Not-a-Lemming : economy

The Gun Pointed at the Head of the Economy

FutbolGuru — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 22:51:00 GMT

I loved HALO. The original game. Even with XBox Live, neither HALO 2 nor HALO 3 captured the essence of the original game feel.

Not only was it a great game, but it had a great soundtrack. I still listen to the album when driving from time to time. One of the best songs on the HALO soundtrack is The Gun Pointed at the Head of the Universe. And it played during one of the best levels - when Master Chief was tasked with destroying the generators to keep HALO from firing and destroying the known universe.

Just when we thought the economy was about to bottom out there is a new threat to the economy. Indeed, a gun pointed at its very head. For even as President Obama is striving to revive our faltering economic engine, his other hand may well be seeking to destroy it.

The EPA is considering listing six 'heat-trapping' gases as health hazards. If they do that, they will have the legal authority to regulate those gases. An article on CNN summarizes today's events but the details can no doubt be found elsewhere. These gasses are: carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride. Now I'm not going to delve into the details of what constitutes a 'health hazard' as defined by the EPA. It really doesn't really matter because the reason they are doing this is perfectly clear. Once it is a health hazard they will then be able to regulate it as they see fit.

Before I get into the implications of what that means, lets look at the gas they're most interested in regulating, carbon dioxide. They want to say it is a health hazard. So does this mean I won't be able to drink it anymore? After all, there is significant CO2 dissolved in every Coke I drink. It comes out of solution in my stomach and when I burp it up it makes my nose sting. If this is a health hazard Coke drinkers should be dropping like flies. (BTW, CO2 is inert, which means it doesn't readily react with anything.) Will they prevent dentists from using nitrous oxides to calm patients or, God forbid, fill cans of Redi-Whip? Please say it isn't so! And to regulate methane I suppose they'll have to start ticketing cows, which means somebody will have to monitor the cows with some kind of sniffer. Ah, no thanks on that job.

But what am I talking about? These gases aren't dangerous in levels they are found in nature. It makes as much sense to regulate water since, if improperly used, water can result in drowning and death. It must be a health hazard. Thousands die every year worldwide in floods. And air - it kills people in the form of tornadoes. I suppose we should regulate that.There are people out there convinced the sky is falling and they will do anything to save us. They are 100% convinced that rising carbon dioxide levels are going to kill us, every one. And soon. Whether they are right or wrong can't even be proven. Climate simulations are less reliable than the weather forecast, and from personal experience that puts them somewhere between 0% and 25%. Are we really going to turn this power over to someone with 12.5% accuracy at best? We did it with the mortgage industry and look where that got us. We go with this one it is going to make the current recession look like a Golden Age.

Lets have some fun and play Einstein. He used to run what he called a Gedankenversuch, or, thought experiment. He used them for testing things that can't be tested, like astronauts moving at the speed of light. Suppose the EPA decides to save us from ourselves and places some kind of cap on carbon emissions. How they would even do that is so full of technical problems as to make the entire law meaningless, but that never stopped the government. But I digress. If they do that then car sales will go from a 25% drop to more like a 50% drop. Perhaps more. Manufacturing is already on the skids. This would cut it in half again. Talk about the first time jobless claims the month after that nuke goes off. And anyone who thinks Obama's high speed rail system is going to replace those jobs probably works with that heavy, man-chick at the EPA.

This is a gun pointed at the head of our economy. Maybe we do need to cap CO2. I'm not the person to ask that question. I've only spent my adult life running high fidelity, multiple-degree-of-freedom, digital simulations of physical systems and hold a masters degree in atmospheric science. Lisa Jackson, administrator of the EPA does have a masters degree in Chemical Engineering but after graduation she went directly to work for the EPA and has been there ever since. Something tells me her analysis of the situation might suffer from biases picked up during her government years. And you know the problem with biases? You don't know you have them.

CO2, a health hazard? Is that because it is dangerous to the health of humans? Or is it because they fear it will cause the extinction of humanity from interpretation of their climatological simulations? Do we really want to trust our teetering economy to those odds? Master Chief... where are you when we need you?

