The World Is Flat.

Okay, I give up. The world is flat. There is no fiscal cliff looming over us or under us because there are no cliffs. The fiscal world is also flat. Therefore we do not need many of the services that the government has been trying to provide for us. Many government jobs are simply unnecessary and can be eliminated. I am ready to agree and would nominate the members of the House and Senate for that honor.

Time is much slower than we thought. Even though the Earth is billions of years old and we have evidence of life on the planet millions of years ago, authorities tell us life on Earth was created only six thousand years ago. The discrepancy, I assume, is caused by slow time.

I used to believe that my God lived all around me and in me, but Congress set me straight on that. According to the new Pledge of Allegiance that replaced the one I was born under, this nation is "under God." I'm not quite sure how Congress knows this. Such knowledge doesn't seem to be one of the qualifications for office. But there it is.

The citizens of Egypt seem to be in a similar quandary. Their new government is telling them that Shariyah law is the new law of their nation. The problem is that many of those citizens, including members of the judiciary, do not know Shariyah law. I hope they are fast learners. Or that time is slow.

Our local equivalent of Shariyah law is called the Constitution. I learned in school that it is a very wise document even though it, like the Pledge of Allegiance, has occasionally required amendment. The Constitution originally only allowed white males, called the militia, to vote and own guns. Now the voters, the militia and the guns have changed, and so has the Constitution. But the world is still flat.

Theater of the absurd.

The news is absurd. It doesn't matter whether I read it or watch it on TV. It doesn't matter what channel I watch or which newspaper I read. It doesn't matter what part of the world they are talking about. Examples:

• In December global warning brings us record cold in Europe and tornadoes in the US.
• The solution to avoiding the fiscal cliff is to (a) deny that it matters, (b) blame it on the other party, or (c) be rich enough to afford a parachute. Meanwhile we are about to hit the debt limit before we fall over the cliff. The fiscal cliff was created to force us to solve the debt problem. Is it time to consult the Greeks on how to solve our nation's financial problems?
• Iran is grounding all air travel during the five daily times of prayer, but that time varies all over the world. I guess Allah never intended us to fly.
• The solution to gun violence is more guns, according to the NRA. Others think it is fewer bullets per gun.
• Housing developers are finally figuring out that the problem with the housing market is that we can no longer afford mansions. Their solution is to construct mansions with two front entrances so that two generations can live in the same house.
• Toyota has agreed to dole out $1.1 billion (that's nine zeroes) and a "Sorry" to customers who had faulty floor mats in their cars.
• Russia is banning Americans from adopting Russian orphans. Meanwhile available orphans in America are ignored. What's the problem?
• "Homicides in NYC near 50-year low." Does anyone actually live in NYC or have they all moved to Connecticut?
• Gun owners in New York State are upset that a local newspaper published a map allowing people to identify homes where guns are registered. What's the problem? I thought the point of owning a gun was to scare the bad guys away.
• Stores are offering big post-Christmas discounts to shoppers whose expectations of those discounts stopped them from buying the stuff in the first place. Doesn't that sound like a scenario that could be applied to the fiscal cliff negotiations?

Toys Are Us.

I took my nine-year-old grandson shopping for Christmas. An enlightening experience. For his step-brother and age-mate Ben he bought the toy equivalent of an AK-47. From his discussion of the purchase I gathered that my grandson already has a similar weapon and wanted to equalize the arms race for better play.

The plastic assault rifle is a distinct upgrade. Last year on a similar safari my grandson bought Nerf swords for nearly everyone on his gift list. The world has evolved from sword play. But are we any safer with better weaponry?

My own experience with a rifle was limited to the U.S. Army in the late '50s. In basic training I came down with the flu when I was supposed to be on the rifle range. After a night in the hospital they sent me out to the range on a cold, rainy day. I don't remember firing my M-1 but it got dirty and I was in no condition to clean it that evening. The next morning I--my rifle, that is--failed inspection and I--me, that is--got latrine duty. Thus ended my love affair with my rifle.

I graduated from basic to a desk job. My only other experience with a rifle was a day of "qualifying" on the rifle range for us desk jockeys. This time the weather was decent and my aim seemed to be quite good.  I discovered the secret of my success when I went down to the pit to pull targets. My buddies instructed me in the use of the M-1 pencil. After each round of firing no target went unpunctured.

The M-1 fired a single shot with each pull on the trigger. Today no one should need a pencil at the target end. Assault rifles allow you to spray the target area with a fusillade of bullets. That removes the element of skill but, it seems to me, also removes a sense of responsibility for the outcome. It becomes more liking firing a semi-automatic plastic dart gun. If I happen to hit someone in the eye with one of those darts, is it really my fault? If I spray a schoolroom full of children with lead is it really my fault when I hit some of them? If I take my grandson shopping and there are guns all over the toy section, is it really my fault if I let him buy one?

The Arms Cliff.

At last the National Rifle Association (NRA) has spoken! Perhaps now the Arms Cliff can be avoided. We were about to lose our right to own and fire an assault weapon at marauding children. Instead we may now be able to become part of the "national school shield emergency program."

The problem is that our spokesman, Wayne Pierre, is a piker. He proposed that every public school in the nation be guarded by an armed police officer. One officer? That'e not nearly enough. What if the school is attacked by a street gang, the Taliban, or the KKK? That lone guard would need a machine gun or bazooka.

Here is my proposal: Every school should house a police station. We need neighborhood police stations just as we need neighborhood schools. Simply combine the two services under one roof. What kind of a nut would attack a school that has police cars parked in front of it and armed police swarming all around it? Certainly not our kind of nut.

An added advantage of this plan is that children wound daily witness the importance of being armed. They will ask their parents about protection of the home. The police and armed services will find it easier to recruit, as will the street gangs and the Taliban. The demand for guns will increase and this in turn will create jobs in gun factories. The NRA will be hailed as a major job creator.

There is still one problem we must confront. Too many gun users, like Adam Lanza, are committing suicide. We suspect that they fear retribution. Feelings of guilt and fear of punishment for gun use are mental health issues that must be addressed.

Old White Men.

I am an old white man (OWM). Well, at least I look like one. And today I am ashamed.

A couple of my fellow OWMs have publicly bullied, lied about and innuendoed a respected female public servant into withdrawing her name from consideration for a promotion. It is the sort of thing OWMs are good at. And we seem to feel proud of ourselves when we do it.

We won't name any names here but you know who they are. They have pushed themselves to the fore as defenders of our nation against the schemes of this younger woman who dared to try to speak to the American public as a representative of our government. So far as we know no one assigned these OWMs to do this and it was not a duty defined by their positions. But our media were used to seeing them on the center stage and were easily drawn into the plot. Now they too have egg on their faces but they will never admit it. It is the job of the media to expose other people (OP), not themselves.

OWMs have been displaying their propensities quite a bit lately. We have watched as the antics of American Generals and French and Italian politicos and a British TV personality have been displayed on our screens. OWMs all, and not what I would like to claim as members of the club. But politicos seem to be the worst. They are used to having cameras focused on them and microphones thrust in their faces. They seem to think that the public will believe them if only they can repeat their lies often enough. Aren't OWMs venerated the world over? Don't we own this planet? Can't I say anything I want to in this blog? You do believe me, don't you? I'm an OWM!

Revenue.

We hear a lot about revenue these days. The federal government needs it to pay for its services to the nation such as protection from enemies and management of federal lands. State and local governments need it to maintain roads and support good schools. Businesses need it to pay for supplies, equipment, and salaries. Individuals need revenue from employment or investments in order to pay for the necessities of life.

The word revenue in French means "return." When the government taxes its citizens and businesses it is seeking the return of some of the money it has put into circulation in the economy. Corporations and business owners seek a return on their investment in education, raw materials, transport, machinery, salaries and wages. Individuals are looking for a return on their time, effort, loyalty and expertise.

