www.RogerWendell.com
Roger J. Wendell
Defending 3.8 Billion Years of Organic Evolution^SM

Economics I've been around, a bit, and things just don't seem quite right - some people starve while others have more than they know what to do with. The planet is being ravaged while we're told this is the best possible system. Since I'm naturally skeptical, and really do believe things can be made better for the majority, I'm going to use this page to explore various economic ideas that not only question the current "system," but offer hopeful alternatives as well... - Roger J. Wendell

Click Here for more information on the concentration of wealth and power...

Click Here for information on capitalism and its failures...

2008 Stock Market Crash:

www.FoxNews.com - October 11, 2008

"Trillions in stock market value - gone. Trillions in retirement savings - gone. A huge chunk of the money you paid for your house, the money you're saving for college, the money your boss needs to make payroll - gone, gone, gone.

"Whether you're a stock broker or Joe Six-pack, if you have a 401(k), a mutual fund or a college savings plan, tumbling stock markets and sagging home prices mean you've lost a whole lot of the money that was right there on your account statements just a few months ago.

"But if you no longer have that money, who does? The fat cats on Wall Street? Some oil baron in Saudi Arabia? The government of China?

"Or is it just - gone?

"If you're looking to track down your missing money - figure out who has it now, maybe ask to have it back - you might be disappointed to learn that is was never really money in the first place.

"Robert Shiller, an economist at Yale, puts it bluntly: The notion that you lose a pile of money whenever the stock market tanks is a 'fallacy.' He says the price of a stock has never been the same thing as money - it's simply the 'best guess' of what the stock is worth.

"'It's in people's minds,' Shiller explains. 'We're just recording a measure of what people think the stock market is worth. What the people who are willing to trade today - who are very, very few people - are actually trading at. So we're just extrapolating that and thinking, well, maybe that's what everyone thinks it's worth.'

"Shiller uses the example of an appraiser who values a house at $350,000, a week after saying it was worth $400,000. 'In a sense, $50,000 just disappeared when he said that,' he said. 'But it's all in the mind.'"

Commentary: We owe oldest Americans an apology
by Bob Greene
CNN Contributor
03-15-2009

Story Highlights

• Bob Greene: Oldest Americans don't have time for markets to turn around
• He says they survived Great Depression and sacrificed in World War II
• Greene: They should be enjoying calm retirement but can't due to crisis
• It's shameful that they suffer due to foolish Wall St. decisions, he says

"Think of the disdain they must feel for the Wall Street titans who have hurt them. When they hear about a brokerage executive who spends $1,400 on a wastebasket, their first thought undoubtedly is not that the man has taken advantage of his shareholders, or of the federal government. Their first thought -- remember, these men and women were children of the Depression -- is that the man must be a fool, a complete and utter sucker, to pay someone $1,400 for such an item. If you grew up having nothing, your contempt for such an idiotic expenditure is just about absolute. And you wonder about a society in which a person who would spend money that way is expected to prudently handle the money of others."

"Economics deals with society's fundamental problems; it concerns everyone and belongs to all. It is the main and proper study of every citizen." - Ludwig von Mises

"The inevitable tendency in capitalism is the accumulation of wealth. According to its own laws, capital always moves to where it can generate the greatest profit, never the greatest good. Why does everyone know the saying, "The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer?" Because it's true." - Richard Curtis
in the Colorado Daily, page 6, June 8-9, 1994

"Why aren't these the best of times? We live in a country of enormous abundance, but we're working longer, commuting farther, and we have ever less time to spend with family and friends. Our economy, while indulging those on top, seems to require a permanent sublcass of hardcore poor. We consume the Earth's resources endlessly but joylessly. Something is out of whack, and everyone knows it." - Paul Rauber, page 38, January/February 2004 Sierra opening an interview with William Greider

"Part of America's current prosperity is based not on genuine gains in income, nor on high productivity growth, but on borrowing from the future. The words of Ludwig von Mises, an Austrian economist of the early 20th century, nicely sum up the illusion: 'It may sometimes be expedient for a man to heat the stove with his furniture. But he should not delude himself by believing that he has discovered a wonderful new method of heating his premises.'" Danger time for America
The Economist January 14th 2006, p. 15

"What for? 'In anticipation of future needs, in order to provide for the continued industrial and population growth of the Southwest.' And in such an answer we see that it's only the old numbers game again, the monomania of small and very simple minds in the grip of an obsession. They cannot see that growth for the sake of growth is a cancerous madness, that Phoenix and Albuquerque will not be better cities to live in when their populations are doubled again and again. They would never understand that an economic system which can only expand or expire must be false to all that is human." - Edward Abbey
in Desert Solitaire, pp. 144-145

"I suppose the expectation (or hope) is that the quasi-mythical 'plunge protection team' -- a 'working group' of federal reserve officials and bankers -- will jump in and administer some soothing pepto-bismol, but frankly I don't see how that's possible this time. The poison at the bottom is a fetid mass of 'non-performing' mortgages, billions upon billions of loans that strapped borrowers are not paying back, loans which, in the meantime, have been rolled over, rebundled into jive 'securities' (ha!) and sold, and rolled over again and used as 'leverage' for massive exotic bets and bloated arbitrages involving mere abstract figments of electronic digital pulses completely removed from any reality-based productive investment activity."