Futbol Guru, http://mises.org/community/blogs/not-a-lemming

Bureaucracy In Action

FutbolGuru — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 13:30:00 GMT

I was looking over my posts the other day and said to myself, "Futbol Guru, you sure have become cynical." So I've been thinking about my attitude and trying to decide if I'm being fair or if I've gotten into a rut.

Well it's always possible to focus on doom and gloom. My lovely wife often accuses me of having gotten into a habit of seeing only the negative. And there is much to what she says. In fact, I am by nature a very optimistic person. I am always hoping for the best - which is a trap because "the best" rarely happens. When I tell her that she just frowns. Maybe she's right. Maybe I do tend to focus on the negative. At the same time, when you're headed for a cliff the global negative in your future tends to outweigh any local positives. I suppose there is a school of thought that prases the lemming who turns to his running-mate and comments on the beautiful weather. Fortunately I didn't go to that school.

The Obama administration continues to surprise me and I was especially astounded this very morning. And no, I'm not being cynical. On the way in to work I heard on the radio that President Obama has directed the Attorney General to drop all charges against Senator Ted Stevens, effectively throwing out his indictment. Honestly I don't know whether the man is guilty or not. I know he's an idiot and doesn't know the difference between the internet and a series of tubes but that doesn't make him guilty of accepting bribes.

What I wonder is why the government spent millions of dollars bringing the case against him, effectively handing his senate seat to a challenger from the other party, and then decided the case was indefensible. And how many other senate and house seats were affected by the bad press as a result of the scandal that apparently never existed in the first place? I really don't care anymore what party did what to whom. The point here is that the citizenry has a very good reason for their utter lack of faith in government because there are only two possibilities here. 1) An indefensible case was successfully prosecuted against an innocent man or, 2) charges were trumped up by the opposition part to gain a Senate seat. Either way the conclusion is inescapable.

Bureaucracy. What is it? We know its effect - corruption, inefficiency, and grid lock. But we don't often think about the actual causes of bureaucracy. Consider cancer as an example. We know what cancer does, and for a long time we just treated the symptoms. The patient (sometimes) survived a little longer and was (sometimes) more comfortable, but the end result was the same with or without treatment. Only now are we beginning to understand what causes cancer: mutations in cellular DNA that lead to rapid, uncontrolled, cellular growth. And with understanding new treatments are coming.

Though very similar in effect to cancer, Bureaucracy is much easier to understand. And as can be done with many things in life, to get at the root cause we will begin at the effect and step backwards until we find it. Soof the way science works, or following the money trail.

First Step Back: Bureaucracy comes from government officials making bad decisions. E.g., Let's invade Iraq.

Second Step Back:These decisions can be bad either because the official making them is incompetent, or they can be bad because they are driven by political considerations rather than attempts to address an actual problem. E.g., Lets prosecute Ted Stevens to get his Senate seat.

Third Step Back: So the people making the decisions are either a) incompetent, or b) politicized. E.g., Let's invade Iraq.

Fourth Step Back: This is where it starts getting muddy. The point in science where there are more unknowns than equations. Or where the laundered money comes back clean. How does an incompetent person get himself elected to public office? One way is to be the son of a former President (Bush). Or Senator (Gore). Or have a butt-load of cash (Bloomberg).This used to be called dynastic succession and is one of the reasons we fought a conflict called the Revolutionary War. Regrettably Dynastic Succession seems to have come back in to fashion, maybe because we stopped teaching history in schools.

Another way to get elected if you don't happen to be royalty is to say the right things, to the right people, in the right way. Like eloquently articulating the need for substantive change (aka - politics) in a melodious baritone (Obama). Or demanding a return to family values (Bush).

Once the desire for efficient government administrated by honest public servants is supplanted by politics or heredity in the minds of the people, as has happened in America, you wind up with incompetent people in positions of power making decisions for all the wrong reasons. The results are catastrophic. Invading the wrong country. Deregulation of the banking and investment industry. Laws to limit entrepreneurship. Presidents trying to run car companies. Prosecutions aimed at gaining control over government institutions. Trillions of dollars transferred from the poor to the rich. National economies at the mercy of enviro-political activists.

