“Now, Daddy he was makin’ money hand over fist, and y’all was gettin’ screwed but you wasn’t gettin’ kissed.”

-from the song The Ballad of Hank Williams by Hank Williams Jr.

If you are someone who used to buy things from sellers in Europe or China on eBay or Etsy before the unpleasantness of the tariffs kicked in last month, I hope that you weren’t caught in the crossfire between having ordered before the tariffs began but not receiving the purchase until after they were applied. This happened to us, and it was terrifying to wait and wonder how badly we were going to get screwed on having to pay up when we did receive the item. Information on the internet about what to expect was all over the place regarding how much we were going to be on the hook for on an item that only cost $8.99 to purchase. Some sites said $0.89. Others said that it could be as much as an $80.00 flat rate and there could be an additional tariff for every post office that the package was sent to as it made its way across the country to the final destination. This is the stuff of financial nightmares for people who are just barely scraping by already. We are those people.

It was a monumental relief when the package finally arrived yesterday and we actually didn’t have to pay anything, believe it or not. Apparently, few people really understood how the tariffs were going to be handled early on and many of them jumped the gun in relating what our responsibilities would actually be. I am extremely relieved to know the reality now, but my god, until yesterday I could not be sure how we were going to manage it if there had been a large flat rate attached to a small purchase like a compact disc  I’ll tell you, this is a time of dreadful uncertainty here in America because finding honest and accurate information on the internet ain’t what it used to be and previously reliable news sources aren’t so reliable anymore either. Things change here so quickly that what you thought you knew and understood 10 minutes ago could be completely wrong when you look again. I get headaches just thinking about it, and if you use Google search now to find a homeopathic remedy for the type of headache that you are suffering from you will discover that they will direct you to sites that don’t always know what the hell they are talking about or they will recommend an obscure remedy that isn’t available anywhere locally and you have never heard of it even if you have been trusting your health to homeopathy for decades. It is a headache on top of a headache and forget about going to a doctor because you cannot afford it.

Since the pandemic began here in 2020, we have been ordering our groceries online once a week and picking them up curbside at the store. Recently this has become more of a frustration and a (another) headache as well. They will charge you a certain price on the store app for something that is not actually the in-store price. What you pay will be higher. On the other hand, (literally) you can be in the store and find an item that you want that doesn’t have a listed price so you check their website for the price and they will tell you that they do not have that item when you are standing there physically holding the item in your hand that they say does not exist.

Our monthly electric bill amount has skyrocketed in the past year, and I keep hearing that the cause for it is that we are paying for data centers that power AI. I don’t know why anybody thinks that AI is a necessity in this world. The existence of AI has become the new adored child for the corporate capitalists. They are thrilled to be able to throw human beings out of their jobs in favor of the wonderful new alternative that they now have to produce their wares and take over their customer services. I won’t go into how badly this is working out in reality but if you are interested in finding out you do not have to search very deeply to read the ridiculousness of the outcomes. I see more and more videos on YouTube that are AI generated and to believe that you are getting anything spectacular from them when they are full of incorrect information and incorrectly pronounced words and names is lunacy. 

If you thought that our future was going to be like on Star Trek, you need to look again. We do have iPads like Captain Picard had and maybe a few other technological gems have made their way to us from the 24th century but a great deal of it is a pain in the ass when you consider how often they screw up. Scotty said it best in the film Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, “The more they overtake the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain.” Even more accurate than that is what Dark Helmet said in the film Spaceballs: “Fuck! Even in the future nothing works!”

The Lazy Lazoon

In the 1960s there was a British television series called Fireball XL5 that had a cast of marionettes and is great fun to watch. It is science fiction set in outer space and has many never before heard of alien races that the Fireball crew come in contact with. Some are friendly and some are hostile but there is one race of beings called the Lazoon that are so incredibly docile and unobtrusive that they are darn near extinct from not having the capacity to defend themselves in any way.  One particular Lazoon, named Zoonie, lives with one of the Fireball crew named Venus who is their medical officer. She allows Zoonie free reign in her house and never loses her temper with him even if he messes up situations frequently because he understands next to nothing about their culture and mannerisms. The best he can manage of their language is to say “welcome home” and “full power” and a few other simple phrases. He does require supervision even though he tends to sleep a great deal of the time. He is quite a unique character and would likely be exasperating for some people to tolerate, but he isn’t for Dr. Venus. She understands and trusts him like no one else. I wonder how many of us in real life would be so accommodating?

I was in a Walmart store recently and heard an employee talking to another customer as they and I were at the self-checkouts. She said, “The energy here is really bad. Nobody that works here wants to work here.” It isn’t hard to feel empathy for what she said. The store is always crowded. There are always aggressive people in there. Many people are tired and frustrated about everything from the hot weather, the prices on just about everything having increased since your last visit to the store, the screaming and crying children who are possibly more troubled about having to be there than the adults are, the customers who are oblivious to the fact that they are blocking the aisles with their shopping carts, and the fact that there are sometimes five or more of them in their entourage who are congregating at the end of an aisle talking about their grievances in life and making it very difficult to quickly do your shopping and get the hell out of the store that you don’t want to be in either.

“Times is hard.” Mrs. Lovett sang about in the musical Sweeney Todd. They are very hard and not getting any easier. I could name off about 50 reasons for why that is so, but in this post, I will confine my ranting to just one of them; why people seemingly don’t want to work. I say, seemingly because I don’t believe that this assessment is truly accurate. They have futility confused with laziness.

