Friday, January 28, 2011

True

When I was young things were much different.

They aren't like that now. Things seemed to make more sense when I was young. There was a job you went to. It gave a tangible return in terms
both of real work you did and in terms of the paycheck you got in the end. You didn't have to make excuses for yourself since you were actually doing something. You didn't search Google for "other things." You had your own.


No, I did not like it very much. I was very, very unhappy with my job and it even gave me nightmares. I worked very hard as a young person and I hated it, and, I eventually left the work force.

That's where I am now. Outside of the workforce that is to say, but when I was in it life had definite rules, and discipline to it.


I hated my job but on the other hand I had a place to go. Both of these extremes seemed to exist in one person. I was not very happy. I really did not like my boss very much. On the other hand he also gave me a paycheck!

There is an American dream. It's not about holding a job, exactly. It is to go out on your own or own your own business but this morning, when I am a writer, I got up and thought about those days, long ago, when I had a job.

Thursday, January 27, 2011

January 27, 2011

. . - - . . - - . .Payless
Americans always want to pay less. Americans have this utterly charming habit of acting like a dowsing stick and veering towards the lowest price. This is all wrapped up into the fabric of our system.

How does capitalism work? Well, only under capitalism can a restaurant can appear to provide both good food, and, low prices. The reality of it is a little more tricky. It seems a bit of an “oxymoron” in fact. A true combination of the high and the low of it. Does seem a bit contrary, to nature -- doesn’t it? Oxymoronic -- by nature.
It is not exactly a George Tenet slam dunk. How can you get high quality and low prices at the same time? It seems moronic. Consider, for example, the restaurant called family. When I was young I ate in many of them because my Dad ate at them, so that is something he brought me. He call them, lunch counters. The combination does seem obviously self-defeating, considering that if you had a restaurant you would get more money coming in if you either give yourself up to the lowest prices on raw ingredients, or, give in, to the tempation for making a better restaurant. Anways, on the lower level, there is a need or an imperative to move up the food chain of success, if not quality, and buy mass-produced ingredients like corporate cheese, rather than say, organic small farm cheddar from a little farm out in the unfettered countryside regions. The eggs in that restaurant are not likely to be free-range happy chicken eggs. There’s no way around, it is there? I do not believe there is any way to do it: if you have a family restaurant you need "family" prices. But wait! Here comes the “economist” (magazine or person! we do not care!) on his white horse. As the herald’s golden – or seemingly golden horn blares he announces that he has “got it.” The Economic theory. Here he is: “with lowered costs due to productivity increase in a context of mushrooming, no, “sustained” – pardon my unprofessional exuberance – growth…you will achieve..." what every mid-level professional retailer advertises, which is high quality. And at a low, low price. Yeah, yeah, yeah. At the same time. That's Amazing! The economist explains to us about: the combination of factors you need. What do you need to get things like “growth” and “productivity”? You do not begin to know. You to be explained it to you. Uh-huh. And he declares that we would get low price with high quality, if you had just the select bag of inputs he described you. Sounds good. Economics explains stuff --- that, due to "productivity growth", sure. You can get high quality products with less money expended; both at the same time. Wasn’t that nice of the entity called economics? – What is it? A university department or something? I mean, to explain things and all? (“Do you want to get anything else,” asks the waitress?)
All you need is an industrial revolution. Hell. We’ve got, probably, one of those. Hell, we’ve probably got two. Floatin’ around here... We’ve got lots of 'em products. Sooooooooooo many. Pro-Ducts. So many factories that I just get high on dem fumes. Just chuggin’ out the products that make America thwell. Not only we: Japan has products, China has products, Europeans have ‘em. Everybody has products.
Some would say that it can be achieved industrially—you can have both, if “productivity soars,” as they say.
Yet still I have a question. Even with the kind explanation of the economist, who will protest that he is not trying to be kind at all, and the question is that of how we get high quality and low price, and have an economy. I mean how can we have low prices, high quality, and an economy that actually works, one that actually gives persons jobs.

We can also ask how we get one that distributes those products to its population. You can get high quality and low price but you also have to distribute those products that you produce. Otherwise what’s the point? Once the cost of production, and hence the price tags, are low enough, you go out and try to find persons who need these items. OK—the 5ºº blue jeans can sell. So can the Lil’ Debbie 25¢ snack bars, and Gatorade.

