Once Upon a Time

"The outlook is for the end of the decline in business during the early part of the 1931, and steady... revival for the remainder of the year."

-- The Harvard Economic Society's Weekly Letter,
November, 15, 1930

Note: In 1931, the economic squeeze of the depression forced the Harvard Economic Society to suspend publication of the Weekly Letter.

Source: "The working person's history of the great depression," Show me the Money, Issue 10, Autumn 2001.

A World in Which Most People Don't Have Jobs

The following is evidence that the Wall Street economic mindset still persists:

Jobs are likely to remain scarce through next year and maybe beyond that even though the overall economy seems to be picking up.

Apparently, jobs are not part of the overall economy.

Taking this mindset to its logical conclusion, we can envision a day when very few people have jobs. I presume the many people without jobs will have the resources they need to survive and even thrive. Sounds like a Utopian socialist society.

Psssst... Do Something

• Contact the Broadcast Media
  
• Contact the Newspapers
  
• Contact the US Senate
  
• Contact the House of Representatives

Sources:

Associated Press, "New jobless claims drop, benefit rolls reach 6.7M," Christopher S. Rugaber, AP Economics Writer, May 21, 2009.

Diamond's Collapse and Today

Guest Blog Entry from Readingnerd:

The following is a reflection on contemporary lessons from Jared Diamond’s "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed"

Late one night, I finished Chapter 8, “Norse Greenland’s End,” only to find a chilling
conclusion:

Thus, Norse society’s structure created a conflict between the short- term interests of those in power, and the long-term interests of the society as a whole . . . what the chiefs and clergy valued proved eventually harmful to the society . . . The Greenland Norse did succeed in creating a unique form of European society, and in surviving for 450 years as Europe’s most remote outpost ... Ultimately, though, the chiefs found themselves without followers. The last right that they obtained for themselves was the privilege of being the last to starve.

Diamond attributes many causes for this collapse (including environmental damage and climate change), but what I find most compelling is his description of the behavior of those in power. Chiefs and clergy used the labor of the islanders to satisfy luxury
appetites in Europe: raising sheep (wool); hunting walrus (ivory), polar bears (live bears or their skins), and narwhals (tusks). Ships exported these to be exchanged in Europe for a few necessities (iron, good lumber, tar for a wood preservative), luxuries for the church (bells, stained glass windows, candlesticks, communion wine, linen, silver, churchmen’s robe, jewelry) and other luxuries for the wealthy (pewter, pottery, glass beads, honey, salt). These luxuries enabled Greenlanders to retain their identity as Christian Europeans. However, Diamond posits, this firmly entrenched cultural identity also prohibited them from trading with, learning from, or getting along with the Inuit. Instead, they killed them. Unlike the history of American colonists’ wars against the natives, in Greenland, the Inuit survived; the “Europeans” did not.

Diamond’s subtitle reminds us of the importance of the choices every society makes. Aren’t we now choosing to bail out the bankers on the backs of the workers? Did peasant Greenlanders feel so intoxicated by their identity as Christian Europeans that their starvation at the hands of poor decision makers was ameliorated? Are modern wage earners opposing abortion, gay marriage, and “elitism” ready to support the party which facilitated our current financial disaster which resulted for many (and for more to come) in the loss of jobs, homes and health insurance?

Another cause for Greenland’s collapse was the loss of trading partners. Wonder how much more debt the Chinese can stomach?