"The Koch's Nation"

We are indeed a nation of Kochs.  We live in a country that is controlled by large dollar interests.  Over ninety-three percent of our elected representatives outspent the opposing candidate in their win.  Are you one of the three million who sent a campaign contribution to Sanders of twenty-seven dollars, or so?  What did you spend on groceries, gasoline and utilities last month?  That money went to the Koch Brothers and their ilk, who legally put a small percentage of the big dollars into the election, but enough to bury your donations.  So you give a token donation to who you would like to see in office and a much larger donation to the candidate who the corporations feel will benefit their interests.  The corporate donations, to political campaigns, benefit them hundredfold, but they are rarely for your benefit.   Do you think that the Kochs like the candidates that they back?  No … they own them.

Let’s look at the bright side.  We of the Koch Nation respect wealth and success.  We aspire towards it.  We will even borrow beyond our ability to repay, to display it.  We are the nation of conspicuous consumption.  Does anyone need over 3000 square feet of home for a single family?  No … the five million dollar plus homes are bought to impress friends and acquaintances.  Often they are bought to impress total strangers.  This need is shown with the purchase of an automobile at a price of over thirty thousand dollars.  We all do that, if we can.  This is the value system that we have been raised in.  We have Faith in our values.  The people we most respect are actors and athletes.  The great ones are showered with unimaginable wealth and notoriety by our society.  They are our heroes.  Corporate leaders often do their best work in the dark.  Do you know who the CEO of General Electric, Raytheon or The American Tobacco Company is?  Even the much publicized corporate leaders, like Bill Gates or Warren Buffett, do not have the name recognition of a Michael Jordan or a Meryl Streep.

Is there a light at the end of the tunnel, which is not an oncoming train?  Well, the head of the most financially powerful church in the world, “The Church”, rides around in a Fiat and preaches that you are your brother’s keeper, not his killer or his judge.  How is that for a welcome change?  The millions of elderly members of my organization, “Curmudgeons Anonymous”, would primarily respond that the exception proves the rule.  An exception never proves a rule.  The exception proves the rule not to be universal.  An opinion has not yet been confirmed by Radicalized Agnostics.  There is hope.  The growth of the independent voter may lead to open primaries, meaningful campaign reform and an end to legal lobbyists.  Perhaps someday there may be an end to the source of legal bribery in our government … political parties.  The Koch brothers are not the problem.  They are the visible winners of our political/economic system.  They will soon die of old age, but the system will continue.  There will always be Kochs to take their place.  You have to change the political system.

Cheers, Old Buz      

"The End Days"

This is an emergency blog posting.  I read in the paper this morning that Learjet is laying off 1,700 employees.  Their market is the one percenters and they are buying fewer Learjets.  This development is akin to the parakeet of the American Nation dropping dead.  Learjet is a bellwether of the health of our CEOs’ wealth.  The decision goes something like this:  “Well, do I need a third Learjet or can I get along with two?”  It is very similar to the decision my wife and I are faced with.  We each have a car.  One is a Chevrolet Malibu, the other a Ford Taurus.  Both are over a decade old and were purchased used.  There is no public transportation in our little town, but the question is, how much will we save by sharing a vehicle and can we get along with only one?

The lower income one percenter, is faced with the decision of if he or she can afford one Learjet.  The unacceptable alternative to the Private Learjet is traveling by first class on commercial airlines.  To the person of extreme wealth, this would be like a trip to Quartzite, Arizona in a Greyhound Bus.  Learjet’s marketing and engineering people have tried to make the purchase much more rational.  Their new product, the “35A”, gets just over 2 miles per gallon while cruising.  This is termed “low fuel burn” by Lear and the unit is only sucking 197 gallons of fuel per hour.  Don’t try to tell me that the wealthy are not concerned about the planet.

To make matters worse for Learjet, Humvee is offering an alternative to this market, for ground transportation.  The new offering is called the FED or “Alpha” and is claimed to be70% more fuel efficient than the unit it replaces.  It averages an astounding 6.8 mpg.  This is over three times the Learjet's mileage.  With competition like this, it is little wonder that Learjet is having a hard time in the conspicuous consumption market.  What the Humvee lacks in fuel mileage, it more than makes up for in lack of seating capacity and lack of storage area.  This vehicle is normally purchased by a macho, very wealthy person, with a very small penis.  It compensates nicely.  The question is, when you drive by in your Humvee, why are people on the sidewalk always laughing?

The issue here is why is a lowering of the Learjet market a bellwether for “End of Days?”  Obviously, if the richest one percent has to cut back, given the trickledown theory, you and yours are done for.  With 99% of the market gone, the remaining one percent is doomed as well.  Who will hang their clothes?

(I apologize to the 1,700 who are losing their jobs for my making light of it.  But you have to admit that you serve a strange market in a strange economy.  By the way, do any of you folks being laid off own a Learjet?)

Cheers, Old Buz

A Fair Minimum Wage

It is unfortunate that we must legislate a minimum wage.  Some large corporations would rather pay their workers less.  In a better world an employer greets each employee at the door each morning, can look them in the eye and pays a wage that will provide adequate food, shelter, clothing and transportation for the employee and their family.  Anything below ten dollars per hour cannot possibly accomplish this.   For a fair wage, the employer has a right to expect an honest day’s work from the employee.  Smart employers hire good, intelligent, industrious employees, not cheap ones.  Good employees create good profits.  A major problem is that the employer is often a casino in New York named Wall Street and the players have no interest whatsoever in the employees or in the long term health of our economy.  All decisions in our present market driven economy are made for the short term maximization of profit.  But, a middle class that is doing well is very good for the top 10% of income earners.  They are called the major market and drive the economy.  Middle income earners have some discretional income to spend.  The low wage earner has little discretion over how they spend income and the top one percent earner’s spending is simply obscene.  Individual competition for higher income rather than greater results is not productive.  Our bank CEOs have recently proven that.

A more effective legislative action than a legal minimum wage would be a legal maximum wage.  According to a “trickle down” theory, this would free up billions of dollars to working Americans; and even an intelligent theory would agree.   A figure like five hundred thousand dollars per year, maximum, would supply a high income person with an excellent standard of living and a reasonable incentive to produce.  There is a misconception that the great commercial producers, athletes, artists, financiers and surgeons do what they do for the insane incomes that they receive.  Any super effective producer is primarily motivated by satisfaction earned from the fruits of their efforts and yes, those who benefit the society deserve to be well compensated.  The need to have the highest income in one’s sport or their field will never be satisfied.  You would probably opt to add great educators to the well paid.  We live in a strange values society that pays the president of a top notch university several times less than it pays the university’s football coach.  If the maximum legal wage were $500,000 a year, do you think that a LeBron James, a Brad Pitt or a Bill Gates would be willing to do what they love, for that figure?  You know they would, as long as no one earned more.  You wouldn’t miss a thing currently being created nor would the country suffer.  It would bloom.

A fair minimum wage, scaled to the local cost of living, along with a reasonable maximum wage designed to minimize conspicuous consumption and spread the wealth, would be thoughtful legislation.  Thoughtful legislation couldn’t hurt this country.  It might be a nice change.

Cheers, Blogger Buz