Friday, June 13, 2008
We are getting closer to the poverty line
How far is the current oil price stimulated price hikes eroding life quality? It's going fast.
And it will probably get a lot worse as people take the easiest way out, like buying cheap cars.
Just chatting on Second Life yesterday an acquaintance from the US said that she is already eating canned and frozen food as fresh food is too expensive given the rise of gasoline prices and food in general. For a treat she had fresh chicken the other day. What a life! And she has a full time job! It looks to me as if this is all going faster than we could imagine.
Actually, there is a need for real innovation in how taxes are set up. Instead of imposing import restrictions, why not just reduce the corporate tax burden on a sliding scale depending on how many citizens you employ? I reckon you could waive sales tax and tax on profits for corporations and small companies that had one employee or more per $100,000 in annual turnover.
And it will probably get a lot worse as people take the easiest way out, like buying cheap cars.
Just chatting on Second Life yesterday an acquaintance from the US said that she is already eating canned and frozen food as fresh food is too expensive given the rise of gasoline prices and food in general. For a treat she had fresh chicken the other day. What a life! And she has a full time job! It looks to me as if this is all going faster than we could imagine.
Actually, there is a need for real innovation in how taxes are set up. Instead of imposing import restrictions, why not just reduce the corporate tax burden on a sliding scale depending on how many citizens you employ? I reckon you could waive sales tax and tax on profits for corporations and small companies that had one employee or more per $100,000 in annual turnover.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
WORKERS OF THE WORLD RELAX
Wonderful film following the theme of my book INVENTING FOR THE SUSTAINABLE PLANET how work should be eased off!
CLICK HERE.
CLICK HERE.
My letter to Joe Bageant
I publish below my letter to Joe Bageant. His latest book Dear Hunting with Jesus tells how the working person in USA ( 65% of the population) is kept enslaved and on the edge of bankrupcy. Even the media perpetuate the myth you gotta be poor and proud and it is your own fault!
Joe!
As a Brit living in Sweden, I am following your observations with interest, and with despair starting to see the same phenomena in Europe coming slowly.
However, that is not at the top of my mind just now; it's Die Hard 4 with Bruce Willis. We rented the DVD last night and I sat down to watch it at the request of the youngest member of our family.
At one point, the baddy looks up the personal details about the hero John McClane (played by Willis) on government computers. This New York cop of Irish origin, had no retirement plan, his personal economy was ruined, and he was divorced from his wife and estranged from his daughter.
But he had saved thousands of lives earlier, in Die Hard 1, 2 and 3. Earlier in the film, he says how heroes are not welcome and he talks about how people want don't to know about them. It obviously does not pay well, but our hero appears to accept it.
I thought about Die Hard when I read your blog! This film is pure indoctrination into just what you are talking about. You are white and of Scots-Irish origin, have to lay your life on the line, because you just happen to be there, and be the one that does something about the situation because you are the only one who can. You find a computer hacker with the same sentiment. You are tough and reckless and do a jig when the bad guy gets killed.
The upper echelons of the middle class, the lackies of the ruling class, are either real bad-ass people who are using the education they got subsidized by the taxpayer to screw virtually everybody and topple the economy, or incompetent jobsworth who put daily life at risk by creating infrastructure and systems that blatantly do not work or are intrinsically unsound.
Talk about art imitating life!
Keep up the good work and saying it like it is!
Steve
Stockholm, Sweden
Joe replies...
Steve,
It never ceases to amaze me on how many variations on the theme can be created. In the end the American working class will always come to see their defeat and consequent suffering as heroic.
I heard a version of this yesterday on the radio as I drove back home from the airport, after having been to the National Conference on Media Reform in Minneapolis. The radio program had a series of ordinary Americans -- people who had triumphed over their lack of health insurance or health care, through their own stubbornness, toil, ingenuity, individualism and sheer grit. Now implicit in this of course was acceptance of the complete lack of health protection whatsoever, and then overcoming that lack.
read the rest on....
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