Dogs love snow...
Now this is how you beat box...
They are getting so desperate...
50 of the greatest guitar riffs...
When pets look stoned...
Everybody eats bacon...but no one wants to stab the pig!
World's oldest optical illusion...
Eat like its 440 BC...
How much food can a hamster stuff in its mouth?
Ahhh the powers of cooking spray!
Obesity in America...
Polar bears up close and personal...
Lose weight with sex and laughs...
Introducing artist Salvador Dali...
1984 is here...
Another explanation for the birds dying...
I've said it before...I'll say it again...Monsanto is evil...
Life is new...
Would you really pay $3100 for a 3 hour tour?
Some cool pop art...
Introducing Neotame...a new "organic" toxin to ingest!
Find peace of mind...
Dogs love snow part II...
Madness or mind control?
If you ever wanted to know who the elite really are...
What's in store for 2011?
They dare not speak its name...Rothschild Zionism...
Interesting presentation...
How to map and sell stereotypes...
Puppies vs. door stops...
Introducing the Orbitix Sphero!
OJ was innocent?
If we are not alone...fear the aliens...
The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America...
Akinori Ito, the CEO of Blest, a Japanese company,wondered why we didn't take the deconstruction process a step further: turning mountains of plastic waste into a new source of oil...
When a compact car meets a Segway...
Quote of the Day
Someone's opinion of you does not have to become your reality.
- Les Brown
Knowledge
Eye of Science
As Albert Einstein stated, "People should be ashamed to use the wonders of science and technology if they don’t know any more about it than a cow knows about the botany of the grass it relishes in eating." The Eye of Science Project was begun in 1994 when a photographer and a biologist joined 'to combine scientific exactness with aesthetic appearances, and thereby help to bridge the gap between the world of science and the world of art.' You'll have access to galleries that do indeed 'explore fascinating forms and structures in a world beyond human vision.' Browse through images of Cristals, Bakteria/Viruses, Botany, Medicine, Fungus, Technic and Zoology, each image with an explanation of the subject and the equipment used to capture it. Here's your opportunity to closely study science and technology and examine some of the intricacies of the relationship. Even Einstein would enjoy this visual approach to learning!
Note: The site has not updated the English Flash version so if you are not proficient in German, enter through the HTML 2008 link. The Flash Version 2010 has fascinating images but German is the presentation language.
BigEyeintheSky.com
Big Eye in the Sky is a site developed by Ed Fink, who 'may be the first photographer to do full spherical (180 x 360) panoramas from a helicopter.' He actually leans out of the helicopter (securely strapped in, of course), takes the shots, then stitches them together on a computer. The visitor can fly over the posted sites, controlling the flight as if he/she were the pilot. Be sure to 'hang on to your chair;' some of the maneuvers can be stomach-churners you might want to take your motion sickness pill before you get too wild with the controls!
Success With Quantum Mind
By Thomas Leigh
To consciously use your quantum mind for success in life and beyond you must realize that you have two focuses to your consciousness. One is your earth focus, which has little power. Its focus is too narrow, blinkered you might say, it having to do with the material world at hand.
The other is your quantum or ’soul’ wide focus with which you can scan for a great deal of information in practically no ‘time’ at all. It’s fast because, unlike your earth mind’s focus, it doesn’t think in a ‘blinkered’ linear way but in dimensional concepts. It reads information like a super search engine and at the quantum level of existence where all knowledge is stored.
Your earth mind forgets things by design while your quantum mind never forgets anything. Because your earth mind forget things you don’t remember what you were before your consciousness was focused into it at birth. You had to start from scratch, except that your body came pre-programmed in the form of your DNA, with a whole mass of information sub-conscious to you. This pre-programming made your body to a specific format – i.e. human – and keeps it running well. It also gives you your basic survival ‘instincts’.
However you were focused into for a purpose for great as the community of fifty plus trillion cells are that make it up, they can’t manage without you to keep them out of danger, keep them warm and seek out food for them. In return for your efforts they do their job of giving you a ‘point of focus’ for your consciousness.
