The down and dirty of the concentration of wealth

Going along happily upon my recent themes of a declining world, it is a curious question to wonder WHO will be hurt first when the economy collapses in upon itself like the black hole of unsustainability that it is.

Of course the answer is the poor will be hurt first, and probably a good number of "middle class" as well, those who are over their heads in revolving debt that has stopped spinning.

Still, how would it look? The poor, those poor enough to have avoided debt, well, they'll perhap make their way as always, on a wing and a prayer, family support systems and all that.

But I just don't get how the massively indebted class will get through - those who find themselves with a mortgage they can no longer afford after, with car payments, credit card payments, all stacked to the roof with no place left to borrow from.

I'm pretty well convinced that the housing "boom" was illusionary wealth, created via subsidized mortgage loan programs, and low interest rates, and created for the purpose of trying to "jump start" a stalled economy, and it worked, for a time, but that time is passing.

There's probably yet more money that China and Saudi Arabia can invest in the united states, but you got to think they'll get a clue sooner or later that the dollar MUST fall and with it all their investments. Sure, they're dumb, but not forever!

So back to wealth, in order for the average american to have a "zero savings rate" for 2005, that means the money must be going SOMEWHERE. Well, it might be a funny statement in a static world - like saying in a shocked voice that 50% of our children are below average. You would think without a trade imbalance, and a fixed economy that the young would be saving in equal amounts to the elderly spending down their savings. Anyway, whatever it means, we're apparently doing WORSE on average than ever before.

So, anyway, if I'm a rich investor, I want to find a way to get my money to work for me with as little risk as possible. Well, that calculus is tricky, but really I mean whenever possible investors are best off to play the right end of a sucker's game, like being the house in a gambling industry, or exploiting public-owned natural resources given away by greedy governments looking for some quick short term cash. Yes, in general a good invester looks for things that win out in the long term, finding what is under valued, under exploited now and being the first one to get into the market, and also the first one out when something newer comes along.

I would think these wealthy investors do NEED the little people. I would think they value their neighbors working, and having money to spend and all that. The economy makes money because there's people with money to spend.

Whenever someone offers me a business deal that is "too good to be true", I usually refuse out of assumption that it is just another pyramid scheme designed to take on suckers who will pay the top. Still, when I participate in the wider economy, it's harder to see.

That digital camera looks like a pretty good deal at $249, doesn't it? Takes great pictures and I save a ton of money on the old film cameras. Who am I to turn down a good deal on a luxury item I can afford.

I have negative feelings about cars and Repair garages, seeming to take quite a large chunk of money regularly enough, without any great benefit, at least by measure of alternatives - bicycle and bus are much cheaper, no insurance, no $2000 repair bills, no $20,000 purchase costs.

I'd have to think, even without high fuel prices that an economic depression will hit transportatio the greatest, if not instantly, undeniably through attrition. After the bad years progress more people may get a clue that throwing away $5,000/year on a car between purchase, debt-interest, maintenance, insurance, and fuel isn't the best investment they could make on that money. In the very least I'd expect many more families to downgrade from two (or three or four!) cars down to one.

This might yet make a dent into the amazing U.S. 25% share on the world oil consumption, although I admit sharing a car can waste more miles than it saves when people end up making 4 trips instead of two.

I recognize the government and federal reserve are surely in complicity with the wealthy few in the country who encourage laws to their own benefit. AND surely federal reserve policies that promote economic growth is a good thing, right? Surely everyone benefits from a good job, and you gotta keep printing enough money to pay all of them something right?

I'm sure its true in the short term - that MONEY can be controlled in ways that seem to help everyone. Who can complain when every year we all have a greater access to processed natural wealth from around the world? Who is hurt by these progressive policies?

Those who live in the future, those who will have to deal with the convenient lies we've been telling ourselves about how the pyramid raises all boats. It's NOT real. Nothing is real, except the day of reckoning that is due us all one day.

You might understand how those at the bottom are taken along, like an amusement ride, amazed at how many cheap thrills they can buy for a buck. But I wonder what the "plan" is for those on top. Do they see the next step or two? Do they expect they can continue their magic tricks of doubling energy again in 50 years by some new technical wonder, cold fusion or whatever? Are they also in denial?

I think the movers and shakers are generally smart and aware people, although perhaps a little too "in the moment" day-to-day to be calculating "risk probabilities" that the whole system is in danger of collapse.

Let's take an easier example: How about those famed 36,000 princes of Saudia Arabia? Sure most are young and foolish, but some will be thinking of marriage and children and all that and wonder what "share" their children will have in this ever shrinking, ever dividing pie. They know that even if Saudi Arabia's oil may continue flowing equally for 50 years, their children's share may be worth little, and of course they know the political instability. The largest holder of oil has to first invest lots of money to feed an ever growing discontented population below, and that's going to cut more into their bottom line than a few more princes.

Well, if I were such a prince, I wouldn't turn down a "free lunch", but I'd be "keeping my options open", putting away as much wealth as I can, preferrably in a safe swiss bank account, and look to where I can "retire" when I'm say 45, when my children are grown. You know those Swiss Alps are very pretty!

As a prince, do I have ANY empathy or compassion for the wasteland of human misery that my country will become in 50 years? Why should I? What can I do? I'm not making them have so many babies? I've only got two kids - my fair share, so it's not MY fault there's just not as much to go around anymore.

