The Job Creator Argument

Sorry it’s been a while since I’ve blogged. Frankly the state of the world is a bit much for me to handle without having a neurological meltdown.

But I have to address the “Job Creator” mythology.

It is absolutely true that when people have money they create jobs. They hire accountants, gardeners, child care providers, employees to help with their companies. In the late 1980s after the Reagan years (the man who perpetuated the myth of the ubber rich as “job creators”) one percent of the population controlled 90% of the world’s wealth.

After the 1990s, more specifically by 2001 (before George Jr could completely unleash his plan to  finish off the American Dream)  10% of the population in the US controlled 71% of the wealth here. Now that’s still not that awesome, but as we all know during the 1990s there were more millionaires in the US than ever before and chains that started during this period (like Starbucks) were forced to give employees a living wage and excellent benefits to entice people to work for them. The economy was healthy and the US debt was set to not only be paid off but there was to be a surplus which would have gone a long way to save Social Security and other much-needed social programs – that is before George Jr. decided to murder hundreds of thousands of Iraqis (both civilians and soldiers but we’d prefer not to think about all the innocents who died so they aren’t even counted in our stats) and thousands of American soldiers, for what amounts to some personal vendetta against Saddam Hussain under the cover of fear that 9/11 provided. And of course his half-hearted attempt to find Osama Bin Laden which he later said after thousands died, he didn’t spend much time thinking about.

We are in this financial mess because of these horrendous wars as well as deregulation of multinational corporations. We can put some blame on Clinton for deciding the US was going to become the brains of the world and the rest of the world would be our manufacturing plant. This certainly cut off options for a great many Americans and dramatically changed corporate culture – impacting it in a very negative way.

The myth of the “Job Creators” broken down in the most base terms: You have 10 millionaires – they employe 1,000 people. You have 100,000,000 millionaires – they employee 10,000,000,000 people. It is sort of akin to a body in motion stays in motion – meaning more money circulating, enables more products to be made giving people more jobs and the opposite is also true – less money circulating through the economy makes new products harder to buy, get off the ground and become successful and therefore fewer jobs are created. The best metaphor was something I heard on NPR from an economist. He said (I’m paraphrasing here): It’s like a poker game. If all the players keep winning in equal measure then the game can be played infinitely. But if one guy keeps winning hand after hand, eventually all the players go broke and the game collapses.

This is in essence what happened to our economy.

After a certain amount of wealth money just ends up out of the circulation in the economy – take for example a guy who has 10,000,000,000.  Most of that money will inevitably sit in a bank, or in bonds or in investments because he is not able to utilize all those resources. His money will just make more passive income for him, accumulating residuals on work he is not doing. And control of this much of the world’s resources creates an imbalance that is antithetical to the tenets of DEMOCRACY. There’s a reason Republicans aren’t called Democrats. They are not of the people for the people. At this point I’m not sure anyone in our government is. It seems money, privilege and lobbyists have poisoned our system from the inside out.

The argument that the “working poor” are “lazy” and that the wealthy are productive is ass backwards. I have met innummerable people who work 16-20 hours a day seven days a week doing multiple jobs just to make ends meet for their family. Unless you count the amount of time Donald Trump talks about how awesome he is to the media, then he couldn’t possibly be working as much as those he deems”lazy.”

Check out the outrageously sociopathic and offensive interview Trump did with Piers Morgan where he states the Chinese “just work harder” (oh, yeah and they have no child labor laws or protection for workers – think Dickinson’s England) and he pines away for the Chinese ability to “not have to get permits” for anything. He is a disgusting man and about as sick as it gets considering Climate Change, and the fact that more than half the US population lives in poverty despite the fact that many of these people have two people both working full time and often more than 40 hours a week. Trump also endorsed Michelle Bachman who I actually was working on a post about. I’m going to deconstruct her chart. I think someone must have put LSD in Trump’s hair spray. He’s beyond out of touch with reality.

Pray that the meek truly do inherit the earth because the wicked are fighting for control right now. May those without conscious live in the hell they are creating for the rest of us who care about our fellow beings and have empathy for others.

