Two Hundred Twenty-three years ago we here in the (mostly) United States of America decided to set out on our own as a Nation rather than a collection of colonies. Some years we did better than others, This is not one of those years. But we are still a strong nation, the only Superpower left in the world. How much longer that will last is unsure at this moment, as what made us a superpower was our manufacturing might, which we have now outsourced to China. We are slowly, and in ways not so slowly, turning into a third-world nation economically with a small caste of very rich and a large underclass, with a thin middle class separating them.
You might ask why a witch on a bicycle would be writing about economics on the day we celebrate our birth as a nation. The answer is simple, just as all politics is local, all things revolve around economics. What can be done is a reflection on what can be paid for, whatever the currency required. The West won the Cold War by destroying the economy of the Soviet Union, we created more war materiel than the USSR without destroying the civilian economy because our economy was more efficient than the Soviet’s. And now we are facing an even greater foe, Greed. The very rich are not satisfied with 80% of the wealth (some of them, enough to make it a problem). They want all of it, not just the biggest piece but the whole pie. And rather than share they would let the pie be destroyed completely. They don’t see that by sharing they can have more than trying to keep the whole thing for themselves, that by paying more to their employees and by treating their employees as partners rather than enemies they can get a smaller share of a much larger pie and still get more pie.
Me? All I want is a place to stay, enough to eat, and a safe place to ride my bike.
PSA, Opus
Happy 4th of July! Now go watch some fireworks.