But it is the wide or quantum focus of your higher soul mind that can turbo-charge your lower earth one to give it a powerful edge when it comes to success in life.
Many successful people, from Galileo to Einstein, may not have known the quantum mechanics of how they got their inspiration. But most of them, it is reported, had quiet contemplative moments in which they sought information in their minds. They would even have ‘walking around fast’ thought periods, in which information flowed rapidly into their minds as they walked. We all do it it come natural to us. Sometimes it is in the form of daydreaming, others as active ‘reaching’ for solutions. But it works better and even on demand, if you have some inkling of how it works.
So How Does Quantum Mind Success Work
There are literally trillions of trillions of quantum minds making up the universe with each streaming information that is local to them. Each particle is one such or it could not exist as part of an atom sending information to the atom and the universe. Each atom, molecule, cell – to a community of them – like living Lego blocks – can make any life form and do so by using ready-encoded information: all of those forms existing both on a physical level and a quantum or ’soul’ level and seeking out, creating and using information and storing it quantum mind. It is the sum of that information that gives the physical universe the many quantum possibilities from which to choose. You have to realize that, as Einstein said, time is relative to density. Here on the surface of the earth and in an earth body the density slows down the speed at which consciousness can process information. On a planet wide basis this guarantees that we are all pretty much in step. Out in space the speed at which your consciousness can process information is faster. Yet near a black hole your thought processes will slow down almost to a stop. All this is known by physicists and though their slant on it may be different to the above the effect is the same.
Now imagine that the speed of light is the key note of the universe, like a musical scale with a low note in the black hole and the high note in the speed of light. Now imagine that another dimension with a far fast keynote (speed of light) lies beyond our own. Another can lie beyond that and so on. Many physicists at the cutting edge of their discipline such as ’string theorists’, are realizing that if the ‘big bang’ could happen once it could happen twice, a trillion or infinite numbers of times and each universe could have a different speed of light depending on the density of its matter.
Infinity is beyond all keynote light speeds. It is the ‘nothing’ from which all matter comes. The speed of universal thought can therefore be infinite. In other words it can compute all things instantly.
Your quantum mind stores all the knowledge of what you are. It doesn’t store all the knowledge of the universe, it is the universal mind, the sum of all minds, that does that as a quantum matrix, a universal brain – but your mind can access information from it.
How do I get it?
Like Einstein, you ask for it. You ‘reach’ for it in your mind by asking questions of it. The answers come back to you not in words, but inspirations, insights and eureka moments of sudden clarity.
What can we do with it?
By using your over mind as a search engine you can access past lives of both yourself and others. You can receive inspiration about what you are trying to invent. You can read the virtual future for all possibilities exist, for any choice you have to make. Science tell us that the universe ’splits’ off at each decision into many quantum possibilities from which any of us can chose. So even as we choose, we are giving others all the possibilities surrounding our choice so they can choose their own.
How do I start?
Allow yourself the possibility that organisational abilities can and probably must exist everywhere in the universe. You see and comprehend your own locality and encode what you see on the quantum level of yourself and this is immediately available to the ’search engine’ abilities of other minds, just as theirs is available to you: giving all who search many quantum possibilities of answers to all problems.
Summing up
We are all so much more than, in the past, we have believed possible. Yet it is those past beliefs that still hold us back as a race. If we open our minds as individuals to all possibilities we will find them and in finding them we have the tools for any success.
  Really Important: Sesame Street Fighter Stickers This set of 15 adhesive characters features Sesame Street staples re-imagined as their would-be SF equivalents, from the Fozzie x Balrog "Baldog", to an eye-patched Big Bird as Sagat, to an E Honda-repping Cookie Monster -- given his love of ginger cookies, you know his move is the Hundred Hand 'Snap. Your walls will be naked without at least a few of these  Cellu-Lied: Little White Lies Prints From cutting-edge movie mag Lies, these stylized hand-drawn prints all depict film stills of lead actors' faces, from a brooding Sam Riley in Control, to a mangled Mickey Rourke in Sin City, to a digitized Jeff Bridges in Tron: Legacy -- a film whose tagline definitely should have been "I fight for the losers!" |
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Blue Light May be Key to Fighting Winter Blues
Posted By Dr. Mercola | December 14 2010
Lack of sunlight during winter can lead to the condition known as seasonal affective disorder (SAD).
