VN AfterTaste

by David Raffin

A rising tide lifts all ships. Those without ships drown. At least we saved the ships.

We have tried trickle-down economics for over 30 years. In the 1980 election, when George H.W. Bush ran against Ronald Reagan in the Republican primaries, Bush attacked Reagan on the concept of trickle-down economics. Bush called it “Voodoo economics.”
Voodoo is not just an economic system, it’s how you raise armies of the dead: old-style zombies.

Trickle-down economics is the idea that you give everything to the rich, in the form of tax breaks and hand-outs, and the money will trickle-down, magically, to the poor. Yet in the decades this system has been in place the social divide has done nothing but grow; the rich have become richer, the poor poorer. Still, the common political viewpoint of the two party system in the U.S., and the mass media, is to do more of the same: tax cuts for the wealthy, handouts for giant corporations. These are now called “job creators,” though the jobs are absent. Common knowledge says the poor must continue to pay the way of the rich, the social welfare system (what is left of it) must be further gutted, and everything must be “privatized,” that is, used as a tool for corporate profiteering.

Albert Einstein said, “We cannot solve the significant problems we face with the same level of thinking that created them.”
Then again, Einstein was a socialist. Which is a way of saying he was bright.
The rule in this country is: you can’t garner political capital by being an egghead. Corporations will refuse to buy into your campaign.

There is an occupy encampment in the town where I live. It is in the same spot that a 1930’s depression era shanty-town stood, in the shadow of the state capital.
There are many tents. There is a sign out front that advertises “Free Hugs.” It is a protest over the commercialization of hugs.
I am afraid the occupy movement will be co-opted by the merchandising system. Like the ads after the WTO protests of 1999 where protestors rejoiced as police turned hoses on them because they could make branded powdered iced tea. Party!
It could all be repackaged and sold back to the 99% at a mark up.

...

I hate camping. People say they like camping, mostly in personal ads, but I have a hard time with the concept. I think they are just saying that for marketing reasons.
No, the only real reason to camp is out of necessity. I learned that in the Boy Scouts.

The support for the Occupy Movement, the 99%, is larger than the encampments. Polls show this. Public sentiment has shifted against corporate greed. People are sick of the trickle-down that never trickles down.

This is a short history of the 99%:
There has long been a great divide between rich and poor. The strong bullied the weak, then they hired intermediaries to bully the weak for them. Then they made the weak pay the salaries of the intermediaries. This is the basis of the system. It’s broke.

There were chiefs and there were lawgivers. There were god kings, then kings with divine rights. Then there were various experiments with democracy, some with real slaves, some just with wage slaves. Democracy, of course, is a system where the voters, whoever is included, believe they are in control while the moneyed interests still call the shots. This was true in the lands were the economic system was capitalism and also true in the lands where the economic system was called communism. In fact, the last large nation that calls itself communist, China, has proven it really knows its way around the market system. They make almost all the American flags, after all. They cornered the market.

Historically the 99%, the people not in charge, were commoners, slaves, serfs, wage slaves, and cannon fodder. Only recently did they have civil rights. Such things are a modern affair. People have short memories, but it has only been in the past 100 years that child labor and 16 hour work days were considered unfashionable. It has only been in that recent timeframe that there has risen a somewhat large and fabled middle class. It has only been in those few generations that people began to take that progress gained in struggle, earned through blood and sorrow by unions and protest, and taken it for granted and willingly allowed it to be systematically dismantled. Eventually, it was a given that people would notice.

The truth is: our economy and culture is a fiction– it’s fictional. We live in an illusion.
Even the poor often hate the poor, a victory for ad men and the public relations industry. The myth-makers and the politicos. People construct the illusion. People buy into the illusion. People live in the illusion, and die by it. They identify with the rich, which is why they vote against their interests. They can be bought out, sold out, co-opted, and made to believe wrong is right and right is wrong. For a price.

Consumer spending is the basis of the economy but for higher profits companies cut worker pay. So people buy on credit. Have you noticed that your credit card bills often come with advertisements for some junk you can buy, right in the same envelope? They are smart. They have identified you as someone who likes to buy things. And if you don’t buy things the economy will crash. And your pay growth is stagnant. And the cost of living isn’t.
That’s a gamed system. But for who? It’s a Ponzi scheme. It’s a fools paradise. If someone created it today they’d be thrown in jail. But it’s codified into the system, so people believe it’s rational. That’s not just an illusion, it’s delusional.
How do people make money today? Same as they did in the ancient world: Pyramid Schemes.

Everything is built to break. So you will go buy it again. That’s called planned obsolescence. This is why we can’t have nice things. Seriously.
So we buy things but the things we buy are garbage. And then we throw them out and buy another. And we bury ourselves in garbage. And in the third world children pick through it.

And we eat garbage. Over processed foods with vitamins added. Here is a clue: if it says “vitamins added,” it’s bad for you. Our food is packaged for sales, not health.

Our fastest growing economic segment is healthcare, which literally makes its profit from human misery.

Consumerism makes you unhappy, in the name of making you happy. You become a prisoner of want. It’s a trap. And when you fall in the trap you think, “Yes, this is exactly where I want to be.” It’s a very advanced trap. It was built by very smart people. But they were delusional.