In a capitalist society it is understood that you will have to do some kind of work or you will die in the gutter pretty quickly. There has never been a time in history when that wasn’t so. In the 20th century there were some people who realized that not everyone was capable of managing a full time job and some accommodations were made to help them sustain life with government assistance. That was truly a blessing. For the rest of us who understood that it was up to us to make it on our own we at least carried into that endeavor a mindset that whatever kind of employment that was available to us would have within it at least an adequate amount of compensation for our labor. I don’t know if that mindset was truly possible for everyone but I am sure that it seemed reasonable to assume that it would be true. There can be no reasonable assumption of that now. In fact, far too many jobs in this country will not pay you enough to even cover housing alone. I cringe every time I hear that there are cities here in America that have rental houses and apartments where the rent is 5 thousand dollars a month and up. Who the hell can pay that much when there is a minimum wage of less that $8.00 an hour in this country? You might get extremely lucky in this world and find yourself a job that pays $50k per year but that will not be the amount that you will actually receive in take-home pay. What you will actually have after taxes and insurance premiums are deducted will be about $32k per year. Divide that by 12 months and you have approximately $2,666.00 per month in actual money. It is ludicrous to think that anyone on the planet can manage to live on that amount when rent can be more than three times that per month. What is even more ludicrous is to think that an employer will give you a salary of 50k per year for any of just about 75% percent of the jobs that are available in this country. You can tell me that people just don’t want to work anymore but the fact is that they know that it isn’t going to do them a hill of beans good to work when receiving a living wage for the work is on the impossible list for far too many of us. They will tell you that you are a lazy slob for not wanting to accept a substandard compensation for your labor but they won’t tell you how you can manage to live in a world that “wants 11 dollar bills and you only got 10” ( from the Bob Dylan song Subterranean Homesick Blues).

 

And now that we have established that the vast majority of Americans are well and truly screwed when it comes to even approaching the ability to adequately sustain themselves here we need to understand that this isn’t our only problem. Many of us also do not have healthcare coverage. Many of us also cannot afford a car. Many of us cannot afford to pay for childcare. And we also do not have free television service which prior to the 1970s most people had if they could afford at least a second hand tv and had access to an outdoor antenna. Watching television used to be one of the most prized pastimes for overtired and overworked people to come home to in the evening. You may think that not being able to watch television has little importance in this world but without a way to tune out how difficult life can be sometimes you cannot reset and recharge the energy that a constant barrage of the bad news and frustration that life hands you every single day takes out of you. There weren’t very many channels to watch back then but there was a multitude of very good and very entertaining shows that the whole family could watch together. You can still watch many of those shows on YouTube today. There were no parental warnings shown before the programs started that told you that there was content in them that was unsuitable for children. Such a world used to exist?!? You bet it did! Ask your grandparents.

One thing that is definitely not free in today’s world is the ability to communicate. You are more than screwed if you don’t have a computer or a smartphone and internet service and WiFi. None of those things are cheap. Multiply the cost of them by the number of people in your family and deduct that from the actual salary that you are getting. You might be able to just break even if you live in a garbage can like Oscar the Grouch from Sesame Street. No utility bills, no car, and…never mind. Oscar probably can’t manage either.

I would really like to see a world where everyone including beings like Zoonie had good homes and people like Venus to see to it that they can live a decent and worthwhile life regardless of their circumstances. That really isn’t too much to ask for from humanity. I never heard anyone tell Venus in Fireball XL5 that she was stupid for taking care of Zoonie. His life mattered as much as anyone’s. We have a cat that we named Zoonie. He is one of a litter of four boys and we love him dearly. One of his brothers is a bit of an efficiency and organization fanatic. He rearranges things in their room all the time but he never gets scrappy with the others if they happen to nudge him out of the way at mealtimes. In cat culture he may be the best at “keeping house” and “keeping the peace” but that does not lessen the contribution that Zoonie and his other two brothers give to their and our lives. Capitalism shouldn’t be a mandatory way of life. Everyone has something good and needed in this world to give. Whether it is Zoonie the Lazoon or Zoonie the cat or any one of us that exist, do not judge them by their strengths and weaknesses and then discount them as useless because they don’t possess the skills to keep someone else wealthy. Like Venus, know that they matter for the mere fact that they are here. And get rid of the word lazy. Every life deserves the best that we can give.  No one has the right to take us for everything that we have or covet a world where we are continuously forced on to the endangered species list for their continued gain.

Just for fun, here is an episode of Fireball XL5.

     

 

Caring for everyone is possible. We just need to strive for making selfishness impossible by setting a better example.

“This means giving up no freedom except the freedom to act irresponsibly.”                          

                    -from the film The Day the Earth Stood Still.

“We were never holding back, worried that, time would come to an end.”

-from the song Being Boring by Pet Shop Boys

In a recent video posted on the YouTube channel Life After Layoff, the series host told a story about people having been hired for a job out of state, quitting their current jobs and moving to another city to start the new position then finding out that the job offer had been rescinded before they were ever able to start work, leaving them high and dry and unemployed with no guilt whatsoever on the part of the employer. For anyone who is seeking a better employment future for their self this is the ultimate horror. In the current job market now, this is probably much more common than we might imagine. It also happens that sometimes you are actually able to take the job but for whatever whim that strikes the fancy of the employer they might terminate your position within a few weeks or a month without giving a damn about the consequences to your life.

Many years ago, actor Bob Hoskins was hired for a role in a major motion picture but before he could start working the producer/director of the film decided to give the role to someone else.  Bob was given an apology and a substantial amount of money anyway for his time and trouble. I wish I could remember the name of the film and its producer because I really think that the way they handled the situation was truly fair and commendable. It should be a law that anyone who gets treated like they have no worth as far as making a living goes must be paid the equivalent of two years salary by the corporate perpetrator who plays games with people’s lives and walks away clean. It is too bad that in today’s world of apathy and no empathy for fellow human beings and the tragedy that is life in the 21st century we could all take a lesson in how decent and honest people handle situations that can make or break a human being as they do their best to navigate this life and try to live the best life that they can.

If you were born in the 20th century you can probably remember people, possibly your parents or grandparents, who had worked at the same place for years and sometimes decades. Many of them were fortunate enough to retire with a pension and a paid for home. This was not a legacy that was passed on to later generations. My daughter told me recently that she cannot remember any time in her life when the kind of troubles that we have now didn’t exist. Certainly what we have now is worse but she is correct about things being in a constant state of turmoil and fear since the beginning of this century. We cannot be sure from one day to the next what kind of fresh hell is going to hit us in the morning and the people in this country are extremely divided on why this is so and how to fix it. There is a category of people who are hell bent on destroying any possibility for security and stability for the majority of us. On the other side there are the rest of us who keep trying to duck and dodge our way through the mind-boggling deluge of hate and disregard for whether or not we live or die while they set about destroying our security and wellbeing one piece at a time every single day. Just like the lyrics from the song written above there was actually a time when we felt reasonably sure that we didn’t have to constantly fear for our very lives. We did have “time to find for ourselves” and we weren’t “worried that time would come to an end” because we were not in a position of constant terror like we are now. Most people were truly not thinking that they wouldn’t be able to have a job or a career at some point. It just did not occur to them that they could not or would not be able to work and sustain themselves somehow. Jobs may not have been easy to find but they were out there. We just needed to prepare with an education. There were many of us who saw this coming in the 1990s but we were in no position to stop it. Those who had the power to stop it were the very people who were creating it, so we had to watch the downfall as it came and try as we might to save our children from it as we entered the 21st century we were not able to.

