Capitalists Capitalize On Capital...What a Concept

I majored in economics and now have a BA from the University of Colorado. One of my favorite econ jokes in college asks why god created economists; to make weather forecasters look good. The truth hurts but it’s often funny.

If you get any two economists to answer a question, inevitably you will get at least three answers. Economics is very much like psychology. Answers to the problems are more opinions than anything else. I guess that’s why they call it a Bachelor of Arts. Economics is an Art, not a Science.

Economists often deal with the problem of allocating resources. Economists see resources as scarce. I don’t see where the scarcity is. We have enough land in this country to build more than enough houses for everyone to live. There is more than enough food in this country for all three hundred million of us to eat well. Beyond a home and food, everything else is a luxury. Do you think they mean there is a scarcity of luxuries?

There is a scarcity of money. There is not enough money to go around for many people because a very few of us have horded ridiculous amounts of money. Bill Gates, for example, has horded an incredible amount of money. If he was paid for every hour that he has been alive – he was born on October 28, 1955 – he would have to be paid $100,000 per hour to get his current wealth. That is not only ludicrous, ridiculous and absurd, it’s wrong. No one should be paid that much money for that long even if they have cured cancer, aids, and written more quality novels than Isaac Asimov. No one should have that much money, but it’s just one example of why capitalism is wrong. Capitalism believes in and promotes the accumulation of that much wealth.

There are four hundred families who have accumulated money in the billions of dollars in the United States. They are just a part of the problem. The bigger problem is the 100 million people fighting for the capitalist system to rule the land. These people include moderately wealthy folks all the way down to outright homeless people. They all believe that capitalism is the right way, the only way, because they believe freedom is intertwined with capitalism. It is not.

These people also believe there is a chance they can accumulate that kind of wealth, so they want to preserve the system just in case they do. Good luck with that. There is an infinitesimally small chance of actually accumulating a billion dollars.

To give you some perspective, if you were able to hit Powerball, and the prize was 100 million dollars, you’d still need to hit it ten times to come up with billion dollars. Actually, that would be the gross prize. You’d need to hit Powerball thirteen times if you want one billion dollars after taxes. To have Bill Gates money, you have to hit a 100 million dollar Powerball five hundred (500) times. So if Powerball was worth 100 million dollars on every drawing, you’d have to be the winner every time, twice a week, for the next five years. Can you understand these kinds of numbers, the odds and the impossibility of this occurring? Even winning the lotto’s top prize 500 times would not give you the wealth that Bill Gates has.

Essentially, three hundred million of us are allowing the 400 wealthiest families to accumulate that kind of wealth so that we can also have it if we get that lucky. What a ridiculous concept. We could all have so much more if we distributed the wealth we have now. We don’t even have to create more wealth. Just spread what we already have around to everyone. I’m not saying we should spread it evenly. I’m not a communist. But capitalism is not good for the masses. It is good for only the very few; only about 400 of us.

As to freedom and the American way, let’s not confuse capitalism with democracy. Capitalism is an economic system. Capitalism is a way to divide all the stuff we have among the people we have. Democracy is a form of government. It is a way of putting people in charge of the collective goods of our society.

You can have a capitalistic democracy. You can also have a communistic democracy or a socialistic democracy. Democracy makes sure that everyone has the ability to be heard, to vote and have an equal voice in the society’s decisions. Capitalism is simply an economic system in which the rich have an advantage. If you don’t think so, give me a hundred million dollars and I’ll get a person with an IQ of 80 accepted to Yale. The United States is more of a Plutocracy than it is a Democracy.

History books like to say this country was founded on democratic principles. Hardy har har! Tell that to 750,000 blacks who lived in America when it was founded; or to the two million women who lived in this country when it was founded; or the estimated 10 to 15 million Native Americans who lived in this country when it was founded, not to mention they were here first by hundreds of years. I guess seniority didn’t count back then; maybe the Indians should’ve unionized.

Our founders were a group of upper class white male Europeans who believed in democracy as long as you weren’t a woman, or black, or Native American. Our forefathers controlled our county, the United States, with approximately 1.2 million other white males while the entire population of the land was about 15 million adult people. That’s the democracy the country was founded under. If that’s real democracy, I can be the next Mr. Universe.

