FEBRUARY 4 2017
A CLUELESS LEADER AND HIS SOON TO BE DISILLUSIONED FOLLOWERS.
The fellow must have writer’s cramp by now from signing all these executive orders. Not too long ago the spineless Republicans condemned Obama for doing a miniature version of this in his last months in power: this fellow enjoys every minute of displaying his ill-gotten authority, well, let him. In my humble and unworthy opinion it seems that he is speeding up the coming of the Kingdom: also the most powerful man in the world occupies an important place in God’s service, even though he sees himself as God. In rambling speech at the National Prayer Breakfast, President Trump jabbed at immigrants and religious freedom and reassured Americans that he will save the world, “THE WORLD IS IN TROUBLE…..I WILL FIX IT!!”
As the self-proclaimed God he is yet constantly afraid: one handshake will cause dangerous bacteria to sicken him. He is afraid of the media, afraid of the intelligence community, afraid of Mexico and China and now Iran, afraid of Muslims, afraid of terrorists. I think before he goes to bed, he looks under it: who knows some danger might be lurking there.
However he not afraid of a big Mac or Kentucky Fried Chicken. If I were him –God forbid – I’d afraid for my health. He already is overweight and is under constant pressure to prove himself, not very good for his heart, but he regards himself beyond the powers of nature by a most unhealthy and heart-rending eating regime that simply invites a direct assault on his blood circulation. Mens sana in corpore sano means a healthy mind in a healthy body. Mens insana in corpore insano means the opposite. That’s what we see in what is called the most powerful person in the world, a sure example of the insanity of our entire system, both financial and environmental.
And he is not alone.
I read last week in the Globe and Mail that nearly half of U.S. men have genital infections caused by a sexually transmitted virus and that 1 in 4 has strains linked with several cancers. No wonder almost 20 percent of the US GDP – the Gross Domestic Product – consists of medical expense, the highest in the world, but the outcome is poor: on a world-wide scale the health gauge is not even among the ten top. Blame vested interests as well as a fanatical faith in private enterprise stemming from a fearsome loathing of government intrusion. All this, combined with a TV-saturated sedentary life fed by a fast-food diet is a recipe for bodily disaster. If there is any country that needs universal health care, it is the USA.
The real reason why tens of millions of men, between the ages of 25-54 have dropped out of the job market is partly their poor health, which, in turn has led to suicide and drug dependence. Idleness breeds devilish conduct. Also, due to automation and jobs migrating overseas, these men have lost the opportunity to do meaningful work. Now they no longer are able to function as meaningful members of society, no longer can prosper, and lack the satisfaction of succeeding at something. It is precisely these legions of men – soon to be disillusioned – that secured Trump’s victory in the battleground industrial states of Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. In today’s state of automation it will be impossible to create 25,000,000 new jobs and health coverage for all at a fraction of the cost of Obamacare. Both promises will backfire badly.
We live in a new world dominated by the machine.
According to some reliable reports, the American economy is already at full employment. True, there are these millions of idle hands, mostly men, who want to work, but, unfortunately, people to dig ditches, milk cows, and cut down trees with a two-man saw are no longer needed. A long time ago those were the jobs for the unskilled. I remember how, during the Dirty Thirties in the Netherlands a new company was formed with the (Dutch) name DE HEIDE MAATCHAPPIJ, The Heather Company. This government agency was charged to overturn these stubborn tracts of heath, converting them with pick and spade into tillable soil. This had a dual purpose: to provide work for thousands of empty hands and serve the larger good by making the soil ready for cultivation.
Most men in our Western world today would be incapable of doing hard physical labor. The USA army already has a recruitment problem, because only 1 in 4 qualifies because of the strict regulations, such as no criminal record, no tattoos, no health problems and at least a high school education.
Many of these unemployables, in their innocence, and ignorance, voted for Trump. True, change was needed, just as a lifestyle of no-smoking, no soft drinks, plus lots of exercise and meaningful work is also needed. However in the existent economic situation, with good pay going to fewer people and the increasing loss of the middle class employment, the drift toward service jobs in bars and fast food outlets, cannot be reversed.
I am reading AVERAGE IS OVER, a book by Tyler Cowen, an economics professor.
The title says it all: only if you have above average intelligence, come from a functional family, have a good work ethic, or are a math whiz, familiar with current technology will you be a financial success. The rest will become an underclass, doing minimum wage stuff.
The book ends with the prediction that society will split in two classes, the high brainy earners, and the rest. The rest means, by and large, the products of the USA educational system, which has been sabotaged by the Republicans who wanted to reduce taxes and consistently voted against increases for education.
How to fit into the new way of life.
The crucial problems today concern the way technology and globalization are decimating jobs and tearing the social fabric. All the big things that were once taken for granted are now under assault: globalization, capitalism, an American-led global order, on the one hand, and mechanization, computer-driven work and robotic explosion on the other hand. All thanks to AI – Artificial Intelligence – which is changing everything in every workplace.