Do you notice a common denominator in this return concept? It has to do with the circulation of goods and assets in the economy. When the government needs revenue it typically seeks to grab a slice from somewhere in that circulation. It might tax the sale of goods, income from services, payment of dividends, import or export of goods, inheritance of property, value added, or ownership of land. It might (and does) spread the load by employing several of these forms of taxation.

Those who are taxed often complain about double taxation, as when businesses are taxed on profits and then the investors are taxed again on dividend income. The truth is that taxation is a never-ending series of snips taken out of the circulating dollar. If the rate of circulation increases, as it does in good economic times, the government gets more frequent snips and more income. Our current tax malaise, the deficit, is often attributed to a tax rate that is too low but it could just as well be blamed on sluggish circulation that makes tax events less frequent. To increase tax revenue it makes as much sense to stimulate the economy as it does to raise tax rates or devise new forms of taxation. If tax cuts actually act as a stimulus they might in fact increase revenue. Unfortunately, history does not support this particular theory.

An economist friend of mine, Daniel Farkas, argues persuasively that all federal revenue should be derived from a tax on land ownership. This would be an annual tax; thus in any year there would be no double taxation at the federal level. The rate of circulation of value in the economy would not matter, but developing the land would increase its value and thus the tax on it. Taxing only land value is a simple idea that would eliminate much of the partisan infighting about tax rates and their effect on the economy. Perhaps both sides in the current negotiation to avoid the fiscal cliff are focusing on the wrong variables.

Cliff Notes.

After hearing so much about the fiscal cliff I thought it might be a good idea to find out what is already at the bottom of that cliff. To avoid the fall I took the descendalator down. (There doesn't seem to be any elevator or escalator.)

I have discovered that there are a lot of people already down here. Some of them were born here and have never seen the top. Others slid down slowly, aided by alcohol, drugs, depression, or lack of a good education. Falling on top of them were people who lost their jobs or homes in one of the several recessions that have occurred in the last fifty years. I have also found quite a few military veterans who returned from the battlefields to find no jobs and a long delay for treatment of their PTSD.

The foot of the cliff is also littered with businesses. Most of them were small companies that had been under-capitalized and had lasted only a few years, but there are also the remains of some larger firms that were stripped of their assets by corporate raiders. There are also a few former financial institutions that thought they were too big to fail.

I have looked for signs of anyone who might provide assistance or leadership. There are a few former labor leaders, but hardly any losing football coaches, ousted office holders, defrocked clergymen or fired executives. They all seem to have found a way to avoid falling over the cliff.

The biggest problem facing dwellers at the foot of the cliff is not falling bodies but pollution. The water falling over the cliff is from sewers, polluted streams, and wells that have been poisoned by fracking. The cleanest source is water from melting glaciers, but it is raising the level of the waves that lap at the base of the cliff. Soon there will be no beach left for us to stand on.

Sending this report was easy, thanks to the electronic revolution that has put so many of us out of work. But scientists still haven't discovered the Star Trek knack of transmitting people electronically. So would someone please lower a rope to me? I promise not to let anyone else climb on it.

Going Non-Postal.

If the tea party insists on downsizing the federal government they should start with the Postal Service. It is easily the most useless, not to mention annoying, service of that government. Ninety-five percent of my snail mail is junk. It wastes paper and the fuel to deliver it. It piles up on my desk until I need the space, then it goes directly into my recycling bin. If I weren't so lazy that is the first place it would go. Unopened.

I am sure that some of the charitable organizations sending me this mail do good work. But they don't need to waste the money I give them by asking for a new donation every month. I'm an annual giver. When they keep wasting my money with monthly pleas I cross them off my list. There always seem to be replacements. Let them deluge me with email like everyone else. Save a forest!

Next the tea party should insist on removing the tax deduction for charitable giving. I am not the one being charitable when I declare deductions for those gifts. I am giving away the government's tax money. The government needs that money for its charitable work, namely its services to unemployed and impoverished citizens. And what happens to the separation of church and state when my tax savings from deductions end up in a donation to my church? And how are my gifts to my church charitable when they are being used to pay the pastor, the mortgage and the heating bill? The whole deduction business is a ripoff of our government's right to levy necessary taxes. I am certain our Representatives recognize that right. It pays their salaries.

If the tea party sees a need for something to replace the Postal Service for the five percent of my mail that really needs to be delivered, I recommend that they privatize the task. I'm sure they can handle that.

The Marriage Contract

Marriage in the United States is a business contract. Our government has made that clear by taxing married couples like a business partnership. For purposes of fair taxation all a gay couple needs to do is form a corporation or partnership. Even DOMA doesn't stop that.

No, the problem is marriage. Marriage is a failing institution. More than half of the marriages in America now end in divorce. Part of the problem seems to be that increasingly both members of the partnership are in business but not with each other. When the business was the family farm or the corner grocery they worked together and shared the fate of the business. Now they each work in separate office buildings with different co-workers, perhaps with different work hours. Often the marriage is a second or third try and the children may be "assorted" and/or "part-time".

The marriage contract has always been a problem. It is presumed to be the start of a family relationship but that often is not the case. I learned that the hard way when my brother pointed out to me that our parents were married only six months before I was born. My mother was a teacher and back in those days marriage and/or pregnancy were grounds for immediate dismissal, so my parents waited a bit before making it official. Big whup! Jesus' parents weren't officially married either.

That brings me to the question of whether it makes any sense to treat marriage as a religious matter. Aren't churches simply trying to coopt something that is really a legal matter? How did churches come to be in the business of writing marriage contracts? A contract with God I can understand, but that isn't filed in a government office. What I strongly suspect is financial motive. Marriage ceremonies are good business. And so we have come full circle.

Marriage is Gay

Headline: Supreme Court to hear gay marriage cases

When I visited The Netherlands to attend my niece's wedding I discovered that the official marriage ceremony was the one conducted at the Mayor' office. That was also where the pictures of the ceremony and attendants were taken. Later we went to the church where the religious ceremony was performed.

I immediately liked this arrangement for a couple of reasons. First, marriage has legal consequences such as taxes and custody of children. That is the basic point of one of the two suits being brought before the Supreme Court. Legal marriage should treat the couple as citizens. Yet the Defense of Marriage Act treats gay citizens as second class and denies them rights that other citizens have. That is what we used to do with women and African-Americans but I thought we had gotten beyond such unfair nonsense.

The second reason I like the Dutch arrangement is that it makes the church marriage optional. If you believe in marriage as an act of faith you are welcome to celebrate the wedding as you wish. If you don't believe, as is increasingly common in this age of reason, the ceremony in the Mayor's office is enough. And that is the underlying issue in the other case being considered by the Supreme Court, the legality of California's Proposition 8. That law tries to make marriage exclusively a religious act. Religions that view marriage as a matter of faith get to "protect" their faith by banning gay marriage. I'm sorry, you don't get to do that in a democracy. And the Supreme Court had better recognize that fact.

The economy, stupid!

Yesterday former Pres. George W. Bush called for a "benevolent spirit" toward immigrants, calling them the bedrock of the our nation's economy. I think I understand his point, but it depends on what economy he was talking about. Many illegal immigrants were "allowed" to enter our economy as cheap labor. Cheap labor may help some sectors of our economy but it undercuts other sectors. The agricultural sector, for instance, has profited from illegal immigrant labor but at the expense of many poor citizens who might not feel so benevolent.

Like many citizens the bedrock of my economy, until I retired, was a job. My job was teaching and immigration probably gave me more good students. But I am sure many of the immigrants I taught went on to take jobs from non-immigrants. For citizens who are entrepreneurs the bedrock of their economy is a thriving business. In their case immigrants might provide an economic opportunity, serving as cheap labor and additional customers. Or the the immigrants might become strong competitors.