Where will it end? When will it end? Will we as a nation continue to run head long over that cliff, driven forward by fear and paranoia created and exploited by those who would profit from our deaths? Or will we, as a people, come to our senses and curtail the power of the parties. We can do it. The internet has taken the power of information away from the media and given it to the people. This very blog is a manifestation of freedom in action. But will we use it? Lord knows we could all use something to give us hope. I'm tired of being cynical. But then again, maybe I'm not cynical. Maybe I'm just reporting the truth.

-Futbol Guru, http://mises.org/community/blogs/not-a-lemming

Changing Perspectives, Part 2

FutbolGuru — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 15:30:00 GMT

The defense budget of the United States is the largest on the planet. Our nation pours massive resources into improving, modernizing, and keeping our fighting forces the best trained and best equipped in the world. While it is foolish to assume that we should win every battle because of this, or that every piece of equipment is without parallel among our allies, rivals and adversaries, our record over the past few wars is nonetheless quite impressive. And even though several thousand American uniformed men and women have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and each death is a priceless blow, our death ratio remains ridiculously low compared to earlier conflicts, or the conflicts fought by other nations.

While this is partly due to incredibly well-trained and led soldiers, it is also due to the amazing weapons we have given to our armed forces. We can launch a missile and know it will destroy its target. We know when the enemy is coming long before we see him. We can see in the dark. We can strike anywhere in the world quickly and with deadly force. A single bomb dropped from an attack aircraft can destroy its exact target with near 100% accuracy, performing the job of an entire squadron of B-17s.

The videos of our weaponry have jaded us to this unheard of performance and we’ve come to take it for granted. But there is a very good reason the United States has poured money into technology since World War II. Never again did we want to suffer another Pearl Harbor. Never again did we want a repeat of Iwo Jima, or Tarawa, or the Philippine disaster, or Normandy. For Americans, the toll in human lives was simply too high to repeat.

Shift gears.

The pyramids are still standing after 4,000 years, a testament to the men who built them. At that time, life in Egypt was better than anywhere on Earth. The planet was still an incredibly brutal place and trying to think about what it was like forces the removal of so many societal and cultural norms that it is nearly impossible to get an accurate picture. Even in Egypt it was horrendous by modern standards. Pharaoh was in control and his word was the utterance of god. The people who built the pyramids, while not slaves, weren’t much better. Corvee labor it is called; labor provided by subjects in return for ‘bread’. They had no choice in the matter. There were no rights for the people. They labored in faceless anonymity and passed from this world having had no opportunity or chance to improve their lives.

For thousands of years corvee labor was the standard mode of operation throughout the world. Even today it remains in practice in some third-world nations. Bread for labor. It is difficult to imagine life under such a system, especially without the miraculous technological advances we so often take for granted. But where did all that wonderful technology come from? And why?

These seem like simple questions but it doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be asked, or that they shouldn’t be answered. These advances came from a desire on the part of humanity to rise above the horrors of life. Horrors which modern western countries have effectively forgotten. To today’s children, and even to me, a middle-aged male, life prior to the industrial revolution, and the medical revolution, and the information revolution is hardly imaginable. Just the other day my son found an old portable television set amongst my junk. He plugged it in and to his astonishment, found that it could pull signals right out of the air! And he’s 13 years-old. What would I do if he became ill and there was no doctor? No antibiotics?

Man has struggled for thousands of years to improve his condition. The wealth of knowledge and sheer volume of discovery necessary to support our world is simply staggering. And every bit of it formed as an idea inside of a brain, transmitted to other brains through inventions such as language, writing, and the book, and allowed to grow further – even beyond the life of the originator. Thoughts transferred over space and time. Mathematics, physics, chemistry, engineering, art, commerce, business, finance, economics, medicine, manufacturing, culture, politics, society, philosophy, all culled from the ether at enormous cost and sacrifice, and very often under direct opposition of ignorant rulers. Government itself, and the very notions of freedom and liberty are inventions of man. They are ideas that took thousands of years to develop and integrate into the lives of the teeming masses. Freedom and liberty are, every bit as much as computers and automobiles, technology.

Life means pain. Man wants to improve his lot in life. To have less pain. Ultimately perhaps, to eliminate death itself – which may or may not be a good idea and is outside the scope of this discussion. Regardless, to that end great scientists and engineers have labored for years to provide better weapons to reduce the human toll of war. In a more general sense, man as a species, in every region on Earth, from every race, male and female, has labored to improve his lot, one little bit at a time. One bit adding to another from a myriad of disparate sources until we arrive at what we have today. A universe in which I can distribute my thoughts to the world in the fashion that you are reading at this very moment. Man’s oldest and best invention – the written word – distributed to the entire world at the click of an icon displayed on a screen.