The democracy in this country has improved over the centuries. Blacks grudgingly gained their freedom, then the right to vote. Jim Crow is not dead but he is living under a different name. Maybe, if Newt Gingrich becomes President, black children can have more janitor jobs to learn the value of working. Good old Newt; always thinking of the poor and disadvantaged and ways he can take advantage of their situation.

It has also gotten better for women over the centuries. White guys got real magnanimous, giving the gals the right to vote a mere century and a half after the founding of this country. Some day women will even have the glass ceiling removed from their careers which most males don’t even know exists; but probably not during my lifetime.

Alas, it’ll never go back to the way it was for the Native Americans. The United States has eliminated their culture entirely. We spent the 19^th Century breaking enough treaties to push them off the continent completely. The last the Native American culture was seen was in the movies.

Is capitalism really an economic system of fairness? Is it fair that the 400 richest families in the United States have the total wealth of the bottom 150 million Americans? That is the America we live in today. Four hundred families have the same wealth as half of the population of the country. I would never expect that to be possible in an economic system of fairness.

We need the tax system to be incremental. As a person accumulates wealth, more taxes should be collected. Is that fair? I say yes and have no problem with the tax rate being 90% at some point. If you’ve got a billion dollars, I want the government to get 90 cents of every dollar you earn beyond that. If a billion dollars isn’t going to keep you satisfied, you may be insatiable.

My party, the Republicans, came up with trickledown economics. When they said trickledown, they really meant trickledown! However, that is the exact opposite of what is good for the masses. I don’t say everyone should get paid the same. I do say that everyone should have a job that wants one. If there is not a job for everyone, the jobless should be supported by the government. If all the poorest folks in this country have money, they will spend it. They will be buying necessities such as food, drinks and housing. Then better jobs will be created so that people can get the luxuries they want since their bellies are already full. The more luxuries people have, the more they will want. Then the capital will trickleup to the business owners. Trickleup economics would work for the masses but it will never be allowed by the rich. They have the power to prevent such a system; just ask any lobbyist.

The only way a person can accumulate a billion dollars is to either under pay your employees or overcharged your customers. With a billion dollars of accumulated wealth, you would have probably had to do both things. Is that fair?

I suppose I could go on all day about what I think about money and how it should be used. Suffice it to say I believe that people who have vast amounts of wealth should use most of that wealth to pay back the country that made it possible for them to accumulate the wealth. If the money went back to the people, then no one would need to pay when they got sick. No one would need to pay for education. No one would have to be homeless. The roads could be paved, the police could be well paid and teachers would be more respected and wealthier. The total happiness of the country would increase because people would no longer have to worry about their next meal or simple warmth.

We have the money to do these things. It’s really all a matter of who we trust – or elect – to be in charge of the distribution of our money. Do we need the rich to get richer or do we need the rich to share more? I know which side I’m rooting for, but I’m not holding my breath waiting for it to happen. That’s the shame of capitalism.

Love It or Leave It

Welcome to the New Year – 2012. We have new hopes, new aspirations, New Jersey, New Hampshire and New Delhi. I’ll have a roast beef on rye. Unfortunately, as a country, though we have lots of new stuff, we still have a lot of the same old problems.

I’m a bit uncomfortable thinking of myself as a citizen of the United States. I like much better to think of myself as a citizen of the world. I live on planet earth. I am a citizen of earth. Interestingly enough, some people would argue that point. Not me. I was born right here in the good old USofA, at St. Vincent’s hospital in Bridgeport, Connecticut. I have the birth certificate to prove it. Not to worry about my candidacy for the Presidency. I’ve got plenty of other skeletons in my closet and choose not to be vetted. The question I have is, does it really matter which plot of land the building was occupying when my mother gave birth to me?

I guess it does matter but no one consulted me. No one has a choice of their country of citizenship, which strikes me as unfair. I’m a citizen of the United States of America totally by accident; a matter of the luck of the draw of birth; lucky me.

I’ve checked it out. Would you believe that most countries have very similar policies concerning birth and citizenship? It seems that for most countries, if you were born there, you can stay. If you’re not born there, well, you can visit, but you can’t work and you have to leave after a short period of time. They won’t let you stay or live or work there but you can shop all you want. That attitude is pretty universal.