What is "our nation's economy"? We can measure it in dollars, jobs, stock market averages, national debt, and percentages of improvement or loss, but these figures obscure the heart of it. The figures are simply averages or sum totals of millions of individual economies. The nation's economy is really the sum total of the well being of all our citizens, native born or immigrant. And--Supreme Court take note--it does not include the well being of our corporations. They are not citizens and, in fact, many of them are multinationals. If they can profit by hurting our nation's economy, they will.

Also in today's news we learn that corporations cannot even agree on how to avoid the fiscal cliff. Some corporations, particularly smaller ones, declare their taxable income as persons. If the fiscal cliff is avoided by increases in personal tax rates or elimination of personal deductions those corporations will suffer while larger corporations are unaffected. Pity the poor Senators and Representatives who must decide whose economy to ruin. Those lobbyists and constituents will not be happy.

Basically the whole battle about how to avoid the fiscal cliff revolves around the definition of our nation's economy. Both sides and many economists are worried that falling over the cliff will trigger another recession. But a recession is just one of those national averages. All of the various proposed fixes will benefit some citizens at the expense of others. Those choices cannot be avoided. The difference between good and bad choices is simply in the breadth and degree of hurt. Some people call this "fairness."

Cyberbullying

A new law in North Carolina has left me wondering if I was guilty of bullying back in high school when I publicly challenged my physics teacher on a fact of physics. I was right, of course, but according to the new law I might also be subject to punishment as a bully if I used a computer (e.g. cell phone) with the "intent to intimidate or torment" a school employee. Who is to say what my intent was? I don't even know. I was only fourteen at the time. But my teacher took it personally so I guess he felt he was bullied by the facts. The only thing that lets me off the hook is that I didn't use a computer. They weren't available yet.

Cyberbullying is certainly a problem. Part of the problem is that it can be anonymous if the bully uses a computer. But the new state law doesn't stop at anonymous bullying. And it doesn't stop at banning untruthful statements. It potentially jails teenagers for telling the truth, just because they cybered it. How does that differ from what I said aloud in front of a whole class? (And some of them laughed.)

Suppose that a school employee engages in an illegal sex act with a student and the student surreptitiously photographs the act with a cell phone and puts a picture of the encounter on Facebook. According to the new law that act--the Facebooking, not the sex--is punishable by a $1,000 fine and up to 60 days in jail.

Here is my thought on the matter. All of us live in a Brave New World brought on by the electronic revolution. Either we need to adjust to it or we need to ban computers. I don't think we are going to ban computers. The new law may be an attempt to adjust to the BNW, but banning free speech is not the answer. The new law seems to assume malicious intent, but intent is notoriously difficult to judge. Putting words and pictures on the internet doesn't even seem to require intent these days. My thumbs did it. So bug off with your stupid new laws.

Why Not?

According to today's news five states have proposed extending the school year, citing the fact that we are falling behind many other nations in the education of our children. Why not? In most areas it is no longer necessary to close the schools so that the children can join in planting or harvesting the crops, and most pools no longer hire life guards. Air conditioning takes care of the summer heat in school. And 99% of us can no longer afford to take vacations. Let's at least get our money's worth out of those school buildings and teachers. We can also extend the football and basketball seasons. And maybe our children will learn something so that they can earn a living.

Rep. Boehner says the Pres., by insisting on tax rate increases for the rich, is determined to take us over the fiscal cliff. Rep. Boehner, by insisting on cuts to entitlements, is determined to do the same. After all, what is an entitlement if you are not entitled to it? So why not just go over the cliff? It will get rid of those Bush tax cuts that never should have been passed in the first place. You don't cut taxes at the same time you are trying to fight two wars. What you end up with is the longest war in American history. But after the cliff we will be able to afford it. Oh, I forgot. The cliff also cuts the military budget along with our entitlements. Well, why not?

Israel is building more settlements in Palestine. The Palestinians are protesting. What the Palestinians need is an Occupy movement. Just thank the Israelis for the gift as you occupy those settlements. Why not? It is now your country. The United Nations has said so.

Once again our newspaper and TV confronts us with another murder/suicide. We all think "Don't do it!"  But if you are going to do it anyway my advice is "Try the suicide first." Why not?

The Atmospheric Cliff

"2012 storm season ranks among busiest"
"Warming permafrost needs attention now, scientists say"
"Are of Arctic sea ice larger than U.S. melted this year"

These three headlines clustered on pages 3 and 4 of my newspaper this morning. The fiscal cliff didn't come up until page 5. Perhaps we have been worrying about the wrong cliff.

The first story noted that we had 19 named storms in 2012, although only one that got up to category 3. If I understand the physics correctly that is exactly what we should expect from global warming. The intensity of a storm is determined by the difference in temperature between between two colliding fronts. The frequency of storms is determined by the average warmth of the atmosphere. Global warming is increasing the average temperature but may actually be narrowing the differences in temperature.

The story about melting sea ice noted that it is causing a rapid rise in sea levels. That reminded me of recent stories in the newspaper about the increasing frequency of damage to beaches and roads on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Land on the Outer Banks costs an arm and a leg but how much is it worth if it is under water or can only be accessed by boat? My daughter, who works for the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance in USAID and whose current assignment includes the Maldive Islands in the Indian Ocean, has told me that at the current rate of sea rise the entire country will be under water by the end of this century. I think that qualifies as a disaster.

The problem with melting permafrost is that it releases large amounts--gigatons--of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide and methane. It creates a vicious circle of atmospheric warming. More gases produce more melting which produces more gases. How soon will we resemble the planet Venus?

My short term solution is to sell my land on the Outer Banks and in the Maldives and invest the money in farm land on Greenland and shore property on Hudson Bay in northern Canada. My long term solution is to die before the end of this century.

Strange Bedfellows.

Politics makes strange bedfellows. I used to have considerable respect for Sen. Lindsey Graham. He seemed to be an independent thinker with some interesting ideas. Now he has become tied to the conspiritorial apron strings of Sen. John McCain. Both are complaining about something that doesn't even matter unless you are a conspiracy buff. Who cares if United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice unwittingly dispensed some inaccurate information about the attack on our Benghazi, Libya embassy? Ambassador Rice was not in charge of our embassies and could not be presumed to have the latest information on the matter. Nor could it have any effect on the fate of the embassy personnel. She was not the right person to ask in the first place. How does that make her a poor candidate to be our next Secretary of State?

Then there is the Simpson-Bowles plan to tackle our national deficit. Erskine Bowles was former Pres. Bill Clinton's Chief of Staff while Alan Simpson was formerly a Republican U.S. Senator from Wyoming. They are working together in the Fix the Debt campaign to push a set of budget cuts and revenue increases that neither party likes very much. It seems unlikely that either Simpson or Bowles would support such a package if they had to do it alone. But together they form a solution that could work if the party leaders would stop tying themselves to the mast of the sinking ship.

The fiscal cliff is the result of a strange cabal of Democratic and Senatorial lawmakers who deliberately  concocted a package of tax increases and budget cuts they thought no one would support. The package was passed precisely because everyone expected it would be cancelled after the elections. But why cancel it? Maybe it will send our economy into a new recession or depression but each side can blame the other for it. For the Democrats it puts in place some tax increases that the Republicans wouldn't touch but for which they are now equally responsible. And for the Republicans it makes some cuts that reduce the size of the federal government and make the tea party happy. After we go over the cliff the Republicans can forcefully propose to restore the tax cuts and the Democrats can loudly try to pass legislation to restore the entitlements that were trimmed. What a wonderful show! So I predict that the two parties, while appearing to search for compromise, will secretly conspire in their efforts to let us fall over the fiscal cliff

A Thanksgiving Prayer

Let us give thanks to the turkey

who gobbled the corn

as she strutted her plump feathered breasts

for all to admire

and to eat.