Human behavior has changed so much in the last two decades that I find myself looking back and remembering when it was actually possible to “rely on a friend” but as I look around, I realize that most of the people that I could rely on are gone. They have moved away or died. Is this why things have gotten so terrible? Is it because the people who knew how to care don’t exist in my world anymore or is it that the traits of caring people have been unlearned and are evolving out of the culture? If the latter is true, I can tell you that there is no hope for us without a deadly civil war brought about by those of us who still remember a better way. What a tragedy. I see and hear experts walking carefully around the promotion of taking to the streets to begin that war but there is no denying that they are tailoring their speech to say that this is all that we have left to us if we are ever going to come out of these deadly times and bring forth a world where we can believe that our time won’t come to an end while we try to prevent the inevitability of it.

When you cannot trust that you will have employment to sustain you or income of any kind be it from working or from the benevolence of a government that understands that everyone must have a way to take care of themselves properly you are just a few baby steps away from annihilation.  When you cannot trust that you will have a decent place to live or clean water or something to eat or a way to sustain your health there is nothing left to keep you living for much longer. I keep hearing that we have no other recourse for this other than a situation like the French Revolution or the Russian Revolution. That says to me that our days are truly numbered because a great many of us are not capable of living through such a thing. What can we do while the battle is raging? You only need to look to the east of us to see our future. How are those who are engaged in these kinds of wars right now holding up even as the whole world takes to the streets and condemns what is happening? There is no benevolent and prosperous United States to escape to now as there was during World War II. Life will only be as good as we are able to make it by relearning the basic human traits of civility and hard work as the basis for having and keeping a safer place to live. If we don’t re-learn that and do it damn fast we won’t have the luxury of looking back and declaring that “we were never being boring” because we sure as hell won’t be able to remember a time when we weren’t worried to high heaven that our “time would come to an end”. “Feeling boring” is the least of our problems. Feeling singled out for extinction is problem number one.

"Go Get a Job, Slob."

-from the 1970’s parody song, 50 Ways to Whip Inflation* sung by Judy Tenuta

In the 2010 Disney live action film Alice in Wonderland, the character Alice says that her father used to say that one should always try to do three impossible things before breakfast. Alice’s father has passed on by the time she becomes a teenager so we will never know if he changed his mind about that later, but as Alice still believes it, the movie can proceed with her actually trying to live by that goal, making for a more believable story. (maybe) I’d love to see if he would believe that getting a job in 2024 is possible or not. I count it as being damned impossible now for way too many people unless you can survive on gig work. Just two more impossible tasks to go and we would gain her father’s approval if we could pull it off.

On a side note, I must complain about Disney’s decision to prominently showcase Johnny Depp’s (he plays the Mad Hatter) picture on the cover of the DVD package of the above mentioned film and the later released film Alice Through The Looking Glass instead of Mia Wasikowska’s who plays Alice. There is no logical reason for this except to promote the highest money-making draw actor ahead of the actor whom the film is actually about, Alice. Pure capitalism, it is. (Yoda speak reference) & (money speak reference). It is also possible that it speaks of favoritism on the part of Tim Burton (Alice in Wonderland was a Tim Burton film) who has a long standing friendship and work history with Johnny Depp, but I tend to lean on the side of pure money making reasons for it.  That usually tends to overshadow every possible reason for every possible situation. Which brings us back to the issue of why getting a living wage for a life sustaining job is on the impossible things list. And while I cannot be sure of it without doing the research, I would wager a small (because that is all that I can afford) bet that Johnny was paid a salary for his work in the films that was many times higher than Mia’s.

So, why is it so difficult to get a job now? What are the reasons for it? Some people have proffered some very good explanations for it but I tend to feel that it is like Max Von Sydow tells the young priest in The Exorcist when the younger priest tries to tell him the background of the demon possession and how many demons that he estimates there are. He says “There is only one.” It is the “because they can” reason. They can deny you anything that they like regarding employment because there is no such thing as democracy in the workplace. There never has been to my knowledge but it used to be a little easier to ignore that fact if you were able to at least squeak by financially. Since that ability is pretty much gone with the wind now you really cannot ignore it anymore. I very much admire the people who are publicly raising hell about it but it is a fact that there are few of us who are in a position where we can join in the hell raising with them without losing even more of our livelihood than we already have. The risks are too great, and since employers know this and also know that our government representatives do not give one big damn about how bad off we are with few exceptions, this is how things are going to stay. Go ahead and scream your head off about it. No one intends to exorcise this demon. So, this is the second impossible thing that we need to do before breakfast.

I keep waiting to see this idiotic mentality jump up and bite the employers in the ass. It seems only logical that if the people cannot afford to buy what these companies produce or partake of their services, they would see the connection between their business practices and the hits that this has to be making on their bottom line. Maybe they do see it, but rather than rethink how what they are doing is destroying everything they somehow always manage to work around it. Most of the reason for this has to do with the fact that the majority of them have more than one business. A mom and pop business could never survive it but those who have multiple businesses can sacrifice a few of them to strengthen those that are still doing well. They can cut corners, get rid of some employees, give their remaining employees fewer work hours, and raise their prices on everything. They owe their employees nothing. Everyone is told that they must have a job anyway. Any kind of job, whether it pays you enough money to sustain your life or not. You must work, your spouse must work, and your children must work. Here is the third impossible thing that you are up against. You are going to get awfully hungry trying to accomplish all of these tasks before you get to eat. Most of us already realize that we just are not going to get any breakfast.

