Plan C

As we ever more desperately scrape the bottom of the peanut butter jar we must acknowledge that the last few years have taught us that encouraging economic revival has proved extremely difficult. Plan A (A for Anemic Accommodation?) has obviously gotten us nowhere.

Hundreds of Plan Bs have been suggested and a few tried, with President Obama proposing yet another one, Plan Barack, to Congress and the nation. But no matter how many Plan Bs are proposed or even successfully implemented – which is highly unlikely in the current climate of bald men fighting over a comb – the underlying economic problem will continue far into the future – for no matter what Americans do Asians can do just as well and cheaper. And what possible help is it if Americans are, in fact, better innovators, if Asians can steal patents as well as patenters - for now they are even stealing the very best jobs from those very best minds we brag about having?

Here in tiny Denmark electrical and computer engineers are losing their jobs by the hundreds as their jobs are being farmed out to Asians. A good education, a highly skilled technical education, is now by no means a guarantee of a job or a comfortable life in the West. Chemists, metallurgists, computer programmers, engineers, aircraft, car and windmill designers are all now joining the ranks of the unemployed in America and Europe.

The hideous choice the Western world faces is to either accept lowering our standards of living to that of the third world, with the accompanying total lack of unions, job security, health care, decent pensions, pollution and job safety controls etc – or to bravely resort to perhaps the only thing that will work – Plan C.

Before we discuss Plan C let us acknowledge that the globalization of business has helped bring countless millions out of abject poverty and possibly mass starvation in the East. Never have so many people risen from below the poverty line so quickly. A miracle unmatched in human history is occurring. Yes, many would also point out that what Asians have risen to is also a life of factory slavery where they are treated as less valuable than the machines they man.

Be that as it may, a bad job is better than no job, just as bad food is better than no food. But while the East rapidly changes for the better – at least as far as employment is concerned - the West is collapsing just as fast. The West can now offer the world nothing that East cannot produce cheaper – and soon even better? But as for now, what good does it do the West monetarily if our faltering innovations can be so easily stolen and replicated? And perhaps more importantly, what real good does cash-rich Apple mean to America and not just to Apple's shareholders, if all of Apple's products are made in China? Pride of inventive accomplishment puts food on only a few tables.

Perhaps the only thing that can save jobs and ensure a decent standard of living, not only in the West, but in other non-Asian areas of the world, is Plan C.

C in short stands for Cure, for Containment, for Continents and for Container ships.

Although it may seem like biting the hand that literally feeds me, I must mention here that the biggest container shipping company in the world (..or second biggest.. the ratings change..) is the Danish Maersk line (which also owns Denmark's biggest super market chains.)

Although this company is the pride of Denmark, its pale blue ships crowding every major harbor of the world, the line is working hand in hand with Walmart to destroy every decent job in America and the West.

Can anything be done? Yes, something that is as effective as it is unpalatable and unlikely to be implemented. Yet it is the only thing that might work.

Plan C calls for the containment of container shipping and the containment of continents. If the world were to initiate, let us say, in ten years time, a system where the only shipment of goods allowed between continents is raw materials.. if factory-made products are confined to their own continent, each corner of the world would be left to develop in an equal way. Why shouldn't the residents of South America build their own TVs, computers, cars, plastic sandals? Why shouldn't the Africans, the Europeans?

By stopping all manufactured trade between continents we ensure that the best minds do not fear the loss of their jobs, nor will one area of the world become solely dominant both politically as well as economically.

The East now knows how to grow and prosper, so a quarantine will not permanently derail progress and growth. They have enough citizens to satisfy demand for their products.

Plan C's call for the end of container shipping between continents is the only option and alternative available to the loss of jobs to an area of the world where workers toil in sweat shops for pennies, and force us to pinch our own.

Finally, a containment of container shipping would save the world millions of barrels of oil burned and wasted by these highly polluting ships – and as we commemorate 9/11 – possibly decrease somewhat the risk of terrorist madmen smuggling nuclear bombs to our shores in a container.

What is so hare-brained about a scheme that would save millions of jobs, promote equal and balanced economic as well as political world development, save enormous amounts of oil, as well as cut back drastically on air pollution?

Plan C is unlikely to ever be implemented. But not because it wouldn't work.

The Greatest Inventions

Most people, if asked to name the two greatest inventions in human history would no doubt point to fire and the wheel.

I wouldn't.

