Diatribe: Philosophy and Capitalism

It’s about time that we looked at the rot that has been eating away at the base values of America: hyper-capitalism. Milton Friedman and other “let the market self-regulate” believers (and make no mistake, it is a belief, a la faith, because no matter how many historical fiascos are used as evidence against this idea, they will inevitably claim that they came about due to too much regulation) have corrupted, or more accurately shunted aside, the middle-class values that are the core of a reasonably prosperous society. Allow me to elaborate.

First of all, some people, those who I expect think of themselves as rationalists, see a strange and wondrous force in the world of economics. Supply and demand, micro and macro, imports and exports – the numbers dance across the world and commerce occurs. It seems so wonderful. And all these basic principles are absolutely self-regulating – or so the lie goes. Follow the money: capitalism is a system whereby those who succeed in acquiring capital become more powerful – in fact, pure capitalism demands that you acquire more stuff than your competitors to distinguish yourself from them. Money is the only measure of success in a purely capitalistic society. Therefore, a high-paying job is not simply a means to and end: i.e. raising a family, retiring mad early, etc. but a status symbol in itself. After all, your job is literally how much you are worth to somebody, or to the system at least.  See how these egotistical wall-streeters became that way? They have been taught to value money as an end in itself. They honestly believe they are worth the mind-boggling money they bring in. They’re not. I’m not just saying this because I hate these people. Most of the high-risk products that these people work in are high-risk, high yield but they hide the risk in this composite derivatives system – literally allowing ordinary banking institutions to gamble with money that, on the surface, appears to be safely invested. But as you can see, all this wheeling and dealing can have negative consequences when these derivatives turn out to be the illusion that they are. Because these people could not rake it money fast enough the safe way, they figured out a treacherous back door (Paul Krugman has called it “shadow banking”) so they could keep paying themselves obscene amounts of money. This sort of money shifting does not produce anything of value, it’s simply rearranging money and skimming off a hearty portion for yourself. Sounds a bit like the health insurance industry, doesn’t it?

If you tack on some of Ayn Rand’s “rational selfishness” onto this economic fairy tale – suddenly you have what appears to be a philosophy that allows you to loot other people blind and yet you are perfectly justified in doing so. In fact, this poisonous philosophy is often waved about by right-wingers without any real understanding of the issues at hand. They bludgeon people with “Atlas Shrugged” not realizing that they themselves are the very dross that the industrialists in the book abandon utterly. This has a lot to do with this pernicious idea that Republicans have thrown around: you can’t tax the wealthy because one day you’ll be rich too! However, most people don’t end up hitting it big – certainly not enough to justify this me-too chicanery. Taken as a portion of the population, holding up a meager 1 or 2% as a model simply due to their socioeconomic status is completely nonsensical. You won’t be likely to find the average American there – but somehow that’s what they want us to believe.

Into this seething cauldron of greed for greed’s sake let’s add the funtastic world of the Christian fundamentalist. You really double the issues all over again when you’re dealing with people that believe their fortunes in life are handed out by a third party. Why, surely what happens to others can hardly be your fault – God gave them their due in life. You’re only the lucky one because God likes you.

Note the lack of the trademark Christian compassion? True followers of Christ would reject this wealth-mongering out of hand, but there’s nothing that bastards like Robertson and his ilk can’t corrupt and twist to suit their ends. If you don’t believe that Christian fundamentalism is part of this composite hyper-capitalistic plague, you should check out the Family – not the mafia, but rather pseudo-Christians who believe that Jesus had a separate message to the rich and powerful – the movers and shakers of the world. That message was to due whatever it takes and take whatever you want. Members of this delusional and filthy cabal are in some of the most powerful positions in America, both public and private. And they command legions of brain-dead frothing-at-the-mouth fundamentalist Christians who will maim and kill in the name of peace and love.

Really, does it take any more than this utter defilement of what is (or was, originally) a pretty chill religion to prove that there is nothing sacred about religion? Indeed, that they are constructs of man and are (as they always have been) used to control people who like easy answers over tough choices.