Let us give thanks to the corn stalks

that turned sun and rain

into ripening ears of golden grain

to fatten the bird

and to eat.

Let us give thanks to the planet

that cradled our roots

as it held us all firm to its bosom

to breathe its sweet air

and to eat.

Let us give thanks to the sun-star

that held Earth in thrall

as it plunged through the seasons toward Autumn

to bring harvest time

and to eat.

Let us give thanks to the Big Bang

that gave birth to stars

and to time, light and forces of nature

that brought us to life

and to eat.

Let us give thanks to ancestors

who captured the fire,

and learned to sow crops and reap harvests,

who made tools for work

and to eat.

Let us give thanks to each other

who gathered today

to share thoughts and memories and play,

to set a great feast

and to eat.

Land Values.

Headline on the front page of The News & Observer in Raleigh: "Legal mess lies beneath homes."

The article details the difficulties faced by some homeowners when they try to sell a home that stands on land where the title to mineral rights has been retained by someone else. Timber companies in North Carolina have sold hundreds of thousands of acres of land but "retained the right to mine and drill hundreds of feet below the surface of the land". Banks are reluctant to issue mortgages on such land and not without good reason. Legal wrangles could easily eat up any profits from the sale of the mortgage.

Some economists believe that land values are the bedrock of all economic value. A friend of mine argues that a single tax on land values or land usage could and should replace all other forms of taxation. If land ownership can be divided into strata, however, these ideas about value and usage require modification. Can land have two or more sources of value? Should both the owner of surface rights and the owner of mineral rights be taxed? Might underground rights be defined and sold for different levels or different minerals, such as for natural gas and for water? Might air rights also be defined and sold separately?

Is it possible to divide the earth into legal strata? Governments have tried to do that, for instance, in order to regulate air and water pollution by power companies. Courts have struggled to deal with loss of land value caused by subsidence of land over coal mines. We are now embroiled in the issue of fracking for natural gas and its potential effects on other resources such as clean drinking water. The sloughing of chemical fertilizers from the land surface into our streams and rivers and the resultant effects on other resources such as fish has also become an economic issue. And land under water has taken on new economic value as we explore its use for wind farms, tidal power, and oil drilling platforms.

If land ownership is the base on which our economy stands it is obvious that we need to clarify such ownership as to both the rights and the responsibilities of land owners, including governments.

The Time Tax

No one seems to have noticed that Tuesday's election results tended to vindicate the judgment of the US Supreme Court in their Citizens United decision. Corporations lie just like people do and money speaks lies just like people do.

The election also showed that we as a people have gotten an awful lot of practice in deciphering and ignoring corporate lies. We are barraged with these lies daily on television, radio, and phone and in newspapers, magazines, and email. If we hadn't learned to protect ourselves from corporate speech we would be much poorer than we are.

The net result is that our business moguls wasted billions of dollars trying to buy an election just as they regularly waste billions of dollars trying to influence our purchases. Not that they don't sometimes succeed, of course. No amount of education will help some citizens. But enough of us knew how to sort the wheat from the chaff that the nation was saved from four years of corporate presidency.

The corporate billionaires could have shaped the outcome of the election to their liking if they were wise enough. All they had to do was donate all that money to charity in the name of their favored candidates. The 47 percent would have roused themselves to vote for their benefactors. But why would the electorate want to vote for the people who for months had tortured them interminably with lying ads?

Advertising is basically a tax we pay for our entertainment and news. Those of us who watch PBS are spared from most of the advertising by simply paying for the service with our taxes. But if you prefer to watch a football game, Fox News, Two and a Half Men or Stephen Colbert (my favorite) you pay the tax with your time. Granted that you can use that time to learn how to parse corporate lies, it is still a terrible waste.

Romney Wins!

How did we ever manage to conduct presidential elections before TV took over? Last night I was watching the returns when the channel (not NBC) suddenly announced "NBC has declared Obama the winner in Ohio." The picture immediately switched to cheering crowds in Chicago and that was it. Everyone everywhere seemed to treat that as the official outcome.

The whole scene reminded me of the famous picture of Harry Truman holding up a front page headline announcing "Dewey Wins!" What if NBC had been wrong? What a terrible responsibility it must be to have to decide when the evidence--a partial count of the votes filtered through analysis of exit polls and projections from dozens of counties--becomes strong enough to pick a winner. NBC turned out to be right this time. I guess that means we can all relax.

Perhaps it is time to dispense with this whole voting thing. I suspect that if we had analyzed all the tweets about the campaigns we could have announced the winner before voting ever started. After all, in presidential elections our votes don't directly decide anything anyway. That honor goes to the Electoral College, a bunch of people whose names did not even appear on the ballot. I suppose it is still possible that the Electoral College could overturn the NBC decision but I doubt that will happen.

I was also impressed by how well the voters were able to ignore the billions of dollars of ads that were showered upon them and the grim efforts of some officials to block people from actually voting. I worked my fingers to the bone clicking to avoid those ads but it was worth the effort. It was also worth the effort to vote early (and often, as they used to say in Chicago) and to live in a state that allowed plenty of time for early voting.

Thank God I didn't retire to Florida! I hear the Floridians may vote to rejoin the United States if they can get their polls up an running. Perhaps they can join us along with Puerto Rico, whose citizens narrowly opted for American statehood in a referendum yesterday. I hope the Puerto Ricans don't ask for a recount.

Uteral Utterances.

As a believer in the pro-life position that a human life begins at conception I have been trying to figure out how that belief somehow trumps a woman's right to decide whether to let her body be a baby factory. Even a woman who takes reasonable precautions can find herself in that unplanned condition. It seems unfair both to the woman and to the fetus.

Life can certainly be unfair, but it is a human trait to try to overcome an ill fate if possible. So when is it possible to move a developing fetus in such a way that it can continue its development without benefit of an unwilling uterus? We know that surgically removing the fetus intact is possible at almost any stage of development. Once the little heart starts beating and circulation is established the fetus can be transferred to an incubator. Is it possible that we could develop machinery that would do the job of incubation at an earlier stage? Given the already-developed mechanical wonders of modern medicine I think it is a certainty that we could. So why haven't we done it?

Why have we wasted time speculating about what God intends? Did God not intend that humans develop the ability to build complex machinery? If so we should ban guns. We can now remove and freeze human ova and spermatozoa that can later be unfrozen and combined to generate a fetus that can then be implanted in a uterus. All we need is an artificial uterus to complete the job. Then women can finally cry "Free at last, free at last, thank God we are free at last!"

Oh, I forgot. Someone has to raise the poor little devils.

Virtues and Vices

My brother sent me this quotation from  Sir Winston Churchill:

 "The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue

 of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries." 

My reply to my brother was: The inherent virtue of government is that it is able to mint or 

print money, thereby making capitalism possible. The inherent vice of government is 

that it spends money, thereby making capitalism necessary.

Headline in my local newspaper this morning: "Lingering joblessness poses long-term 

risk: Economists say nearly 5 million jobless for so long warrants action." That is where

capitalism is supposed to step in and make use of the money. Why hasn't it done so?

Actually it has done so. It has made use of the money to purchase machinery and robots 

that can do the job faster, better, and cheaper than people. Better yet, the machines and 

robots don't form unions, bargain for better wages, strike, ask for pensions or require

health care insurance. That is their virtue. Their vice is that they don't buy anything.

Of course there are still some jobs that are too menial to mechanize or roboticize and 

some that are too high-level to give away. Thus we still employ waitresses and doctors, 

janitors and teachers, office boys and CEOs, footsoldiers and Generals. These jobs will 

remain with us for a while longer.