To me the two greatest are obvious – money and taxation.

Money, most of us would agree, is something both convenient and essential. Money eliminates the necessity of paying the dentist with live poultry or hookers with nuts and berries.

The invention of money has led to the establishment of trust between strangers. You and I both believe the green piece of paper has more or less the same value to us, so when I hand a stack of them to you, you happily accept them and hand me the iPad I don't really need from the trunk of your car. And we both walk away happy, me however briefly.

Capitalism and credit are based on trust between strangers, something that never occurred in the millions of years of pre-human history. They are the sign of the ultimate optimism.

But what about taxation, the annoyed reader asks between clenched teeth?

Let us take a brief look back in time, using British history as an example:

Three hundred years ago in Britain there were more than 30 different crimes punishable by death – everything from pick-pocketing to poaching the King's deer (..all the deer were the King's deer.)

Why did the Brits back then execute so many people for what we would regard today as minor crimes? Were they crueler and more sadistic than Newt or Rush today?

No. It was because they had no prison system. Why did they have no prison system? Because they couldn't collect enough taxes to establish one. Why couldn't they collect etc ect?

Because the vast majority of people had no money, only chickens – and the wealthy aristocrats wouldn't cough up money but would instead arm their reluctant serfs and send them out to fight the King's wars in place of taxes. Kings had dungeons to hold their well-off and ransom-paying hostages, but they never housed or fed poor prisoners. There were too many of them.. and so the chopping block.

But once capitalism kicked in, trade and the middle class increased, so did taxation. And so prisons and schools (same thing?) and hospitals, police and fire departments were established. Taxation made civilization possible. It paid for the disposal of waste, the more successful fighting of wars, eventually the protection of the environment, minorities, free thought and free speech.

In doubt? The Danes, for example, are known to be the heaviest taxed people in the world, with income taxes averaging 46% and sales tax at 25%. New cars have a 200% tax. Yet poll after poll taken by outside observers have shown the Danes to be the happiest people on Earth?

Why the happiness despite the massive taxation?

Because the 5 million Danes, by pooling their money have bought themselves an army, a navy, an air force, free schools, universities and medical care, pensions for all and housing for the homeless.

Danes are happy and proud because they know they live in a decent society where no one will be left to starve or die for the sole reason they have no money.

Look at any map and you'll see that the countries who tax the most have the most advanced societies. Afghanistan takes in little tax money and suffers, and the Greeks are experts at avoiding the tax man, which has brought their country to near-collapse.

Can taxation get out of hand? Of course. One only has to look at a communist country like North Korea where everyone works for the state, the ultimate taxation, and surpluses are never produced or true incentives allowed.

But a look at Scandinavia will show many things, all signs of truly civilized thinking: high taxation, extremely low church attendance and superstitious beliefs, the greatest degree of free thinking, free speech, and free personal behavior – as well as strong and responsible capitalism and extremely low political and financial corruption.

And all proving that an effective system of taxation and a wise use of taxes leads to the building of strong and free societies..

Paradoxically, Right Wingers not only want to keep your taxes low, they want to make sure you get nothing of real value from your tax dollars. Their gift to us is the freedom to go to hell all by your lonesome.

Us Bleeding Heart Liberals

I'm going to attempt the nearly impossible. I'm going to try to analyze only the flaws and foibles of my peer group, without any regard to our opposite numbers – that is to say I won't be balancing and justifying by saying “..right, okay, but the Right is even worse.”

First of all, I call myself a bleeding heart liberal for several reasons, one of them, of course, being I wish to seem modest and self-effacing – but also because I do recognize many of the sillier thought processes and motivations of people like myself. We are, admittedly, often all too smug, prejudiced, naive and lazy in our thinking.

For example:

Many of us BHLs believe that, if not a majority, than at least a large minority of rich people acquired their wealth by underhanded methods. They cheated, exploited. “You must be mean and devious in order to make much money in life,” is our assumption.

Sadly we don't seem to realize that few people would be in business long enough to acquire much success if they were deceiving their business associates or treading on their employees to any great degree or for any major length of time. In other words you can't run a business for very long if trust is often broken. We BHLs tend to point to the Ken Lays and Bernie Madoffs of the world, as if they were the norm and the honest businessman was as rare and as charming as Jimmy Stewart running his tiny ah-shucks no-interest lending bank.