I wish I could say I was overstating my case here. I am being a bit hyperbolic, but the danger that this venom represents to American values is very real indeed. The decline of these values is inextricably linked with our vanishing middle class. You see, the basic idea of the middle class is you have a job where you can work hard, raise kids, retire, and all in all leave your kids a little bit better off than you were. This pattern repeats, and it does (as it did from the 50’s to the 80’s) bring about huge GDP growth in America because while it is slow, it is very, very steady. The trick in these sorts of values is that other than perhaps a few aspirations towards property ownership and perhaps some retirement-oriented investing, money is not the main goal per se, rather it is the means towards and end. As long as you have a decent job, you should be able to accomplish these things. Remember when single-income households used to be the rule, rather than the exception? That’s because living wages were all the rage back in the distant past.

But hypercapitalism demands profit – so much so that we have to go overseas and employ foreign workers because how can we honestly expect to make money when we have to pay for things like health insurance for workers (note: I realize that this system is a rip off for employers too), vacations and so forth? How many more handouts could our drones possibly want? They should feel lucky just to have a job! Especially when they’re just a hair’s breadth away from having their job done for them in Thailand!

The automakers were one of the few remnant companies that made any effort to bolster the middle-class standard of living in the face of these transnational money-whore megacorporations. They actually tried to insure and provide pensions to everyone, which is one of the the reasons why they tanked (other than extremely poor marketing decisions regarding fuel mileage). Now if we had single-payer government healthcare, employers wouldn’t have to pay out monstrous amounts of money to companies who are literally delivering sub-standard coverage and pocketing the difference.

It’s amazing how everything is related isn’t it?

But from the very beginning of life these days, children are inundated with how they should get a high paying job so they can afford a bunch of stuff that they don’t actually need. The lifestyles of the extraordinarily wealthy are held up as some sort of guide for the rest of us to aspire to, rather than treated as the extreme minority of the population that they actually are. The consumer culture in America may be responsible for a great deal of it’s growth, but it also encourages people to live beyond their means in an attempt to keep up with the Joneses, so to speak. Hence, credit card debt for all. By the way, credit is not counted as “real money” by the Fed’s market calculation – since you’re technically just moving money around, credit does nothing to improve the GDP from an individual lendee perspective (it does for companies inasmuch as credit allows them to actually function at all, but that is an indirect result).

So here I am, feeling extremely countercultural with no viable options. There are two political parties – The Corporate Fascists, and The Corporate Fascists Lite. They drown out sensible people like Dennis Kusinich – one of the few people who actually expresses outrage at the tepidity of recent health care reform, since he knows full well we could create a fantastic, efficient, and money-saving single-payer healthcare system if these fallen politicians would stop fellating their corporate masters for two goddamn minutes.

I’m gonna have to start voting third party. It may be a joke, but I refuse to vote for these hyper-capitalistic whores for even one more goddamn minute. I’m sorry to good old Dems like Mr. Kusinich, but you’re being drowned out by obstructionists who aren’t even trying to hide their utter contempt for the fates of their constituents or their shameless endorsement of all things corporate.

What is it like to wake up one morning and realize that the evil empire was really us, all along?

Later.

Today’s Rave: Smart-Guy Advantage

During Bush’s reign of error I would recall reading many informative and useful pieces by various staff of the New York Times. Not all the columnists necessarily make political recommendations in their articles, but a couple that do (most often Krugman, Friendman, and Kristof) struck me as being particularly useful. There are ideas being thrown around that are worth simply knowing about and considering.

Then I would recall that the chances of Bush reading it to be absolutely zero, or at least abysmally low, and even were he to read it, the chance he would use or absorb any of the contents were zero.

Of course, I’m not claiming that the New York Times columnists are particularly adepts at instituting policy recommendations. Their strongest ability is simply to promote awareness of an issue. But most of all they quite authoritatively use the lens of common sense (with the exception of Kristol and some Brooks).

I read a good article regarding moving hard and fast in regards to another stimulus package by Krugman. And suddenly it occurred to me that Obama probably read the same article, or if he didn’t, one of his people might bring it to his attention. Additionally, Obama may consider Krugman’s word carefully, since Obama would be likely to take things like education and Nobel Laureate status into consideration.

Refreshing, isn’t it? That’s the power of logical thinking. Oh, how I’ve missed it.

So whenever I read a good idea from any even remotely public source, I can be sure that it’s probably gotten to Obama’s ear one way or another.

Obama seemed to be dead-center in terms of political ideals, but if you think about the policies he wants to implement (universal healthcare, green energy) he would seem to actually be leaning quite a bit to the left. Unless, of course, he’s seeing those two things simply as what they are: two good ideas that are necessary to move this country forward, and they have no inherent political affiliation. That’s what we’d all like to hope, I’m sure. I imagine the real reasons like somewhere in between.