So how can we employ all those people for whom capitalism has no use? My suggestion: 

Turn the vice of government into a virtue. Hire the unemployed as legislators. Expand the 

legislature to include all citizens not otherwise employed. Give them a button to push, 

tune them in to C-Span and let them vote. Pay them as we do our current legislators. 

Then they will have money to spend on the stuff the capitalist machines produce and 

everyone will be happy. Except the taxpayers. But that will be all of us.

 

Buying Elections.

Billions of dollars have been spent on this election to influence voters. In addition to the traditional avenues of  conventions, debates, and personal appearances we have been inundated with TV ads and robo-calls and email appeals for money. I sit in front of my TV set with the remote in hand, finger poised over the mute or fast forward buttons. When my phone rings, if I don't recognize the caller, I just hang up. I delete the email appeals for money without even looking at them. I know who you are.

Do those billions of dollars accomplish anything beyond annoying us? Or are they just wasted? Anyone with any sense knows that the ads are lying to us. If that sort of thing actually influences the outcome of elections then democracy is in deep doodoo.

What would be a more useful investment for all that super-pac money? How about encouraging more capable candidates to run for office? You wouldn't have to tell so many lies about them. Voters might even have to choose between two or more candidates who know what they are talking about and can actually do a good job for us when elected.

Think of all the jobs that could be created if that money were spent on something useful! Think of all the buying power that would be put in the hands of the Koch employees if the brothers gave them a raise instead of loading the airwaves with loathsome ads. Instead of complaining about the economy the Koch brothers could actually do something about it.

No matter who wins the election the government will not belong to the people. It will belong to those who bought it. That's nothing new. It is just that the price has gotten higher. Be proud, America! You have the best government money can buy.

Progress.

The arrow of progress is twirling in the winds today. And I am not talking about hurricane Sandy. America  built its economy on progress, on being the first to take advantage of new technologies and new opportunities. Now look at us. We have fumbled the ball on nearly every playing field except how to conduct war by remote control.

Take energy, for instance. We know that the future for energy lies in tapping renewable sources. We won't run out of fossil fuels tomorrow, but we know they will slowly become harder to access and increasingly expensive. If we want to maintain a leadership position in this field, developing renewable sources is the way to go. But our hidebound energy suppliers are tying our hands and feet on this issue.

Transportation is another field in which we have led the world. We developed canals, railroads, automobiles,  ships and airplanes both as industries and as ways to access the wealth of the world. Now we are struggling to catch up in the automotive industry, our railways chug along at half the speed of other nations, and our airlines need to charge us for our bags in order to make a buck. Today the subways of New York City, once a marvel of our ingenuity, are literally under water. Our movies portray a future of vehicles flying around the city on electronic pathways but we are stuck in traffic jams and our airports still function at the mercy of the weather.

Look what we have done with electronics. We can now communicate with almost anyone anywhere on the planet. And what do we do with this capability? We tweet inanities to people who are sitting next to us. We divert our attention to our cell phones while supposedly driving a car. And there lies an opportunity for progress--building cars that you program for a destination and then go about your business. But our business community is busy trying to make a buck out of our cell phones by capturing our identities and selling them to advertisers. Meanwhile our enemies hack our computer systems and threaten our financial and power industries.

Do the Democrats or Republicans have a clue about how to get us back on the track of progress? Not much. The Democrats talk about developing renewable energy while other nations do it. The party seems vaguely aware that the private sector has lost its way and is not going to be able to continue to supply jobs and income to everyone. So they try to fill in the gaps that used to be filled by private charities. The Republicans object to this approach and insist that our industries can do the job, but the truth is that there is nothing stopping them from doing it now except lack of imagination and will. We have plenty of capital but no will to use it. So our capital, the remnant of our past progress, remains tied up in mansions and yachts and a falsely booming stock market instead of generating new progress. And the Republicans focus on returning us to the glory days before the Civil War.

Speech is Speech.

We are now being assailed by political "speech" in the form of television ads and billboards funded by anonymous groups or persons, telephone robo-calls, letters from our employers telling us which candidates pose a threat to our jobs, and email appeals for money to support or attack particular candidates. According to our Supreme Court all of this "speech" is protected by our federal Constitution.

My Webster's defines speech as "oral communication" and "a form of communication in spoken language, made by a speaker." Television ads usually have an anonymous speaker but much of the message is conveyed by images and printed quotations. My Webster's is too old to know what robo-calls are. Form letters and email messages aren't speech at all. And none of these forms of "speech" allow me to ask questions.

In an article in the New York Times by Steven Greenhouse the author reports that "David A. Siegel, 77,chief executive of Westgate Resorts, a major time-share company, wrote to his 7,000 employee, saying that if Obama won, the prospect of higher taxes could hurt the company's future." In an interview Siegel said "I really wanted them to know how I felt four more years under President Obama was going to affect them." He further explained "It would be no different from telling your children: 'Eat your spinach. It's good for you.' "

So now I have to wonder if political "speech" is like child rearing and the American electorate are a bunch of children. Is that what the framers of our Constitution had in mind?

As for the email appeals I have been deleting them en masse. If money is going to determine the outcome of this election then we, the children, have already lost no matter who wins.

Good Question.

Sometimes a good question is the best answer. This morning I encountered a good question on the opinion page of my local newspaper--the Raleigh News & Observer. Amanda Marcotte was writing about the position on abortion taken by Richard Mourdock, a candidate for the U.S. Senate from Indiana. Mourdock publicly declared that if a woman becomes pregnant because of rape God must have approved that pregnancy and it should not be terminated. Amanda Marcotte asked "If God can ordain the rape and the pregnancy that follows, why can't he (sic) also ordain abortion?"

The answer a person gives to this question tells us more about the person than the issue. Mourdock apparently believes that God is not the Creator of all things. Or else Mourdock is confused. If God is the Creator then God is omnipotent and responsible for everything. That is what I was taught and how could it be wrong? Surely God would not allow my minister to lie to me. Unless lying doesn't matter.

Perhaps God intended for random, uncontrolled events to occur. Such as rape, pregnancy, miscarriage and abortion. Nearly half of all human conceptions end in miscarriage. If that isn't God's will I don't know what is.  Maybe we should continue to allow abortion just in case that is what God intends. After all, the Supreme Court in Roe vs. Wade could have stopped it right there. Does God not speak to the Supreme Court? Or smite them?

Some clergy, in defiance of the laws of this land, are telling their congregations to vote for candidates who say they will outlaw abortion. Their explanation for this behavior, if the ministers give one, might be that human life begins at conception and abortion is murder. If so, why isn't a drone strike on a group of suspected terrorists murder? Why, then, would clergy not also urge people to vote for candidates who support peace instead of war?

Why am I looking for logical consistency in a political campaign?

The quest to save America.

It is amazing to me that so many people are on a quest to save America. We are the richest nation on Earth, with the strongest military, a strong currency, a democratically elected government, with land and resources that are the envy of the world. And yet the tea party, the occupy movement, Mitt Romney, the Koch brothers, and many of our religious leaders, just to name a few, think America needs to be saved.

Save America from what? Sixteen trillion dollars (and growing) of national debt, a weak job market, paying entitlements to our elderly and infirm citizens, allowing illegal immigration, having more citizens imprisoned than any other nation, growing drug addiction, avaricious banks and bankers, fracking, obesity, inadequate care for our returning troops, gay marriage, rampant political advertising and debates. You name it. If there is anything about America that does not meet your standards, the nation needs to be saved from it.

One small problem. Almost everything we want to save America from is something that other citizens want to keep. Too much money in the hands of the one percent? That's what a capitalist nation is supposed to have. A lot of people out of work? More leisure is what some of us have been looking for our whole lives. The pews are empty? We are finally ridding ourselves of that Medieval claptrap. Too many citizens in prison? Well, at least that helps the job deficit problem. Fracking is good for everyone until we need that groundwater. And why should anyone worry about gay marriage? After all, they don't reproduce.