So now we know why it is virtually impossible to get a job in this country. In case you missed it, it is because the employer class is not being held accountable for not providing jobs that pay a living wage equal to the amount that it actually costs now to sustain life. They create the jobs. They set the prices for their products and services. They hire and fire the employees with no accountability as to whether or not a person will live or die based on their disconnected to reality whims. The ruling class turns a blind eye to their behavior and inhumane practices and our society crumbles as a result. The employer class makes lots of money. The ruling class makes lots of money, and they made sure to set up a system that covers their financial asses for the rest of their lives no matter how bad things get.

So who was Alice’s father really talking to when he said one should try to do at least three impossible things before breakfast? It had to be those people who are secure in the knowledge that they can even afford breakfast. He must have believed that he would live forever and guarantee that his daughter would always be provided for. He was wrong. That being the case, if he actually thought that far ahead, he must have believed that Alice would find herself a wealthy husband who would always make sure that Alice had breakfast. He would have been wrong here too. In the sequel Alice Through the Looking Glass, Alice and her mother nearly lose their asses and all the trimmings, but thanks to the magical thinking of the writers, Alice prevails as the Captain of her own ship and her own company and indeed does do the impossible like her father told to her to. This was even more impossible than anything for a woman in that time period. And she did it all without a husband! So, I don’t know who the hell her father was really meaning that endeavor for but it surely was not for a female in the 18th century unless he already knew that their story was pure fiction. Jump ahead to now, the 21st century, and it all makes sense. Capitalism did indeed manage to do three impossible things before breakfast. They set it up so they would always have the upper hand. They set it up so they would always have money. And they set it up so no one would hold them accountable for their behavior. They managed to do this even as they are an extreme minority in the world considering that the working class in this world outnumbers them by the billions. That is a stunning achievement to have accomplished before breakfast! And to have managed to do at all!

Feeling hungry? Now all we need is for Alice’s father to have a talk with the governments of every country on this planet and tell them that they will not get to eat until they do some “possible” things like turn this situation around and make the world that they live in a place where survival is possible for everyone. They might tell you that this is impossible, but don’t believe it. There are at least 50 ways to eliminate capitalism. That this hasn’t been done before now is a ‘problem that is all inside our heads.' “The answer is easy” if you recognize that you are not the only person on the planet who matters.

*a parody of the song 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover by Paul Simon

OMG It Happened

If you have read this blog with any consistency over the past decade you are pretty much aware of my opinions on politics and politicians. It is rare for me to approve of and support any of them. The one exception to that has always been Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. I have always tried not to be an “I love Bernie” gusher about it and a Democratic Socialist flag waver. No one is perfect, but it is true that Bernie speaks the language of the most disenfranchised of Americans who have few voices that speak for them with any consistency. It has taken a lot to bring me to the point where I must speak out with a different tune, but…today is the day. 

I saw Bernie make a speech today regarding “Solar Power for All”. I was with him for the first few minutes, and then he began talking about the cost of going solar, and my own Virgo jumped out from behind Leo and Pisces and had to abandon ship from the Bernie bandwagon. As much as it pains me to go here, it must be done. For the good of the struggling homeowners in America and the good of the average struggling citizen who couldn’t take on another debt if they had to, begging to differ with Bernie today is totally unavoidable.

Before I get into the specifics of my dissent here, let me tell you how I see the situation regarding climate change. I never have been and never will be a climate change denier. I realize that there is much to be done in this country to try to undo all the damage that humans have done that brought us to the dire situation that we are now in.  Virtually all of us are guilty in one way or another when it comes to not being responsible citizens in taking care of our world, but the biggest slackers in this country when it comes to chronic and repeat offenders of destroying the planet are corporations. These are the ones who pollute the water, squander resources, produce products that are not recyclable or biodegradable, manufacture gigantic gas guzzling automobiles, and feel completely unaccountable regarding a change in behavior that might turn many of our problems around. Climate change fault is always thrown back at the average citizen to be dealt with while corporate capitalists pay a bit of lip service to fixing the problems. With all that said, I will now get to the issue that I have with Bernie’s plan to achieve solar power for all.

As far as installing solar panels on our homes, that would be a good thing if it were possible, but it isn’t. Why it isn’t has to do with two things. The first is the cost of doing it. He said that it would cost between 10 and 20 thousand dollars. Most of us couldn’t cough up 10 percent of that now. We can barely keep a roof over our heads and pay for food and other necessities if at all. He said that there would be grants and loans to cover the cost. I think few of us would qualify for a grant, even a partial one. Getting a loan which would add another burden to our cash strapped existence would only make things worse for us, and the piece de resistance of the entire plan was to tell us that it would save us from $50 - $100 per month on our electric bills. HA!  My electric bill is around $300 per month! And I don’t even have electric heat! That isn’t a drop in the bucket when you consider that I would be saddled with another bill to pay for the loan that solar panel installation would cost. The payment would most likely be much more than the savings on my electric bill. It cannot be done, Bernie. No way in heaven or hell. I agree that we are darn near beyond being able to combat the effects of climate change, but this proposed solution is not a solution for the majority of Americans now. The skyrocketing cost of just basic living has made putting anything else on our financial plate a complete impossibility. Even if the government gave us another Covid relief check of $1,200 per person it would not cover it, even for a family of ten!

I, like most people, cannot proffer a blanket solution for the climate change crisis, but if I had to come up with something to help the situation, I would strongly suggest two things. First, stop manufacturing products with single use plastics. Second, stop manufacturing large vehicles and stop buying them. Many families where I live have three or more trucks and SUV’s. Yes, some people will throw tantrums about it but they will throw even bigger tantrums when they cannot buy gasoline for them and find that they cannot tolerate the unbearable summer heat and the desperately cold winters to come. The first step in changing a bad situation must be calling a halt to the behavior that put you there in the first place and these two issues are monumentally guilt-ridden activities. There are drawbacks to going solar in our homes that tend to be glossed over much of the time and one of the biggest is the availability of sunlight on a daily basis. This could be an extreme problem in some parts of the US during the winter months. Heaven help us, Bernie, dependency upon solar energy is very risky when you could find yourself without power during severe weather. Solar energy sounds like a god send on the face of it, but truly what would help right now is to require responsible behavior from those who have acted completely irresponsible for a very long time. When the citizens of this country find themselves in a position that affords them some financial breathing room you might find us deciding that we are able to convert to solar energy on our own, but right now, there is no way. Those who have been the worst offenders in creating climate change are always putting the guilt and burden for fixing the problem on the average citizens, and everyone who loves the corporate fascists is complicit in pointing the finger and passing the buck, although it isn’t a literal buck because they aren’t about to give us any more money to live on.

