencing is a sign of the human spirit behind our culture, and that has been the case in every place in every time. For those who study history, the condition of the United States in our time is no surprise. It happened in Rome. It happened for the British Empire. The fall of every empire was presaged by the increasing disparity between the haves and the have-nots. When we comprehend how dire the state of the economy is, the impact on our lives can feel chaotic. The wake-up calls that are pulling us out of our sleep can feel shocking, dismaying, and depressing. It is no wonder that many people are afraid. Historically, chaos has meant that things aren’t working. But humanity is resilient, and within chaos resides our capacity to open up into something new. In Thus Spake Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche said “I tell you: one must still have chaos in oneself, to give birth to a dancing star.” We can see evidence of this capacity in the Occupy (Wall Street) movement, which has as of this writing has 2,668 occupy communities spread not just around the United States, but in more than eighty other countries as well. Note 10 People want a voice and they want change. Matt Taibbi said this in the November 24, 2011 issue of Rolling Stone magazine: ”Occupy Wall Street was always about something much bigger than a movement against big banks [...]
Money as Circulation
Why Hoarding by the Few is Death One of the principles of money is that it is fluid and dynamic.. It’s purpose is to go on moving from hand to hand, and that is why it is called currency. Greed and hoarding, destroys its whole purpose and the current becomes stagnant. The more money flows the richer a society, as it supports the unfolding of human potential of all of it’s citizens rather than for just a few. When it flows, money can be a servant of all rather than a master by a few. When there is only fiscal liberty for a few, it creates a hierarchy in society from which follows competition, ambition, dependence, helplessness, possessiveness, power over others, oppression and even tyranny. In our current society, money has stopped circulating. If we liken it to blood, we can see that when blood is circulating it is life. But when blood has stopped, it is death. It is the same with money. Money stopped is death. The more money circultaes the more there is. The more money is used the more it circulates, and the richer the society is. The fact that almost all of the money has been hoarded by a few- and it is getting worse not better- is leading to a death. Our money system, our society, and there are some who say even our species and/or planet earth cannot continue without the death of the organism. This is at the macro level. Now lets [...]
The “I Am” Sickness
Our Belief in Separateness is Leading Us To Serfdom Joseph Stilitz has done it again. He succinctly outlines the causes and impacts of the increasing disparity between those who have and those who don’t. The title of his article brilliantly says a lot: “Of the 1%, By the 1%, For the 1%”. There are some amazing statistics out that illuminate this disparity in a way that make it more personal for us living in the United States. For example, that 400 families in the US have the same wealth as the bottom 150,000,000 million Americans. On the world stage, the top 1 % own 97% of the wealth. In the US, that percentage is 1% owns 40%, but it is a growing disparity. In the 1980’s , those percentages were 12% and 33%. So, we are being impacted too by this disparity and the statistics are changing at an alarming rate. As Sitiglitz pints out “we’re doing inequality on a world-class level”. In my experience, we in the first world were congratulating ourselves for not feeling subject to the lack that so many people in the world have been experiencing, which has been denial of the worst kind- we are special and it won’t happen to us- that’s what happens to “them”. Evidence of our belief that we are separate. Even as we watch protests in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, we are not recognizing it is increasingly the same situation at home. This is hubris and narcissism, not of the [...]
Two Practical Matters- Social Security and Health Care Insurance
The Turning Tide One fantasy that is becoming dangerous to embrace is the illusion of security in the form of Social Security in the United States. I have heard many people say that they have no savings or investments, and instead intend to rely on these monthly payouts to support them in their old age. It has recently been announced that Social Security has become permanently cash-flow negative. In other words, more will be paid out yearly in benefits than will be taken in as revenue. Some people are shocked when I tell them that there is actually no “trust fund” sitting there that they and everyone else who has been working (or their employers) have been paying into for all these years. Rather, the government has always been “borrowing” those funds. What’s more surprising to these people is that the total amount that “should” be in there isn’t even a legal debt. It is a government liability that is backed by a moral obligation only. It could be eliminated by political will, which is a significant probability given the current economic situation. If it is allowed to wind down, many who are paying into it today, and have been for all their working lives, won’t see any benefits. Social Security cannot survive without raising taxes and/or decreasing benefits. So when creating your financial plan, it is better to know now rather than later that you cannot rely on it as a source of income. Other countries do have [...]
The Permafrost Melt
Money and the Unsustainability Confluence Stephen Leahy is an international environmental journalist who covers international environmental issues in the public interest. In his website he says his work focuses exclusively on important stories that go unnoticed by mainstream media, often which are about climate change. On February 17, he posted an article “Permafrost Melt Soon Irreversible Without Major Fossil Fuel Cuts”. In his article he says that global warming could cause up to 60% of the world’spermafrost to thaw by 2200 thereby releasing huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere that would further speed up climate change. Without major reductions in the use of fossil fuels, as much as 2/3 of the world’s huge storage of frozen carbon will be released pushing temperatures several degrees higher thus making large parts of the world uninhabitable. And we are only about 20 years away from the tipping point. The study he refers to in his article does not include methane release from the sea nor something called thermokarst erosion of the permafrost from warmer water. Politicians nor policy makers have taken any of this into account when looking at the amount carbon emissions need to be reduced. So we are at the top edge of a dangerous precipice. Clearly we our out of balance. It is not hopeless however according to the study Leahy is quoting. If we were able to phase out fossil fuels by 2050 by using renewable energy sources, we could find a safer path. But that would require [...]