In any case, having a President who actually reads the newspaper (of course, he probably has a bunch of press staffers combing the news at all times, but that’s more for publicity control) is a real relief. I can be sure that Obama won’t exclude anyone simply because they don’t fit into his own political conception of what the world ought to be like.

I don’t know when pragmatism became so rare, but I’m oh so glad it’s back where it belongs: in government.

Speed Screed: Litigation Nation

No, I don’t need help out with my single two-pound grocery bag. Thanks for the offer though.

Not that I’m offended, despite my strapping young man status. But I am annoyed. I shop at Vons all the time and apparently it has become company policy to ask everyone, regardless of gender, age, or general fitness if they need help with their groceries. It could be a pack of gum, or a fifty-pound sack of potatoes. The customer could be a little old lady or a two-time world kickboxing champion. The same question must always be asked. Never mind the fact that grocery carts exist for the purpose of piling on the purchases and still being able to easily wheel them around.

Of course, there is logic to this. You don’t want people to feel excluded. Why only ask women? Why not ask men? Well, first of all virtually every non-disabled man is not going to ask for help with practically any amount of ordinary groceries. He’s even less likely to accept help from a female attendant. If you made it company policy not to ask men if they need help, I don’t think it’s going to matter.

But I somehow suspect the real reason was some lawsuit in the recent past. Some poor fool threw his or her back out trying to lift some groceries, sued them for selling groceries that were too heavy, won, and now Vons has instituted Operation Overkill: ask everyone if they need help. Or maybe even more likely, some woman behind the counter freaked out when the old lady in front of her was offered help but she wasn’t, and decided that it was discrimination other than, um, common sense. And now to cover their ass legally, they have to ask everyone the same damn question.

Even if I’m wrong about there being a lawsuit in this particular case, it’s the story of this country: legal action can be pursued even when it is you, the “victim,” that is clearly in the wrong. Many companies, like Mickey D’s, find it much easier to throw money at the problem until it goes away than actually defend itself from frivolous lawsuits. Make no mistake: McDonald’s can afford some extremely good lawyers, but the publicity from squelching these people’s pointless lawsuits would probably be worse financially than offering someone a few hundred grand to quietly go away. It’s a beautiful system, in its way.

Of course, for most of these register people, it’s become a mantra: they don’t actually think about the words that are passing out of their lips, they just say them because they have to. I suspect that if I actually said “yes” they would probably reel in disbelief. I have no desire to do that, though, because these people’s jobs are irritating enough without me wasting their valuable time to prove a point for a self-indulgent blog.

Bye.

Speed Screed: Soft Drinks and the Restaurant Industry

It just occurred to me, today, that soft drinks must have revolutionized the restaurant industry. Before Coke, Pepsi, and their ilk were around there were basically three things you could drink in your average restuarant besides booze: milk, coffee, or water. Water was free, and milk was basically a concession to kids. Kids would probably just be drinking water anyway.

But along comes soft drinks, and now there’s something special that kids can drink as a treat while their parents kick back a beer or two. Not only does that mean that there’s a whole host of drinks to be targeted to the spending money of minors, but it also means that restaurants can buy cheap and sell dear on a drink that really only costs them a couple of cents a glass. After all, if all the other drinks on the menu are already a couple bucks, you can easily inflate the true costs of a glass of soda into a tidy little profit for yourself.

I mean, any beverage that comes with free refills nine times out of ten is obviously so cheap that one person can’t even drink enough to lose money on the deal. I’ll bet you that this “buoying up” of the ability of restaurants to operate at a profit sparked a boom in the restaurant industry. I couldn’t readily find any statistics to support this assertion, but that’s alright because I enjoy being wrong, if it turns out I am. Still, it’s a pretty compelling product from a marketing point of view. People often drink several cans a day. And the profit margin is absurd. I often wonder if soda is one of the most “marked-up from cost” products, though bottled water is still, I think, the winner in that category. As Penn Jillette said on an episode of Bullshit!, selling bottled water is like minting your own money.

The profit margin on alcohol, by comparison, can obviously also be pretty good, particularly for cocktails and wine. But only adults can drink booze. The fact that you target the kids too is what makes soda so particularly effective as a method of getting more money from your average customer.