How far we seem to have come!

Next: Part III

-Futbol Guru, http://mises.org/community/blogs/not-a-lemming

The Return of Feudalism

FutbolGuru — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 16:09:00 GMT

They say things come to you in the shower. That doesn’t usually happen with me. More often, during the act of climbing into bed. Then I have to get up and write the idea down, for experience has taught me if I don’t write it down, no matter how Earth-shattering the thought, it will be gone the next morning. But this morning while I was shaving a light bulb went off.

There used to be something called a ‘Retirement Plan.’ You’d go to work for a company and they would begin a retirement plan. Basically they’d put a little money aside each month and when you were old and gray, they’d start siphoning it back to you. It would come agonizingly slow but at least it was there. Sort of like serfdom in the old Feudal systems of Europe. In exchange for work, the Lord provides care and protection.

But retirement plans became expensive. And people clamored about not having any personal control over ‘their’ money. Companies took the opportunity to eliminate the costly retirement plans in favor of giving executives larger bonuses. But our government, always looking out for the little guy, said there had to be something for the workers. (They must have known even then that Social Security wasn’t going to be there.) So they came up with the 401K. You have the option to place a portion of your income, pre-tax, into an investment vehicle over which you have ‘control.’ Some companies even put money in there for you. How nice. It can then grow with the market. Sounds good on paper. Or does it?

Think about what’s actually going on here. The portion of 401K provided by your employer isn’t a gift. It is money that could have just as well come to you in the form of compensation. Sort of like FICA which the government takes for your retirement plan. You pay 7.5% and your employer picks up the other 7.5%. Of course they don’t ‘pick it up.’ They pull it out of funds you earned for a total of 15%. So 15% of your income goes to FICA retirement. Then your company, or you, puts some money into your 401K, in my case 15% for your, uh, retirement. That’s 30% of my income for retirement. Keep in mind that all this cash is flowing monthly into the stock market, continuously, like a river. Even now.

I can’t get to any of this - my - money right now. The Social Security System has no ‘fund’ so there’s nothing there to get. And my 401K isn’t available until I’m too old to use it. I can take it out but I pay a huge penalty, close to half. So it isn’t available to use in my productive life for things like, starting a business, paying for college, or stimulating the economy. So while you can’t use your money to grow your life, there are others who can use your money to grow their lives. This may seem like swindling, but this system was set up by laws.

Yes, you heard me right. While your income isn’t available to you, it is made available to other private citizens in a process protected by U.S. law. Consider the following argument.

Keeping your 401K in a ‘safe’ money market account produces virtually no growth so isn’t a viable retirement plan. So you move it into mutual funds. Mutual funds then make the money available to companies to use as investment capital through the purchase of stocks. These mutual funds are administered by investment banks and other institutions which, as we have all seen, almost without exception, pay their executives ridiculously huge bonuses even though they lost all the money you had been forced to put aside for retirement. So while the money your earned can’t do you any good, it supports a lavish lifestyle for others.

That’s bad enough, but there’s an even more chilling revelation hidden in this web of deceit. One of the strongest arguments against socialism is always the exorbitantly high taxes needed to pay for social services. On the order of forty to fifty percent in some countries. But we’re already paying upwards of 30% for retirement alone! Add income tax and that jumps to 45%. Health care comes out of our checks too, which easily pushes the rate to 50%. State and local taxes drive it north of 60%. In California it’s more like 70%.

Friends, we’re socialist already. But it gets worse. Far worse, because for most of us, there are no social services to be had! The hallmark of the socialist state – the safety net – is missing. While other socialist countries provide retirement and health care – even if it isn’t the best – the middle class in this country has neither. Social Security is insolvent and our 401K’s are worthless. Health care is only available while you’re working. So while we’re socialist, we’re not. We have the high taxes, but not the services. Where did the money go? I hear some Wall Street execs took home in excess of 2 billion dollars in compensation last year.