The Real Law of Attraction is NOT “The Secret” and NOT “The Power”
The Decent Of ”Spirituality” Into A Materialistic Egocentric and Self-Centered Doctrine I noticed in the New Yorker this week that the author of the book, The Secret, has just written a new book, The Power. Oh dear. It’s unfortunate that in the name of true spirituality ego-centric pseudo-spirituality gets on the New York Times best seller list. I was hoping that the Secret would pass by an disappear into oblivion before it could hurt people even more than it has and that the author, Rhonda Byrne, a purported ”spiritual” teacher would deservedly lose any proponents she might have gained. (I’m really sad Oprah didn’t see through this one and rather, by having the Secret contingent on her show, actually supported the growth of Byrne’s fan base). In case you need a reminder, in the Secret, Byrne was supposedly revealing a big secret that there is a “law of attraction in the universe”. Anyone on the spiritual journey, or even who has been in therapy, knows about this energetic law. It is no secret. She twisted the meaning into the idea that thoughts have power, and thinking about something is the way to get it, so therefore thinking positive thoughts will get you what you want. And mostly what people want is money. So it was just really about getting rich. She even went so far as to say the Law of Attraction is “the greatest power in the universe”. Wow. Even more than “God” or Being or whatever you call [...]
Money and Obesity
Over-Consumption and the Bloating of America My husband and I just took a road trip from here is the San Francisco Bay area up through Oregon, Washington, Vancouver, Vancouver Island, and camped on the way home down the coast. What was remarkable was the amount of obesity we encountered. Some of these encounters were more memorable than other. On a ferry, we saw an overweight couple eating ice cream and feeding a young child under one year its own ice cream cup. Another at a rest stop was seeing a family arrive in two vehicles because they couldn’t fir in one vehicle- not because of numbers but because of size. My husband once exclaimed “look at that poor tiny woman!” which caused me to turn around and see this very small-boned woman with a giant belly protruding and an apron of fat descending. In the San Francisco Chronicle pink pages( Sunday Datebook) from yesterday, a question to movie critic Mick Lasalle included “Do you think movies reflect their times not only in their content, but in the way they’re produced? For example, too many of us eat too much, drink too much, spend more than we can afford. And too many of today’s filmmakers seem to think that if they just throw money at a film it makes up for lack of craft.” Mick LaSalle’s response included ” Your question introduces an idea I’ve never considered, that the bloat in our films is related to the bloat in our people”. [...]
The Rubber Is Meeting The Road
The Spiritual Opportunity Of Our Money Pain I really like this guy , Matt Taibbi, who writes for the Rolling Stone magazine. He again has a great article this month on the continued betrayal of the American people. The article is called “Wall Street Strikes Back” and the table of contents description on Page 5 tells a lot of the story: “Congress looked serious about financial reform until the country’s biggest banks unleashed an army of 2000 paid lobbyists”. In the body of the article, Matt talks about the watering down of the Restoring American Financial Stability Act and ends with a few points that In feel are important to mention here. On the positive side, the bill will curb some of the predatory lending I have spoken a lot about. But the more important issues the bill was supposed to address, like breaking up large risky banks, requiring financial giants to set up a fund to pay for their own bailouts, and probably most importantly, forcing the derivatives market to be more transparent, won’t happen in any meaningful way. So the $600 trillion derivatives market will continue to work without the light of day, and that in my mind is criminal. Matt’s conclusion foretells the continuing impact on the American people- “a war the once looked winnable will continue to drag on for years, creating more havoc and destroying more lives before it is over”. So the results of the financial fiasco keep getting put back onto the shoulders of [...]
Concentric Circles of Recession
We Are Not Out of the Falling Bubble Woods Yet. I heard a joke the other day, that might have been funny if it weren’t so close to the truth. “The last will and testament of the Icelandic financial sector requested their ashes be spread over Europe”. I loved what my husband’s friend said in response to hearing that: There was a special bequest to England who replied “We said cash not ash”. But this is what is happening not just around Iceland debt, but debt in general all over the world. The debtors are being blamed, and the creditors have been given cash. The US government bailed out the banks- who were responsible for making bad loans, but gave nothing to the debtors. In effect, the bankers have been paid for their bad loans. As our economy is shrinking, these same creditors are grabbing as much as they can and in the process making the debtors feel guilty. The creditors are more guilty. They supported predatory lending- lending knowing that the debts could never be paid. It is another chapter in the wealth grab. The 10,000,000 Americans who are probably going to lose their homes didn’t cause the problems, but they and the American people whose taxes funded the bailouts are going to be left holding the bag. The economist Michael Hudson has likened the American democracy at the moment to an Oligarchy. He said that 25 years ago, 1% of the American public owned 27% of equity income, [...]