On Jan 26, 2013, at 12:45 PM, OrionWorks - Steven Vincent Johnson wrote:
From Ashfield:
> ... The referenced article was rather unimaginative in places but
> noted the basic question: “who is going buy all these nice goodies
> if they are unemployed?”
Precisely.
<personal rant>
IMHO, too many politicians are focusing on a misguided belief that
balancing the national budget is the most important thing, above
everything else, that must be tackled. What most fail to realize is
the fact that "money" is nothing more than a contractual
representation of the exchange of goods and services between
individuals and legal entities.
No Steven, what you say is not the issue. The issue is that money has
been lent to the US in various forms and by various people and they
want their money back eventually. Meanwhile they want to be paid
interest. The US is rapidly approaching a level of debt such that if
the interest rates rose to normal levels, we could not pay the
interest without shutting down significant parts of the government.
The US is presently printing dollars to cover this expense. As a
result, the debt is growing because this money is borrowed from the
Federal Reserve, which is a private bank owned by individuals who want
to be paid. At some point in the near future, the debt will be so
large, it simply can not be paid. At that point, the US is in default,
and the financial system of the world collapses. This means starvation
and civil strife. The problem is serous and can not be solved without
great pain, which means further loss of jobs. The fools in Congress
over the last 20 years have created a no win situation that very few
people understand.
Ed
Most don't like to ponder the realization that "money" is quite
ephemeral in nature, despite all attempts to back it with a
representation of limited physical resources like gold and silver.
In a sense, I think this is false advertising of the worst kind.
It's worshiping the value of "money" over the value of the actual
work & labor that creates said goods and services that "money"
attempts to accurately represent. It's as if "money is being
worshiped as a false god. It's putting the cart before the horse.
IMHO, politicians need to focus more on whatever it takes to create
environments that allow people to go back to work (or remain
working) so that that they can start (or continue) acquiring enough
of these symbolic representations of goods and services that they
can cash in for themselves. I don't think one can accomplish that by
constantly slashing national budgets in a misguided belief that
doing so will stabilize the value of "money", which in turn will
somehow miraculously cause businesses to automatically flourish so
that they will automatically start employing more people... many
whom may end up being hired at minimum wage. But Hey! It's a job!
All that national budget slashing... the national budget employs a
lot of people too, just like out in the private sector. If massive
amounts of them lose their jobs due to forced budget cutting and are
forced into the unemployment lines, it's absolutely no different
than private companies firing it's employees because it has
insufficient "money" to pay them for their services. Everyone
suffers as fewer goods and services are being generated which, in
turn, devalues the value to "money".
We need to stop finding scapegoats to blame (i.e. national budget),
and start focusing on ways to make sure everyone has a chance to
continue to make valuable contributions to society. In the end,
allowing enough people to continue to make valuable contributions to
society is the only real way of saving the value of "money". I don't
think one can accomplish that by, in a draconian manner, slashing
the budget.
</personal rant>
Regards,
Steven Vincent Johnson
www.OrionWorks.com
www.zazzle.com/orionworks