I still love you, Bernie, and appreciate and admire your efforts for the people, but the ability to just keep ourselves alive is the highest-level priority that exists now. Without that, we could have solar panels installed to high heaven, but it would not matter if we are homeless and starving or dead.

"All it takes is faith and trust." Peter Pan Thinking

I recently read an article on The Nation where the author talks about putting a wealth cap of ten million dollars on the rich. No one could accumulate personal wealth beyond that limit. Any excess wealth would be taxed to fund infrastructure and social programs. I take issue with the idea of social programs because that sounds like we would keep many people in poverty. Social programs are not necessary if everyone has a basic living wage and income. So, I am all for setting a limit on wealth accumulation, but I wonder and worry about what governments would do with the new windfalls of money.

There is legislation in California which proposes to take control of the utility companies and have them assess the level of income for every household in the state and base everyone’s electric charges on how much money they have. Supposedly, the poor will pay less for their electricity and the wealthier people will have added charges on their bills to address wealth inequality. I take great exception to this idea. A basic need of the people should not be turned into a tiered system where some pay more than others. Programs like these invariably lead to a better quality of service for some and shoddy service for others. While it may sound (on the surface) like a great way to get the rich to pay their fair share in the world this is not the way to accomplish that.

The United Kingdom has been experiencing a dire poverty situation within a large proportion of the populace. Scholars there are comparing it with how bad things were in Victorian England. Many people are now suffering from diseases that were pretty common back then such as scurvy and rickets. These diseases are all curable if people have a balanced diet but far too many people now cannot afford to eat properly. They call it “food insecurity” but that is just a prettier way to say that they are starving. How much money would go to eliminating the insecurity of living so many people are experiencing if the ten million dollar wealth cap were to become law in every country? That we have gotten to this point in human evolution where starvation even occurs makes me think that there are so few people on the planet who even give a damn about it that those in power aren’t likely to fix a problem that they don’t even believe exists. It took a lot of ignorance and inattention to get us to this place. When they have billions more dollars in their coffers will they take any notice of the misery and poverty that needs to be addressed or will they decide that what the planet really needs is more of what we have already done to make us look like the envy of the world? The White House has been around for a very long time. How about building a bigger, better, and more palatial one? What good does wealth do us if we can’t show off to everyone? Without a change in the mentality of the people who control the resources in the world you will not see any of our problems eliminated. They will not address anything that is not already a part of their thought processes or part of their experience. What would make them suddenly want to bother with it now?

Unlike the other two situations that I have written about here I did not see that there has been a solution to starvation proffered by the UK government or concerned citizen groups. It is not a problem that is unique to the UK but this is the first time that I have heard anyone liken the problem to a dreadful and deadly time in history. I am sure that hunger and starvation exists in every country on the planet in one form or another but it is an issue that isn’t likely to go away easily because elitism exists in every other country as well. The royal palaces and residences will continue to have lavish meals several times a day as will the houses of government, the well to do, and restaurants without giving a second thought to how much their privilege costs the rest of the world. No matter where you look you will find that societies unchecked operate like this because they believe that they deserve more than others do. We can only change this by not believing and supporting their perceived right to it.

What would be done with all of the new money that governments suddenly had at their disposal if the above proposed solutions to inequality were implemented? Would it be turned into a national healthcare system in America? Would it be used to provide a basic income for everyone in an amount equal to a living wage in the US or the UK or any other country that is seeing a surge in poverty levels? What is a living wage in America? Depending on where you live here it has jumped up to more than one hundred thousand dollars per year. Bear in mind that no one would actually have that much in actual pay after deductions. Would it provide free college or free childcare or affordable housing? Some countries already do but that hasn’t solved the wealth inequality issues that have skyrocketed. Would anyone think to put a cap on how much people will be charged for basic necessities such as food, clothing, transportation, etc.? If they don’t, expect that people would fall right back into poverty in a short period of time even with more equitable wages and income. Without a cap on the ability to raise prices for everything through the roof there is no way that any of these new situations would be sustainable. So, how should the new economic system be set up to prevent a new corruption of society? If you don’t like the new system, can you fight it within the judicial system? If you can, the courts could be bombarded to high heaven for years and maybe even decades. Does the President have the power and authority to say, “This is how it is, people. This is what we are doing so everyone has a fair share and governments can no longer be bought.” Do we have a President who will say enough is enough as far as inequality goes? Have we ever had one like that? Does such a person exist in the world? Is this what is supposed to happen when the second coming of Christ arrives? Is there really going to be one? If it doesn’t happen pretty quickly a great many people will not live to see it. There are people saying that Jesus was too “woke” and Christians need a new leader. If he comes back tomorrow will anybody even pay attention to him if he doesn’t show up with some serious miracles and destroy everything that has corrupted the world? I think not. A great majority of the people would deny that he was Jesus even as he performed a few thousand miracles right in front of them.

So, until the Universe sends us a supreme deity to strike down inequality here, we are totally dependent upon a supreme human someone or someone’s to get the job done. I keep looking and listening for them. While there are many people with good ideas and helpful knowledge in the here and now which could make a tremendous difference in the way things are done it is troubling to know that they are scattered among the masses and not in solidarity in numbers large enough to fix a broken world. The author of the article in The Nation regarding the wealth cap cited two millionaires who believe that they should be taxed more to address wealth inequality, but I suspect that the majority of millionaires and billionaires out there never give a second thought as to how their actions put the entire world in peril and at risk. Actor Jim Carrey once said in an interview that many people give him flack for making and having so much money. His own family fell upon severe hard times when he was a teenager and had to live in a tent on a relative’s property. He obviously has never forgotten where he came from but one has to wonder if he has ever questioned the system that put his family in that situation? In the interview, he wondered aloud what people think that he should do when people in the film industry offer him millions of dollars to be in their films. ‘Should I tell them that I don’t want it?’ he said. Yes, Jim, that would be a good start. Or at least tell them you don’t need it. Because no one needs more than ten million dollars to live well. But it sure does take more than the majority of the people have. They are definitely not living well. And far too many are not going to live to see things get better. If this bothers you, speak out about it and we will pray that your words catch fire with the ones who can change that. Many people know that change must come but we really do need to speak louder and in unison and have some serious, definitive answers on how to make things better. Actions speak a lot louder than faith and trust in existing systems. We had faith that we would never see times like these again but there was no one that we could trust to make sure that it didn’t happen.