So lets concentrate on saving America from terrorism. There is wide agreement that terrorism is bad for America. The people who want terrorism in America are mostly elsewhere. America is an easy target with all those open borders and shops where guns and ammonium nitrate can be purchased. And we have so many tall buildings to topple. Our cell phones and cable networks facilitate communication in terror networks and attacks on our electronic controls. And our government is behind on protecting these facilities because it can't afford to hire the best.

There are several tracks we could take to save America from terrorism. We could hide in bunkers and minimize our interaction with the rest of the world. We could train every citizen in anti-terrorist self defense. We could invade any nation that sends terrorists our way or even gives them safe haven. Or we could join the terrorists as a few of our citizens have already tried to do. What we need is a leader to tell us which way to go. What we have is leaders of many stripes pointing to many different paths. We must save America from its leaders!

Pro-life

On the basis of scientific evidence I believe that each human life begins when an egg is fertilized. The genetic facts of each life are established at that point. To that extent I agree with the Pro-life position.

Any deliberate act intended to interfere with the implantation or development of a fertilized egg could be defined as an illegal act such as murder or assault. People who adopt the Pro-life position generally believe that such interference should be prohibited by law. Many seek to change the laws of this country to protect fertilized human eggs from any harmful interference. I disagree. A newly fertilized egg has almost nothing invested in it. We have not fed it, we have not carried it, we have not given birth to it, we have not clothed or loved or educated it. Our only human investment is one egg and one sperm out of zillions that are available.

The Pro-life position seems to be that God arranges for each fertilization to occur. God selects which egg and which sperm shall get together. Thus each fertilized egg is sacred. Where is that written? In which fiery bush has God proclaimed it?

If each fertilization is God's will then God has a lot to answer for. Studies of the fertilization process tell us that about 22% of all fertilized eggs fail to implant in the womb. Without implantation they can receive no sustenance and must quickly die. Is this some sort of cosmic game, rolling the dice with fertilized eggs? If implantation is successful another 31% of the fetuses miscarry before they are viable outside the womb. More of God's play? Or is God testing each and every fetus before it is born? I can't find anything about that in my Holy Bible.

God by definition is all-powerful but God also delegates decisions to His human creatures. Isn't that what the story of Adam and Eve tells us? Humans are called upon to exercise judgment in such matters as whether the egg and the sperm are from healthy stock and carrying good genetic characteristics and whether the parent(s) are prepared to take good care of the resulting infant. A pregnancy resulting from rape, for instance, may not predispose the mother toward love of the child. Shall we condemn the fetus to the Hell of being an unloved stepchild? If we are trained in the exercise of medical care we may also have to make judgments about the effects of pregnancy on the health of the mother. Does God really require that we suspend human judgment on matters such as these?

Human life is obviously not sacrosanct in the eyes of American law. That law provides for execution of murderers, for instance. Homeowners are permitted to shoot to kill in order to protect their property. Soldiers are not only permitted to kill their human enemies in times of war; they are commanded to do so. And the law requires no action to save the millions of lives that are lost through spontaneous miscarriage. Why, then, should we suddenly be concerned about lives in which very little has been invested? What punishment would you mete out to a pregnant teenager who chose abortion because she was nowhere near ready to bear and raise a child? What punishment is appropriate for the manufacturers and pharmacists who make and sell pills designed to keep a fertilized egg from implanting itself in the uterus?

What does Pro-life mean? What does it mean when a politician says it he is Pro-life and then calls for war?

HIStory

Our presidential candidates are touting their credentials as supporters of equal employment and equal pay for women. Gov. Romney described how, as Governor of Massachusetts, he deliberately sought out female candidates to appoint to high-level jobs in his administration. Pres. Obama noted his support for the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, the first bill he signed into law as President. He also appointed eight women to his Cabinet. That is only 35 percent of his Cabinet appointments but he also nominated two women to the Supreme Court.

Unfortunately there are problems with both of these stories. Romney implied that as Governor he "went to a number of women's groups" in search of information about qualified female candidates for positions in his administration. But the nonpartisan Massachusetts Government Appointments Project has rebutted this story, saying that they came to him with this information. Pres. Obama failed to note that in spite of the Fair Pay Act women in America are still paid only about 80 percent of what men receive in the private sector for the same work and qualifications. And he did not tell us what, if anything, he has tried to do about that. Does he expect women to do all the work by filing millions of lawsuits?

A more important question for Gov. Romney is what he did as head of Bain Capital to hire and promote qualified women or pay them equally. Practicing gender equality in the light of government office is a no-brainer. Failure to do it in private enterprise is the real problem.

Pres. Obama really failed to answer the question asked by a young woman on the panel at the debate on Tuesday. She asked what his Administration had done to bring women's pay up to the level of their male equals. The answer is--very little. The Fair Pay Act makes it easier to sue for discrimination in pay but our employers should not be discriminating against women in the first place.

What could our federal government do? It could be shining a spotlight on discriminatory employers but it is not doing so. It could be requiring equal pay as a condition of awarding government contracts but it is not doing so. It could be providing tax incentives for equal pay and employment or tax penalties for discrimination but it is not doing so. It could enact tariffs to penalize foreign employers who discriminate against their female employees but it has not done so.

If the women of this country formed their own political party they could win. They are the majority. And there is no law against it.

The Buck Stops Here

Pres. Truman had a sign on his desk in the Oval Office: The Buck Stops Here.  Pres. Obama should have that sign too. It doesn't matter when he was informed about the attack on our embassy in Benghazi, Libya or when he was told that it was apparently a planned attack, not just a riot. He knew that the budget for embassy security had been cut and he signed that budget. The buck stops there.

On the other hand the buck also went through the hands of Rep. Ryan and the House of Representatives. They engineered the cut in money for embassy security. They squeezed and redirected the bucks. And Pres. Obama had to consider many other items in the budget when he signed it. He is responsible for all those items as well, for better or worse. And Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is responsible for how the funds were allocated. And her operatives in the field were responsible for advising her on where the security funds were most needed. And the attackers in Benghazi were responsible for disguising their efforts so that we would not know about their attack in advance.

The buck makes many stops along the way. Life is like that. And so is our economy. Bucks are supposed to move and make many brief stops along the way. That is what they do when our economy is booming. When the bucks pile up in banks in Switzerland or the Cayman Islands they are not doing their job. They can't be used to fund an expansion of the military or to cut the national deficit or to repair our crumbling roads. So Gov. Romney and his 1% buddies need to put a sign on their foreign accounts: The Bucks Stop Here.

The Sin of Low Wages

Republicans and Democrats alike are yammering about how they are going to create jobs and restore prosperity to America. The fact is they are not going to accomplish those goals until they recognize and fix a major glitch in our economy, the failure of wages to keep up with productivity.

According to data collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics the wages of our hourly-paid workers rose steadily as their productivity increased from 1950 to the early '70s. The recession of 1973-75 knocked us off that track and since then wages have increased only about 13% while productivity more than doubled. What did this do to the economy? It put a strangle hold on the purchasing power of our workers, the people who are most likely to spend what they earn and buy what they produce. 

As productivity increased but spending didn't, our manufacturing and marketing sectors tried to maintain profitability by cutting prices and jobs. They also siphoned more cash out of the system by increasing executive pay faster than profits were growing. Meanwhile working families, thinking that they should be part of the economic boom, bought houses on shaky mortgages. Then the whole scheme collapsed in the Great Recession. But it all started with the failure of wages to keep up with productivity.