Many blessings to the good people of this world,

Denise

Gen-X as a Uranus/Pluto Metaphor…

Thomas Paine was quoted as saying, “People are more like their generation than they are like their family.” He would say that being an Aquarian. Astrologers have often undermined the importance of the outer planets in astrology but I have found them to be amazingly important in the psychology, physiology and general fate of those born under the influences of generational planets. I’ve even seen physical traits that seem to defy logic among generations. There is a certain look to those with Pluto in Leo, Neptune in Libra (the Boomers) and to those who came before them. And certainly every subsequent generation. It’s not just the way they dress, it’s the way they carry themselves and even their features seem often to reflect a subtle hint of the outer planets influence.

In the 1960s just the transiting conjunction of Uranus and Pluto was enough to cause the sexual revolution, war and the vehement anti-war movement, civil unrest and the health food movement (the transit planets were both in Virgo) and also the decline in wages leading to the death of the American dream. It  also coincided with a huge drop in the population (due to the advent of the pill and other things). Those who are commonly referred to Gen-X’ers are the smallest in number around the world.

My definition of Gen-X is astrological and goes from about 1956/57 until 1969/1970. These people have in common Neptune in Scorpio (thus the obsession with the occult, often unusual sexual proclivities and all things hidden, secret or occult) and Pluto in Virgo which brings with it a desire to be of service, interest in health, healthy living, alternative medicine, natural foods, and unfortunately also brought us lower wages on the whole, and perpetual financial problems. Many of us have had to change careers many times over (Virgo is a mutable sign ruled by Mercury) which has made it imperative to change in order to survive.

The super ultra extra generation X-ers are those born with Uranus in Virgo conjunct Pluto in Virgo. That configuration started around 1962 and ended around 1968. These people are rebellious by nature, challenging, bright and often visionary. Kurt Cobain was born 2 weeks after me the same year, we shared a grand water trine, Uranus and Pluto conjunction in Virgo making a kite off of it. He however was not as lucky as I. He had far too many planets in water. My husband reminded me that I once looked at his chart and said it looked like he was an elemental. And indeed the poor guy had no fire (like me) but was deluged by water. He had twice the water I do and no air to distance himself from his emotions. Anyone who had that chart would eventually kill themselves, he was just too sensitive and too emotional. Life was pain for him. Many of the most innovative musical artists (popular in the 1990s) had this configuration as this configuration often shakes up things. And for sure this group shook the music industry to its core, it still hasn’t recovered but that’s another story… if only they would have embraced the Pluto energy, the change and the Uranian innovation they would have figured out what Itunes did and they would be flourishing like never before but instead they resisted, trying to be conservative and killed what people loved about the art and destroyed their own business in the process by resisting new technology. Often people with Uranus/Pluto conjunct will enter into a situation right before it’s about to implode or explode and become a catalyst for this change. And of course the more the person resonates the energy of that configuration the greater their effect is on those around them.

Obama is on the outskirts of the Gen-X’er generation. He doesn’t have the radical idealism embodied by those born between 1962 and 1969. He has the practical idealism of Pluto in Virgo. He believes he can work things out rationally. However he fails to see that while one would hope the world capable of rational thought and measured intelligence, as George Bush showed us, this is not always in the genes or the generation. Pluto in Leo people (who make up the vast majority of politicians) are very emotional almost vitriolic and/or zealot-like about their ideology, of course until it changes and then they intensely defend their new world view with the same passion often using their old life as an example of why their new life is so right on. I could name a thousand celebrity examples of this, but the first one that pops to mind is “Dr.” Laura Schelssinger (she’s not actually psychologist as many assume she actually has a degree in physiology which would make her qualified to be a coach, PE professor/teacher or give her good background to be a physical therapist: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Schlessinger .) All that aside, she rails on about the evils of divorce, oh yeah, she’s is a divorcee’, about the evils of adulterous affairs, that too she is supposedly guilty of and a host of other things which she vehemently chastises her callers for admitting without ever showing her own vulnerability. This quality in various forms can be seen in the Pluto in Leo generation often to good effect. They can throw themselves into things and truly effect change like nobodies business because they believe so strongly in their ideas and the Leo pride and arrogance allows them to do so without question. However the Achilles heel (for those who live in the shadow side like Dr. Laura) is intense, disgusting and ridiculous hypocrisy like George W. spending his life as the poster boy for cocaine and the party lifestyle and then doing a 180 a few years before he decides he wants to get into politics. Very convenient for him to have found God.

