Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
The economy. Will it ever be fixed?
I can't quite decide whether or not I think the economy will ever be fixed. I'm not a very bright person and I don't think I'm qualified to make any kind of decision. But this country has just reached 1,000,000 unemployed 16-24 year olds and with everything that's happening with the euro and wall street...
It's hard to decide whether or not I'll ever be able to get a job where I have any worker's rights or that isn't temporary.
Just makes me start looking at monasteries again.
It's hard to decide whether or not I'll ever be able to get a job where I have any worker's rights or that isn't temporary.
Just makes me start looking at monasteries again.
0
Comments
The point is these things kind of go in cycles. Its not to say that people aren't responsible but when times are good we tend to get soft and forget the lessons of the difficult times. Our politics may be broken due to a lack of political will right now, but if things get bad enough people will be mad as hell and they won't take it anymore which should hopefully light a fire under the butts of the politicians.
In Buddhism we try not to put too much of our hopes and happiness in external factors because of their inherent unreliability.
Is this where things are headed, a police state to control mad-as-hell people who only want jobs and Social Security? And medical care?
(Good topic, Sagat. We love political debate here.
@Dakini the fire under the Republicans is already lit (the "Tea Party"). Their intentions really are the same as many from OWS, and that is to fix the Govt to make life better for everyone. We may never learn who had the best plan, left vs right, as we continue to bash each other, ping-ponging in both directions, never fully achieving the strategy of either.
Now for some rambling not directed towards anyone... If everyone realized that we are the same entity, only expressing different sides of ourselves, we may be less reactive by bashing each other, and truly work together to make life as enjoyable as possible for all of us. And this working as one would require us to understand that our voice may not be in sync with the voice of the majority, so at times we need to accept this and look for the joy in the journey instead of looking for opportunites for bitterness and placing blame... a dream like this may not be achievable in my life time, but this is not a prerequisite for a dream.
But ok, enough fuss and bother about politics.
Then, I'll tell you.
Form is emptiness and emptiness form. The "economy" is just one part of a human society, and as societies evolve and the push and shove of self interest brings various groups in and out of power, our economy - our way of making and distributing wealth - remains in the control of a select group. Sure, there's enough to go around, if the people who have more than they need will give up some of it. When in human history has that ever worked out? Communism tried it, but someone always has to make the rules and human nature wins in the end. They replaced one set of privileged class with another, that's all.
The dirty secret of today is, the economy is doing great for a select group of people and those are the people paying for our elected government to stay in power. Is it sustainable? They don't care. It just makes them more eager to get more of the available wealth while the getting is good. Good times or bad, rich people do not go hungry. Cynical? When I was younger, I would have said so. Now, I've seen too much repeated to imagine we're not following the same old pattern.
It's that bad over here.
Instead of fixed, how about. Not completely and utterly screwed to the point where we're on the verge of becoming a third world country.
So no, the economy isn't going to be "fixed" in your lifetime.
As I've commented several times around the forum, this debacle began with Reagan. Could any of you UK members tell us what happened over your way under Thatcher? I vaguely recall they were said to have similar policies, but I have no specifics.
I've never been in a well off family. But now you work crappy jobs for virtually nothing. I need to travel to work, that costs a small fortune. I could live closer to work like I used to, but that's ridiculously dangerous and the perfect to donate to crappy neighborhoods. I buy it, then some guys break in, decide if they like something and take it. It's a donation in its own twisted little way.
Food costs too much, everything is going up in price. Electricity went from £90 to £155 for my parents in the space of a month.
I'm not a materialist, but I go and do stuff I despise all day, just so I can afford to eat and plug in my alarm clock and fridge so I can stay nourished and awake to do another day of stuff I despise... and that's when I can find work.
Nothing wrong with being poor. But there's not much to be happy about these days.
China took over, america is just falling and crumbling.
all of this non-sence, all of this corruption, all of those ridiculously complicated systems that got inflated to the point of absurdity, after decades of people twisting the laws to take advantage of them, the result of decades of letting education erode (smart people are way harder to herd)...
Now all of this non sense that was possible to create when the wind was blowing in the right direction, is just crumbling and falling.
10-20 years and america will be worse than Poland after the war.
it's already similar to a third world country in some part of the country (the enormous ghettos), and people got so used to the ridiculously high amount of homelessness that they don't realize it's not a normal thing for a developped country.
Better learn Mandarin or Cantonese.
just my 2 cents.
The US has always had islands of 3rd and 4th-World* communities amid what used to be prosperity. Racism allowed that. Remember when South Africa was considered a modern, industrialized, wealthy nation? Then the world eventually found out how the other 90% of South Africans lived. :shake:
*Indian reservations
From a buddhist perspective I think I should practice harder with my free time. On the other hand I wonder if being exposed to the problems of the world and thinking about them might even be more true to the teachings. The dichotomy of meditating or engaging in the light of the pain of the world. There is a case for either I feel.
this is a classic fallacy about economy.
Friedman: “Most economic fallacies derive from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another.”
i'm sure you'll find plenty of stuff online for a good explanation but here
http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2006/12/fixed-pie-fallacy.html
was a fairly decent overview.
Economies, which are how people come together to exchange goods and services, run in cycles. Sometimes they are growing and sometimes there not. Supply and demand. It is always changing. That's to be expected.
What we have going on now is much bigger than the normal ups and downs of the economy. It is the result of 30+ years of unchecked corporate greed. It's why, in the midst of the biggest economic slow down in 80 years, the corporations and the rich few are doing great. Balance sheets are flush with cash. The corporations are sitting on trillions of dollars. While the workers have been squeezed so hard, or lost their jobs completely through yet more downsizing, that they cannot buy stuff. Because labor is not being valued properly (due to corporate power and greed, unfair labor practices, and a lack of organized representation by the employees) it has led to a system of huge income inequality.
In a healthy environment the govt. would step up and use it's powers of taxation, regulation, and spending to restore balance. Or to at least level the playing field so the 99% have a chance of getting a fair deal. We are not healthy.
It is not all doom and gloom though. The Occupy movement is beginning to get the masses to wake up to what's going on.
The pie, with careful management, can get bigger. Didn't Clinton grow the pie? Lots of jobs were created during his presidency, and the national debt was slashed.
Mts., the statistics you give are hard to comprehend. Clearly, those families haven't lost their homes to foreclosures, so the poverty isn't due to that. We can only guess that one of the breadwinners in those households has lost a job, and the families are struggling to get by on one paycheck...?
I'm afraid we're going to end up depressing ourselves and each other on this thread.