This can make you feel lethargic, gloomy, and irritable. However, while daylight as a whole is beneficial to fight off the syndrome, different colors of light seem to affect your body in different ways.
Blue light can affect your mind, including mood. And according to a new study, blue light might play a key role in your brain's ability to process emotions. The study results suggest that spending more time in blue-enriched light could help prevent SAD.
CNN reports:
"Studies have shown that blue light improves alertness and mental performance ... [T]he researchers discovered that blue light, more so than the green light, seemed to stimulate and strengthen connections between areas of the brain involved in processing emotion and language."
Sources:
Dr. Mercola's Comments: |
Light has a major impact on your health, influencing your vitamin D status, mood, weight, and even your risk of cancer. But now research is showing that different colors of light impact your body in different ways.
Emerging as one of the key players in your body's ability to process emotions is blue light, which researchers suggest may help stave off Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), or the winter blues.
Why You Might Feel Down in the Winter Months
The short days and long nights of fall and winter can trigger feelings of depression, lethargy, fatigue and other problems. About 20 percent of Americans are affected each winter, suffering from the blues and, in some cases, more serious depression as sunlight grows scarce.
Symptoms may include:
- Extreme fatigue
- Getting too much sleep
- Difficulty concentrating
- Cravings for sugary/starchy foods
- Weight gain
In the more serious SAD, you may also experience tension, inability to tolerate stress, decreased interest in sex and physical contact, and a loss of self-esteem. But what differentiates SAD from regular depression is that a full remission occurs in the spring and summer months.
The fact that SAD and the winter blues occur when the days begin to darken and sunlight is at a minimum is not a coincidence. This occurs because you simply are not getting enough exposure to natural light and as a result your mood and physical health will suffer.
More specifically, your serotonin levels (the hormone typically associated with elevating your mood) rise when you're exposed to bright light. You may have experienced this "high" feeling after spending some time on a sunny beach, for example.
Similarly, the sleep hormone melatonin also rises and falls (inversely) with light and darkness. When it's dark, your melatonin levels increase, which is why you may feel naturally tired when it begins to get dark outside (even when, in the heart of winter, this may be at only 4:00 p.m.).
Light and darkness also control your biological clock, or circadian rhythm, which impacts hormones that regulate your appetite and metabolism.
But the manipulation of hormone levels and your circadian rhythm are only two ways that light impacts your mood; it can also impact your emotions directly.
Blue Light May be Among the Best for Your Emotions
The latest study from researchers of the Light Research Program at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia has shown that blue light strengthens and stimulates connections between areas of your brain that process emotion and language -- and it does so better than green light.
The researchers suspect that blue light may, in turn, help people to better handle emotional challenges and regulate mood over time.
Blue light may be even more effective than the bright white light currently used in light boxes to treat SAD and other forms of depression. As CNN reported, a 2006 study found that blue light also worked better than red light in treating SAD symptoms.
Blue light is prevalent in outdoor light, so your body absorbs the most during the summer and much less in the winter. Because of this, the researchers suggested that adding blue light to indoor atmospheres, as opposed to the standard yellow lights typically used, may help boost mood and productivity year-round, and especially during the winter.
How to Use Light to Relieve Winter Blues
If you feel down in the winter months, first try brightening your environment naturally -- open your blinds and take a walk in the sun at lunchtime. Spend as much time outdoors in the sun as possible.
If you have the resources, taking a vacation to a tropical or subtropical environment, or even relocating there for the winter, is also an excellent option, but this is unfortunately not a viable option for most.
