Ray Katz

Not so long ago, I bought a soda maker. It’s a small, simple device which allows you to inject carbonation into tap water. Add flavoring and you’ve got soda. With a few tools and supplies, I can make it myself, and even “customize” it, using whatever flavorings I choose.

That got me thinking. New tools are coming. We’re starting to get affordable 3D printers, which can make three dimensional versions of things modeled on a computer. I’m also seeing more independent designer shops with the owner producing clothes.

I wonder if we aren’t approaching a time when economies of scale used by big corporations to dominate the marketplace won’t be so important. If I can get it on my own, my way, locally…who needs mega-corporation to make it boring, shoddy, and cheap using abused overseas workers?

This is only speculation. I’m don’t know if this will happen. But, I firmly believe that the world changes in ways that can be somewhat foreseen. And lots of changes are working against the continuing mega-corporation and the dependence of the world population on these capricious entities. Just when they were starting to look invincible.

While we’re always hearing about the bitter division in Washington D.C., there is—in fact—remarkable unanimity. Both parties favor deep cuts in government spending, at the local and national level.

The exact nature and depth of these cuts differ. But in all proposals, the deepest cuts come to the safety net, and to programs that put money in the hands of ordinary consumers.

“Austerity” is something that politicians, the ultra-rich and huge tax-evading corporations won’t share in. (If they share at all, it will be a tiny face-saving gesture.) Basically, whatever program is adopted will take trillions of dollars out of the hands of consumers.

This means, inevitably, a sharp drop in consumer spending.

Bipartisan Cuts

All sides, including Nobel-winning economists who have an unbroken string of wrong predictions on the economy, agree. The key problem is the deficit. We must fix that first. It is an emergency.

We can tackle the problem of jobs later.

Role of Demand

Jobs growth can come from only one thing: increased consumer spending, I.e. “demand.”

Plans for slashing Federal government spending range from $2 – $4 trillion. State and local spending is also being slashed. Most of these cuts will take cash out of the hands of consumers.

Reduced demand will destroy more and more private sector jobs. Less consumer spending means fewer goods and services purchased. Business will need fewer workers, so jobs will be lost.

The unemployed, once they run down their savings, will spend less. With a shredded government safety net, this will happen quickly. Businesses will shed more jobs.

This job destruction snowball comes on top of millions of government jobs—local, state and Federal—directly eliminated by spending cuts.

Accelerating Toward Depression

Sharply decreased consumers spending leads inevitably to Depression. Jobs, businesses will disappear. The economy will shrink. This may be happening now. Economists tend to correct their mistakes months or years after making them. Then, they authoritatively tell us what we’ve known all along—we’re jobless and suffering.

While we are undoubtedly speeding towards a Depression, it is difficult to say when it will hit full force. Some tactics may delay it.

Financial markets can create imaginary money and perhaps a mini-boomlet (preceding the big bust.) Economists will call this a recovery.

Also, it may take some time for consumers to exhaust their savings and credit.

And, businesses may make up for decreased domestic demand for a time by tapping foreign markets. But, in an international economy under the influence of international banks, foreign markets will also collapse.

Governments, big corporations and especially the financial sector are working together to destroy our economy. There is no significant opposition.

How about we save the country some money (say, a few trillion dollars) and privatize war?

The big defense contractors could sell the private mercenary companies (like the former Blackwater) all kinds of war planes, bombs, guns, rockets, etc. Backwater could recruit paid patriots to invade and occupy whatever country allegedly threatens us. (or wants Americans to liberate them.)

Let the free market work. Patriotic Americans will contribute all the money necessary to Blackwater to defend us. Because freedom isn’t free. Right?

Some skeptics might say Americans won’t pay for this. They won’t hand over their hard-earned money to a private war-making company. Real skeptics might even suggest that American aren’t willing to pay for the three wars we are currently in. There has been no “war tax”. We are borrowing the money, and the wars aren’t even included in the Federal budget.

I’d say that if Americans want war, they’ll pay for it on the free market. That’s basic supply and demand. If American won’t pay, well…we’ll just have to keep our citizens here instead of shipping them to foreign battle fields to kill and die.