And lets not forget that soda companies has actually forged a minor cultural bond. In the old days you’d take your date to get a soda at the drugstore – like going out to a bar, but much more lame. There you have the iconic picture of the two teenagers on a date drinking the same soda that is resurrected by Coca-Cola every couple of years. Of course, back then that was as close as you could get to kissing in public. But I digress.

Now they have the a small “stake in America” angle that so many domestic beer companies capitalize on; not to the same extent, but Coca-Cola is at least responsible for Santa Claus in his current red-suited incarnation. And of course they run the commercials with the young people tricking out their bicycles and jousting with them and then all sitting around and drinking Coke and laughing. Not too subtle. But I also sadly realized that these kids are all sitting around and drinking coke and laughing because they aren’t allowed to drink beer. Otherwise they’d probably be getting trashed and then running their bikes into each other. I mean, wouldn’t we all?

Today’s Rant: The Intellectual Conservative

Institutions like the College Republicans tend to mystify. Here you are, most likely getting some kind of liberal arts education, yet there are these small groups of perfectly smart people who are inexplicably conservative. Other than a predisposition to a conservative temperament, or having been raised Republican, you’d think that they would treat their conservative philosophy with the same critical thought that they apply to all their classes.

And perhaps they do. At least, partially.

Intellectual conservatives like David Brooks, William Kristol, and even the late William F. Buckley Jr., are not stupid people, though they may hold views that make you think they are. But these are the people that appeal to these college Republicans because they act as a well-read, well-spoken mascot for a party that is increasingly represented by hillbillies/Christian fundamentalists/megacorporation CEOs. That easily explains the love affair with Buckley, who had scads of negative qualities, such as being an overt racist until it hurt his book sales.

In any case, it’s not that these sorts of conservatives lack intelligence, they just lack imagination. Or to put it another way, they lack empathy. A useful oversimplification of the basic way of looking at how problems ought to be solved conservatively versus, um, liberally (I guess) is that the conservatives see the universal in terms of the singular and the liberals see the singular in terms of the universal. In other words, for conservatives, “What’s good for me is good for everyone” versus, for liberals, “What’s good for everyone is good for me.”

These are far from slight differences in opinion. Trickle-down theory is a patent manifestation of this sort of self-oriented thinking. Universal healthcare, on the other hand, is the idea that by aiding everyone, we aid ourselves. Conservatism (in its current manifestation, the one that angers the few real conservatives left in the House and Senate) is basically a philosophy of selfishness, and what separates this view from a truly libertarian one is that a libertarian has a much keener grasp of his responsibility to himself and everyone else. As I’ve said, libertarianism is an almost laughably optimistic philosophy about people taking full responsibility for their lives, which is why I like it on a philosophical level. I do believe that if everyone took 100% responsibility for themselves it would solve a host of problems; I just know for a fact that it will never happen.

On a vaguely related note, I’m tired of tax cut rhetoric. Last I checked, taxes were the main (and some would say only responsible) source of revenue for a government. The idea that taxes always need to be cut and never raised is an insanely fatuous one. If we’re up to our ears in debt and constantly borrowing to fund our misadventures abroad, we clearly need more money, and money that does not come with interest payments. Palin was saying that it was not considered “patriotic” to pay your taxes. Tom Friedman wrote an article about his irritation with that sentiment, and I will upgrade it to disgust. Taxes pay for your roads, your schools, your police, your public works, your programs for the homeless, your army, your social security, and a host of other things that you probably don’t even realize. These are things we get because we all put in money. I’d say paying your taxes is plenty patriotic.

I can’t blame Obama for using tax cut rhetoric. I wouldn’t care if a politician said “we have to raise taxes or we’re fucked” especially if he said it like that, or more likely if I actually thought he was going to do something responsible with the extra dough, like pay down our foreign debts. But Obama scores a double whammy by actually cutting taxes to the working class when McCain isn’t, so I can hardly blame him for leading a Republican candidate on tax cuts.

I mean, Obama is dead center (not that I care) so it’s not totally surprising he might buy into that philosophy. But in any case, I suspect we will have to raise them at some point in the future. We need that money! Remember that war in Iraq? If paying more taxes could halve the time it took to recover from this financial spiral, I’d be first in line! You hear me, Capitol Hill? First in line!

