Category Archives: food stamps

The Age of Survival Economics

Leave a reply

Survival economics have been in existence since life began on Earth. The primary instinct of all life on Earth, be it plant or animal, is survival, and perpetuation of its own kind. Mankind has been no exception.

With the discovery of the New World, the Colonial powers of the West extracted immense wealth from the rest of the World. New settlements and new countries were founded. The new countries rose to immense prominence such as the US, and others such as Brazil, Argentina, Canada, Australia, etc. to lesser prominence. They prospered and grew, along with the US, as the Lands of Opportunity. Nobody, but nobody could equal the growth, the innovation, the power, and the wealth of the US. The dollar became the Reserve and Official currency of the World in 1944, and was proclaimed as such in Bretton-Woods, New Hampshire, USA. All the world’s debt and trade was denominated in US dollars. The dollar was convertible to gold at 35 dollars an ounce. The US became the master of the world. The only country that would not buckle was the war damaged USSR. The Cold War was instituted to destroy USSR. The Soviet Union collapsed in 1989 through it own internal decay and weakness. The End of History was proclaimed and Western Liberal Ideas were proclaimed as supreme and immutable like the Laws of Nature.

But it was not to be so. Man made concepts cannot be compared to the Laws of Nature. Economic systems are concocted to serve the economic interests of the ruling elite. Laws and ideas are created to brainwash the masses. Eventually, the system starts breaking down and no laws or recycled ideas can save it. We are at such a period now.

Despite denials, the world is in recession. Actually, some areas of the world are in depression. Wages have stagnated, especially in the EU, Canada, and the US. Jobs created in the US are low wage and part time. Attempts to stimulate the economy through quantitative easing have not worked. SNAP {food stamps} have been expanded to help the poor. Under President Obama, the SNAP program has expanded from twenty three million in 2008 to nearly forty five million in 2016. The food program is a double edged sword. It keeps the poor from starvation but it entices them to buy junk food and drinks which leads to obesity and ill health. They buy processed food because it is cheap. At the same time, the SNAP program is a huge subsidy for giant Agri business, food processors, and giant food chains.

There can be no recovery because the US is suffering from negative energy flow which is reflected in the growth of debt, individual, corporate, and governmental at all levels. Wages are stagnating. Whatever positive energy there is, goes mostly to one percent of the population, the ownership class. Some energy goes to around five percent of the population, the overseer class. The overseer class faithfully serves the ownership class, and some members are abundantly rewarded. The Precariat Class which is around ninety percent of the population gets very little, if any, of the positive energy flow. The Precariat Class has some positive energy flow in the form SNAP, etc, which is a form of subsidy to giant corporations.

In the end, everything flows to the ownership class. Tax cuts, deregulation, and infrastructure renewal will not help because it will be based on more debt. Survival Economics is already the Modus Vivendi for the Precariat Class. Massive violence in society could be next.

The new economic Black Death

Leave a reply

The Black Plague, also known as the Black Death, took place in Europe from 1346 to 1353. In a span of seven years almost half the population of Europe was dead. Anywhere from 75 to 200 hundred million people died. It was the most horrible experience since the Fall of the Roman Empire in 476 AD. It was caused by a bacteria, Yersenia Pestis, aka, Pasteurella Pestis. It originated somewhere in China or Central Asia, and via the Black Sea trade entered Europe. The agent of transmission or vector was a rat aboard the trading ships. The population of Europe was estimated at around 250 to 350 million, and the population of the whole, known world was around one billion people. The Western Hemisphere was not known or had been discovered yet. Christopher Columbus discovered the New World in 1492.

In 2016, mankind ( with a world population of over 7 billion people) is facing another Black Death, caused not by bacteria but by human evil. There is no economic recovery in the West, and there will be no recovery until the West restructures totally and completely by embracing  a new system that will cherish life and the environment of the earth.

The economic system of the West, the new Neo-liberalism, has entered a phase of exhaustion from which there is no escape. The reason for the exhaustion is the immense debt which can no longer be sustained. There are several components to this world debt that must be explained.In 1944, the dollar became the official currency of the world as decreed by the Anglo-American Powers. All of the world’s trade would be done in dollars, and, the dollar would be the reserve currency of the world. The US became, in effect, the ruler of the world. The only country who opposed this arrangement was the USSR. That same year, Winston Churchill suggested,                “Operation Unthinkable”, the plan that Anglo-Americans join with Germans in fighting the Russians. The Cold War was in full swing. The official proclamation of Cold War was announced by Churchill in Fulton Head, Missouri in 1947.

The West, aka, the Anglo-American countries, realized that debt could be used as an instrument of power in re-enslaving the newly independent countries of Africa and Asia, by lending them money for so called “development.” The already independent Latin American countries were subjected to the same treatment with similar results, as were the Eastern European countries.

Domestically speaking, Americans were encouraged to go into debt. The reason for this was the fear that the slack in demand would lead into another “Great Depression”, and that was no,no policy in a time of “Cold War.” Wasteful consumption and debt was encouraged. Credit cards were created to increase consumption and debt. Economists glorified debt as good. Debt was no problem, the Americans were told, “after all we owe it to ourselves.”

Debt can be considered “safe and useful” in an economy that is growing, if wages and jobs are also rising. People feel good and secure. Buying houses on a mortgage is a sound economic policy. Also, in a prosperous economy, the crime rate decreases.

Internationally speaking, no effort is spared to indebt as much of the world as possible in dollars. The dollar indebtedness is the “Carte Blanche” for giant Western corporations to exploit the Third World. This situation enhances the power of the West and enslaves the rest.

The largest corporations are moving factories to the Third World because of the very cheap labor, and the cheap products are re-exported to the entire world at immense profits. By this policy, the US has de-industrialized itself, but enriched the trans-national corporations. This was the Age of Globalization which was pushed on the rest of the world. The World Trade Organization was established, which is above the law of each individual member country, as is the City of London above the British law, and the Federal Reserve Bank of the US, a private bank, is above the US laws. The trans-national corporations are modelled after the Dutch East India Company and the British East India Company. These two companies controlled the world trade in slavery, spices, and the opium trade with China. They were progenitors of modern globalization. Nothing has changed in the last five hundred years except technology and the intensity of plunder and exploitation.

The Third World is already in maximum debt and depression where the poor are already dying and the anger is growing. Third World countries are trying to pay the interest on their debt, and some are trying to pay the debt off, so commodities are cheap and the dollar is strong.

Domestically speaking, the West is suffering from lack of consumption, because the vast majority of people are barely making enough to survive. Unemployment rates of the European Union and the US are sky high. According to John Williams of Shadow Stats, the unemployment rate is 23 percent in the US, and the work force participation of 62.8 percent has been the lowest in years. The number of people out of the labor force who can and want to work is around 95,000,000. The number of people on food stamps is around 47,000,000. The velocity of money has collapsed which implies that people have no money to spend. Pay Day Loans with monthly interest rates of 20 percent or more are increasing. One should not wonder why crime, prostitution, and drug use are increasing. ( Incidentally, the Baltic Dry Index is decreasing, which is a sign of collapsing world trade.)

The economic system of the West and the World has entered the phase of exhaustion, and nothing can save it. The ruling elite of the West thinks that a massive war with Russia or China, even nuclear war, will save the system, but nothing will. There will be collapse of the monetary system based on usury, and those responsible will be punished. Hunger, starvation, and deprivation is on the horizon. Violent revolution is inevitable, and nuclear war cannot be excluded. Only time will tell.