From Babel to Baltic Avenue

                Wiley Coyote would today make a fine professor of economics.  W.C. understood quite well that it is possible to walk on air – until you look down.

                This is the virtual world of economics in which we live. It is a system of exchange based on smoke and mirrors, words, opinions, breaking news and high speed computers trading on the crest of every wave.  It is a system in which the mere possibility that a country with .17% of the world’s population might abandon one form of virtual money (the euro) for another (the drachma) sends the “value” of North American companies plummeting or skyrocketing.

                The word “value” in the previous sentence is in quotations because the only thing that changes about these companies during these brief, dramatic rises and falls is their virtual value in virtual markets. Exxon doesn’t sell any more or less oil; Walmart doesn’t sell any more or less Chinese plastic during these brief ups and downs, but if the “downs” prevail, wage slaves across the land might see the “value” of 10 years or more of 401K contributions vanish into thin air.

                That’s the beauty of virtual money. As easily as it vanishes from one location, it can reappear in another. Between 2007 and 2010, the Federal Reserve secretly conjured over $16 trillion from thin air and gave it to the largest banks in the world. It was arguably the largest transfer of wealth in human history.

                Some people (banks, presidents and Congressmen) view the actions of the Fed as a necessary measure to stabilize the world economy.  Some of us view it as theft. A good example of this latter point of view can be gained by including the virtual board game, Monopoly, played by over 750 million people around the world, in our discussion. Suppose the banker simply handed out monopoly money to a select few players when they needed to pay a bill or make a purchase.  The price of everything from Boardwalk to Baltic Avenue would go up as the players flush with cash bid up the prices. The players not included in the “stimulus” would soon find it hard to purchase anything at all and some would go bankrupt very quickly. Before long, most of the board would be owned by the players with the most play-money.

                In the virtual world of economics, this is precisely what has happened over time. Witness the remarkable transfer of wealth to a very small percentage of the population over the last two decades.  There is a reason for this transfer, and it is not because 1% of the population worked harder or smarter than the rest.  This transfer occurred because the “banker” in our virtual game is cheating.

                Unfortunately, this is not a game for anyone who must buy gas to drive to work so that they can earn money to buy groceries to feed the kids before they buy more gas to drive to work. It is not a game for the unemployed. It is not a game for the elderly beginning to discover that what remains of their life savings buys much less than it did last year or the year before.

                As I scanned the headlines this morning, headlines provided by the 6 major corporations who own what we see and hear in media, I witnessed a remarkable discordance of opinion. I have never been to Greece, but I feel like I now know much more about the tiny nation than I ever cared to know.  The euro survives, but cash is evaporating. Storm clouds are gathering, but the Dow could skyrocket before the end of the year, if the world doesn’t end in December.  I believe I can begin to understand the message behind the biblical story of the Tower of Babel.

                It is easy to switch it all off. A single click on the computer; a press of a button on the remote and the sun still shines, the earth still spins its way through the heavens and the birds still sing. The corn in my garden needs hoeing, and the world is peaceful and green again in our beloved mountain home. It would be very easy to leave it all switched off, but an ostrich with his head in the sand will soon find that he can’t afford to keep his little plot of sand. Sadly, the noise, the drama, the irritating, nauseating incessant flow of opinion – is our medium of exchange.  Once we had gold as a measure of value. Now we have glitter and gloom. If we sincerely want to change things, there would be a good place to start.

Time to Remember

                 

                The Memorial Day which just passed is a holiday that I hope everyone remembers in particular this year.  Many of us took time to remember the sacrifices made in service to our nation, but I would like to add to that reflection a memory of how we spent our time during the long weekend.

We need more holidays. Granted, from the boardroom this might be considered a contrarian opinion in the face of concerns about productivity and competitiveness, but from the freeway crammed with travelers driven to arrive at their holiday destinations as quickly as possible, from the parking lots filled with shoppers in search of holiday sale items or hot dog buns, from the long line of cars waiting to get through Helen, Georgia, more time off might seem a good idea. With relatively few holidays many of us feel pressure to “relax” harder and faster within the brief window of time away from the construction site or the cubicle.