The next step would be to address the lighting in your home and office environments. Most people use incandescent lighting in their homes, but this is not a high-quality light, nor one that is recommended if you suffer from the winter blues.
Ideally, you'll want to use only high-quality full-spectrum light bulbs in your home and workspace. This is the type of lighting I personally use at home and in my office.
Full-spectrum lighting is one of the most cost-effective ways to treat the winter blues, and in my experience patients tend to feel a profound increase in energy and improvement in mood and sense of well-being quite quickly -- oftentimes within two to three days after exposure.
There's some confusion on this issue, but currently full-spectrum light bulbs are only available as fluorescent bulbs. There are some LED's available – and in time they will likely become the standard – but at the present time full-spectrum LED's are simply not cost effective for the majority of us.
Please recognize that incandescent neodymium lights are claimed to be full spectrum but they aren't and they don't have the important blue wavelengths you need.
A full-spectrum light box can also be used during the winter months, and while most use white light you can find them with blue light instead. While the blue light is thought to be more effective at relieving SAD symptoms, there is some research that shows blue light may have a slightly greater risk of harming your eyes, so avoid looking directly at the light source (with either a blue or white light box).
You can actually get many of the same benefits of a light box by replacing the regular light bulbs in your home and office with full-spectrum lighting. I can honestly say that these lights have provided an enormous boost in my ability to tolerate the often-gloomy days where I live near Chicago.
Full-spectrum lights and blue light are not a replacement for real sunlight, but they are the next best thing when it's grey and cloudy, or when it's too cold to spend time outdoors.
Three More Tips for Beating the Winter Blues
Light is a major factor in overcoming SAD, but you can also help boost your mood naturally during the dark, cold winter by:
- Exercising: Regular physical activity works better than antidepressant drugs to improve your mood. In fact, it’s one of the most powerful strategies you can take to prevent and treat depression and boost your mood.
- Going to sleep early. You were designed to go to sleep when the sun sets and wake up when the sun rises. If you stray too far from this biological pattern you will disrupt delicate hormonal cycles in your body. In the winter, this may mean that you’ll want to go to sleep a couple of hours earlier than in the summer.
- Avoiding sugar and increasing high quality animal-based omega-3 fats. Your brain consists of about 60 percent fat, DHA specifically, so you need a constant input of essential omega-3 fats like krill oil for your brain to work properly.
In fact, one study showed that people with lower blood levels of omega-3s were more likely to have symptoms of depression and a more negative outlook while those with higher blood levels demonstrated the opposite emotional states.
Sugar (including high fructose corn syrup in soda) also has a seriously detrimental impact on your brain function. There's a great book on this subject, The Sugar Blues written by William Dufty more than 30 years ago, that delves into this topic in great detail.
In fact, one study showed that people with lower blood levels of omega-3s were more likely to have symptoms of depression and a more negative outlook while those with higher blood levels demonstrated the opposite emotional states.
Sugar (including high fructose corn syrup in soda) also has a seriously detrimental impact on your brain function. There's a great book on this subject, The Sugar Blues written by William Dufty more than 30 years ago, that delves into this topic in great detail.
Last but certainly not least, the lack of sunlight during the winter months will also take a toll on your vitamin D levels, and vitamin D deficiency is also linked to depression.
So in addition to installing full-spectrum lighting and using the tips above, I can't stress enough, especially during the dark, cold days of winter, how vitally important it is for you to keep on top of your vitamin D intake.
DUDE, WHERE’S MY JOB?
The storyline being sold to the American public by the White House and the corporate mainstream media is that the economy is growing, jobs are being created, corporations are generating record profits, consumers are spending and all will be well in 2011. The 2% payroll tax cut, stolen from future generations to be spent in 2011, will jumpstart a sound economic recovery. Joseph Goebbels would be proud. PROPAGANDA MINISTERS
It was another wise old man named Ben Franklin who captured the essence of what those in control are peddling:
“Half a truth is often a great lie.”