"What makes matters far worse is that all this wildly reckless lending has been in the service of a suburban sprawl-building juggernaut that will itself represent another layer of grotesque liability for the United States. The crash of the house-selling bubble, based on absurd asset inflation for things built badly in the wrong places, is coinciding exactly with a permanent oil crisis that will only exacerbate the locational disadvantages of houses built in the newest and furthest suburbs."

- Jim Kunstler
Singing the Vegetable Opera - March 5, 2007

"But it is important that we challenge those who argue that the free enterprise system provides greater freedom than other ways of life. In actuality what it does is to substitute one set of constraints on the individual for another. In preindustrial society, the constraints were those of tradition, religion, and family; under the free enterprise system, the constraints are those established by the market. Thus, in our society an individual must obtain an education, must move to where work is available, and must compete vigorously to be successful, while in traditional society an individual had to fulfill traditional obligations to family and community in order to enjoy the respect of others." - Warren Johnson
Muddling Toward Frugality p. 129

"One key observation is that the US economy is dependent on the availability of cheap, plentiful oil and anatural gas to a greater extent than any other country. Once oil and gas become expensive (as they already have) anbd in ever-shorter supply (a matter of one or two years at most), economic growth will stop and teh economy will collapse. The term 'collapse' as I try to use it here has been given a precise meaning by John Michael Greer's theory of catabolic collapse in his 200t book How Civilizations Fall: A Theory of Catabolic Collapse. Under this theory, collapse can be caculated to occur when 'production fails to meet maintenance requrements for existing capital.'" - Dmitry Orlov
Reinventing Collapse The Soviet Example and American Prospects
pp. 12-13 (from his 2008 unproofed galley)

"The hunger problem was best summed up in a 1974 report issued by the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition, co-chaired by Senators George McGovern and Robert Dole, a bipartisan team who continue to work to end hunger and poor nutrition. The report stated that the fundamental issue facing the hunger 'is not [so much] the mechanics of the food assistance programs as it is the fact of persistent poverty, and the continued tolerance in this country of a starkly inequitable distribution of income. In a nation ... in which 40 million people remain poor or near poor, more than a food stamp or child-feeding program is at issue.'" - p. 10

"Income and educational inequality are clearly at the heart of the food gap. IF there is a gap that is more responsible for the food gap than any other, it is this country's glaring disparity between the haves and the have-nots. Economic inequality has been increasing in the United States for more than thirty years. According to the New York Times, 'The top 0.1 percent of earners - that's one out of every 1,000 families - made 6.8 percent of the nation's pretax income in 2004, up from 4.7 percent a decade earlier and about 2 percent in the '60s and '70s.'" - p. 179

- Mark Winne
Closing the Food Gap (Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty)

"...perpetual population growth does not make America richer. As America paves over its farms and wetlands, as it pollutes its air and water, as it degrades the quality of its schools, as it increases the cost of housing, as it ... Well, you name it. Ultimately, America's population growth is a good investment for only a few. Meanwhile, it makes most Americans economically poorer." - Edward C. Hartman, The Population Fix (Breaking America's Addiction to Population Growth), p. 52

The American Dream (a parable)

A boat docked in a tiny Greek village. An American tourist complimented the Greek fisherman on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took him to catch them.

"Not very long," answered the Greek.

"But then, why didn't you stay out longer and catch more?" asked the American.

The Greek explained that his small catch was sufficient to meet his needs and those of his family.

The American asked, "But what do you do with the rest of your time?"

"I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, and take a siesta with my wife. In the evenings I go into the village to see my friends, dance a little, play the bouzouki, and sing a few songs. I have a full life."

The American interrupted, "I have an MBA from Harvard and I can help you.
You should start by fishing longer every day. You can then sell the extra fish you catch. With the revenue, you can buy a bigger boat. With the extra money the larger boat will bring, you can buy a second one and a third one and so on until you have an entire fleet of trawlers. Instead of selling your fish to a middleman, you can negotiate directly with the processing plants and maybe even open your own plant. You can then leave this little village and move to Athens, Los Angeles, or even New York City! From there you can direct your huge enterprise."

"How long would that take?" asked the Greek.

"Twenty, perhaps twenty-five years," replied the American.

"And after that? Afterwards?"

"That's when it gets really interesting," answered the American, laughing.
When your business gets really big, you can start selling stocks and make millions!"

"Millions? Really? And after that?"

"After that you'll be able to retire, live in a tiny village near the coast, sleep late, play with your grandchildren, catch a few fish, take a siesta with your wife, and spend your evenings singing, dancing and playing the bouzouki with your friends."

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