                When holidays are scarce they can become imbued with an aura of expectation and obligation. We are obligated to take the kids to visit grandma, who lives three hours away on the other side of interchanges and exit ramps. We feel obligated to gather and gorge with friends, which requires driving, parking and shopping. We expect to be able to recreate those images from the commercials of joyful friends cooking meat over a grill in some wonderful natural area, again requiring driving, shopping, and more driving.

                As a brief member of the motoring mob over the weekend, I had a chance as a passenger to observe the behavior of my fellow travelers more closely than I normally do as a driver.  I saw anxiety, impatience and anger in many who were working hard to position themselves to have a great holiday. I had to wonder how rested many of my fellow travelers would feel at the end of their marathons, or whether returning to the office on Tuesday would actually be a relief.

                I hope that you all enjoyed the long holiday weekend, and that within the bit of extra time away from work you were able to relax, to recreate, or perhaps to just sleep late for a change.   I congratulate those of you who were able to stay at home and enjoy the simple pleasure of time – time with family and friends, time puttering in the garden, time stretched out on the sofa:  time free from obligations and expectations.

                Hopefully, at some time during the holiday you paused to reflect upon the lives that have been spent to purchase our ability to enjoy these freedoms. They were dearly bought, and the price continues to rise. Free time and the ability to choose what to do with it is becoming more expensive; not because of enemies overseas, enemies at home or enemies around every corner, but because of the pressures pushing us deeper into wage slavery, pushing us to work more for a dollar that buys less. Those of us who were gifted with a day off on Monday can thank Congress.  Most of our meager set of holidays has been rescheduled to Mondays so that Congress can have a long weekend. Perhaps they need to rest up for the laborious task of finding ways to extract more from our labor in the ongoing search for revenue to pay for their excess.

                By Memorial Day next year, it is likely that the government will be extracting more tax from our paychecks, our purchases, our dividends and our capital gains. It is likely that the deficit will be considerably higher. It is likely that the fewer dollars we have to spend during our brief holiday will buy less, which is not likely to increase our ability to relax and recreate. By the time you read this, Memorial Day 2012 will be a fading memory, but remember, if you can, the troops that will still be overseas all year long. Remember the increasing cost of the grand schemes of government and empire in terms of blood and treasure. Remember all of this on Election Day.

Picture This

                I saw an amazing sight Saturday night as the “super perigee moon” rose up out of the Atlantic Ocean.  Moonlight on water is hypnotic, mesmerizing. It is a window into infinity. A full moon big enough to reach out and touch, barren and beautifully scarred by impact craters as old as the solar system reminds us that we are blessed to float suspended in space on a unique and irreplaceable life raft.  The beauty of the night was enhanced by ocean breezes and waves rolling onto the shore. It was a magical night.

                As my wife and I walked along the shoreline, drinking in the enchanting sights and sounds, I witnessed a scene that seemed strangely at odds with the tranquility of nature and the rich feast for the senses.  A woman driving a new sedan whipped into a beach access parking lot and jumped out of her car. Motor running, music blasting and headlights glaring, she proceeded to point her I-Pad at the moon. Poking her glowing slab a few times with her fingers she was apparently taking snapshots of the scene, but before we had gone five paces she hopped back into her car and sped off into the night.

                I do not know what necessity drove this woman. Perhaps she was late for work or late for a gathering, but chances are that her entire memory of that beach scene will be compressed into a few pixels stored on a computer.  As we walked along the beach that night, I noticed many more people recording the experience in similar ways, and my wife and I will undoubtedly be posting our own images of the night on Facebook.

                Taking pictures is certainly not a new phenomenon, but now that every phone is a computer and every computer is a camera, it seems that we are becoming a people who experience reality in a radically different way than our ancestors.  Long before the camera became ubiquitous, people shared experience by word of mouth. More recently when we did take pictures, we had to wait for them to be developed. With great anticipation we would pick up our photos from the drugstore, and as we looked through them, we would talk about the experiences behind the images and then carefully preserve our favorites in a photo album for future reminiscence, future conversation.