And perhaps similarly, as a wealthy investor in the U.S., what compassion am I supposed to have for those who get over their heads in debt? I've got my safe government protected investments along with my risker multinational investments taking in 20% returns a year. I'm working hard to manage my wealth. What am I supposed to do to help those stupid poor people having 6 children and expecting they can live it up? The government can worry about that, although I'd better keep a watch on those "entitlements" I don't need myself. And I've got my gated community up on the ridge over yonder. We've got security forces. It'll be all right for my family, and as long as I feel safe, I'll do what I can if things turn down. I'll donate to the food shelves, and all that.

I do have a hard time blaming the wealthy for our problems. Okay, I DO, but I understand power corrupts, and humans haven't much experience at the levels of power reached in this last century. Besides churches and kings, very few have had as many temptations to evil. We all need our youth to "fool around", right? And we'll grow up when we HAVE to.

Well, I still don't see it. I don't easily see the wealth as PURPOSELY sending out future into the toilet. I don't see them as doing anything more than bacteria in a jar of food - stuffing themselves in delight, and even if a little guilty at first, later merely wondering why the honey isn't quite as sweet or as free as it was just a little while earlier.

I imagine the economy MUST fall into depression, but it's hard to see how it might happen. Assuming a government that is "managing" the money to maximize growth, you would think that it would muffle out all contrary signs as long as it can. Well, especially if you happen to believe in the free market that finds optimal solutions to every problem by its own greed. The purpose of government is to get out of the way, and at best to anticipate the needs of the wealthy so they can keep working their magic.

Perhaps it is just a collective "hope" that the next best thing will propel us again into the future.

I just LOVE the ironic pro-lifer joke when someone get a chance to ask God why he hasn't cured cancer yet, and God replies that "I tried, but you aborted her." My god, bless the optimists for they give us LOTS of problems to solve!

Surely with a world of 7 billion people SOMEONE ought to be able to find infinite free energy that can propel us to new prosperity and another century of economic growth and a 20 billion population. WE CAN DO IT! China has the same area as the U.S. and 4 times our population. Why can't the whole world do that!? Maybe we don't want to live like peasants, but with enough energy, we can support it. And Canada is still nearly empty, ready for colonization when global warming makes it the new agricultural center of north america? Are you invested up there yet!?

Maybe the growth model is simply too intoxicating a vision to abandon? It is probably just thinking too much to hope that we could do better than bacteria in a jar of light sweet crude honey.

It's hard for me as I like to think big, like to envision solutions and systems that can expand wealth and abundance and well being to my neighbors. Who am I to piss on my neighbor's fence for envy of his new 108" TV or his Hummer? He can afford it - look at his bank account, or at least his credit card limits!

I'm being unfairly sarcastic and judging, but mainly I'm just doing what ever other not-bad-off guy with a brain and a conscience is doing - protecting my ass for when the shit hits the fan, and my guilt when my Ark can not hold any more animals in the rising global warming tides. I did my "fair share" will be on MY tombstone, or it SHOULD have been!

You expect ME to get down and dirty with the scum of the earth, the trailer trash who think having 6 kids on a high school education is a good idea, or those TV addicts who think there's nothing to life beyond getting a paycheck, and drinking beer in front of the TV all weekend, or whose aspirations rise no higher than a down payment on a corner of a shit hole swamp lake up north where I can drink beer in my cabin in front of my satellite TV?

Being an elitist takes a lot of concentrated effort to maintain a superiority complex.

I admit it is easier to feel sorry for the poor in India with their $1/day income, and 6 skinny kids who'll never make it past 4th grade before working. At least they know about family support systems, even if the'd have aspirations if they were available.

Putting down the poor as dumb and lazy is not a difficult proposition. Even smart people are frustratingly dense, but poor people?! How am I supposed to care about their plight?

The reality of the next 50 years is going to be probably the saddest tragedy of wasted potential in the history of humanity, and that's the bright view, assuming senseless violence of war is minimized through some good old fashion peace-loving dictators take effective charge, who'll beat the crap out of anyone who tries to take a piece of their pie. We'll yet have a lot of weapons in the next 50 years, and weapons benefit the powerful the most. People CAN be beated into submission, and when the alternative is civil war, the majority will surely take a not-half bad dicator over the uncertainty of civil war.

My pessimism surprises even myself, and much easier to project in my mind than to imagine any real people living it.

Seriously folks, can't everyone just listen to ME, NOW!

Can't you all be as scared as me about the future and stop your nonsense long enough to look at the signs?

Do you ALSO sometimes think at night how our free lunch will finally come to an end?!

For myself of course, as long as I have a job and can pay my bills, I'm NOT going to rock the boat. I'm just going to keep building my little nest egg, even with no assurance it'll be worth anything. I only know I'm better of later for owning my home, for knowing how to live without a car. I don't care about money, but I do care about security. As long as the future looks insecure, I'm forced to just keep muddling in my little less-than-average-insane corner and see what happens.

But seriously folks, BE AFRAID.

I mean sometimes, just long enough to wonder what president Bush really means when he says "America is addicted to oil." It's a clue, even if it seems like a joke I don't get.

I'm addicted to oxygen too, so the fuck what? Should STOP breathing?