The economy is growing due to unprecedented deficit spending by the government, fraudulent accounting by the Wall Street banks, the Federal Reserve buying $1.5 trillion of toxic mortgage “assets” from their Wall Street owners, various home buyer and auto tax credits and gimmick programs, and Fannie, Freddie, and the FHA accumulating taxpayer loses so morons can continue to purchase houses. Jobs are being created. According to the BLS, we’ve added 951,000 jobs since December 2009, an average of 79,000 per month. Of course, the population of the US is growing at 175,000 per month. It seems that there are millions of jobs being created, just not here as shown on these graphs from the NYT.
The storyline of corporate profits is true. As a percentage of national income, corporate profits are 9.5%. They have only topped 9% twice in history – in 2006 and 1929. When you see the paid Wall Street shills parade on CNBC every day proclaiming the huge corporate profit growth ahead, keep these data points in mind. Do profits generally rise dramatically from all time peaks?
You might ask yourself, if corporations are doing so well how come real unemployment exceeds 20%? The answer lies in who is generating the profits and how they are doing it. It seems that the fantastic profits are not being generated by domestic non-financial companies employing middle class Americans producing goods. Pre-tax domestic nonfinancial corporate profits are not close to record levels as a share of national income. They exceeded 15% of national income once in the late 1940s, and repeatedly topped 12% in the 1950s and 1960s; in the third quarter of this year, they were 7.03% of national income. I wonder who is making the profits.
According to BEA data, financial industry profits and “rest of world” profits — that is, the money U.S.-based corporations make overseas — are relatively much higher now than they were in the 1950s or 1960s. And the taxes paid by corporations are much lower now than they were then, as a share of national income. The reason that corporate profits are near their all-time highs is that Wall Street corporations and mega multinational corporations are making gobs of loot and paying less of it out in taxes. Isn’t that delightful for the CEOs and top executives of these companies?
The profits are being generated on Wall Street through collusion with the Federal Reserve, as the insolvent Wall Street banks accept free money from the Federal Reserve to generate speculative profits at the expense of senior citizens earning .20% on their CDs. The mega-multinationals are ”earning” their profits by continuing to ship American jobs overseas at a record pace. The Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank, says American companies have created 1.4 million jobs overseas this year. The additional 1.4 million jobs would have lowered the U.S. unemployment rate to 8.9 percent, says Robert Scott, the institute’s senior international economist. “There’s a huge difference between what is good for American companies versus what is good for the American economy,” says Scott. The hollowing out of the American economy has been going on for decades and despite the usual rhetoric out of Washington DC, it continues unabated today.
But consumer spending has surged, so the recovery must be solid and self-sustaining say the brainless twits on CNBC. Consumer spending is rising because the top 1% wealthiest Americans are doing splendidly as they are now reaping 20% of the income in the country, levels last seen in 1929. The Haves have more, the Have Nots have less. The top 10% wealthiest Americans own 98.5% of all the stocks in the country. They feel richer because Ben Bernanke has propped up the stock market with trillions of borrowed money from future generations. The other 90% of Americans have stagnant or non-existent wages, rising costs for fuel and food, falling home prices, rising debt levels and little hope for the future. They have been thrown a bone of extended unemployment bennies, a temporary payroll tax cut, and extended tax cuts. Any spending they are doing is on credit cards as the austerity deleveraging storyline is another big lie by the MSM.
Greater Depression
The figure of 15 million unemployed reported by the government and regurgitated by the corporate media is one of the biggest lies in the history of lies. The real figure is 30 million and I will prove it using the government’s own data. I created the chart below from BLS data (ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/suppl/empsit.ceseeb1.txt) to prove that we are in the midst of a Greater Depression and no amount of spin by politicians and the media can wish it away. When we look at jobs in America across the decades, a picture of a country in decline, captured by financial elites, reveals itself. In 1970, America still produced goods, ran trade surpluses, and paid wages that allowed families to thrive with only one parent working. Only 34.6% of the population was employed, with a third of these workers producing goods.