 A few of us still enjoy the written word. Some of us still keep old photo albums with captions underneath or written on the back of the pictures.  These are all second hand experiences, reflections of reality, but they do require some processing, some effort on our part. A life experience dominated by fleeting images is bleached flour, missing the nutrients found in the whole grain. Every passing year brings new technology that further separates us from nature, from a direct experience of reality. We cannot run, jog or hike without ear buds. We cannot gather without smartphones. We experience nature from a parking lot, through a lens, on a pixelated screen.

Taxed And Taxed Again

                No matter where we find ourselves on the map that describes the landscape of political philosophy, most of us have at least some libertarian tendencies. We do not like to be told what to do. Nevertheless, every April we are reminded of just how much we dislike being told what to do when we get the bill from those who presume to tell us. The hole where our checking account used to be reminds us that tax season has come and gone again.

                Of course tax season never really leaves us. It is with us in every purchase we make, every paycheck we receive and every hard-fought gain that we achieve. We are surrounded by entities grasping for our wallets and the money that leaves our hands finds its way from around the corner to around the world as it pays for the upkeep of unelected money-spenders from the smallest incorporated hamlet to the largest military bases of “our” international empire.

                When I say “we” in reference to taxes, I am referring to the 59% of us who actually pay the bill. You read that right, and if you are among that number you have already done the math which reveals the 41% of us who pay nothing. You may not be aware that the IRS paid out $105 billion in refundable credits to those 58 million non-payers.  Twenty-six million who paid no taxes received $56 billion in “refunds” through the Earned Income Credit. Twenty one million non-payers received $27 billion from the Refundable Child Credit.

                “It makes me want to storm the castle with pitchforks and burning torches,” a friend quipped recently after filing his income tax. Indeed the tax issue has become a perennial political football, but it would behoove us to know which goal posts we really want to run for. The real numbers do not concur with the political rhetoric and the populist notion that the financially successful must be punished for not paying their fair share. These numbers are from the Tax Foundation, which uses the government’s own data to compile statistics. Warning:  Fact can be detrimental to our favorite paradigms. Here are the numbers…

                The effective tax rate of people making more than $250,000 a year was 23.4% and those people paid 45.7% of all taxes. The effective tax rate of people making more than $50,000 was 14.1% and they paid 93.3% of all taxes collected.  The effective tax rate of people making less than $50,000 a year was 3.5%. That is correct. The largest group of taxpayers had an effective tax rate of 3.5% - and they paid 6.7% of all taxes collected.

                Unfortunately for all of us and particularly for retirees, this is not the worst of it. The government also conjures a hidden tax which affects the purchasing power of every American. Inflation has robbed the dollar of about half of its purchasing power in the last 20 years and we are on course to continue this trend for the next 20. Every time the Fed adds to the money supply, the value of our money decreases, but government must fabricate some way to pay its enormous bills.

Our tapeworm economy is saturated by government from the smallest to the largest components. Every hamlet wants a city hall stuffed with officials. Every county wants the same. In most cities in Georgia if you live in a city you get to pay city as well as county taxes. The states are flush with departments and agencies that must be paid for. The federal government itself has become one of the largest segments of the economy. Meanwhile, as government strangles the economy with taxation and regulation, the ranks of those dependent on the state continue to grow, which in turn inflates the size of the state again. The result is an increasing tax burden levied upon a decreasing segment of the population.

                 

               

Pushing the River (part 3)

     Last week we were alone in a canoe and clinging to the trunk of a fallen tree while the flooding Okmulgee River threatened to  capsize our boat and drag us under the churning black water.

                The canoe was parallel to the trunk of a fallen tree, pinned there by the force of a river out of its banks. I was in a prone position, sprawled across the top of my gear with a bear hug around the tree trunk, trying to steady the boat with my legs and getting tired quickly. Terror had gripped the tree when the canoe slammed into it broadside. Fear replaced terror as fatigue weakened my arms and legs. If I let go of the tree I would lose my leverage and the boat would flip over and quickly fill with water. If I let go of the boat, I would be stranded miles from civilization, clinging to the trunk of a tree in a flooding river churning with frigid water.