Have you noticed that the stock market has fully recovered while employment has not? That is because the stock market is where executives and other rich people put much of the money they can't spend. But stock prices have almost no effect on employment or on production of goods and services or on spending for those things. If we want to jump start our market economy we must find a way to put more money in the pockets of workers and their families. 

You don't begin by creating jobs, you begin by spreading cash around. When it is spent the spending will create jobs. And the best way to spread cash around, if you don't want to just give it away, is to increase wages.

Money is Speech

The Supreme Court has declared that money is speech. And the Court is right. Very right.

Since money is speech we ought to listen to it. As with all speech--such as your mother telling you to clean up after yourself--it might be correct or incorrect, important or unimportant. But you don't know until you listen to it.

These days it is easy to find money to listen to. It blares from my TV every time I turn it on. What money is saying is that we should not vote for anyone who is running for President, Governor, Senator or Representative. The major candidates are all liars, thieves, idiots and cunning plotters against American values.

Why doesn't money have anything better to do? Why couldn't it speak for renewable energy, for instance? We are certainly going to need that after we frack ourselves to death. But money doesn't seem to want to say anything useful these days. So why do we need more of it? What is the purpose of cutting taxes if the money is simply going to sit there and nag us? Right now money is nothing but speech.

Money was not invented for purposes of speech. It was invented to facilitate trade and the collection of taxes. It was easier for the King to collect coins and pieces of paper than to gather up livestock, produce, lumber and ore. But the King learned that when he had something to say to a neighboring monarch money often said it more clearly than cannon balls. And if his neighbor refused to listen money could also buy cannon balls.

As a nation today do we need more speech or more cannon balls? Some of the candidates who are assailing our ears seem to think we need more of the latter. If so, why aren't their moneyed supporters investing in more and better cannon balls? And if we need better medical care I am sure that money could speak for that too.

Assumptions

At the Vice Presidential debate a lot was said about Rep. Ryan's plan to reduce the national debt with a combination of tax cuts, removal of tax loopholes, and slashing of government programs. His assumption is  that the cuts would stimulate the economy, thereby creating jobs and profits that will pay off the debt in 20 years. Vice Pres. Biden countered that the math shows this plan will not work and will actually increase the national debt. His assumption is that there are not enough savings in the loopholes and programs to offset the loss in taxes.

It is not the math that is out of whack in this scenario. It is the assumptions. The evidence of the effects of the Bush tax cuts throws cold water on the assumption that these new tax cuts will stimulate the economy enough to pay off our debts. Instead of creating a boom Pres. Bush's cuts generated stock manipulation and overheated the housing market, causing a crash. And at the consumer level a lot of money from the cuts was spent in multinational megastores on foreign goods with very little benefit trickling down to our local businesses.

The effects of throwing money at the economy to stimulate it have been lukewarm at best. The fact is that if we put more money in the pockets of our citizens by means of tax cuts we have no idea what they will do with it. If they spend it on goods from China this will not increase employment in the US and will provide no incentive for our corporations to invest in increased production. A lot of the wealth that has been created in the US is now being spent on a frenzy of political "speech" but that boom will soon end.

Another unexamined assumption is that the jobs lost through cutting government programs will somehow be replaced by private sector jobs. So far that has not happened. States and communities in particular have had to cut many jobs in education, road and bridge maintenance, police and fire departments, and the social safety network. And jobs in parts of the private sector such as manufacturing and banking continue to be lost to better machines and robotics. The bailout of our domestic auto industry did save some jobs but it probably would not have succeeded without substantial investment in tooling that replaced workers. How do you think Japanese and Korean auto plants do it? Any assumption that depends on creating jobs has to take into account changes in the way we do business such as automated tellers, electronic shopping, word of thumb or phone advertising, and growing food in "factories" that automatically feed, pluck, collect and slaughter the stock.

I predict that we never will return to the level of employment we had. We simply don't need that many man-hours of  production or service. What we could do is to spread the existing employment by reducing the standard workweek and workyear. But that will not substantially increase the money available for consumer spending. It will simply spread it thinner. That is my assumption.

Affirmative Action?

The Supreme Court's review of affirmative action in college admissions raised a great variety of connexions with other topics. What is race? What does it have to do with diversity in a university?  What sort of action does it call for? What does it have to do with education? In what ways is it affirmative?

The entire human race is one species. It arose in Africa and spread from there to Europe, Asia, Australia and the Americas. Recent findings about our gene pool indicate that along the way there may have been some mixing with Neanderthals. Otherwise the cosmetic differences among us are just that--cosmetic. When people of different skin colors engage in sex they have no difficulty in reproducing and their children are not neuter like a mule. They are human like Pres. Obama.

So how did we end up with racial subspecies based primarily on skin color? We know that skin color can be a factor in "survival of the fittest" because of its effects on susceptibility to skin cancer and on receiving our daily requirement of vitamin A. The need for dark skin is high in an environment of intense exposure to sunlight and low in the higher latitudes. So it appears that our color differences are adaptive. However, if we are going to continue to migrate from one climate to another perhaps a bit of a mix is the safest strategy for the future.

Skin color has historically led to segregation in America for slaves, former slaves, native Americans, and Chinese, Japanese, and Latino immigrant groups. But even immigrants from various parts of Europe have been segregated until they assimilated into the community. An important part of the assimilation process is our public schools. We have desegregated the public schools and employed affirmative action at the college level in order to break the cycle of segregation and provide equal opportunity for all our citizens. Affirmative action is also supposed to expose our light-skinned collegians to the diversity of American culture so that they will better understand the world they are preparing to face. It turns our that being able to see the world as people from other backgrounds see it is part of education. Who knew?

But is affirmative action still needed? Diversity in our public schools has helped to raise the performance of children from the formerly segregated groups so that more children from these groups qualify for college admission without affirmative action. We have not reached equality of performance yet, unless you are talking about athletics, but there has definitely been progress. What the Supreme Court is trying to assess is whether there has been enough progress to stop being affirmative. Affirmative, it turns out, means using lower standards of admission for dark-skinned students than for light-skinned ones.

Something like affirmative action was clearly needed when desegregation began because most of our previously segregated population had not received proper preparation for college. By now, however, we should be able to build equality from the ground up by assuring that all of our children get a good education pre-K and K through 12. Research has shown a key to this goal lies in assuring that our school populations are truly diverse so that children whose families lacked opportunities are exposed to children with higher aspirations. If we can affirm that we probably won't have to affirm anything else.

Will Darwinism Survive?

Poor Charles Darwin. He is so misunderstood. Everyone says “Darwin? Oh yeah. Survival of the fittest.” It is true that being fit may help you to survive and reproduce but that is only a small part of what Darwin was trying to say.

Fitness depends on your environment. What Darwin observed was that birds of a species, when exposed to different environmental conditions, over time developed small differences in characteristics such as the size and shape of their beaks. These changes were related to factors such as the kinds of food available to them. Long thin beaks were good for gathering some foods, short stout beaks were better for other kinds. Whatever shape worked better tended to be preserved because its possessors survived and multiplied more successfully.

But fitness could also be related to how a bird looked to its potential mates. A male who looked more attractive or behaved more aggressively might spread those characteristics by fertilizing more eggs. A female might build a better nest to take care of the eggs.

Changes in the environment could change the characteristics of the species that survived. For instance a drying climate that caused loss of forests could, by favoring agility on the ground rather than in trees, develop a new species of apes who walked upright. And if staying together in families or flocks or tribes made survival more likely the survivors would spread the traits, such as empathy and ability to communicate, that facilitate staying together.

Notice that there is competition between various traits for survival. Is looking good and being aggressive more or less important for species survival than being able to communicate well? The only way we can know for certain is to wait and see what traits survive. And even then we will only have the answer for a given environment. It is not survival of the individual we are talking about.

Can a species survive so well that it multiplies beyond the capacity of its environment to support it? The human species may currently be working on a test of that hypothesis. Dinosaurs may have tested it too.  