Ahem. Back to my original point, I remarked on Brooks’ inability to divorce himself from the party line despite being a man of no small intelligence. His cognitive dissonance is at once irritating and saddening. Even William Kristol, the heir apparent to William Buckley knows that McCain is going to lose this election (barring a “miracle.” What’s the Satanic equivalent of a miracle? A curse?), and said as much. It must have been a major relief for intellectual conservatives to hear him say that, so they could finally divorce themselves from McCain (I mean, even if they vote for him). They can say he messed up his campaign, they can say the Republicans are unpopular, they can rationalize away the reason they will lose the election, but manage to keep their worldview safe in all the confusion. Ready to bust out again when the pendulum swings back this way in eight years’ time.

And this is the most dangerous thing of all: if we don’t learn our lesson about deregulation and about imperialism by seeing what an utter, utter failure this administration has been, if we repeat this tragic folly again and again and again because financial and political hacks refuse to learn their lessons due to simple greed, then this is as far as the USA is going to get towards a perfect union. And we can do so much better, if we try.

Today’s Rant: Losing To Win

The fact that the McCain campaign has no relevant points, ideas, or policies to the modern era is sadly apparent. McCain must know this, if he has any scrap of the integrity he claims to have. So his “country first” slogan is ringing quite hollow at this point.

If his country was really first, would John McCain continue the reverse Robin Hood policies that have caused the greatest income inequality in almost a hundred years? Would he continue to put our brave soldiers at needless risk, galvanizing a new generation of terrorists, and costing our treasury billions of dollars a month? Would he ignore financial crises, the impending energy crisis, and America’s dependence on foreign oil.

Well, no. If “country first” was anything other than an empty catch phrase. Which it is. McCain is a morally bankrupt, demented old man who has no business running the country in the era of global interdependency. Were he to keel over dead, he would be replaced by someone with an even more myopic and fundamentally Christian worldview than W. This McCain/Palin duo is among the most dangerous group of people we could possibly elect to run the country.

The only thing they have left is attacking Obama relentlessly, playing up an essentially non-existent connection between him and a reformed radical. I take extreme exception to this “we must have the Presidency at any cost” attitude, where if you have no business running the country it’s still okay to sleaze your way into the Oval Office. My disgust with their campaign is total. These people are treasonous hacks. Who cares if we run the economy into the ground? Who cares if we bring this country to its knees? We can give our pals government jobs and deregulate like hell, and then take a nice golden parachute off to an island somewhere.

These people are about as patriotic to the US as any terrorist organization you care to name. They only care about how they can game the system, and that includes politics. These people have no morals. None.
It makes me physically ill to even consider that they could win.

Luckily, that is looking less and less likely, because people aren’t buying these scumbag tactics anymore. After the swiftboating of Kerry and monstrous mismanagement by W, people have learned to ignore attacks with no basis in reality, like all of them. Even as McCain launches his abhorrent campaign to make Obama look like some sort of terrorist, he continues to pull ahead in swing states and is even making inroads in places like North Carolina. Because Obama is actually attempting to address issues, and not “turn the page” on them. After all of McCain’s grandstanding and trying to take credit for brokering a bill, and the bill failing, and then taking credit again once it passed, and nothing happening, McCain has about as much credibility on the economy as a six year-old child. Probably less. And after seeing what a blatant political opportunist he is, most people want to find a candidate that can make them believe in politics again. Out with the old guard, goddamnit!

Oh, and fuck you, McCain. Fuck you.

Speed Screed: Recession and the Dow

I’m getting pretty tired of the idea of “Main Street vs. Wall Street.” Frankly, most towns cannot simply be collapsed into main streets at this point and it rather cloyingly calls to a bygone era of 50’s small towns. I realize it’s just a turn of phrase, but as has been shown from Wall Street’s heavy investment in (and unscrupulously messing around with) real estate that these two supposedly different or even diametrically opposed economic areas of America are in fact fairly intertwined.

Especially with credit. While I was loathe to start using credit cards (and I ended up spending more than I ought to have and shunted the balance of my old card onto a low fixed APR card to pay it off) the average responsible person who has a card, but uses it to smooth out cash flow and almost invariably pays it off on time is a rarity. We’ve had a false standard of living recently because people would use credit they couldn’t afford to maintain their lifestyles as wages stagnated. So when credit becomes difficult to obtain, it’s recession time because we’re not buoyed up by somebody else’s money. This is an even bigger problem for smaller businesses. Small businesses actually make up a rather large part of the employers in America, with something like 10-20% working for the megacorporations. Of course, many of them are not “small” per se, but smaller than a very large company. But businesses rely on credit more than individuals to get money to the right people. Cash flow is erratic for even the best of companies and they need to be able to get people paid on time, load up on materials or inventory before the end of the month, etc, etc. So credit suddenly becoming unavailable is devastating to many, many, many businesses.