                With no apparent options, I had a moment to consider my situation as my arms and legs began to tremble with cold, fatigue and fear, and it made me angry. Anger is directly connected to our survival mechanism. The fight or flight reaction produces adrenaline, an emergency fuel that the body can use to ensure its survival. The problem with modern civilization is that the stress, the frustration and the fear of our daily lives produce this fuel, often on a daily basis, but it does not burn cleanly – and this is deadly. Fear and anger, with no outlet, kills us quickly in the consequences of a rash decision or it kills us slowly with heart disease, cancer or other “stress related” disease.

                Clinging to my tree trunk I discovered that my anger had given me a burst of energy, but I knew that this would not last long. I thought for a moment about the angry group of young men somewhere upstream and all the talk we directed at them as counselors about how to deal with their anger – and about how difficult it is in practice to think clearly when you are angry or afraid.

                Every athlete, every performer and every martial artist knows that the key to controlling emotion lies in breathing. Deep breathing exercises were something we regularly practiced with our groups of adjudicated youth, and finally, almost too late for my desperate situation, I remembered to breathe.

                The trunk of my tree was even with the top of the canoe, but the tree was not quite parallel with the water and the upper branches hanging further out over the main channel would provide more space and less resistance – if I could position myself and my boat there. Loosening my grip on the tree I rolled over onto my back, hooking my feet under the stern thwart, and proceeded to “climb” the tree, dragging the boat toward the upper branches. As the bow of the boat reached the upper branches the force of the water turned the canoe 90 degrees and parallel with the flow of the river once again.

                As the branches of the tree began to break I knew I had seconds to plan my next move and then seconds to execute it. The main course of the river took a sharp turn to the right, but the current was pushing out of the submerged banks and into the forest, now a moving lake full of hidden hazards. When the boat left the relative safety of my unintended mooring, I would have to swivel from my back, lying on top of my gear facing the stern of the boat, around and into my seat facing the bow. I had to do this without capsizing the boat, get a paddle in my hands and then paddle with all my remaining strength to reach the main channel.

                I made it to the main channel just as exhaustion robbed me of my remaining strength.  Fortunately the course of the river straightened out over the remaining miles into Hawkinsville, Georgia, and I was able to rest and steer the boat while the river did most of the work. Years later now, the memory of my encounter with the river still produces some of the adrenaline that saved my life on a cloudy day in February.

                Today the picture of a slain teenager wearing a hood that is currently fanning the flames of media frenzy could have been any one of the kids who graduated our wilderness course and returned home that year, or any one of hundreds that followed.  The anger which propelled those kids in and out of detention centers is still with us today;  thousands of kids whose hope for the future is constantly suppressed by the knowledge that they will continue to be judged, based solely on appearance. Anger stalks the thousands of families in their fortified neighborhoods, fearful of “the other;” fearful of the culture of violence perpetuated and glorified by “artists,” rappers, musicians and celebrities who profit from the agony of misguided youth.  I am personally angry with the Sharptons , the Jacksons, the parasites of their own communities whose careers depend on a continuation of hostility between the races. I am angry with the talking heads who sell us soap by attempting to try a court case in the media, and I am angry with those of us who listen, who judge, who attach our own fears to a lot of interpretation with very little fact as we slow down to gawk at the scene of the accident.

                Anger is not wrong.  It is part of being human. What is right or wrong is what we choose to do with our anger. It remains to be seen what our culture will do with the anger that threatens to further polarize our people. What will you do with yours?

                

Pushing the River (part 2)

                We left you last week on the banks of the Okmulgee River during an expedition down the flooded waterway with a group of teenage boys trying to put their lives back together. We were all learning lessons about anger, and before the trip was over the river would have more to teach us. Let’s continue the journey.