Not being allowed to emigrate is very puzzling to me. People live their lives and at some point may decide they want to live somewhere else. They choose not just a different neighborhood but an entirely different country. They choose to work and set up a life in this other country. Choosing to live in a country would seem to me to count for more than being born in a country. Immigrants become illegal aliens who need to be thrown out of the country even though they’re working and paying taxes and adding to our society. Really? That’s the rule? Isn’t there something wrong with this equation? And it’s universal?

Okay, so if I can’t leave my country, why are some people with carmine napes telling me, “America; Love it or leave it?” Isn’t one of my rights in this country a freedom of expression? I think they call it “Freedom of Speech”. So why would anyone want to throw me out of the country for saying the United States should change? I’m not yelling “Movie!” in a crowded firehouse. I’m just trying to tell others about the things I’m not very fond of – like NIMBY.

Ahhhh…..NIMBY you ask. It’s the acronym for “Not In My Back Yard”. What are some of the things that qualify for NIMBY? Homeless shelters, rehabilitation clinics, and prisons to name a few; for prisons to be in the NIMBY category is really confusing to me. I would love to have a prison built in my back yard. I would think that prison neighborhoods would be among the safest in the country. When a prisoner escapes, I don’t think they’re going to be hanging out in the neighborhood. Even prisoners have the common sense to get as far away from that prison as possible.

Maybe every state should just have a NIMBY neighborhood. We can build all the homeless shelters, rehabilitation clinics and prisons in the same neighborhood and let them do their work.

Back to the illusion of freedom of speech; a lot of folks want the government to get out of the way. Government should not tell us where to build things or how to build things or basically how to live our lives at all - accept for some things. People like rules that say don’t murder or steal at the risk of incarceration. I do too. They also like the government having regulations on things like airlines. They don’t want airplanes falling out of the sky because they didn’t have enough lug nuts or something. And cigarettes too; regulate where people can smoke because I don’t want to smell other people’s smoke in public. I want to be with people but I don’t want to have to smell them. There are probably a few more laws and regulations people want but you get the idea.

Oh yeah, there are other things people agree that government should do besides laws and regulations. The government should supply the police force, fire department and military. Those are must haves for any society. Let’s not forget an infrastructure. Roads are pretty important to commerce so we really need that too; then there’s the post office so we get our mail; and a Motor Vehicle department; and a justice system along with prisons; and an immigration system…..and maybe some education too.

Our education system seems a little bizarre to me. We make it so that kids have to stay in school until they’re 16 years old, all for free, but as they start to get smart, we begin to charge them for more education. It really makes no sense. The socialists are fine to run the schools until high school but we tell the capitalist to take over when the kids reach their late teens. Forget about the benefits we derive from having a better educated population. It’s more important to make a buck than to educate our future workers. Why would we want to invest in the future when we can make a few bucks right now?

Speaking of money to be made, we let capitalism run the healthcare system too. Why not make a few bucks on the sick. They’re sick! They can’t do anything. The sicker you get, the more we charge. If you can’t pay, we throw you out of your home. After all, there’s money to be made in them there hospital rooms. How long before we give the prisons to capitalists? I’d like to see the brothels run by the capitalists but that’s a different screed.

Wow….where does it stop? We need a government for all these things and we’re supposed to agree on how to get them too? When I disagree I’m told, “America, love or leave it!” Really? Well I’ve got sayings too. Some of them say what to do with and where to put that type of attitude. One of the cleaner ones is, Americans, can’t live with them and can’t live without them! 

Dad…God…God Dad!

I lost my dad in February of last year. I didn't really lose him since I know exactly where he is; St. Michael's Cemetery buried with his mother and father.

For most of my life, death was almost never a part of it. I don’t remember anyone dying in my family until I was 27 years old when my grandmother passed away. Then, I was almost 50 years old when the previous generation started to make a mass exodus.

A couple of my favorite aunts passed away, then a couple of uncles I was close to when I was a child; then last year dad. I already think about death too much but these things really started the ball rolling. So now, not quite the first anniversary of my father’s passing, I’ll share some things about dad. So sit back, grab a drink, and reflect as I tell you at least one thing you’ve probably not considered. And if you have considered all these things, you’re as weird as I am!

During my first twenty years, my dad and I were very close. If he would have died then, I think I’d have been lost. Not having a mother to speak of while I was growing up, my dad was everything to me. As a teen and young adult, I went the usual rebellious route. I developed friends of my own, struck out on my own and began my own family. But as the saying goes, the acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree.