In fact, we’ve come full circle. We’re back to feudalism. Bad feudalism. In a good feudal relationship, the Lord expected work but provided protection. As long as he wasn’t a cruel, greedy bastard, the system worked surprisingly well. When he was a cruel, greedy bastard the Lord rolled in lavish excess, stopped providing protection, yet demanded the serfs continue to work. The serfs starved and complained but the Lords had lost the fundamental human element of compassion so simply shut the gates on their castles.

The question is, what are we going to do about it? America isn’t feudal Europe. In feudal Europe the people had no rights and the wealthy class had no accountability. We still have rights and there is still accountability. For now. But for how much longer? Those in power have already shown their disdain for good government and good business in favor of hoarding wealth and land. They passed laws which made your money available to them and not to you. They know they have swindled us and that we’ve done nothing about it. When people behave badly without consequence they grow only more bold. Why should they not feel that they are fundamentally entitled just because the masses are still restrained by the concepts of law and ethics? Concepts which they have found to be inconvenient or never had in the first place. Will they win in their latest ruse to increase their fortunes by asking us to buy things we don’t need, made in a country not ours, to ‘jumpstart’ the economy and get money they don’t need flowing back into their coffers?

I’m not a fan of socialism, but it is better than what we have now. And unless we the people take back not only our government, but our economy, we’ll wind up with even less. What is that going to take? There are those who say that the Tree of Liberty requires blood and sometimes they are right. But it hasn’t gone that far yet. Not even close. And in fact, the solution is much simpler, won’t cost a thing, and would actually save us money.

All that in between lifting the razor to my face and pulling it down my cheek. I guess you can have a thought in the shower.

-Futbol Guru, http://mises.org/community/blogs/not-a-lemming

AMC and the Dodo

FutbolGuru — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 15:28:00 GMT

AMC. American Motors Corporation. Does anybody remember that one?

They actually made some pretty cool cars. The Javelin and AMX come to mind. Forward thinking for the time, the AMX was a two-seat sports car with a 401 C.I.D. engine. Fast, good-handling. It actually competed well with GTOs, Camaros, Mustangs, Firebirds, Chargers, and other stallions from the muscle car era. Look it up. There’s a following.

Of course there was also the Pacer, the Matador, and who can forget the Gremlin – aka, the Garthmobile. I still can’t decide if it was the ugliest car ever made, or something that could be turned into the ultimate sleeper. But with declining sales in the seventies and AMC’s ill-fated merger with French manufacturer Renault, the company was doomed. In 1987 they were acquired by Chrysler, primarily to get their hands on Jeep, and that was the end of AMC.

I bought one of those Jeeps. It was a 1989 Grand Wagoneer. The one with the wood-grain. Jeep was owned by Chrysler then but the Grand Wagoneers were still manufactured in the same Kenosha facility formerly run by AMC and staffed by former AMC employees and using AMC parts. Still, the Grand Wagoneer was a pretty amazing vehicle. Designed in the early ‘60s, it was powerful, strong, and safe. My wife and two young sons walked away from being T-boned by a semi in one. After pounding the rear fender off the wheel I drove it home.

But the Wagoneer had its flaws. The design was post-World War II so didn’t take advantage of more modern manufacturing techniques. It was never upgraded and once while working on it, I found mounts for the original headlight configuration buried deep beneath the grill. Quality control was poor – always AMC’s Achilles heel. Aerodynamics weren’t part of the equation when it was designed so fuel efficiency was poor. Extremely poor. And it used an older engine design. Much older in fact.

The V8 family engine block used by AMC was originally a World War II-era Packard design. It had a high nickel content that minimized cylinder wear, which was good, but used antiquated casting techniques, which was bad. And it far pre-dated the concept of emissions controls. I don’t even think the original Wagoneer had a PCV valve. So as laws began to change in the late 60’s, placing ever tighter restrictions on automobile exhaust, AMC/Jeep attempted to comply by hanging ever more crap on their V8s to meet them.

By the time I bought my Wagoneer there was a veritable spaghetti explosion of vacuum lines, solenoids, EGR ports, and sensors under the hood. Troubleshooting even minor problems was nearly impossible given the labyrinthine maze of rubber, copper, and metal tubes. AMC, strapped for cash, had never invested in updating either the engine, or the control systems, simply patching and re-patching what was hanging on an already obsolete engine design. The result was disaster, and even pulling off every bit of smog control hardware resulted in a poorly performing vehicle. I know from painful experience that this is true.