                The eleven adjudicated teenage boys under our care had all suffered the consequences of anger. Some were in fact adjudicated because they had acted out in anger:  getting into fights, destroying property or being convicted of the catch-all charge of “terroristic threats.” Anger is a normal part of the growing pains of youth. It can be a challenge for the best of families even with the support of the community and the school. The majority of our boys did not; indeed the majority of adjudicated youth do not have the luxury of a healthy and functioning support system. Most of them were from broken or dysfunctional families, a condition which remains a reliable indicator of future crime.

                The capsizing of a canoe and the rescue of two boys from the frigid water had sent a shock wave throughout the group.  Jon and Mike, my two fellow instructors, both veterans of wilderness expeditions, had been able to pull the two shivering lads out of the water and into their own boat and they came around the bend in the river with the boys and their now empty canoe in tow to join the rest of the crew gunwaled-up in an eddy.  Time was of the essence as we passed the two waterlogged boys across our makeshift raft like cordwood, stripping off their wet clothes and putting on dry polypropylene and wool. Mike boiled some water on his small primus stove to make a hot beverage while I dug into my river bag for peanut butter and cheese for some fast fuel to warm the boys.

                The sun was sinking westward as we pushed our raft of canoes back out into the river. We stayed gunwaled-up for a while as we talked to the boys, making sure that they were confident enough to continue the expedition, at least as far as a campsite for the night. Time was not our ally as we searched for a spot to camp in the lengthening shadows. Our river notes were useless now that all the known campsites and sandbars were under several feet of water.  At dusk we finally found a small embankment, now an island just a few feet above the water, barely large enough for a few tents. As we unloaded our gear Jon quietly told me that, though the boys were docile now, when the shock subsided and they settled in for the night, we would have some “behaviors.”

                Strong emotions, especially fear, can resolve into anger when we lack the tools or the understanding to process them. One of the longest nights of my life began as my two fellow guides and I made plans to keep watch, not only on the boys, but on the river should it continue to rise. The first fight broke out as we were preparing the evening meal. By morning we were forced to intervene more than a dozen times to prevent continued violence.  During a few quiet moments just before dawn as the exhausted group finally succumbed to sleep, we decided that at daybrwould paddle downstream alone to Hawkinsville, Georgia to recon a campsite, call in our support team and arrange for resupply of our lost provisions.

                The sun broke through the clouds for a moment just as I pushed off and headed downriver, and then it disappeared again as the rain returned. The normally lazy black water of the Okmulgee was moving rapidly and just a few miles from our campsite, there was no land in site and it was getting harder to discern the main channel. A river out of its banks makes its own path and several times the current heading off into the trees was stronger than the main course. Alone in a canoe heavily loaded with provisions the adrenaline of my extreme situation banished all sleepiness from the long night as I fought to navigate the sharp turns away from hazards on both banks.

                At one sharp bend in the river I went wide to river-left to avoid a strainer – and headed directly into a downed tree.  Unable to make the turn I tried to hit the tree with the bow, but the rushing water soon turned my boat alongside the almost horizontal trunk of the tree and threatened to flip me over and under. Wedging my paddle under the seat I grabbed the trunk of the tree in a bear hug and tried to steady the boat with my legs.

                We are amazingly strong when we are afraid. Alone, with no land in sight and a rushing river trying to push me under a tree, I was able to keep the boat from capsizing, but fatigue began to set in. They say that faced with death, our life flashes before our eyes, but I think we rarely have time for that. I knew that eventually my legs would give out and I would lose the boat and be left clinging to a tree with nothing but a lifejacket and the contents of my pockets.  If anger and desperation are not the same things, they are at least first cousins.  As my legs began to fail, I got angry at my untenable situation and the last of my adrenaline was enough to pull myself and the boat along the length of the tree, breaking limbs and tearing cloth and skin, until the upper branches were weak enough to let the canoe break free. 

                We will pick up the journey next week.