We’ve had Twitter and Facebook enhanced protests and revolutions. And marketing people are using social media to sell stuff. And people are building their online brands.

But one thing hasn’t happened yet. We haven’t yet seen the formation of an international community of ordinary people. I believe this will come, but I don’t know when.

What kind of community am I talking about? A community where you can quickly locate and chat with regular folks all over the world. This would really change things.

Imagine if, back when the Union Carbide plant blew up and killed more than 900 Indians in Bhopal, we all had online friends in Bhopal? What if we all had friends in countries that our government decides to go to war on?

Maybe we wouldn’t put up with that crap anymore. When the “enemy” is revealed to be (mostly) ordinary—even nice—folks, we won’t kill them.

When the faceless Indian workers and citizens of Bhopal are revealed to be real people, and not an abstraction, we won’t allow their senseless deaths to be cheapened by a corporate buy off—a few dollars paid for each life.

I’m aware of the evils of the Internet. Governments and businesses are spying on us. Powerful forces are using it to try to control us.

But, ultimately, the Internet will make us freer. It will make killing and evil much harder. I am looking forward to it.

Perhaps the three least ambiguous words in the Constitution are: “Congress declares war.” These words have been repeatedly violated by both political parties since World War II. Based on those three words, every war the country has fought in more than half a century has been illegal.

The Supreme Court has not ruled on this, and avoids opportunities to do so. I have never heard “strict constructionists” or “originalists” argue that the U.S. can legally go to war only if Congress delares war.

I have heard all sorts of ridiculous excuses. For example, the war in Afghanistan is “justified” by a bill called “Authorization for Use of Military Force” which apologists say is the same as a declaration of war. It isn’t. In that bill, Congress punts on its responsibilities and tells the president essentially “you can go to war whenever you want.”

In other words, Congress delegated one of its powers to the president. Which is, of course, absurd and wrong.

The other popular excuse is the War Powers Act. This bill allows the President take the country to war without a declaration. Of course, an ordinary law cannot trump the Constitution. To change the Constitution, you need an amendment. That doesn’t seem to apply here.

When the president sends troops to war without a Congressional declaration, the President violates the law and the Congress evades its responsibilities.

Also, when the President acts a commander-in-chief during these conflicts, he commits another affront on the Constitution: because he is authorized to be commander-in-chief of the military only “when called into service” by Congress.”

Unfortunately, there is bipartisan support for illegal wars and the Supreme Court has repeatedly looked the other way.

When anybody tells me about his principled approach to the Constitution, I ask about “Congress declares war.” I have yet to hear a credible response.

Between now and perhaps five years from now, the economy will collapse. It won’t be a recession. It will be a complete collapse: a Depression. Unlike 2008, nobody will be able to credibly pretend that it’s just a setback. There won’t be a plan for recovery. It will be total failure of the economic system.

Millions will have insufficient food and shelter. Most of us will be cold in the winter and hot in the summer.

The usual entrenched interests will try to protect themselves and their allies from blame. Indeed, they will still insist that taxes and government regulation and excess spending are to blame. They will also say that it was a fluke; that nobody could have foreseen the collapse. (They won’t be expected to explain why they can tell you the alleged cause AND also claim it was unforeseeable.)

And they will again demand trillions from the treasury, claiming this will avert even worse troubles.

But this time, people won’t listen. We won’t even look up from the breadlines to listen to those old lies. Restive people (formerly) on the Right may reach for their guns. Those on the Left will begin organizing an alternate economy.

The next crash is completely foreseeable. It’s OBVIOUS that the economy will crash again because: 1) the financial companies that destroyed the economy in 2008 were REWARDED for their behavior, and 2) no regulations have been put in place to stop them from doing it again.

So, I say now, before the inevitable happens: I don’t believe your lies. Those who failed to regulate, who failed to deter the next collapse will be responsible for it. We foresee.

UPDATE.
A CNN poll reveals the 48% of Anericans believe it is likely or very likely that we will have a Depression within a year. A record 30% believe they could soon be unemployed.