Well, enough ragging on the negative sides of that generation. There are a lot of people, the vast majority of the population that fall under this configuration, and for sure there are many great people and many who have used the bravery and sureness of Pluto in Leo to do amazing things. It’s just those few wankers who ruin it. But of course there are always wankers in every generation.

The Generation Y’ers are still coming into their own. Unfortunately, the Neptune in Sagittarius and Pluto in Libra combination is a hard one for personal (marriage type) relationships. Neptune in Sag wants to explore, go crazy, party, see the world, drink and generally over indulge and Pluto (which as I’ve stated is powerful transformative energy) wants to destroy, and the sign it’s in, Libra makes the aim partnerships, marriage, legal matters, injustice. On the good side of this, this generation has many strong activists for social change, those who are committed to changing the laws to make life equal for all (both Sag and Libra have legal implications.) On the negative side there is the Paris Hilton’s of this generation, who exemplifies the shadow side of this group of people.

The dark side of Gen-X is the extreme desire to be individual and the almost pathological need to be considered unique so much so that one is hard pressed to get someone in that generation to admit being part of a generation, which of course is absurd. I think many out grew this as they got older and reluctantly, and with much resentment, realized they were actually part of a group that could be “marketed to.” Other problems that I’ve seen among my peers are a feeling of hopelessness + powerlessness = apathy which is partially due to so much Virgo in Gen-X charts. Virgos have a tendency to feel small and of little value. We are the first generation to grow up mostly in single parent households (due to 50% divorce rates among our parents generation), having to adapt to radical changes in the roles of women and men. And the first generation to do worse than our parents generation did. We have often felt like outcasts and freaks, partially due to the inner turmoil between our conservative nature (we can be weirdly prudish and old-fashioned the Uranus/Pluto in Virgo) in opposition to the desire to wreak havoc (hence the Punk rock or Alternative music revolution embraced and continued by Pluto in Virgo). We want to shake things up and alternatively go forward at the same time, actually the music, literature and aesthetics of Steampunk pretty much sum up the conflicting weirdness of Gen-X people.

I focus a lot on Gen-X because not many astrologers have since we are a minor group, and difficult to understand from the outside in. We are the invisible children of the Me generation, the shadowed group that never really got a foothold as the Boomers extended their time in the work place, the group of kids left to raise themselves, fend for themselves in the face of declining jobs (since 1967) and many of us came into the career market as the first George Bush recession hit in the early 90s. Believe me I don’t think we have it the worst. We were and are a hallmark generation, the first truly modern generation bridging the gap between an America that protected its citizens from greedy corporations and stood on the side of labor, and equality and the wealthy pluto/corporatocracy we have now. We were just the first generation of people to go backwards – the beginning of the empire’s unraveling, back toward the standards of people who we were taught as children only existed in developing nations. By this I mean a health care system ranked 37th in the world below many developing nations. We are one step closer to indentured servitude and slavery each year as jobs continue to go overseas where labor is virtually free and we learn to live on the sort of money that seemed impossible 20 years ago to the Pluto in Leo generation. I know many people in their late 30s to mid 40s who are living off of about $600 a month in impossible places like the Bay Area. They live in abject poverty and can only pray they don’t get sick since they can’t afford care and apply to every job remotely related to anything they’ve done to no avail.

Let’s face it this is not a recession. It’s a depression. According to the most recent statistics 1 in 5 people is unemployed. That is 20% of the population, it was 25% during the Great Depression. Health care reform is not only imperative (and a moral obligation)  but so is throwing lobbyists out of Washington and actually  holding corporations to the same laws that we as human beings have to abide by.

Best wishes and happy holidays,

Denise

In Memory of Duane Jarvis & Our Broken Health Care System

On April 1^st we learned a 51 year old friend, Duane Jarvis, died of colon cancer. I knew him for years before his girlfriend told me he had a terrible, painful case of scoliosis and had spent much of his life in bad health and in pain. Yet, he was a gentle and sweet spirit who relished life and took every opportunity to be and do what his heart dictated. About eighteen months ago he was diagnosed with colon cancer. We found this out because his ex-wife in an effort to help him sent out e-mails to all his friends to help him with his mounting medical bills.