There are many things I don’t have in common with my father. I don’t treat my children as he treated his. I don’t rule my family as he ruled his. I don’t believe his list of rights and wrongs as it pertains to people. For example, he always thought I should respect him because he was my father. That’s an incredible thought to me. I should respect you because you were able to climax, lucky enough to create a zygote which developed into a human being, specifically me? Are you serious? I don’t think so. Most of the time, procreation has nothing to do with procreating. So while I don’t begrudge people’s sexual escapades, I don’t respect them for those escapades anymore than I respect them for riding a rollercoaster, watching a movie or doing anything else they’ve done for pleasure.

I respect my father because he took care of me. He raised me, made sure I was fed – let’s not go there right now – clothed, educated and entertained. He was an average dad in the mold of the 50s dads like Ward Cleaver and Ozzie Nelson. That is why I respected my father. I believe he tried to be a good parent. He didn’t shirk his responsibility to me. He took care of me which is what most people should do when they become parents. I can respect that and my father for it.

Politically and culturally I couldn’t be more different than my father. Did we really spend my first 20 years together? Amazing…..he was an Archie Bunker conservative which is a nice way of saying a bigot and chauvinist. He always laughed at Archie because he believed Archie was right and that no one else watching knew how right he was. I’m an off the chart liberal, maybe the most politically liberal person you know. Suffice it to say my dad and I did not see eye to eye politically in almost any sense.

Dad was also religious if he was forced to be. He certainly didn’t doubt there was a creator, but for most of my dad’s life, god was an afterthought. He didn’t live for god, the afterlife or anything spiritual as a young man. While he may have grown wiser in his spirituality as he aged, I suspected it was the fear of death catching up with him.

Regardless, we couldn’t have been further apart on the subject of spirituality either. He died the Catholic he was born. Certainly he broke just about every law and rule the Catholics had, but he still remained a Catholic to his death. The closest religion for me is this New Age Spirituality thing, but I’m not sure I fully understand it. I don’t know if I believe in one god, more than one god or no god at all. When I do believe in god, I definitely believe in reincarnation. My father couldn’t wrap his mind around reincarnation since you couldn’t come back as the same person. From his perspective, the only possibility was to come back as the same person you were. What are the odds that Carmen Corica would come back as Carmen Corica? Then, from his perspective, reincarnation was fiction.

Dad and I did love the culture we were born into. I have enjoyed being a full-blooded first generation Eyetalian. I love the food, the music, the celebrations and I know he loved them too. He and I did think about our culture a bit differently. He thought, like a lot of people, that his culture was somehow better than most. I don’t see how a culture can be better or worse unless we’re talking about a culture that sacrifices virgins. A culture’s food, music or celebrations don’t make a culture better or worse than other cultures. It’s the hubris of human beings that even gives rise to the thought of a culture being good, better or best. Cultures are not better than one another; they’re different from one another, just like people

To tell you the truth, if my dad and I weren’t born in to the same family, I don’t think I would have ever become friends with him. However, I was born into his family. I was his first born male child and got to know him as well as any other human being on this planet. He had his good side and his bad side, just like all of us. He was generous, kind and supportive when he wanted to be, just like all of us. He was a mean bastard when he wanted to be, just like all of us.

My father was just like all of us. He was a human being. Some things I grew to hate about him and some things I grew to love about him. I know I miss him. Probably the biggest thing he taught me, even though he didn’t know he taught it to me, is that every person has value. Every person is someone’s child. Every person deserves to be loved and respected just because they exist. We don’t have to agree with everyone. We don’t have to hang out with people we don’t agree with. We don’t have to do anything we don’t like or want to do, not even love and respect people. But this world will be a far better place if people would realize that you can love and respect someone and still disagree with them. We can do that with everyone. But starting out loving everyone, even strangers, will put us in a far different place than starting out anywhere else.

I miss you dad! We should’ve hung out more, had more dinners together, watched more television together and went to more ballgames together. Then we could’ve argued about all the things we didn’t agree on more often. I loved to hate your opinions; I loved to hate the way you treated some people; I loved to hate some of the things you did. In the end, I miss you and I love you. Maybe next lifetime we can hang out more!e hehhhdhasdfioajh

Father, Forgive Me

I get so angry with people at times and then I just want to yell at the top of my lungs. I want to break something. I want to beat an inanimate object until it’s unrecognizable.

