Taming the Economy

In 1939 the war in Europe is beginning and the Japs are all over Asia but America feels safe. The young men who will fight and die are just graduating high school. Many look forward to a productive summer before heading off to college. My Dad has a good summer job working at a lab owned by is father. In rural Missouri a young man is getting tired of working on his father's dairy farm. He and his best friend are fixing up an old Model T Ford and about to hit the road. They are farm boys and know farming and can operate all the machinery of that industry. They are going to follow the wheat harvest driving threshers and hauling grain. They'll work their way north then straddle the border, working both the Canadian and American sides. They will end up picking potatoes in Idaho and apples in Washington before heading home. Two strong brown boys ready for the rigors of war armed with stories of work, wine, women and of the free life on the road.

Why don't kids do this anymore? It has something to do with The History of Labor. During the war production surged but the men were gone to war so women, the 4F's and the black folks took up the slack and did a fine job of it. After the war women were pressured back into domesticity, the workplace became more unionized and the exclusivity of unionism eliminated many jobs for blacks. White folks would still do production work as long as they had union protection and ever increasing wages. Maintainence, sanitation, meat processing and scullery went to the blacks. Old fashioned farm labor went to the new part time immigrants from Mexico. Initially this took the form of contract labor, a modern day form of serfdom. American capitalism has always hated unionism and in the 1960's business set about busting them up. The American union experiment ended with Ronald Reagan and ever since then the wage scale has drifted lower. You would think a consumer based economy would benefit from modestly increasing wages. Several bouts of inflation in the '70's and '80's convinced finance to the contrary. The mock prosperity of the '90's fueled by private debt accumulation accelerated into the early 2000's with massive federal spending on invented wars, homeland security and other nonsense. Even before the bubble burst business was thinking about productivity and wrongly figured the best way to increase productivity is to lay off a substantial portion of the work force. The greed bubble of the bankers burst and gave all of business the excuse they needed, productivity has never been better. With 7 or 8 million unemployed you'd think honest labor would resurface? You can earn $150 a day working the fields and that price will go up as we continue to deport labor. I'll pay $.25 more a pound knowing some lazy ass suburban white kid is picking my apples. If you quit building, improving and replacing then a generation of tradesmen will be lost and then when the old guys wear down and die where's the new talent? Managed immigration will always be part of our strength and success.

Let's talk about the big lie of generational progression. My father is a farmer, his son a mercantile, his son a banker, his daughter an artist and son a CEO. America progresses along lines of privelege. It has always been way too exclusive. Rags to riches never existed except in popular fiction. But a kid used to be gauranteed a job in the factory, the mines or on the railroad if he followed his father. Theses job were acceptable and desirable but end unionism and they disappeared.

Bill Gates and Steve Jobs existed because they were pampered. Meaning, give a kid love, encouragement and time to think. I don't like Steve Jobs; he was a toy maker, a good saleman and an egoist asshole. Bill, at least could code. His business practices leave much to be desired.

There's more than enough work to be done. We all can't be dilettantes and celebs. All of my young nieces and nephews have jobs because they were taught the most important lesson, "Be Polite".

The basic problem is that American capitalism has produced a static bottom line model. Profit is but a part of the whole. Investors should be contributors, when you see stock market prices jump with the announcement of a huge layoff something is wrong. Our business community is marshaled by narrow minded executives, accountants, lawyers and MBA's. That's O.K. if capitalism is a static environment but if economics is a vibrant, dynamic and evolving part of our world we need philosophers, phycistists and futurists involved in managment.

These prostestors only want to nudge the status quo off it's mindset. It's hard to see the light while you are stuffing your pockets. A gentle persuasion might evolve into revolution. Will Barry bring out the tanks like Hoover. I hope not.

Where's Mohandas? He's dead. I offer myself up to be the next martyr. As we have seen in Africa peaceful protest always elicits anger and violence. When the water canons, truncheons and bullets emerge the passivists have already won.

Tear down all the worthless structures, recycle as much as you can and rebuild America. Send the youth to do honest work. Ask the privileged to contribute. Send their kids to do humanitarian work. Rediscover manufacturing. Don't worry and kiss Mother on the cheek.