As productivity increases—and it has, over the years—you get lots and lots of products at low prices, but only certain ones. You get, particularly, basic staples like clothing, housing, household-type products, including many electronic devices, and then you have to add your telephone service, and some good food if you're like me. So a person can live without spending a whole hell of a lot (if he can walk to work, because he can't drive, because gas is not cheap items) at a later or more "developed" stage of the capitalism situation. Here is where Europeans talk about “political economy.” But the U. S. does not think you need to do that, I guess. In the U.S., the academic figures, somewhat suspiciously, say “economics.” As if it is that simple. Right? But the fact is there are the “people problems” and you do not solve those by refusing to accept that there are people, poor ones, which, make no mistake about it, is what the American economists do tend to do. They are working for the society. In providing us with out narrative of the study field or area called Economics (the study, dahling) they act as if two things are unconnected: persons, and economics. The dissociation of those two things from one another was the masterstroke of American economic ingenuity (the STUDY, dayling). One of the two things, of course, is The People, and that's a rather famous construct, right? So why would economists of all people not study them?  I don't know.  Well, let us ask it, then.
They act as if people and business are completely unconnected. The reason follows:

 If you talk about people qua people – – you know, those funny little peopley thingamajobbers?—in economics, you will be called a socialist. But because Europe has socialists you cannot be called a socialist. So, since Europeans have socialists, their economists can talk about people—it is since they do not have to risk being called socialist, got it? But Euros treat their funny little peopley things just as bad. Europeans are just as bad as the Americans—no doubt—they treat them like crap, they just have a different tradition.
The European admits they exist whereas the slightly more psychotic Americans can simply say peopley things do not exist. Socialism. 
Americans, since they are apparently not people but abstract dots, also do really believe in the magic of low prices and high quality, and who’s to stop them? Why ruin the show?

Thursday, January 20, 2011

No Title

National paper USA Today says the Kardashian sisters, Kourtney & Kim, "give fans what they want."
Maybe that isn't such a good idea.

Monday, January 17, 2011

Persons with missing back teeth often swallow too soon

ADventures this morning:

The regurgitated morself of peach meat came back from the back of throat where it had been sequestered: in order to fulfill its destiny which was to segue gracefully into another go-'round in the taste chamber. Delicious: It was like a second chance. I also like the chance to write about it; But not as much.We should all call our mouths "the Chamber of Taste." Sounds Goth, like Edgar Allen Poe. Maybe if all of us learned to go around talking like differently that would be all it would take. We'd have a less problem getting along with each other, if we used the write stuff, you know?  We could talk like we were in a novel you know. This has been done. This was tried. That is what the Quakers tried With their "I"s and "thou"s: the this and That, they tried to tame society through proper speech so that has been done. That was tried. They are the ones who really already tried it. Those quakers; they quake; they already serve as example; so I guess I'll never.

But we're so crass of a society.

Start a national project for increase of eloquence.
Thus, m' Lady surely we could UPLIFT ourselves.

Goth is Addams Family and not the Munsters, so I am going for quality. Taste? It's twinkies NOT snowballs. We've got to
upgrade our quality. Of life. I am not alone in thinking that our society and culture needs to be upgraded. Gore Vidal understands this too.
Mmmm... good little peach. Come back to Papa now, so I can chew you again.

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Society's Debate

Societies require vigorous debate.
But our economics debate needs a little jump start as it sucks.

Jan 12, 2011 (2)

This is “Panera” writing. I am at table in the popular “Panera” chain. There are about twenty other customers, at least, in the large modern space.

It’s a comfort zone.

But is it public space or private space? I do not know any of these other people around me nor do I have any sort of personal agreements with any of the group.

So, is it (i.e. Panera Café) a public space, or a private space? Why call Panera Bread a private business?

Jan. 12, 2011

Our nation’s mythology bespeaks privacy. Everything is always "private."  If you go according to this core national myth you would believe that nothing is public, I guess. If you really go according to that logic, or really believed it, it follows you would believe that nothing is public. Which is just a bunch of crap.

This is what you might call "ideology." Although it is a bunch of crap, what is always being taught, preached, or inculcated is that nothing is ever shared. All you have to do is stop and think about it. This seems obvious enough. I am quite certain this is the case. This is the ubiquitous propaganda, and we hear it all the time. Of course, if you want, you can "interrogate" it. As follows:

Why are the Chinese holding half our dollars? Because we are busy lying about everything being private; and if you lie, then, in the meanwhile, something odd happened because you were basing yourself on ideology instead of going for the  truth. Why did China get all of that money? We find that we cannot answer  that.

Now what? It is China's private money? Maybe the theory that in capitalism everything is private needed to be interrogated. OK, so that is one question one could ask, about why private or not-private. Why is that a debate? There are all kinds of questions like that by which we could try to interrogate this propaganda. Could we get very far with that? I know that it would not stop being propaganda.

These are urgent question. I don’t know the answers to all these questions, so I'll just offer that notions of capitalism as “private” do not get us anywhere.

(More on the muddled and hopeless excercise of subjecting care economic theory to interrogation instead of just believing it: when Bernanke makes a so-called “helicopter drop” of money, which we pretty much understand is what they are doing lately, he would do so in our own U.S. territory. Of course. He wouldn't do it on China! OK; why not? Why not make the helicopter drop in China? Now that sounds to me like a good question to reflect upon. Maybe that is the way economics ought to proceed but they don't. Or: maybe these are questions no one can answer. This world of economics, if that is a good way to put it, seems to be characterized by continuous u-turns, self-canceling logical twists and turns, or even, Soros's,  "reflexivity" if you want a framework to work within. When anyone tries to answer these kind of questions there just seems to manifest before one such a dense course of u-turns and self-contradicting answers---so much so that it makes me feel that this is the nature of this world, for we live in a human cultural and ideological system characterized by "economics" --- "capitalism" --- whatever words you want to put to it.)