And without pixie dust, it ain't gonna fly.

Why I Hate Money

My stepfather used to say that if the government took all of the money in the world away from everyone and then redistributed it back to them equally that the rich would have it all back within five years. I have never doubted that this is exactly what would happen because without setting up an equitable for all economic system before they redistributed the money there is no way in heaven or hell that the previous “haves” wouldn’t go right back to what they were doing before the money was taken. It would take firmness on the part of every government on the planet to make sure that financial equality was maintained, and I don’t believe there are enough people in charge who would stand firm on anything that didn’t set them and their kind on a higher pedestal from the get go. So, is financial equality even possible on this planet when unbalanced class systems have always existed?

I would love to say that spiritual awareness and Astrology provide answers for the trials and tribulations that have always beset humankind - but it doesn’t. What it does provide is a guide and a road map to balanced living and higher intelligence and ideals that can keep you from falling into the traps that the corrupt and the egotistical among us set to control and deceive us as we go through life. Its focus is on individual understanding of the self and our relationship to the creator of all life. It does not set down a plan to eliminate all social injustices except at the individual level which is the only level at which one has any power that isn’t a corruption of energies. When many people are connected to the higher intelligence then you have the makings of real social change if you realize your personal potential as it was given to you at birth. Then together with others who have realized theirs you have the combined elements of real change which can only be realized in the combined efforts of those who have transcended personal ego. This is a very tall order to attain. Few will take on the task because it is a lifelong commitment to yourself and it has to exclude selfishness. This can go a long way toward living in mental and emotional peace, but it cannot stop the ravages of a society that has set up a system that is reshaping the world to exclude those of us who believe in fair and equal treatment toward each other and would not be able to live with ourselves if surviving meant that we had to steal from and cheat others to do it.  If we were all the same, we would have no real need to be here. We were given free will to either create or destroy in this life and there are reasons why few people believe that they have an obligation to care about anyone but themselves. Those reasons would fill a gigantic book. Why we didn’t start writing that book as soon as we knew how to write one might take another book to explain.

When we got here, we had already lost much of our connection to spiritual and universal truths, so we had to take some hard knocks to get to a mentally receptive place in our evolution to comprehend those truths again.  Without chaos and crisis, we would never shift our focus enough to ask “why the hell are we here?” We have come to the point in human evolution where we have a pretty good idea why things have gone so wrong in the world but there are not enough of us willing to change what went wrong and a large percentage of the population have taken the position that they would rather destroy than create now. Religion, spirituality, education, and access to information all have a potential for helping to undo the damage that we have done in our world but they are like the old saying about leading a horse to water.

What I know from being a student of Astrology and the spiritual arts is that ego is at the root of every issue that has plagued humanity since day one. How to balance one’s ego is not something that humans want to bother with, and when you don’t bother with it you never solve the problems that have forever lingered despite the fact that many of us never stop trying. The problem of inequality, the problem of misunderstanding and abusing sexuality, the problem of crime and criminality, and the problem of mental illness has never been overcome in any generation. 

Upon our arrival here the planet already had most of what we needed to survive. It had air to breathe, water to drink and bathe in, plants to eat, places to shelter from the weather, and sunlight and darkness so we would figure out that sleep was necessary. We weren’t bright enough to know that sleep was a time for reconnecting with spirit. Many people still don’t realize that. Everything else that was brought into existence was developed by us.  Money was one of those things, and like in the song Hard Headed Woman it has “been the cause of trouble ever since the world began”. Only sexuality has been the cause of more trouble. The money itself is useless. It only has power and value because we say it does. We could have chosen many other things to assign power to like oranges or tree stumps or pine cones but we chose paper and coins once we had created them. So, every problem that has manifested from its invention is totally human made. Sexuality issues were given to us by the creator but we have literally “screwed” ourselves into a multitude of life-devastating problems with it. And though it is the portal that brings us into human form we have abused the energy so much that it creates disease, mental illness, crime, and death every single day by our stupidity of it.

When the founding fathers in America said that “All men are created equal.” they were truly only thinking that white men were and they didn’t totally believe that. There are many poor white men and there always has been. It was no accident that women, the indigenous people who were already living in America, and people of color were not included in that statement. The founding fathers didn’t believe that they would ever have to share anything with them or afford them an opportunity to prosper if they didn’t feel like it. It is now close to 250 years later and those chosen people who were supposedly “created equal” see that when they did do some selective sharing with the rest of the human race it got a bit out of hand and exceeded their comfort zone, so since the 1970’s they have been working furiously to take back their “created equal” superiority and they have been doing a bang-up job of it. It was actually pretty easy to do once they got started but they didn’t really expect that people would start raising hell about it and bringing up Karl Marx’s name to make their point. Now, the elitists are getting angry and scared of a revolution that might do some redistributing of wealth, so they have stepped up their campaign to gather up the money and resources in to their greed pots, and since there is precious little government interference in their way, I fear that we have waited too long to call upon the spirit of Karl Marx to redefine the world. Too many roadblocks were set up along the path to their gathering up all of the aces to keep us from breaking their stronghold. Consider what the lack of adequate income and resources has done to us since the time when President Roosevelt set up the New Deal in the 1930s. Since FDR died there has been an extreme effort to dismantle all of the gains for people that he created, and as they say, “the s**t got more real” after the Vietnam War ended. Their efforts are paying off in spades now, and while there is possibly still hope and some efforts are being made to turn the tide, the battle for balance will not be won easily. But these things do not really explain why I hate money, do they?