That will simply make it impossible for President Trump to generate 25,000,000 (Twenty Five Million) new jobs during his 4 year term as he promised. Also how he will revamp the Medical system, having promised coverage for all at drastically lower cost, is another big question. Here too his re-election will depend on this.
In my reading I often turn to PROJECT SYNDICATE.
Simon Johnson of MIT Sloan and the Peterson Institute for International Economics writes that “Trump’s economic-policy priorities are reflected in his proposed cabinet, which represents a dramatic shift to outright “oligarchy: direct control of the state by people with substantial private economic power”. Trump seems determined to lower income taxes for high-income Americans, as well as to reduce capital-gains tax (mostly paid by the well-off) and nearly eliminate corporate taxes (again, disproportionately benefiting the richest).”
Joseph E Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize winner in economics, believes that the political consequences for Trump’s off the cuff promises will be disastrous. He writes that “Experience shows that this trickle-down “story does not end well for Trump’s angry, displaced Rust Belt voters,” who will be tempted to seek even more aggressively for scapegoats once they realize how profoundly Trump has betrayed their interests.
America in the lead – down.
Frankly I believe that Trump is the last gasp: America is quickly becoming a failed state. A country is the sum of its citizens. Already American innovation first began declining or narrowing as far back as the late 1960s, owing to “a corporatist ideology that permeated all levels of government. True, Silicon Valley created new industries and improved the pace of innovation for a short time”; but now it, too, has run up against diminishing returns.
No amount of Trumpian rants will restore America’s greatness, and his erratic behavior will make people all over the world think twice to settle there and invest money. Trump is the last desperate attempt to revive a dying nation.
America has always been ahead of the pack, first in leading the world in development, now in being in the forefront of decline.
This has everything to do with ENERGY and its use. Where the USA has some 5 percent of the world’s population, it uses 25 percent of the world’s carbon products, thus causes a quarter of all Green House Gases, and can expect natural disasters at an equal ratio. Better move away from the most hurricane and earthquake prone coast lines, exactly there where most people live.
Yes, urban North America- and, sorry to say, I have to include Canada here as well – is built on an infinite supply of liquid fuels, the stuff we get when we say “Fill’er up”. In the next decade subdivisions, a single family house on a large lot with lots of green lawn will become the white elephant of the cities: too spread out to economically accommodate mass transit, it will remain dependent on that 2,500 pound monster that conveys a 120-170 pound individual from home to far away work or shopping.
Europe, at least, had the sense – mostly because fuel was so terribly expensive – to build cities up some stories rather than each in its own little domain. Too late to change this now, because, believe it or not, the gasoline age is rapidly coming to a disastrous close.
Some reliable reports now calculate that we may soon be spending more energy on getting the energy that is required to keep the cogs and wheels of modernity turning.
This is due to dreaded Energy Return On Energy Invested (EROEI). That ratio is increasingly becoming out of whack. Before we fill up our beloved automobile, let me recite some of the steps fuel has to take before we can burn it.
Take the Alberta tar sands. We all have seen the gigantic shovels that load these dwelling-size dump trucks with oil-laden sand. There already a lot of energy is expended to manufacture this equipment and these trucks with tires that dwarf a mere human and cost more than an individual earns in a life time. Also these monstrous machines burn many a gallon of fuel a minute.
That sand – and that’s what it is – is then saturated with water, an ever-more precious commodity. The viscose mixture is boiled – just imagine the energy this takes – and the sand is separated from the tiny bit of oil that is attached to the sand, which is discarded because it remains too contaminated for commercial use.
The tar-sand-oil is then pumped into pipeline, mixed with water because it is too stiff to flow, on the way to a refinery. Every step takes lots of energy. The refinery makes it into a usable product from where both pipelines and tanker trucks bring it thousands of miles to service station where it is pumped into our fuel tanks, causing GREEN HOUSE GASES all the way.
That process is now coming close to a point of no return: already 85% according to some calculations. Once that process is equalized, when Energy Return EQUALS Energy Invested, we cease to be a functioning society. There is not much that even Mr. Trump can do about it, other than seize the entire Persian Gulf which Cheney and W. Bush tried to do with disastrous results.
True, the new regime in the USA, put in place by a minority of voters, is a clear sign that people want change. True, the old order was found wanting. It also is true that the future looks grim, because THE AVERAGE IS OVER, which means that the majority of people, because they don’t have the right genes, are becoming surplus, are strictly needed as consumers, but no longer needed as producers.
It also is true that a society which requires 10 carbon calories to deliver one food calorie doomed and is totally out of touch with the essence of Christianity whose aim is “YOUR KINGDOM COME”.
John 3: 16 “God so loved the cosmos,” requires us to live and move and think and sleep the welfare of the world we live in. That must be our thought when we get up, when we eat when we work when we play: it must dominate our life 24/7.