| (Millions Employed) | 1970 | 1980 | 1990 | 2000 | 2007 | Dec-09 | Nov-10 |
| Mining & Logging | 677 | 1,077 | 765 | 599 | 724 | 676 | 763 |
| Construction | 3,654 | 4,454 | 5,263 | 6,787 | 7,630 | 5,696 | 5,615 |
| Manufacturing | 17,848 | 18,733 | 17,695 | 17,263 | 13,879 | 11,534 | 11,648 |
| Trade, Transport. & Utilities | 14,144 | 18,413 | 22,666 | 26,225 | 26,630 | 24,653 | 24,806 |
| Information | 2,041 | 2,361 | 2,688 | 3,630 | 3,032 | 2,748 | 2,717 |
| Financial Activities | 3,532 | 5,025 | 6,614 | 7,687 | 8,301 | 7,657 | 7,573 |
| Professional & Business Serv. | 5,267 | 7,544 | 10,848 | 16,666 | 17,942 | 16,488 | 16,861 |
| Education & Health Services | 4,577 | 7,072 | 10,984 | 15,109 | 18,322 | 19,350 | 19,719 |
| Leisure & Hospitality | 4,789 | 6,721 | 9,288 | 11,862 | 13,427 | 12,991 | 13,174 |
| Other Serices | 1,789 | 2,755 | 4,261 | 5,168 | 5,494 | 5,314 | 5,402 |
| Government | 12,687 | 16,375 | 18,415 | 20,790 | 22,218 | 22,481 | 22,261 |
| TOTAL EMPLOYED | 71,005 | 90,530 | 109,487 | 131,786 | 137,599 | 129,588 | 130,539 |
| US Population | 205,052 | 227,225 | 249,439 | 281,422 | 299,398 | 308,200 | 310,300 |
| % of US Population Employed | 34.6% | 39.8% | 43.9% | 46.8% | 46.0% | 42.0% | 42.1% |
| Source: BLS Establishment Data |
Whether it was due to the woman’s movement of the 1970s or due to financial necessity, the percentage of the population employed grew relentlessly until it reached 46.8% in the year 2000. The level of 46.8% meant that when the opportunity to be employed was available, this percentage of Americans wanted a job. Since 2000 the population of the U.S. has grown by 28.9 million people. The labor force between the ages of 18 and 64 has grown by 26.1 million people since 2000. The government insists that millions of Americans have chosen to “leave the workforce” and should not be considered unemployed. This is laughable. Why would people choose to leave the workforce when wages are stagnant, retirement looms, prices relentlessly rise, and they are drowning in debt? The truth is that at least 46.8% of the population wants to be employed. That means that 145.2 million Americans would be working if they had the chance. Only 130.5 million are currently employed. This means that there are really 30 million Americans unemployed versus the 15 million reported by the government and MSM.
Not only is the country short 30 million jobs, but the type of jobs reveal a country of paper pushers, consultants, temp workers, government drones, waitresses, and clerks. The chart below shows the distribution of jobs through the decades.