Below: an earlier draft.

Our nation’s core myth: everything is always private (therefore, nothing is public).
Ever notice how it is always being taught or preached that nothing is shared? It is ubiquitous propaganda.
If everything is private, nothing is shared. OK, then why are the Chinese holding half our dollars?
I don’t know the answers to all these questions either; but when we go with notions that declare capitalism to be “private” we do not get anywhere.
(Of course, when Bernanke makes a “helicopter drop,” it is in our own U.S. territory. OK; why not make the helicopter drop in China? There’s a good question to reflect upon.)

Sunday, January 9, 2011

January 09, 2011

Now that I know how hard this is I think I shall positively try to keep the posts very short. (...just finished editing the previous entry, below.)

Saturday, January 8, 2011

JacksGreatBlog - Screaming at THe World

This is supposed to be called "Jacksgreatblog" I do not know how to work this stuff but what I see is just "Great Blog" in front of my face. I am the writer named Jack Silverman whose work you can see at jacksilvermaneconomicsblog.blogspot.com

Remember I do not know internet protocol. I am autistic. I channel into certain grooves. Now I am starting my new blog, with a log that sort of tracks an experience I had with the Democracy Now! web.

I am listening to Sen. Bernie Sanders on D Now! ...makes a nice background as I write as I seem to very straightforwardly agree with him.

I am doing this to become successful. Known; famous. All that sort of thing, isn't that the way it works? Shit like this a person does to get famous. I acknowledge it's all about fame. That they either love you or they hate you is alway my experience in this bloody thing called life, anyway. It's all fake. Here is what I wrote today. Why does it come out in the same font?
comes out in the same font as the rest of this. I in fact wrote it in a different font or typeface

but How can I know about Font types; and internet protocol? (as I call it above)? I am autistic. Now you probably think I want to be famous for that, too, but I don'T. Wanting to be known is not the worst thing a person can do is it? Gawd I hope not. Probably there is some ego in there. OK. But the persons Bernie is talking about right now in my high-ttech elitist earphones want something else: they just want to be wealthy. Boy, what total losers they are. I want LOVE. But it's impossible. Anyway...I think wanting to be famous isn't quite as bad.

Bernie talks about wealthy and powerful "forces." He paused a moment before the word "forces." I wonder why. What are the rich? Are they people or forces? They are, I'll offer, people who want to use force. They're immoral. They're immoral rich persons that want to use force. Gottcha!
I am going to hit "publish" now. Could you please blame "Blogspot" (a.k.a. those geniuses at Google) if I said anything bad or for 'whatever' happens, when whatever happens?---if whatever does indeed happen, as I believe that it may? They control it anyways. Ultimately, they do. Do I own the internet? Of course not.
Democracy Now! Comments as parallel track, i.e. my "notes" - Whatever!
Good, decent people ------- the politicians and the board members of the corps. are considered the most upstanding, they are the validated, the ones who get all the dignity and respect from society. Are they really the good and the decent? Maybe, maybe not—but what they do is this. They support their own society or their own group, and these are their friends - they are the big capitalists, or trans-national business elites. I think that that is what rules the world: it is that group. And they get what they want, usually, from the government.
Moderate, centrist course (says the new Daley: Bill Daley). Steer a more moderate course: Daley seems to think in terms of a fantasy spectrum of Right to Left.
Amy Goodman is also discussing another (Obama) appointment now, the successor to Larry Summers. When they work for banks or big corporations, they make lots of money, for themselves and other people. This is what I consider strange though. Why would making a lot of money correlate with becoming the economic advisor, or the chaf of stieff (I'm on strike against the spell-checker). The qualification for these major, major posts is to have made lots of money. (OK, I have some time here, so...I will add that making money is not a good qualification for really quite a few different reasons, if you think about it. If business is separate from government, which seems like the very reasonable suggestion of so many conservative theorists of economics and society, then there is a conflict, a conflict of interest. You want government to not interfere with business, right? So it is a conflict to have a person from the business sector police the business sector, also a conflict for that guy to advise on business. Why not have an economist (like me) who studies the economic system but does not participate as an interested money-maker or big businessperson? But the economic advisers (strike over) are the biggest businessmen/financiers. Oh nice going. Why assume that the priorities of a person who worked for G. Sachs (the new economics advisor succeeded - ceded? - to the Summers post), or, like Daley, on board of a few major major dignified respected upstanking (spelling strike resumes?)Fortune 500 corporations (Bill Daley) are the same priorities as you or I have?)))))))))))
Wayne Barrett (fired by that New York paper that used to be radical – East Village something “Other”? I don’t think so.) He's another guy on Democracy Now! today... Newsflash / Another truth teller fired / goodbye.
-Jack (the blogger)