And mega-successes like Bill Gates tend to confuse us. On one hand, while Microsoft has often been accused of devious and predatory business practices, Bill seems to have redeemed himself in our eyes by his generosity, much in the way Carnegie and Rockefeller gave back most of what they earned-extracted-filched. Just as St Augustine once famously said, “Dear Lord, make me good.. but not yet..” many of our towering business figures seem to go through the same transition – when they were simple millionaires they hated paying taxes – but now that they are multi-billionaires, like Gates and Buffet, taxes are less than gnats buzzing in the room and they encourage raising them.

Another unfortunate tendency on our part is to casually dismiss the complaints of business people.

We either don't believe or don't care if business people are burdened with government bureaucracy or senseless regulations. We by and large trust the government to enact mainly sensible and beneficial policies, when it comes to others – especially the well off. When the government regulates us we find it oppressive.

Another example of we BHL's faulty thinking is the blind assumption that few if any poor people are lazy, parasitic, self-indulgent, bad parents and/or violent or awful citizens. This insistence on our parts that those living in poverty are somehow noble and pure, untainted by greed or covetousness, is surely a sign of wishful thinking on our parts and nearly to the point of established liberal dogma.

BHLs of 19^th century England and America looked at the poor and shuddered. The BHLs wanted to transform the lives of the poor precisely because the poor were all too often criminal, self-destructive and dangerous. Today we tend to say they are simply misunderstood or the hapless victims of circumstance, and we also tend to forget that predatory behavior may be more common amongst the poor than the well off. To paraphrase a wise Frenchman (yes, they exist) “..a wealthy man has no need to knock over gas stations nor break the law by sleeping under bridges..” - an observation we BHLs soothe ourselves with. And we tend to too quickly disregard the pain and suffering caused by predators from the underclasses.

We BHLs also regard any skin color other than white as a sign of primitive nobility, Blacks and browns to us have soul ..and yellows have mystic wisdom. White people are bland, heartless and soulless.

We BHLs also tend to mock white Christian fundamentalists while excusing black.. but only because we like the joy, exuberance and music of black churches? If you syncopate your superstition it makes it much better, we seem to say.

As for sexual relations, we BHLs also tend to increasingly shun the claustrophobic links of matrimony while wishing them on our gay and lesbian population. Hypocrisy? Not exactly, more the willingness to say, “You have the right to be as miserable as the rest of us who've voluntarily committed ourselves to a protective(?) institution.”

We BHL's also tend to over-look the fact that much gay public behavior is seemingly endless examples of loud, trite, repetitive and garish exhibitionism, originally done as understandable pride and defiance ..but now something akin to the self-aggrandizing boasting of bling-encrusted rappers.

We BHLs have also decried the loss of factory jobs to Asia and Mexico for years despite the fact that we have been in the forefront of mocking and rejecting American products, preferring foreign cars, foreign coffee, clothes, electronics, films etc.

While we BHLs are internationalists and hate hearing the French referred to as being rude and cowardly, the Germans as humorless, the Italians as corrupt.. and so on and so on.. we seem to have no problem condemning all Republicans as stiff and selfish or all Mormons as mad as hatters. (Prejudice, unfortunately, is a part of life, as it saves us time.)

As for America's place among nations we BHLs have never met a war we liked – except for the war against Hitler, as Hollywood could never in its wildest imagination come up with a comic book hero so vile and colorful. Those Darth Vader-like costumes clearly told the world, “We're the bad guys!” Fighting Hitler gained our approval, while the so-called cold war seemed silly to us and a waste of trillions of dollars. “Ike should have sat down with Nikita and finished that vodka bottle until they were singing in harmony together,” would have been our naive hope at the time.

(To be fair to us BHLs we had enough sense to favor fighting the North Koreans in the Korean war but opposed the fighting of the North Vietnamese. Proof of our wisdom can be found in examining Viet Nam today. Although the government is stiff and oppressive about some things, no one is starving and capitalism flourishes. Napalm helped no one 40 years ago.)

BHLs are often wrong or at least wishful thinkers on economic issues – but to no greater degree than conservatives, as has become abundantly apparent.

Finally, as Churchill said of Democracy, “It's the worse system, except for all the others,” when progressive liberalism is wrong its usually wrong for the right reasons. When cold and clinical conservatism is wrong it's usually wrong out of spite. (Okay, I couldn't resist comparisons and I succumbed to the desire to justify.. but didn't I manage to stick it out for a praiseworthy length of time?)