I think it’s better for me to lash out in order to release my frustrations. I have never attacked anyone. I haven’t hit anyone since third grade when I sat on Jimmy Gaffney’s chest. I’ve never hit either of my children. I believe that violence is the last refuge for the incompetent and should never be the resolution to a problem. To hit people, or bring physical pain, is wrong.

I don’t come home when I’m angry and kick the cat either. That wouldn’t be much better; and not at all for the cat. I do, however, believe it is healthier to release my pent up frustrations. I’ve beaten an electric pencil sharpener with a baseball bat until the blades were dull.

I don’t condone acts of violence, even against pencil sharpeners, though this one might have had it coming. I believe it’s best to be able to shrug off the things that would normally anger me. If I could let it go, I would. However, given the choice of being angry and holding it in, or being angry and taking a hammer to the guacamole dip, I choose the latter. I don’t like guacamole dip much anyway.

So I yell. I scream. My voice escalates from loud to louder as I get angrier. Actually, almost any emotion brings a rise in my voice. I am naturally loud, though my hearing is normal. My whole family is. Once, when my brother was visiting my Colorado home, we came out of my house to get into my car in the driveway to go to the store. My neighbors, sitting on their porch five houses down the block, about 100 yards away, clearly heard our conversation. They regale me with the story every 4^th of July picnic. I shrug, and smirk and look at my shoes. I was definitely raised by loud Italians.

Me, my ex and my daughter went back east for Thanksgiving one year. We visited my dear family in Connecticut; the one that raised me. When we left, the ex asked if my family was always mad at each other like that. I’m not sure even now she believes that we were not angry with each other. We just talk loud and yell to make our points. Sure, it’s not the best way to communicate but it’s our way. There’s a lot of love, joy, sarcasm, yelling, and grief in my family. I don’t say I’m sorry for the way I was raised, but I do understand it has left me with a lifetime of dysfunctions to repair. It gives me something to do while waiting for baseball season to return.

I do believe it is best to forgive. Even now, when I’m angry, I tell myself I am not angry at the person. I am angry at what the person did. You forgot about our date to go dancing so you’re playing checkers at your friend’s house? You left me ringing your doorbell holding the flowers I bought so you would look nice on our date? Boy, am I angry! But I am angry at what you’ve done, not with you. I’m probably not going to change your tire if it goes flat in the next day or two, but I won’t give you the flat either. Retribution is a terrible thing too.

Forgiveness is one of the reasons for life. It’s one of the things the entire human race has in common. Everyone has people they need to forgive. We need to forgive their trespasses against us if we expect our trespasses against others to be forgiven. Even the holiest and most sacred amongst us have trespassed against others.

It’s not good to hold a grudge against people either. Pencil sharpeners yes; people, no. We need to let it go. A grudge is like an infected cell inside our body. We can let that grudge go, forgive the person we’re holding the grudge against, thereby releasing that cell so the infection doesn’t cause us harm. Otherwise, the cell splits and grows. Before we know it, the cell becomes a growth. Then we might need the growth removed. There’s pain involved. Then the growth can become a tumor. The tumor can become cancerous. The suffering we face then is huge. Radiation, chemotherapy, and operations to remove the cancer are all possibilities. It’s far better to get rid of that infected cell while it’s still small, if it can avoid any of that other pain.

Best of all, we feel better by forgiving others. It’s hard to carry a grudge. Some grudges get so heavy; it takes a lot of effort to carry it all day. Wouldn’t it be better to just let it go, see a movie and enjoy yourself? I think so.

I understand this concept since I’ve thought about it so long and so often. It makes perfect sense to me. So why do I carry around my grudges?

Like I know!

Forgiveness is not something you can intellectualize. Forgiveness is something that has to come from your heart. I may know the intellectual lesson of forgiveness but putting it to practice, that is going to take more effort.

Oh well. I know I won’t be canonized this lifetime. I have issues and things to work on to make my life better. That’s what life is all about. Experiencing, doing and being. Thank you Universe for giving me all these things to work on! I may get depressed and apathetic, but I’ll never be bored!