Now this man was no slouch. He worked all his life as a professional musician. But of course being a musician is not like working at Starbucks, there are no 401k plans with health and dental added. Yet, he contributed to the lineage of art so many of us love. He was Lucinda Williams guitar player and co-wrote some songs with her, played with Frank Black, Dwight Yoakam, Dave Alvin, John Prine, Michelle Shocked and many more. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/music_blog/2009/03/duane-jarvis-in.html  http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/music_blog/2009/04/duane-jarvis-dies-at-51-la-roots-music-singersongwriter-and-guitarist.html  One could say he made his mark in the music world and on all who knew him. Yet because the life of an artist is feast or famine, up, down and a hustle, he did not have adequate health care. And I’m sure with his medical history even if he wanted to purchase it, it would have been out of his ability to pay for it.

His friends pitched in to help save his life. But he lost his battle at 1:30 in the morning at a hospice with an ocean view, with a smile on his face. He never complained about his pain, his disease or his troubles.

Not only was this poor man fighting a horrible, painful, aggressive form of cancer, he had to worry about the financial cost to him and the loved ones he knew he would leave behind. It has been proven that cancer is made worse by stress and chances are good that if he had good medical care to begin with his colon cancer never would have gotten so out of control, claiming his life at the early age of 51.

For all out there who still believe each one of us should think only of ourselves, and not come together as a nation and take care of each other through a universal healthcare system, I ask do you listen to music? Do you read books, enjoy art, read magazines, watch movies or enjoy any form of art as a release, a way to wind down to reflect on your life in a different way? If you answered yes to any of those questions, then I’d like to burst your illusion that those in the arts, even the people you on the outside would deem successful, have the financial stability to pay for their healthcare. Yet we all enjoy the fruits of their work. Art attunes us with our soul, the universe, God, our spirit and each other. It aides compassion, encourages self-reflection and produces self-discovery. It is actually one of the only things we as Americans still make and export. Yet for more than 90% of professional artists of all kinds there is no safety net in this country (unlike other democratic, civilized places.)

Republicans will belly ache about personal responsibility, yet it costs more for us to foot the bill for radical treatment that could have been avoided due to prevention then footing the bill for radical treatment when someone cannot afford their care. And is it fair that after years of giving to the world these individuals and their families should be punished with outrageous bills because they don’t work for a corporation that gives them health insurance?

Our health care system is absurd. There is no reason corporations should pay for our health care and there is no reason people who are self-employed, whether in the arts or otherwise, should be punished with outrageous costs they often opt to avoid.

More than half of all Americans walk this tight rope every day, hoping and praying they don’t get sick because they can’t afford a trip to the doctor’s office let alone several hundred dollars a month to an insurance company who will then, often fight to make sure they pay as little as possible.

Our country has the highest infant mortality rate of any industrialized nations. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2091rank.html

And our life expectancy is at #50 of all countries in the world, ranking well below all western European countries, Canada, Hong Kong, South Korea and Bosnia for God’s sake.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2102rank.html

How could it possibly be that we are the wealthiest country in the world and yet we let ten percent of our population control about 70 percent of the wealth? How can anyone who is not in that top echelon actually abide this? Why is it that any rational human being who works and pays taxes is not absolutely outraged by this? And how is it that the Republicans have managed to sell us on the idea that our system is fine?

Oh, yeah, the amplified fear of communism (aka more aptly dictatorship) which is actually just faked for the benefit of those who don’t understand why there would literally have to be a civil war in our country for a dictatorship to occur although we did get just about as close as we could with the Bush administration with their tactic of not counting the votes. According to the Limbaugh’s of the world it appears going back to the tax code of 1993 which was a 36 percent tax for the wealthy 10 percent to a 3 percent increase at 39 percent is a communist plot and of course so is universal health care. Hmm, I wonder who benefits most from that position. Oh, yeah the rich like Limbaugh. So he’s basically arguing from an entirely selfish point of view but trying to sell it as some sort of great American ideal when it’s nothing but more money for his private planes, which by the way he has, I know someone who was picked up and taken to his mansion in Florida by one of them. (Yes, I do have all kinds of friends.)