Anyone who drove cars during the 70’s remembers that all four American car manufacturers had problems like this, hence the market penetration of better designed foreign automobiles during this period. Fortunately the advent of computer controlled engine management systems and redesigned engines allowed the other American manufacturers to begin competing again. AMC couldn’t make the capitol investment and the rest is history, along with the Grand Wagoneer.

So what’s the point? The point is, the American economy is that Grand Wagoneer. The economy itself is a World War II-era design. It depends on massive consumption by a rapidly expanding, export-based economy. And for many years, like AMC, it was functional and even profitable. But the world in which it formed no longer exists. And the US is no longer an export economy. So over the years, as our economic growth has sputtered, our government and corporate leaders have levied continually more restrictions, regulations, and stimulus plans in order to keep the pistons firing. And now, quite literally, in perhaps the most poignant part of the analogy, economies themselves have been levied with emissions controls. Instead of changing, our economy has become that Packard-based, AMC V8 hidden beneath layers of vacuum lines and marginally functional pollution-control hardware. The result is an economy that runs like crap, can’t be diagnosed, and is unresponsive to repair. Sure there are times when it seems to perform. Through vigorous maintenance and upgrades I kept my Wagoneer running for years. I replaced engines, transmission, carburetors, manifolds. I once redesigned the entire air conditioning system. You name it. But oh, the time I wasted lying on my back in the driveway. And the money I threw away. And the gas mileage was always crap. Life has been much better since I deep-sixed that puppy and went with something more modern. I have a life again.

How long will out politicians call for stimulus plans to revive the economy? How many trillions will we waste on vacuum lines, feedback carburetors, and exhaust gas recirculation before we retool the engine for modern times and redesign the control system from the ground up? AMC paid the ultimate corporate price for their refusal to upgrade. A refusal that turned into an impassable barrier. Has our refusal to fundamentally change our economic engine gone too far? Have we wasted so much capitol on upgrading an obsolete system that we lack the resources and will to build a new one? Have we passed the point of no return? I don’t know the answer to that question. But I do know the answer to this one: Every day that passes without fundamental change is one day closer to the impossibility of change. And nature has shown without exception that when systems lose the ability to adapt they become extinct.

-Futbol Guru

Protection At Any Cost

FutbolGuru — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 03:04:00 GMT

We forget things. We forget because we are people, and people are lemmings. For a moment, recall the basis for my analysis – the myth of the lemming. Lemmings DO NOT rush into the sea and commit mass suicide. Lemmings can, however, be frightened, especially by those who seek to benefit from their panicky mob behavior, whether they be unscrupulous film makers or former chairmen of major financial institutions. That is the lemming, those who fall prey to the machinations of others and join the crowd in running whatever direction without first checking where that direction leads. Lemmings, little, furry morons.

One of the things I seek to do on Not-A-Lemming is state the obvious. I do it because nobody else seems to want to. I do it because it is so often the obvious that is overlooked. Sort of like asking the furry, little hoard, "Why is everybody running this way when there's a cliff over there?" And that is the case today.

Seven hundred and fifty billion dollars. Also written $750,000,000,000. At my engineer’s salary I’d have to work for eight million years to make that much money. Actually 8.3 million years. (Or 8.3 million engineers could work for a year.) I’m going to keep harping on the $750,000,000,000 and writing it as $750,000,000,000, and not $750billion, or even 750 Gigabucks, because we should never forget that fourteen percent of our GNP was handed over to banks by a republican president backed by a democrat congress. Both parties are equally culpable in selling the middle class.

So why did they do it? No oversight. No accountability. That is enough money to give every person in New York City, all 8.7 million of them, my yearly salary, earned with 17 years of experience and a Masters Degree in stuff that’s just frankly, damn hard. Why? As always, history holds the answer.