Indigenous Peoples Day

Yesterday was Indigenous Peoples Day. It used to be Columbus Day but that had to be canceled when we learned he did not really discover America. Yes, I know it still says Columbus Day on your calendar. These things take a while to fix.

America was “discovered” by Amerigo Vespucci who proceeded to name the continents after himself.

Columbus “discovered” Hispaniola, an island in the Caribbean Sea, but it had already been discovered by indigenous people whose ancestors probably came from Asia. Columbus took care of that little problem on his next trip by bringing Spanish conquistadors who proceeded to eliminate the indigenous population. The native people weren't Christians and they failed to cough up enough gold. But Columbus never reached the land masses now called North and South America. And he never reached India, which was his intended destination.

So far as we know the indigenous population of North, South and Central America came originally from Asia by way of a land or ice bridge across the Bering Strait. There may also have been some ancestors who sneaked across the Pacific ocean on rafts, just as debris from a tsunami in Japan has been drifting to the coast of Alaska and our northwestern states. And a few Vikings in boats may also have preceded Columbus, although it is not clear that they left any descendants.

Populations migrating to unpopulated regions were popular in early times. The first migrations were from Africa to Europe and Asia. Some of the Asian immigrants settled in India, a land mass that had earlier migrated from Africa and slammed into the continent to form the Himalayas. Later there were migrations of people from Asia eastward toward Europe, southward toward Australia, and westward to America. Some of the westward migrants may actually have come from India, thus justifying the designation of the indigenous people of America as “Indians.” The indigenous peoples of Europe came from various parts of Africa or Asia. So let us belatedly celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day.

If you already celebrated Columbus Day that's okay. Good holidays are hard to find.

Producers, Consumers, and Scavengers

Our understanding of the human economy is based on the fact that we are producers and consumers. We are also scavengers. We gather materials from the earth and the forests, energy from the sun and winds and rivers and rocks. We “produce” food from farming and ranching but we also harvest it through hunting, fishing and gathering. Scavenging is part of the “production” side of the economy.

Our economy is based on maintaining a flow between acquisition and consumption. Whether we produce goods or simply gather them there needs to be a positive balance on the acquisition side in order for the economy to work to our advantage. If we expended more energy in acquiring our food than we gained from eating it we would rather quickly come to the end of our rope.

So what happens when we introduce machines, particularly robots, into this equation? Machines have to be more efficient than people at some aspect of scavenging or producing. Otherwise there would be no point in introducing them to the economy. And machines are also consumers; they require resources, especially energy.

People look at machines as aids but also as competitors. As machines become more sophisticated they replace human skills in the production side of the economy. Machines also consume some of the same energy resources. And as machines become more intelligent and versatile they compete even with highly skilled workers.

When a worker with a machine can produce as much as ten workers without machines a lot of workers are likely to lose their jobs. That is, they drop out of the producer side of the economy. Without income from jobs the losers fall out of the economy on the consumer side as well. And with a shrinking market for the goods they produce even the machines may be idled.

The forces on the economy that I have just described have been operating there for more than a century but the effects have become increasingly severe in America in the last 40 years. With an excess supply of human labor employers have not had to compete for workers. Wages have stagnated and even the employed have lost purchasing power. With less money in circulation on the consumer side markets have shrunk. For employers the only productive use for the savings in wages is to invest in more and better machinery. In the short run that improves the economy for producers of the machinery but the long range effect is to eliminate jobs and wages.

The vicious circle of decline I have described does have some escape routes. People with special skills are still needed in the development of better machines and robots. Money is being poured into education in the belief that it can propel young people into productive occupations. Many goods have become cheaper and thus more accessible even to the unemployed. The extension of human lives and the freeing up of time have opened up needs for more workers in areas such as medicine, personal care and entertainment. But the overall trend toward a less robust American economy is clear.

If our leaders are willing to do what is necessary to reverse this trend the first step is to put more spendable money in the hands of the working class, whether or not they are working. The key is that they will spend the money because they have immediate needs. Spending will create markets for goods and services, markets will attract investment, and investment will provide jobs for more workers and better machinery. The cycle of scavenging, producing and consuming will boom again.

Making Money Work

Pres. Obama and Gov. Romney have both talked about freeing up money to help business grow, thereby creating jobs. Their plans differ in details, or the lack thereof, but the basic idea seems to be that money is somehow frozen in place and needs to be liberated.

The place up from which--picture Winston Churchill rolling over in his grave--money needs to be freed is the accounts of people like Romney. Money was intended to circulate but instead it is piling up in tax havens. And the reason why the rich are not investing it is that there is no use making more stuff because most people have no loose money to spend on it.

In a blog posted on Ezra Klein's WONKBLOG on August 10, 2012 Dylan Matthews showed that “Higher productivity doesn't mean higher wages.” Using unpublished data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), generously provided to him by the Economic Policy Institute’s Larry Mishel and Nicholas Finio, Matthews showed that wages tracked productivity growth until the early 1970s. After that, wages stagnated even as productivity continued to grow. To show the relationship he presented the following graph based on EPI's analysis:

Source: Economic Policy Institute.

When hourly compensation ceased to grow even as productivity increased, the purchasing power of hourly-paid workers no longer enabled them to buy the additional products with cash. (Picture Henry Ford rolling over in his grave.) To continue their lifestyle many of the workers used credit. This led to debt piling up on the workers until the dam burst and their mortgages ceased to float. Suddenly much of the market for the increased productivity disappeared. The recession at least in part was caused by the failure of pay to keep up with productivity.

It is not that employers ought to pay their workers more. It's not a moral imperative. It's an economic imperative. Money was meant to circulate. If you choke off the money supply to the consumers you eventually break the economic cycle that produced prosperity. That is what our employers have done.

It is time for a redistribution of wealth in America. If our major parties actually understood economics I think they would both agree that more money needs to go to the poor and middle class. The reason is simple: They will spend it instead of sitting on it. When people spend money, markets are created and the upper class has something profitable to invest in. Everybody wins.

If the upper class really want an economy that works for THEM they are going to have to redistribute some of their money to the consumers in the lower classes. It doesn't matter whether they do it through charity or government dole or deciding to pay workers better. If they don't do it somehow, the USA is soon going to resemble the impoverished nations in Africa and the Middle East whose dictators hide their people's wealth in Swiss bank accounts.

Policy versus Proposals


Gov. Romney clearly won the debate last night. He remembered to look at the camera, he grinned aggressively, and he told the Moderator what to do. Yet we learned almost nothing specific on what he proposes to do about unemployment, deficits, tax rates, loopholes, or medical care insurance, to name just a few of the items that were "discussed." What we did learn was about policy: Romney favors a minimal role for the federal government in almost every sphere except the military. He made it clear that he thinks the states and private enterprise should take over most of whatever else the feds are doing now. So we are to become the Collected States of America. 

I think he should expand that plan. The US armed forces could be reorganized around the National Guard units in each of the States. The US Senate and House of Representatives could be populated by state-selected representatives from the state legislatures. The federal bodies would meet once or twice a year while the state legislatures are not in session. Likewise the US Supreme Court could be composed of representatives from each of the District Courts, which would in turn be made up of reps from the state supreme courts. These changes would greatly reduce the cost of federal government, thereby allowing Gov. Romney to accomplish a substantial reduction in federal taxes.

Carrying this theme one step further I would recommend that the US Presidency be filled by state Governors on a monthly rotation. This would give the state Lieutenant Governors a chance to step in and do something useful about once every four years. I suspect that Gov. Romney may not be ready to advocate this particular proposal but I am sure he will see the value of it when he gets to the Oval Office. It becomes awfully hot in Washington DC in the summer and there is no good place to drive your boat.