Pushing the River

                Anger can be as deadly as a bullet to the head or it can be a slow poison that manifests in stress related disease. Anger is ubiquitous on this planet and it has plagued us from the time of the first humans to last night’s network shooting report from Atlanta. Even the Divine is not immune to anger; our religious writings are full of wrath and vengeance. There is no escape from anger.

                My greatest lesson in anger was taught to me by a group of young people for whom anger was a constant companion. My first expedition as a wilderness guide and counselor was with a group of 11 teenagers who had been released from detention centers in the hopes of completing our program as a pathway back home. From the beginning of the course, when we were not preventing physical violence from their pent up hostility, we were dealing with verbal violence released through sarcasm and profanity.

                As a rookie guide I was armed with a variety of “armchair” advice from book authors who had never tried to help a group of unruly teenage boys pitch their tents in the rain while being drained of blood by mosquitos and biting flies. I was convinced that I should never allow my frustration or my own anger to be seen, and keeping those emotions in check was difficult. The physical effort involved in a river expedition was enough to assuage a great deal of everyone’s anger, but the quiet times were volatile. My fellow instructors, veterans of outdoor experiential education, counseled me to take a firmer line. “You can’t be their friend,” they told me. “They will walk all over you and it will be that much harder to keep them safe.”  They were right, but it took a series of extraordinary events to teach me a valuable lesson about anger.

                We put eight canoes on the water just below Macon, Georgia in February of 1992. We were loaded with provisions for at least 7 days on the river before resupply, 11 angry teenage boys and three wilderness guides who had no idea that the heavy rainfalls of the previous weeks would soon raise the Okmulgee River to well above flood stage.  The boys had just been through a week of training in canoeing and water safety and we were as well-prepared as possible, but the lazy, black water rivers of South Georgia are always full of surprises, especially when heavy rain sends them out of their banks.

                We put in on a chilly, overcast day when the water temperature was cold enough to make hypothermia a very real danger for anyone exposed for too long. The boys were excited to be on the river and a little frightened. Most of our clients were from the inner city and anything beyond asphalt and electronics was foreign to them.  I was in the lead boat with one of the stronger paddlers from the group of kids. My co-instructors were paddling together bringing up the rear.  About 10 miles downriver and 20 miles above Hawkinsville, Georgia, we had a boat capsize.

                Life jackets are essential to all river trips and all of us were properly equipped. However, when a tree falls into the river or when the river rises to the level of tree branches, a new danger is created that is referred to as a “strainer.” When a canoe hits a strainer, it can turn sideways and fill with water, quickly flipping passengers and gear over and under. The force of the running water can pin and entangle a boater with a real danger of drowning, even with a life jacket. The cold water of February was an immediate threat to the two boys clinging to the branches of a downed tree.

                As my co-workers positioned themselves to rescue the capsized passengers it was left to me to manage the other nine kids now drifting aimlessly downstream. They were not listening to me, and we were in jeopardy of having another capsize.  It was essential that I collect all the remaining canoes in an eddy to “gunwale-up,” or to bring the boats side by side, each passenger hooking one leg into the adjoining boat to form a makeshift raft. At a loss as to what to do to get the kids to listen, the words of a veteran counselor came to me.  He had said, “It is OK to let them see that you’re angry. You will know when it’s the right time.” This was definitely the right time, and as my mild manner was replaced by the spirit of my old drill instructor, I let fly with all the bellowing anger that I could muster. It worked. The kids finally began to follow instructions and we were able to eddy out and wait for the rescue going on upstream.

                All’s well that ends well. Yet it bothered me somewhat that I had lost my temper. It was in debriefing the event a few days later with my Director of Operations that the lesson was made complete. My D.O. was a combat veteran of Vietnam who had been working with adjudicated youth for over 20 years. “You’re always going to get angry, Don,” he said.  “There is no way around it. And the kids you are working with are always going to be angry. Anger is not the problem. It is as natural as grief or happiness or any other emotion. The key issue is how you express that anger and what you do with it. You used yours to keep some kids from drowning on the river. You will be angry with them again, but if you can show them your anger – and the proper way to handle it, some of them will learn.”