I work hard for the living I bring home – which doesn’t go far on a family of five. Eighty hours a week, forty-nine weeks a year. I get three weeks of vacation but no sick leave. My 401K is a joke; it stank before the stock market tanked. I’ve got a few thousand dollars in the bank. And I do mean, a few. Realistically I’m looking at a second mortgage to get my kids through college and retirement isn’t really an option. I don’t really like my job. I tried for a Ph.D., didn’t have the cash to finish it, and wound up doing this. In a nutshell, my version of the American dream is kind of disappointing. If it weren’t for my utterly fantastic wife and exemplary kids it would completely suck. After my nine-hour day I write just about every evening working on novels I hope to someday publish, but it’s a long shot and I know it. I can’t even get anyone in New York to reply to my query letters. But my story isn’t unique. I’m a law-abiding, tax-paying, hard-working American. The backbone of our nation. I am Atlas. Something to be proud of. I’m not complaining. I’m connecting. With you. Because your American dream is pretty sweaty, too.

Now imagine a different life. Basically enough money to not worry about money. What you would do with it is your business. A lot of people buy cars, boats, fancy homes, etc. And it can be a trap. I’ve seen more than a few sucked in and ground up. Success can definitely be a trap. But it doesn’t have to be. Just imagine that life where you don’t wake up in the middle of the night worrying about how you’re going to put your kids through college. Or how you’re going to fix the roof you know is leaking in that downpour. A life where you’re not anxious about retiring someday, before you’re too old to use it. A life where you can live in the way of your choosing whether it be working a job you love, doing art, contributing to society. Or just sitting around wasting time at a beach on Manihi. (Look it up on Google Earth.) To each his own.

This isn’t reality for most of us. But it is for some. People who can, do. And history has shown that those who live this privileged life immediately begin to feel it is their right, and will do anything to protect it. Anything. Lie, kill, steal, even commit genocide if necessary. No affluent culture has escaped this doom; an entitlement class, just as dependent as the welfare poor, who will go to any length to not worry, to not work, to live their life of ease. Am I stating the obvious? That’s what I do. That’s all I do. Those of means will do anything to protect their privileged life. Never forget that.

$750,000,000,000. Why? How did our leadership come to the conclusion that it should be simply handed over without any strings attached? Maybe we should look at who these leaders are. Senators and representatives have a pretty sweet deal. Reps make $145,000 a year, senators make $165,200 a year. With expenses. And a staff. And an office. And influence for life. That adds up to far more than $145,000 a year. And they don’t really have to work. They don’t even have to show up. And many of them started out wealthy. And they get elected with money. Money elects people. Not votes, not speeches, not even good looks or great legs. Just ask Mr. Obama who raised more than ever before. As the global financial system teetered on the brink – or so the lemmings thought – they sensed that their gravy train was in jeopardy. The wealthy are heavily invested. They lose enough money and they might not be able to take a European vacation next year, much less contribute to the party of their choice. The answer, take 14% of the US Gross National Product and use it to shore up their financial base. Works every time.

And don’t forget, one reason the stock market has tanked is because investors, aka, those with money, are pulling it out. The middle class has shrugged and left it in. They have no choice. They know their only chance is for the market to go back up. And it will. But the wealthy, who can pull their money, have, and it’s driving the market down, down, down. And then they went to congress with their hands out. And congress made sure they didn’t go away empty handed. Congress was in essence, giving the money to themselves.

So I guess understanding why congress would just hand over 8.3 million years of my salary is pretty simple. They were protecting their privileged life. And they didn’t even have to kill anyone to do it. I guess we should thank them.

NEXT: I'm Not One Of Those

-Futbol Guru, http://mises.org/Community/blogs/not-a-lemming

Supporting the Royals

FutbolGuru — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 15:28:00 GMT

In 1940 the Wehrmacht was the most successful army on Earth. Nazi Germany's insane leadership had hijacked their nation's professional military and sent them on a rampage across Europe. Prior to their failed invasion of Britain, which rested on the backs of the Luftwaffe, they had tasted only success. Part of this unprecedented run was because they were fighting against the French, and the French haven't won a major battle since before Waterloo. But they fought against the Poles, Belgians, Danes, Czechs, and Dutch, also, and met much stiffer resistance. Still, their mechanized infantry, combined with a lethal assault from above ,rendered the military answer of their foes quickly moot. A charge of heavy Polish cavalry against panzers is the last recorded used of organized cavalry in modern warefare. It was all they had. Even the British Expeditionary Force was no match for this new kind of Blitzkrieg warfare.

