The World Desperately Needs Us But NOT Online

Today is Wednesday, January 27, 2016 and the good ol' Seattle Times has given me the best excuse to make a decision to stop blogging.

So let's get right to it. What was on the pages of the Times this morning?

It was the confluence of two different but somehow related stories that really caught my attention. On A2 the headline reads: Panel urges all U.S. adults be screened for depression. Then, on B1 the headline reads: Mayor Ed Murray defends actions on homelessness.

There is something about that A2 headline that kinda makes me laugh. If you've been paying attention at all to how people feel these days about the prospects for their lives, do you really think screening them for depression is going to unearth anything valuable? If it is not obvious by now what would drive the average person to be depressed, confirming the fact won't change a damn thing.

It is a newspaper article after all so they're required to get quickly to the bottom line: lost productivity cost an additional $23 billion in 2011. Lost? I don't think so. You may have picked up on the fact that the productivity of an American worker is not reflected in his wages but in the profits sent much further up the food chain. Nothing is lost. We're just bumping up against the limits of corporate greed by seeing the toll it takes on people whose only ambition is to work for a living.

Perhaps the strangest statement came at the very end. The task force gave the recommendations a grade of B based on how much clinical evidence there is to support their findings, a rating that should provide coverage for the screenings under the Affordable Care Act.

So let me get this straight: If theses folks all agree that the depression situation is bad enough, well, gosh, then if we rate it as above average in severity and importance then at least the govmint will pay for us to tell folks, uh, yup, you're depressed all right.

...But dang! Please don't start abusing stuff or gettin' in trouble cuz darn it, you just won't be productive enough.

Please take this pill instead. NEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEXT! 

It turns out even the mayor of our fair city has reason to be depressed these days. The Times tells us: Seattle will spend about $50 million in 2016 to combat homelessness, but Murray said the city can't solve it unless it receives more help.  

I'm not always a fan of Ed Murray, but I will say he appears to know what he's talking about when he says:

It's about the fact that we don't fund mental health. It's about the fact that we're in a national heroin epidemic, he said. It's about the fact that income inequality has made it hard for some people who work to sleep anywhere except in a tent in an illegal spot.

Both of these articles make it abundantly clear that we have plenty of experts who know exactly how to identify the causes of problems. Unfortunately, even when these problems are at the peak of crisis the main cry is always that somehow there isn't enough money to deal with them. As long as we believe this we will suffer the consequences. There is enough money in the world, its just managed by people who control way too much of it. You do know the difference between a billion and a million, right?

At times like this I am often reminded of the adage that in this world there is always enough for human need but not enough for human greed.

My human need is to step back from time spent online so that I can better attend to the matters of real life. I've allowed myself to get so caught up in the things that bring us all down. It takes time away from what I might be doing to bring my loved ones and I back up. Redirecting the only energy I've got is pretty important business.

I've loved blogging, but I'm just one more voice in all the noise that we're drowning in. I'd like to see what I can do besides "pushing electrons" as my darling husband puts it.

So it is with a sense of relief and fairly drawn conclusion that I bid a very fond farewell to The Twenty-First Century Citizen. I appreciate any and all who have read my meandering thoughts and chimed in or even just smiled.

Hang in there. Be well. Love your peeps.

The Quest 2016

Today's response prompt asks:

What I most need to tell myself about 2016 is....

Relax.

You already know that you're connected with the people who can help you piece the puzzle together. You are not alone. Your work will become as visible and embraced as you want it to be. I'm willing to support you. Are you willing to support me?

No question will go unasked. No question will go unanswered.

May there be laughter along the way.

On how we get to enough

        Rather than give you a complete summary of How much is enough?, Robert and Edward Skidelsky's new book, I'd like to zero in on a few of their more salient points. In chapter seven, "Exits from the rat race", they suggest adjustments in social policy and start with a short list: 1) basic income 2) reducing the pressure to consume, and 3) reducing advertising.
        Ideas of basic income have been around for a long time, sometimes called guaranteed income, sometimes called negative income tax, as promoted by Milton Friedman. Whatever the source, bringing this to reality seems unrealistic. In fact, in 1966 Robert Theobald wrote extensively about it in Guaranteed income: freedom or chaos? He characterized the difficulty of bringing it to fruition by going to the root of our ingrained thinking.

The shift from a psychology of scarcity to that of abundance is one of the most important steps in human development. A psychology of scarcity produces anxiety, envy, egotism (to be seen most drastically in peasant cultures all over the world). A psychology of abundance produces initiative, faith in life, solidarity. The fact is that most men are still geared psychologically to the economic facts of scarcity, when the industrial world is in the process of entering a new era of economic abundance. But because of this psychological "lag" many people cannot even understand new ideas as presented in the concept of a guaranteed income, because traditional  ideas are usually determined by feelings that originated in previous forms of social existence.
 

The last sentence of this quote reminds me of Einstein's: We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.         And so, while I love this idea, I think I am not willing to wait for this "lag" as Theobald calls it, to catch up to us in this highly productive era we live in, especially given that those who have created all this incredible productivity are not the ones taking advantage of it. I don't expect the owners of empire to be loosening their grip on capital any time soon.

        The next one, however, has fascinating historical roots. Ever heard of sumptuary laws? As a way to curtail the pressure to consume, there were once laws that restricted extravagance. Can you believe luxury was a moral evil, because it implied that economic resources were being diverted from productive uses? When these laws were abolished spending on luxuries previously confined to the rich soon became a feature of everyone's desired way of expenditure. Unfortunately, prohibition and taxation of particular goods is ineffectual. Skidelsky suggests a general consumption tax as a way to reinstate the use and value of sumptuary laws.  
        The third one on the list, reduce advertising, seems like a no brainer. It would introduce tax reform so that businesses could no longer write off advertising costs as an expense. Ten percent or more of the price of goods represents the cost of advertising them. If this cost had to be absorbed by  business rather than consumers, we'd experience quite a distinguishing shift between necessities and luxury goods. Presumably those products with the weakest link to needs would have reduced sales, and the cost of essential products which need little or no advertising would stabilize and potentially decrease. Again, this idea has been in circulation for a long time. In 1997, Cecile Andrews mentioned it in her work The circle of simplicity.
        Outside of economic reform suggestions, the Skidelskys' book accurately describes the inadequate ways we've defined the good life. Chapter four even addresses the problems inherent in measuring happiness in connection to levels of material well-being. As much as I appreciated this book, it felt like territory that has been covered before in similar ways. However, just as it was about to end, in fact, on the very last page....

stay tuned