MORPHEAL'S COMMENTARY - February 16, 2009 - Economy, Terror, And Fast Food Thought Crime
Morpheal
Why the tax reductions in the stimulus package are an ineffective
means despite being political appeasement to the wrong minded. Without
tax reduction legislation, those affected most end up paying the least
taxes. Those somewhat affected pay less than they would have. So they
are not helped. Those unaffected, fearful now of being affected, are
much more likely to save any tax reduction, not spending it. That
might ease the situation faced by banks, but that only encourages
lending, if anything, and we know where excessive lending led in terms
of the recession happening in the first place. While tax reductions
seem logical and appealing they are definitely not an answer to the
crisis. To the contrary there is increased need for maintaining tax
revenues to fund real value projects that free enterprise will not,
and sometimes cannot, promote and effect. That includes R&D, pure
science, more infrastructure, environment, conservation, oriented
expenditure. There is so much that ought to be done, where the only
scarce resource is money. Government's role then is to rectify that
lack, but it cannot do so by relying on tax cuts as a real stimulus,
and in any case where money is spend needs significantly more
government direction and involvement if we are to expect the right
things to be done for the nation's and the world's future. The world
is watching and it needs a leading example for the future, not old hat
political appeasement of the same old bad habits, inclusive of tax cut
stimulus.
REHABILITATING THE AUTO INDUSTRY:
While the creation of a task force to rehabilitate the auto industry
is a necessary step, the larger question is whether such a task force
can provide truly innovative new solutions. We can no longer live in a
business as usual, sell more of the same cars and trucks, world.
Neither can the auto industry base its hopes on the benefits of war
production as it has in the past. The economic crisis comes at the
same time as does awareness of the environmental crisis. However, that
well made consumer vehicles are the main problem is a common error in
judgement. Their short life expectancy is the real problem. Five years
and a more stylish trade, and used vehicles to ten and scrap, is a
common statistic. Repairs become expensive. Building vehicles that
last at least 20 years, with more reasonable repair costs to maintain
them, that can be financed over ten years, can make them more
affordable to more people, and reduce the environmental burden of
vehicle attrition by more than 50%. That is the real environmental
burden. The energy and pollution costs of recycling and making new
product. We need to change our thinking as to how the automotive
industry does its business. We need to return to Henry Ford's dream of
vehicles that last and last, are cost effective to buy and maintain,
made possible by the newest and best and most innovative technologies.
We need to rehabilitate the auto industry away from the deadly throw
away culture that has prevailed, under American leadership, under the
illusion that throw away and replace is in fact profitable in the long
term, when in fact it is not. The cost of remedy, in economic and
environmental terms is too massive and does not show up on the auto
industry accountaints' ledgers. In the long term it is too expensive
to do auto industry business as usual. A complete re-engineering and
redefinition of that sector is necessary and now is the best
opportunity, under effective government direction, as a stake holder
in a new formula for long term success that combines a new era of
social and fiscal responsibility with sales.
THE WAR ON TERROR IS A THEATRE OF THE ABSURD:
IF as much effort was expended on eliminating actual terrorists as was
expended in the western world for changing the political minds of its
dissidents, and independent thinkers, there would be no terrorists
today. Unfortunately the theatre of the absurd, of terrorism and the
war against it, has become the cover for the constant attack on
freedom of thought and expression that has grown, rather than
diminished, in the western world ever since the Cold War ended. That
failed promise, of increased freedom of thought, expression, culture,
commerce, and association, tells all that there is to tell.
Everything beyond that is irrelevant, because Liberty herself has been
violated, raped, and left for dead. It is “as if” the war has never
ended, and never will end, and Washington continues to play the role
of the wizard of Oz giving out token representations for a freedom
that can no longer be truly recognized or truly found, only being
believed to exist on the basis of those tokens.
If nothing else we know this because there was no economic dissent, or
disagreement of any substance, and there were no whistle blowers, at
the onset of the current economic crisis. No one dared to speak up, or
speak out, who knew anything was wrong. Even the then president was
silent and sounded no alarm bells. Did the CIA sound any economic
alarm bells to the president to warn him ? Perhaps not. We do not
know if they had that much freedom, behind the closed doors of the
Oval Office, or not. It makes it all an illusion.
AND NOW INTO CASHLESS FISCAL HELL:
n a society habitually reliant on and routinely conditioned to
impulse buying, where a nation of salesmen spurs the intentionally
kept unwary, to emotional outbursts of sudden purchase, cashless
commerce is Satan. Few are able to keep track of balances. Most have
built in credit to run over their true means, easily losing track of
their spending, and their indebtedness. Only the banker remembers with
any certainty and even then the banker is more prone to error, rather
than less prone to error, in this strange new cashless world. The
burden of proof usually resting on the innocent to prove their
innocence, and unlike the old game of Monopoly bank error is never in
their favor. Instead it calls for either rare and prodigous knowledge
or a larger than before war chest for defense. More people will get
into fiscal trouble. More fraud will occur. More wrongful and devious
fiscal practices will thrive. Unpaid debt, bankruptcy and crime will
prosper. Cashless is systemic suicide until economic behavior and
education changes in radical ways..
FAST FOOD IS NO COMFORT TO THOSE AT FISCAL DEATH’S DOOR:
Though near dead broke, savings being perished, feeling pushed right
up against economic death's door, feeling socially downtrodden, a
total victim of an utterly rigid fiscally determined class structure,
a pocket poor uninvited, existing in a religiously closed society of
psychologically brutal discriminatory sectarianism, the wrong colour,
the wrong ethnicity, the wrong background, everything wrong and
nothing right, put into and kept in a condition of total terror of a
fickle vicious economy, as it violates every aspect of a life as the
wrecker of all past accomplishments and all future dreams, I still
refuse to pay a high price for heaps of styrofoam and paper disposable
goods, to get carbohydrates, and poor quality fast food..
I confess I am a fast food refusenik. I know I will be punished for
that fact. I know I will be severely punished for that fact. I am a
fast food sinner who refuses to take the fast food sacrament of our
society. I say fast food is dead. I know the screws will beat me for
it. It is anathema. It is sacrilegious. It is unacceptable thought and
worse yet, unacceptable action. I will never be allowed to have any
children. I would corrupt them completely away from fast food.
As my revolutionary act I try to get out to a good restaurant for
something, like a condemned prisoner waiting for economic execution,
which might chance to happen any day. I will savour every morsel of
that repast, and consider it the same as throwing sand in the face of
the bully. Yes, I will be beaten for it, by the brutal system, but I
am a fast food refusenik and will continue to be a fast food
refusenik. I secretly do want the symbols of fast food to be toppled
and eliminated from the landscape. Yes, I do want an end to the fast
food empires and their bacterial growth, as they continue to spread
into every niche and cranny of a beaten society. I know I would be put
into Gitmo for this terrorist thinking. The very thought of the golden
arches toppled into rubble, bringing down the symbol, would be enough.
Fast food would be a very poor choice for a last meal. Knowing the
economy is potentially killing me, at least I might have a last
request, and since I do not smoke cigarettes, I choose a good meal,
not knowing if the morning will actually come, being utterly unsure if
there is even any adequate, if modest, fiscal continuance worthy of
being considered as such.
Robert Morpheal