I have never in my life seen a time when anything that I want to do or need to do wasn’t dependent upon giving someone money for it. Even before I was born someone was holding out their hand to my parents to pay for my arrival. As soon as I did arrive multiple hands were being held out for whatever I might have to have to stay alive. Without someone forking over some cash I would not be able to eat or sleep or stay healthy or become educated. Without paying someone, I could die from exposure to extremes in heat or cold, illness, starvation, crime, natural disasters, and the list goes on and on. Paying others for my ability to have lived will not even stop with my death. There will be people holding out their hands for money from my children when I die. Health care providers will demand it and funeral servicers will expect big bucks to dispose of what remains. Every life is a non-stop potential cash cow for the capitalists and trying to stay ahead of them without losing your mind is a never-ending struggle. This is a sad and disgusting testament to what human beings have created during their time on earth. So many resources were readily available to us on this planet when we first showed up. The Bible says that animals were here first. It is lucky for us that they weren’t standing at the entrance gate with their paws out demanding a payment from us before they would let us in. I would really hate to have to tell a T-rex or a Rhino that I didn’t have any money. (Trying to tell a debt collector that I don’t have any now is pretty awful, too. The threats and insults don’t compare with a large animal but they are disturbing to be sure when you are dealing with someone who has had understanding and compassion trained out of them.) No, instead we began slaughtering them right off because we were ignorant savages whose first thought was to take everything away from them including their very lives so we could be sustained and comfortable. (Notice any parallels between us and capitalists?). Even now, we still do it without giving it a second thought. That is, the majority of us do. There are many humans who realized that there was a better and more humane way to live. Many people provide care and protection for animals without receiving one penny for it, but there are immense rewards that they provide to us in return for their care. Loyalty, affection, devotion, companionship, and protection are just a few of them. How many humans do that without some sort of payment?

The struggle to stay alive and well in our current culture is increasingly more difficult by the day. I find myself now having to decide which is the most critical thing that I need to sustain myself every day. Will I pay the mortgage payment or the utility bills? I cannot do both. If I choose the mortgage payment and not the utility bills I can stay in my home for another month but if my electricity is cut off I could die from the extreme heat that we are experiencing this year. I will also lose my telephone and internet service. Just try to navigate in this world without those now. Should I buy food or should I buy medicines? How long can I survive without both of them? Account payments have had to be stopped which will destroy my credit rating and make it impossible for me to replace my 18 year old car. Repair bills would be impossible to pay for if it finally quits on me. But none of these issues have stopped capitalism from holding out its hand for more money than I ever imagined that I would be paying to just stay alive now. So, this is why I hate money.  If I just truly cannot keep up and finally die trying to, few if any would take much notice. It would be viewed by most as somehow being my own fault. I did not have the right job skills, or I didn’t try hard enough, or I said the wrong thing, or I did the wrong thing somewhere along the line. All these excuses are considered to be acceptable in a capitalist society for denying me a job that pays a living wage and a roof over my head. They are viewed as valid reasons for making sure that I cannot possibly get enough money to keep living because I must have done one or more of these things or I wouldn’t be experiencing this. If I, and countless others like me fall by the wayside, the true reason for it will be an inability to access enough money and resources to satisfy all of those people who are standing in front of us with their hands out. So, why would I have any love for that? Money equals inequality. It is built in to capitalism and guaranteed to ensure that poverty never ends. It is poverty specifically created to make sure that those who call the shots from the top will never have to experience it. I hate it. There has to be another way.

And So, It’s Not Christmas, But What Have You Done?

Today we are told to remember and honor those people who have passed on from this earthly existence. Nobody needs to tell you to do that if you have lost loved ones in your life. You do that every day, but what we do need to remember - and we might not do that without their prompting - is to pay tribute to capitalism by purchasing flowers, American flags, and red, white, and blue mementos to honor those who are gone. There are some people here where I live doing that, but mostly they are taking vacations, making a mad dash to the lake to water ski and live a glorious few days in the sun with lots of beer and food. We can’t help it. The death of loved ones just makes us want to run out and prove that we aren’t the ones who are dead. We won’t get to do this again until July and September, but the good news is that when those holidays come around, we will also be prompted to buy very overpriced fireworks and accidentally start fires and terrorize any animals who might be close by. We have earned these rights by way of losing our loved ones in death, though their deaths were not in vain. At least, we don’t think they were. Best not to look at that too closely!

I understand that in order to receive food stamps now you will have to be over the age of 54 to get them without being subject to a work requirement. I hate to tell everyone this but in some states you had to be at least 60 to escape that requirement more than a decade ago. Even better than that, until Jimmy Carter became President in the 1970s you had to pay for food stamps. A family of three, depending on their particular circumstances, could be charged $94.00 for ninety-five dollars’ worth of food stamps. Even the social workers who had to deliver that information to the families in crisis were horrified and embarrassed by it. But hey, what do you expect, you poor person? You are lucky to be alive. You survived Covid-19, several wars, and September 11th if you are over the age of 35 or so. We don’t want to hold your hand or give you anything to eat if you aren’t an essential worker here. And believe me, the kind of work you do has to be something we deem important. Do not think that an Etsy or EBay shop is going to cut it. You should be grateful that we aren’t remembering you today while we are on vacation!

So, let’s be honest, if we can’t use you to make money for the economy or give us an excuse to celebrate away from our work for at least a day, do not assume that you are worth feeding or housing or providing medical care for. Go get a job, slob! Earn your holiday like the rest of us and be glad that you are still here to witness this momentous occasion when your government can once again pay the interest on its debts because it all was dependent upon whether or not you get to eat.

"An End To Need and The Politics Of Greed."

 -from the Tears For Fears song Sowing The Seeds of Love

In the late 1990’s my cousin won $175k in the Florida Lottery from a scratch off ticket. She and her husband were a young married couple who lived very modestly in three rooms of her parent’s house which had been converted into an apartment. After collecting her winnings, they were very smart and frugal with the money. This was a time when their money went a lot further than it would now. They were able to buy and furnish their own home, and decided that they could now afford to start a family. I was so happy for them.