As I pointed out in an earlier post, communism is not the same as democratic socialism. In communist countries where they took Marx & Lennon’s ideas and ran with them they all ultimately turned into dictatorships because there was no accountability written into their ideology. The notion that a group of people would take everyone’s stuff and then divide it up among all the people evenly is insane and of course was an open invitation for graft, power hungry dictators, and greedy buerocrats. This was beyond psychologically naive, it was ideologically irrational, unsound and irresponsible. No checks and balances, no elections, hell, with all of Marx’s good intentions of lifting up the poor, he may as well have slapped a “rape the people of this country here” sticker on whatever flag adopted those ideas.

As out of whack as the US has gotten with capitalism swallowing our Democracy through corporate lobbyists and special tax laws and loopholes for the wealthy who could pay their way into the halls of power, we still have the power to pull back the reigns on this out of control buggy. And as a people we obviously have started yelling, “whoa!” by ousting the Republicans who have for the past 30 years aligned themselves with corporations, big money and lobbyists in a much more extreme way than Democrats. 

But Democrats have to start really pulling the reigns back before we leap off the mountain here. And let’s get real; they aren’t all that much better than Republicans. They take money from special interests, lobbyists and play all the same games. There is just a bigger percentage of people who identify with the working/middle class in the Democratic party but that’s been drifting away over the past 20 years as well. Which is why Obama was and is such a breath of fresh air. He actually seems like he has, can you believe it, IDEALS! It’s been a long time since we’ve seen that in a politician.

In my humble opinion this form of out of control corporate capitalism is at odds with Democracy at this point in our history. There are laws that need to be put into place, such as, if you are an American company, your product should have to be made in America. As a private citizen if I wanted to go live in France I couldn’t because I’m not French. I’m American. So why is it that corporations started by Americans and incorporated here, can make their crap in China, and then put an office in Guam and avoid paying American taxes? If you ask me this behavior is anti-American and one of the big dark roots of the economic disaster America is finding itself in. All that talk about how unemployment wasn’t that bad during the Bush administration was B.S. Besides changing the rules on how unemployment statistics were reported to only reporting people on the unemployment rolls in the unemployed statistics and cutting unemployment benefits back to 6 months, I hardly think working part-time at Wal-Mart for the minimum wage while being taught how to get food stamps and welfare by the corporate douche bags at Wal-Mart qualifies as the kind of good manufacturing jobs we shipped overseas. You know, the ones where people actually got paid a living wage, one they could feed and clothe their families on.

Another point I’d like to make here is the big mistake of the 1970s when women entered the work force and ERA was not passed. What people didn’t get was paying women 70 cents to the dollar a man would make for the same job drove down wages to the point where now both parents have to work in order to support a family.

It’s the very same principle Lou Dobbs complains about with the Mexicans driving down wages and taking away jobs because they are willing to work for less. Well, guess who relaxed the boarder laws for this very reason? The Reagan administration. Yes, that’s right folks. Allowing illegal people to stream across the boarders was a way to modernize indentured servitude. Again the goal was to make the rich, richer without any consideration of the other 90% of Americans. I’m in no way blaming the Mexican people who have come here in search of a better life. Our country is a hodge-podge of people from all over the world who came here for the very same reason. As a matter of fact the way the Mexican people have been exploited and then demonized is very much akin to what happened to the Irish who came here as indentured servants. Their pay was a ticket on a ship to America and they spent years as slaves until working this off only to find there was tremendous animosity for them because they were poor, and often in desperate straights.

Enough of my blabbing. I just want to point out that history repeats itself. It mutates and grows new claws, but there are patterns. Unfortunately, these facts are not pointed out or even noted for people to consider. I hope to at least try to illuminate those who have been seeing things through the lens of FOX news. By the way I want to note here that numerologicaly FOX = 666 for those who are of the Christian faith.

Here’s how that works:

1    2  3  4   5  6   7  8  9

A  B  C  D  E  F  G  H  I

J  K  L  M  N  O  P  Q  R

S  T  U  V  W  X  Y  Z

This is standard western numerology. As you can see FOX is spelled out under the number 6. Each letter has the value of 6.

I always wondered if Rupert Murdoch knew that and thought it was ironic or funny or if he saw himself as being in league with Mr. Satan. Or perhaps it’s all of the above. All I know is it’s dang ironic.

Best wishes and many blessings,

Denise