So it’s looking like we’re heading into a real, honest-to-God recession here, and not one of those trendy little 4-year mini-recessions that are a simple part of the natural economic cycle. After all, the Dow Jones has been dropping, right? That’s got to be bad news. I mean the graph is going down! Down is bad!

The Dow is a somewhat useful measure of overall confidence in the market but it’s not the be-all, end-all of indices. It’s a weighted average of 30 select companies, with the most valuable stocks being weighted more heavily than the bottom ones, which also fudges the numbers a bit, generally making the dow worth more than the sum of its component stocks. Many economists would argue that it is not a very useful measure of the overall market beyond the sort of “blue-chip” stocks that generally represent people taking the long view when it comes to investing. No one ever mentioned what happened to the other indices, probably because it wouldn’t have made interesting news. Every newspaper loves a “crisis.” I’m getting tired of people bandying that about, too. It’s too pat. Let’s spend our time finding solutions, instead of continually crying about how bad things are, and are going to get.

Today’s Rant: Twisted Metal Black and Gas Mileage

Man sakes alive. You may find the idea of car-to-car combat a little weird. You may not even think it would be all that fun – I mean, cars are pretty good at going in a straight line, and then turning around. Well, at least the parallels to a joust are clear.

But let me tell you this – Twisted Metal Black (an old game for PS2, which I acquired for seven dollars) is one of the most instantly fun games I’ve ever played. And the better you get at it, the more fun it is. There’s nothing quite like nitro boosting down the highway in pursuit of weakened foe, wildly firing your machine guns and blasting missiles at him, all the while swerving and dodging around traffic and trying to avoid the mines and gas cans he’s dropping behind him.

Nope. Nothing quite like it. Which just goes to show you that anything is more fun at 100 mph. A game of chess? Better if you’re in a train going 100 mph. Don’t believe me? Try it! And then see for yourself what a liar I am.

Ahem. Anyway, rather than have this collapse into a review of this game, which I am wont to do when running short on genuine topics, I will instead lament a tangentially related topic: why car companies are bragging about the pitiful mileage their cars get.

First of all, the EPA mileage bill right now is a joke. I think it asks for like 30 mpg by 2020. It’s something really pathetic. That’s what we should have now; and by the way, most of these American companies are already capable of producing fuel efficient cars, since those are the ones they sell overseas. Only rich Europeans will buy gas-guzzlers, as gas is about $6 a gallon over there. Why Ford won’t simply produce more of those cars, I don’t know. Detroit whines about everything, while Toyota forges ahead by looking (gasp) more than 30 seconds into the future. Corporations that start leaning on the government form a dependency that’s really pretty sad to watch. Is this the American free-market enterprise that’s supposed to be the envy of the world?

So when I see a commercial touting the “wonderful mileage” of a new Saturn that gets like 23 city/28 highway, I must scoff loudly. It’s not bad mileage, but it’s not good. And then when I see the commercial for the Escalade hybrid, where apparently, via the addition of a hybrid engine, it goes from 12 city/18 highway to 18 city/18 highway, well, I think GM is trying to pull a fast one on us. Now don’t get me wrong. The Escalade is a cool car, and well, if you’re rich enough to buy one and don’t care about paying for gas, you might as well get the hybrid. But it’s astonishing that GM is still trying to sell SUVs! This is stupidity of epic proportions. What asshole keeps insisting that this is what America wants, and what group of spineless corporate yesmen don’t have the balls to tell him he’s a fucking moron? They think if they slap a hybrid engine into an SUV they’ll still be able to hock them, since people will suddenly think they must be environmentally conscious by purchasing a car that gets slightly less terrible mileage.

GM should be split up into a bunch of the smaller companies that it owns; I’m sure at least a few of them will start producing cars that we want to buy. They should set aside an SUV-making company so when it finally tanks the rest of the conglomerate won’t be dragged down with it.

Pfft. What do I know, right?