| (% of Employed) | 1970 | 1980 | 1990 | 2000 | 2007 | Dec-09 | Nov-10 |
| Mining & Logging | 1.0% | 1.2% | 0.7% | 0.5% | 0.5% | 0.5% | 0.6% |
| Construction | 5.1% | 4.9% | 4.8% | 5.2% | 5.5% | 4.4% | 4.3% |
| Manufacturing | 25.1% | 20.7% | 16.2% | 13.1% | 10.1% | 8.9% | 8.9% |
| Trade, Transport. & Utilities | 19.9% | 20.3% | 20.7% | 19.9% | 19.4% | 19.0% | 19.0% |
| Information | 2.9% | 2.6% | 2.5% | 2.8% | 2.2% | 2.1% | 2.1% |
| Financial Activities | 5.0% | 5.6% | 6.0% | 5.8% | 6.0% | 5.9% | 5.8% |
| Professional & Business Serv. | 7.4% | 8.3% | 9.9% | 12.6% | 13.0% | 12.7% | 12.9% |
| Education & Health Services | 6.4% | 7.8% | 10.0% | 11.5% | 13.3% | 14.9% | 15.1% |
| Leisure & Hospitality | 6.7% | 7.4% | 8.5% | 9.0% | 9.8% | 10.0% | 10.1% |
| Other Serices | 2.5% | 3.0% | 3.9% | 3.9% | 4.0% | 4.1% | 4.1% |
| Government | 17.9% | 18.1% | 16.8% | 15.8% | 16.1% | 17.3% | 17.1% |
| TOTAL EMPLOYED | 100.0% | 100.0% | 100.0% | 100.0% | 100.0% | 100.0% | 100.0% |
| Source: BLS |
In 1970, jobs in the goods producing industries made up 31.2% of all jobs. Today, they account for 13.8% of all jobs. The apologists will proclaim that corporate America just got phenomenally more efficient and productive. That is another falsehood. In 1970, we were a net exporter, consumer expenditures accounted for 62.4% of GDP, and private investment accounted for 14.7% of GDP. Today, we consistently run $500 billion to $700 billion annual trade deficits, consumer expenditures account for 71% of GDP, and private fixed investment is a pitiful 11.5% of GDP. We’ve degenerated from a productive goods producing society to a consumption based, debt fueled society. This is a classic late stage trait of declining empires. Rome and Britain before us experienced similar declines.
The most damning facts that can be garnered from the BLS data relate to how we’ve become a nation of bankers, real estate agents, accountants, lawyers, tax specialists, and fast food fry cooks. Manufacturing jobs have dropped from 25% of all jobs in 1970 to less than 9% today. Jobs in the spreadsheet generating, credit default swap creating, subprime mortgage pushing, frivolous lawsuit filing, tax evasion sector of the economy went from 12% in 1970 to 19% today.
The misinformation and lies will continue. The MSM keeps repeating that jobs are coming back. You don’t hear which jobs. Hysterically, the four fastest growing job categories according to the BLS are:
- Administrative and support services
- Food services and drinking places
- Couriers and messengers
- Performing arts and spectator sports
The well paying goods producing jobs are never coming back. American manufacturing jobs have been shifted overseas for more than two decades by corporate America. Now those jobs have become more sophisticated, like semiconductors, software and even medical and finance. The American middle class is relegated to being McDonalds fry cooks, Wal-Mart greeters, and temp workers. What has happened to the American middle class was not an accident. The wealth of the country has been pillaged by an elite group at the very top of the economic food chain, who were able to reap the rewards of globalization (outsourcing American jobs), manipulate the debt based financial system through synthetic fraud products, and avoid taxes by hiring thousands of lawyers, accountants and tax consultants. When you hear that the rich need lower taxes, corporate taxes are too high and increased productivity is great for America, remember what they have done to the country since 1970. If corporate America and its leaders continue to reap obscene profits while the middle class falls further into the abyss, societal unrest will beckon.
A Tax By Any Other Name...
The Increasingly Complex Relationship Between Man and State |
| Joel Bowman |
"Whatever is true in one form of words, is true in every other form of words, which conveys the same meaning." - John Stewart Mill
Few and confused are the pundits lauding the vitality of the American economy. Worse still, many and confused are those who offer solutions.
More often than not, situations brought about by the wasteful ineptitude of the state are met with calls for more state involvement, as if a double dose of poison will somehow dilute the effects of its initial involvement. We see this everywhere today, as central banks shackle their present and future citizens with more debt in order to treat a problem caused by just that: too much debt.
We offered a broad-brush overview of the nation's general trajectory in the Weekend Edition:
"According to the official figures, the national debt currently stands at $14.01 trillion dollars. That's more than $45,000 per citizen, or almost $127,000 per taxpaying American. If you add in debt held by households, state and local governments and financial institutions, that number (the total US debt) blows out to well over $55.5 trillion, or more than $680,000 per average family. How much in savings does the average family have to offset this amount? $7,918.