There are a variety of reasons that the Germans ultimately failed, starting with a political structure that was as evil as Satan himself. A megalomaniacal, paranoid dictator with delusions of diety didn't help either. But the regular German military man remained effective and ferocious right up to the end. Arguably the best sheer land-fighters of all time, in fact. Which is why the success of the Americans against the Germans on the ground is a bit difficult to understand. Their soldiers were seasoned, well-trained, and by all accounts, incredibly brave. Their equipment was for the most part, technologically superior. Their aircraft were second to none. American tanks were almost paltry by comparison. Yet in every meeting the Yanks advanced steadily against their debatably, militarily superior adversaries. Why?

In World War I, the machinegun entered the battlefield and everything changed. The old strategies disintegrated and hundreds of thousands of bright-eyed youths paid the price of foolish generals who sent them in human waves over the trenches and helplessly to die in no-man's land. By World War II these lessons had been learned and strategies changed. All but one. In World War II, in the Wermacht, the infantry man supported the heavy machine gun. The ground tactics of advance, capture, and hold, were based on squad units supporting heavy machine guns. The Americans on the other hand, had developed tactics in which heavy machine guns supported infantry. The difference is subtle and not immediately apparent, but the American tactical development allowed faster, more fluid movement as well as much quicker adjustment to changing battlefield conditions. So while German soldiers dug in around their MG42s and MG34s, fast moving Americans infantry, supported by their Browning Model 1919s, (still in use today, virtually unchanged, I might add) flanked and neutralized the German positions which were incapable of rapid adjustment. This isn't the only reason that the Americans prevailed, but it is an often overlooked and always underestimated effect.

So why are we supporting heavy machineguns, now?

There is a problem with the American economy. A huge problem. Multiple problems, in fact. There are root causes for this, but at the center of this root ball I believe is a central seed from which the mess has grown. Support of the heavy machinegun. There was a time, I believe, when industry supported the American worker. And industry, in this sense, is not a legal definition, but a person, because decisions are ultimately made by people - or once were. People who owned industrial concerns used the influx of capitol we known as stocks, to fuel business growth which in turn supported the community. And this means, supporting the individuals in the community. The people. Industry supported the workers. This doesn't mean that everyone got rich, but the central focus wasn't necessarily on acquiring individual wealth - or at least it wasn't the only focus as it has become today. Greed. The same thing that drove Hitler to crave every inch of Europe. Pure, unbridled, unadulterated, unmitigated, greed.

Fast forward to 2008. The support of the worker, by industry, is gone. The disappearance of American jobs is the most telling evidence and trumps any and all arguments against this assertion. It is now the worker that supports industry. Labor that fuels lives of almost unimaginable avarice. The difference is subtle, just as it was on the battlefields of Europe sixty years ago. But this time around it is the Americans who are getting their asses kicked. It is all about direction of flow. Emphasis of investment. Choices that benefit community as opposed to bottom line. Because in the end, if the community dies, the bottom line is meaningless. Work in America is no longer an activity, it is a state of being into which one is born and in which they usually die. Can everyone become successful and wealthy? No. But when the incentive of success and wealth is removed, or becomes nearly imporssible to attain without subterfuge, the engine that drives the American economy dies with it.

President-elect Obama's plan for fixing the economy is for the Middle Class to stop saving their money and resume buying crap they don't need by borrowing money they don't have. This isn't a slap against the president elect because it is the same plan on the other side of the aisle. The only difference between the two parties driving our nation into the ground is how to get the 'country' involved. But I say the entire scenario is backward. The entire economy is backward. The solution isn't to get people to behave foolishly so the coffers of business owners will fill up again, it is getting capitol and opportunity back into the hands of the infantry. In nature, forces don't act from low potential towards high potential. Rocks don't fall up. Water doesn't run uphill. Air doesn't move from low to high pressure. And money won't flow, at least for long, from poor to rich. And giving more ammunition to the machinegunners while leaving the infantry to throw rocks isn't going to get us very far.

Tell me the infantry isn't supporting the machinegun. Tell me it isn't all about greed.

NEXT: Why They Won't Listen

-Futbol Guru, http://mises.org/Community/blogs/not-a-lemming