What the “chattering classes” are talking about is so far removed from reality, we should ignore them. Or perhaps expose them.

Everyone is talking about the deficit which, clearly, ballooned directly as a result of the Bush tax cuts. But nobody is talking about reversing those cuts.

They are not serious about the deficit.

Then, there’s talk about war. Americans hate wars, but always find excuses to fight them. We’ve got three wars right now, and keep talking about ending them. But it never seems to happen.

We were told for a few years that the country wouldn’t go to war without a clear mission and exit strategy. Can you see how this is being applied to the wars we are in right now? I can’t.

People are not serious about the wars, especially not about ending them. In fact, they rarely talk about the war.

What about jobs? Millions of Americans are out of work, millions more under-employed. And nobody is addressing the problem. Unlike the deficit, this is a real crisis affecting real people in a major way every day.

When anyone actually talks about this situation (and it’s rare), there’s no sense of urgency. And the “solution” is more of what created the jobs crisis in the first place—more tax cuts and less regulation.

Furthermore, a battle has been underway to reduce or eliminate government help for the unemployed.

People are not serious about the jobs crisis.

And then there’s “values”. While some say this is no time to address values issues (they’re too busy being not serious about the deficit), others are moving right along on them.

But what values? Christian values, we are told.

Well, from that I would expect obsessive action on feeding the poor, loving thy neighbor as thyself, creating peace, and maybe bringing the moneylenders to heel.

But the “Christian” values being touted are the exact opposite.

They are about punishing the poor, hating others (especially gays and Moslems—but the list is amazingly long), defending war, and giving absolutely free reign to the moneylenders.

In fact, they go further: they glorify violence and torture. The god they follow is certainly not the one described in the new testament.

These people who are concerned about values are not serious—or Christians.

We have many real problems…and no solutions. And we have imaginary problems, with urgently promoted “solutions”…solutions that make the real problems worse.

We have violence and guns and anger. The solution is to shun violence and guns and anger. But instead, those who make the rules tend to loosen regulation of guns, encourage proliferation of guns, accelerate the arms race on our streets.

Those of us who are caring and who are reasonable and who recognize the dangers say nothing. We know we do not make the rules, and that we will be ignored. We fear being ridiculed. Or shot.

Sometimes we pay attention. When a famous person is shot. Or children are shot. Or when someone kills many people. We paid attention when the Kennedys were shot, when Martin Luther King was shot, when Reagan was shot. We paid attention recently when a Congresswoman and a child and others were shot.

And then we did nothing. And it happens again, and again, each time with more deadly weapons, with larger body counts. We ignore most of the 100,000 fellow citizens who are shot each year.

We do the same in the larger world as we do in our own cities and communities. We talk of peace, but wage war. The case for the wars, like the case for the arms race in our streets, are ridiculous and deadly. Most of us realize that.

But, we don’t see the 100,000 Americans shot every year. We don’t see the soldiers who are shot. We don’t see the returning coffins. We don’t see the shattered lives, the shattered families. We don’t see the victims of our wars. We seem to think that it’s better for us to kill people than to allow others to kill them. We need to stop the killing. And if we can’t do that, we need to stop contributing to the slaughter.

But we don’t. We feel helpless. We listen to the rage of those who are promoting violence, promoting guns, promoting wars. And we remain silent.

The violence is the fault of those who commit it, and of those who enable the people who commit it, and of those who encourage it. But we are complicit in our silence.

Let’s do our part, however small. Renounce violence and tell those who champion it that violence is wrong and we oppose it, and we oppose the policies that create violence and we will continue to oppose it even if you ignore us, or ridicule us. People who have guns, who need guns, who love guns, do so because they are afraid. They are often afraid of imaginary threats. They are sincere. They are not stupid, but they are wrong.

We must stop the violence, but never deny the humanity of those who promote guns and war and violence, whatever their flaws. Their guns, they believe, will protect them against what they fear. They are wrong, deadly wrong.

But, we are all flawed. We should all be able to live without harming each other. Death will take us all in time. No need to hurry it.