"Letting these figures run for a few years," we continued, "based on their current trajectories, we see that, in 2015, the national debt explodes to over $22 trillion. Per citizen, we're now looking at close on $70,000, or $184,000 per taxpayer. Total debt, as measured above, has now grown to over $63 trillion and the average family's share of that stands at nearly three-quarters of a million dollars. Average savings per family, by the way, have now fallen to just $2,791."
Remarkably, the general consensus on how best to overcome this catastrophic trend invariably involves, in some form or another, additional government intervention and, by extension, spending. The debate appears centered on how best to manage this agent of coercion, the state, rather than on whether we need it at all. Indeed, the mere mention of free-market principals invokes fear, uncertainty and, usually, an abrupt end of the discussion. But look at the facts:
Back in 1903, government spending in the US, expressed as a percentage of total GDP (leaving aside for a moment the spurious nature of that measurement), weighed in at a paltry 6.8%, or $25.9 billion dollars. Although the state's "mission creep" tended steadily higher over the next couple of decades (with an conspicuous spike circa WWI), that percentage remained in or around the low teens until the Great Depression, when the combined efforts of President Hoover and FDR's New Deal effectively doubled state involvement. By 1940, government spending accounted for one-fifth (20.14%, or just over $100 billion) of the nation's GDP. Fast-forward to 2010 and spending by the state had rocketed to over 43% of the nation's total economic output.
We'll leave it to the reader to decide whether the nation's star is today rising or setting, whether her future looked brighter at the beginning of the 20th or 21st century.
Of course, arguments from effect tend to be cumbersome and problematic, due in part to the unreliability (not to mention the sheer volume) of statistics supporting this or that outcome. "Lies, damned lies and statistics," goes the old saw. For every honest, objective, impartial statistician, there are ten million idiots who believe his lies.
It is perhaps more helpful, therefore, to return to basic, first principals. Such is the politico-doublespeak of our time that it seems fit to remind ourselves once in a while, if not constantly, of the true nature of things.
If, as William Shakespeare assures us, "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet," then the law of identity to which he refers leaves us with more than just springtime aromas and romantic iambic pentameter. If, as that law states, A really is A (and A only), then we must not forget to apply this cornerstone of logic elsewhere - even, and especially, to those things which omit a decidedly less alluring scent.
With this in mind, let's revisit the relationship between man and the state that governs him.
The state, by its very nature, is an agent of force. Allen Thornton puts it thus is his essay, Laws of the Jungle:
"What do you think 'govern' means? It doesn't mean 'suggest' or 'implore.' It doesn't mean two people sitting down, talking it over, and compromising. 'Govern' means 'force' and 'force' means 'violence.'"
Concludes Thornton: "When you advocate any government action, you must first believe that violence is the best answer to the question at hand."
While it is true that a great many individuals voluntarily enable it, that fact remains majority rule does not turn fallacy to truth. It does not morph debt into credit, liability into asset, nor wrong into right. A rose is a rose ("is a rose is a rose") whether the majority believes it to be so or not. Likewise, acts of force are exactly that, regardless of how many people vote for them and whatever name they are so given.
The expropriation of private property - which in any other domain is punishable by the very institution that holds a monopoly on such an action; the state - is commonly known as theft. Of course, when the state commits such an act, on threat of imprisonment, fine or other use of force, we refer to it by a subtler label: tax. Let us not be confused here. There exist only two possible forms of wealth transfer - one voluntary, the other coercive. One can no more be "voluntarily taxed" as one can be "partially pregnant." A = A, no more, no less and no other.
Might the problem, therefore, be the agent of force itself - the ever- expanding, increasingly costly, over-reaching arm of the state? And, if so, why are we debating how best to manage it instead of working to rid ourselves of its existence?
To paraphrase that long dead poet: What's in a name? That which we call force, by any other name still robs us of our liberty.
Insight
The richest man, whatever his lot, is he who is content with what he has got.--Dutch Proverb
Until you make peace with who you are, you'll never be content with what you have.
--Doris Mortman
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