Speed Screed: Paving, the Japanese Way

A very simple demonstration of short-sighted versus long-term domestic policy can be easily found in the way in which roads are paved in Japan versus here in the States. There are some logistical issues that I will address as I go, but I think the wisdom will come through at the end.

There’s always some road that needs repaving near you in the States, no matter where you are. Essentially, the roads are in a constant state of repair, because every few years the low-grade asphalt we use for our roads breaks down. What this means is more traffic jams and irritating logistics problems, especially when large streets (like nearby Ridge in my neighborhood) are half-closed for a year plus as the whole damn thing is repaved.

Compare this to Japan. They use a higher grade asphalt, most likely mastic asphalt, which is more expensive but lasts an order of magnitude longer. I’m not sure how much more it costs, but consider that you have to pay for labor each time the road is repaved, and you cause some loss of efficiency due to a main thoroughfare being partially or wholly shutdown, the amount of headache saved is well worth the money.

Now obviously, in the States, we have a lot of road. It is hardly cost-effective to pave all roads with mastic asphalt, considering we have about 4 million total miles of road in America (that’s really astounding if you think about it.) Japan has a mere 728,000 miles of road, but despite its small size it is fifth in the world in terms of total road length, so we’re still talking about a massive infrastructure investment, especially since Japan’s GNP for its size is so high. It seems to me that deliberately paving high-traffic areas, such as city centers, major streets, and yes, the interstate system with high-grade asphalt in the US is a long term investment that will pay off severely.

But consider our crumbling infrastructure, aging airports, and other things that used to be the envy of the free world are now neglected almost past the point of repair, it’s clear that responsibly investing in the future instead of cutting costs here and now is the only safe way to operate when you have, I don’t know, the stake of an entire country’s future on the line.

Just a little something to think about.

Edit: You probably noticed Japan has more road per square mile than the US. The US has slightly under 1 mile of road per square mile, whereas Japan has almost five miles of road per square mile. I assume this is the case in most countries where space is at a premium, but nevertheless is a clear commitment to not inconveniencing people with constant repairs, a Confucian philosophy (a commitment to not inconveniencing people, not to constant repairs) embedded in many Asian nations and often featured most prominently in Japan.

Speed Screed: Hedge Fund Managers

And while we’re on the topic of obscene pay, let’s have a look at the number one offenders: Hedge fund managers. You may have thought CEOs made outrageous amounts of money. Oh, no no. They’re paupers compared to these bastards.

Two years ago the average amount of money made by top hedge fund managers was about 363 million dollars. Here is in numbers:

$363,000,000.

Wow. What an impressive sum of money. Using my usual 5% investment scheme, consider an 18 million dollar a year rake-off. You can live like the Emperor of China three times over on the interest alone. But that’s only the average. You want to see the top? Here it is.

That same year, our old pal T. Boone Pickens, Mr. McOil Tycoon, made about 1.5 billion dollars as a hedge fund manager. $1,500,000,000.

That means on the interest you could make a modest $75 million a year. But assumably these hedge fund managers know some secret investment strategies, or they wouldn’t be raking in this kind of jack. So we can further assume they could nab at least a 10% interest rate. More like $150,000,000 a year.

Philanthropy alert! Let’s see you give some of that goddamn money back. Well, Pickens has given, to date, 600 million dollars. Which seems like a lot. But it’s not when you consider he’s raking in 3 times that on average every year. I wonder if he has a private jet.

Income inequality is especially irritating in America. Robber barony is a hilarious status we seem to revert to every 100 years or so, a trait we only seem to share with Russia. While the average Joe is struggling to stay alive in the face of the recession, hedge fund managers are collecting their eighth Ferrari.

The main problem I see with libertarianism is that it more or less fails to address things like this. Libertarians generally say that he will not begrudge his neighbor his greater wealth providing the two of them had equal opportunities. Which is certainly not the case here at any rate. But a huge middle class has historically been a sign of a prosperous nation. When the rich pull ahead and more middle class people start dropping down, you know that Republicans have been in power for too long. I mean, that changes need to occur. I mean, that giving tax breaks that benefit the rich is the most outrageously selfish and pandering action ever taken by a governing body.

Well, probably not. But it still pisses me off. I tell you if I had money, I would be giving most of it away. Set up the interest rake-off and ditch the rest. I know they say money changes you, but the only thing I value money for is not having to worry about it. Money is the cause, and the cure. And the cure consists of a hell of a lot less than a billion a year.