Something like this should happen for every young adult. To receive enough money to start your life and establish a secure base before you have to face the many adult struggles to come would most likely keep you from having to compromise so much of who and what you are as a person in trying to attain a sense of security. While the US spends a great deal of money to support other countries with their individual issues, people young and old here could use a grant in a comparable amount to jump start their lives again now when loss is and has been for some time the only thing that we see on the horizon for us. But it would not be enough to just give the money/resources to the people and expect that to stabilize them. You would also have to call a halt to the capitalist/corporate invasion that would immediately follow the distribution with their hands out raising prices and withholding the necessary goods and services that we need to make sure that they profit enormously from what the people receive, rendering it impossible to benefit from the help as well as they ought to.

Author and Journalist, Chris Hedges said in a speech once how the money our government gave to US banks in 2008 after the housing debacle could have been used to help and support the American people by establishing a national health care system, giving all citizens a basic income and offering tuition free college plus many other systemic changes that would make a stronger society for a fraction of what they gave to bail out the rich. Why they never understand that stronger citizens make this a stronger nation makes absolutely no sense. When there are 1500 vacant properties in San Francisco for every 1 homeless person in that city it is ludicrous that anyone should ever be homeless here. I am told that the situation is very much the same in New York City, Toronto, Canada, and many other places.

It is only greed and ignorant public policies that make something like this possible. So how do we change the selfish and incompetent policies toward our people? Some would tell you that only public protest on a large scale would change it, but I truly do not believe that it has to come to civil unrest or civil war. What we really need is a change in prevailing thought and government representatives who can put ego aside and understand that we have been breeding fear and ignorance in this country for far too long. A few representatives have already come to that realization but they are in the extreme minority.

This country needs to be re-educated in the basic decencies of human rights and the benefits of strengthening the people who live here. It isn’t rocket science. It is only coming to understand that each country is a family and how you manage the family has to be for the benefit of the entirety. You would not feed and house a few of your family members in luxury and throw the others out to starve and die. In the 1970’s tv miniseries Centennial, this actually was shown to be the way the Arapaho Indians dealt with a woman in the tribe who had lost her husband. In their culture this was considered to be the best way for the entire tribe to survive without having to care for individuals who were deemed to have no more worth once the family patriarch had passed on. The children were taken in by others in the tribe as they assumed they might still have some worth in the future. This is basically what we have allowed to happen in America. It would seem that it doesn’t happen here if you don’t look very closely, but our policies toward humans who don’t look like they can produce wealth or create a façade of superiority are being allowed to live on the streets and in dangerous homeless shelters. Many have children with them. Many others, such as immigrants are put in to virtual prisons rather than try to place them somewhere safe and help them establish a decent life. We are not being taught or learning not to act in inhumane ways anymore.

Who will write a new Bible for the 21st century? Who will write the primer for the processes that will bring us out of the cesspool that we have created for ourselves? The Holy Bible was written centuries ago as a guide for balanced living - at least the New Testament was. Much of the Old Testament is a telling of history and the prevailing laws at the time. What we are experiencing now requires updated thought and laws that can be applied today in a world with a much different mentality. Who are the Scribes and Prophets in modern times with the knowledge and the expertise to advise and reach our people with a message of what needs to be done and how we can accomplish it?

It could not be written by one person. There would need to be many writers, just as it was for the Bible. Experts from many different fields would need to collaborate to assemble volumes on psychology, economics, civics and political structure, history, and sociology. It is a tall order but we have gone beyond the simple answers on how to restructure into a workable society. Thousands of books have already been written on these subjects, but separately and individually they are not capable of speaking to the masses as a whole. A Netflix movie dramatizing the information would also be a tremendous help. Distorted values are already out there and making a mockery of all that doesn’t suit selfish purposes.

The Bible has never been embraced by the entire world, but it has resonated with enough people to make a huge difference in how we came out of dark times to do better. Many people have forgotten or discarded the principles laid out there. Hence, the need for an updated system of thought and action is sorely needed. Can such a book go viral again as the Bible did? I believe that it can.

Most of the struggles that we have are born out of doing our damnedest to avoid fixing anything and, as any neglected house would, it is coming apart at the seams. Will it take a deity coming down to earth and separating the good from the bad as the Bible says to call a halt to the tragedy that we have become? Will the makers of chaos and inequality have to be cast into another dimension such as a hell to save us, or can we as thinking human beings make it so on our own?

At a time when some Americans are frantically doing their best (actually, their worst) to eradicate books that they object to on the grounds that their little darlings are troubled and being corrupted by truth telling regarding whitewashed history and alternative thinking, we desperately need a new and updated accounting of what it will take to break down the walls that we have built in to our society to divide us into a class system that is choking the life out of America. I don’t think that we need more of the news that we are in the crapper here. If you are paying attention, you have already figured that out.  Now that the truth is out there as far as what we have destroyed, there needs to be a step by step guide as to how we can fix up “this old house” and make it livable. We are at the point where you either bring in the wrecking ball and level the place to the ground or you bring in a Bob Vila and some contractors to assess the damaged structure and draw up the plan for remaking the house. I see a lot of “home inspectors” who are telling us that the house is no longer inhabitable but I see very few who are proffering a real set of blueprints for starting construction. In the film, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome,  Tina Turner sang a song called We Don’t Need Another Hero (Thunderdome) during the end credits of the film. In the lyrics, she sings, “We don’t need another hero. We don’t need to know the way home. All we need is life beyond Thunderdome.”  If you have never seen this film or the precursor to it, Mad Max, I would recommend that you do so because you will see how a society that does not give a damn about its citizens can evolve into something so terrible that the people become savages fighting for every scrap of resources and decency that they are being denied. At the time that these films were made, it may have looked like pure fiction and an impossibility for us, but look around you now. We need a life beyond what we have created here. And we must have leadership that will help us bring it to pass. When you realize that there is a hole in the roof you cannot just sit there and say, “Yeah, there’s a hole in the roof.” Somebody has to get up and get a bucket, because the rain is coming in! And we are drowning in the deluge.

***

I would like to include here a thank you to Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith, Tears For Fears, for calling attention to the many problems that have plagued humanity as far back as the 1980’s in their songs such as the one I cited above. We may have been listening but I wonder how many of us took the messages to heart? One of my favorite songs of theirs was called, Change.  In the lyrics, they say, “When it’s all too late, you can change.”  Too often, this is the case. Pray that it isn’t now. With their music to remind us, it may not be. Listen to them again, and remember how to care.