Where are the jobs for the %47

there are lots of jobs that need doing,
companies have the money to hire people,
instead the execs are putting the money in their own pockets
One major gripe of the tea party and people sympathetic to their views is that %47 of the population are lazy parasites who don't want to work and are being supported by hard working people like tea party members.
explicitly the idea is-people don't want to work, they would rather get handouts
implicitly is the idea that these people could be working.

Have you ever been in a store that seemed to be run on a skeleton crew, can't find anyone to ask a question, long lines at the cash register? Not to mention the value of experienced, helpful, motivated staff, rather than minimum wage kids. Have you been put on hold, while a recording said "we are experiencing an unusually high level of call volume".
Bullshit.

If it were truthful, that recording would say:
 "we are experiencing an unusually high level of executive compensation and consequently are not hiring enough people to run the business properly".

There are thousands of businesses across America that need more sales people, customer service reps, technical people, clerks, etc. but instead of hiring enough people to staff the counters and floors, the execs are choosing to pad their own pockets and raise their own pay, give themselves perks and bonuses, and run the companies on a skeleton crew.

"Downsizing" was the euphemism fat cat execs used to fire people, make the poor slobs left work two jobs for the price of one, and stick the money in their own pockets. What bullshit.

Think about it: if all the executives were sick for the day, the business would still go on. If the sales floor staff didn't show up, it's all over.

For every $1,000,000 some yacht owning private plane flying CEO chooses to enrich himself with, he could have hired 30 people at $33,000 per, and some of these greedy motherfuckers have pay and perks in the hundreds of millions of dollars, which would hire a lot of needed staff. Not that they should do it out of the goodness of their hearts, but because it's good business to be staffed at adequate levels (unless of course your yacht needs a new coat of paint).

So that's a lot of jobs that need to be done, aren't getting done, and could get done, but won't be done as long as the top execs can get away with it. My guess is that millions of jobs could be created immediately by redirecting business resources from executive pay to hiring needed workers.

As far as the %47 not wanting to work, that's simply not true. Maybe there is %10 of them that would slack off, but the rest want to work, they are looking for work, and they can't find work.

Let's go a little deeper.
If we look at the total number of hours of work in this country and ask how it is divided, we see that 120 hours of work can be 3 x 40hr jobs or 4 x 30hr jobs. In other words, there is more than enough work for everyone in the country, if the workweek were shorter. People could actually spend time with their families and have some time for themselves.

Could people make enough to live on? Now we get into the issues of how wages and prices get set, who sets them. The basic answer is that the owners have workers and renters by the balls and squeeze as hard as they can get away with. "I'm taking what they're giving cause i"m working for a living". If you're someone who believes the rich should have the right to charge whatever they can, perhaps you also believe that someone with a gun has the right to take whatever they want from you, because in a subtle way, you do have a gun to your head.

Also, let's not forget that the rich have owned and operated government for a long time, buying the senators and congressmen and laws that they want,  so the whole system is rigged for them and against you.

I want to clarify one point. I do not hate the rich, i have no problem with some people having more than others, even much more. i don't begrudge it to them, i'm not jealous, i don't think they're bad people just because they've got a lot of bucks. I've met a lot of nice people who have money.

What i do have a BIG problem with is cheating, rigging the game, taking advantage of your position of power to pay people as little and charge them as much in rents and other costs as possible, so that you can engorge your already bloated asset sheet, while people go homeless and lack the simple basics of life.

i believe in the old fashioned value of an honest day's work for an honest day's wage. I do not believe that is happening today, not just in wages, but in every facet of economic life. How can a millionaire pay a lower percentage of their income in taxes than a factory worker. How can a landlord take depreciation allowance, while a house owner can't. Ad infinitum.
It's cheating, pure and simple, legal cheating because of legal bribes to government officials in the form of "campaign finance contributions", so that loopholes are added to obscure provisions of bills, often at the last minute, under the cover of darkness.

Let's ask the moral question: is it right to short the workers' salaries in order to distribute earnings to shareholders who have done absolutely no work? I'm all for distributing earnings and dividends once you've paid a decent wage to the people who actually do the work, but to screw the workers in order to give the money to a bunch of people sitting on their asses? It's wrong.

As far as taxes go, this article gives a few numbers
http://www.alternet.org/economy/ten-numbers-rich-would-fudged

"3. An amount equal to ONE-HALF the GDP is held untaxed overseas by rich Americans.

The Tax Justice Network estimated that between $21 and $32 trillion is hidden offshore, untaxed. With Americans making up 40% of the world's Ultra High Net Worth Individuals, that's $8 to $12 trillion in U.S. money stashed in far-off hiding places.
Based on a historical stock market return of 6%, up to $750 billion of income is lost to the U.S. every year, resulting in a tax loss of about $260 billion." from article cited above.

If you're working for an hourly wage they withhold your taxes, in full, in advance,
if you are wealthy enough, you hire a creative accountant, take advantage of a thousand loopholes, pay almost nothing, and laugh all the way to the bank.
Why is is that you pay sales tax on a hammer, but not on a stock market transaction?
Why do landlords get to take depreciation allowance on the rental house, but you living in your own house don't?
There are pages and pages of examples, but this is a digression, and if you're a tea party type you're probably so busy thinking i'm a socialist that you've lost the main point, which is

there are lots of jobs that need doing,
companies have the money to hire people,
instead the execs are putting the money in their own pockets

Obama tax Proposals

Wrong focus. The problem isn't just low tax rates on the wealthy, it's that the rates don't get paid by anyone with the money to hire an accountant, especially not the rich, to the point where many rich people and corporations pay virtually nothing. Rates may not have to go up, but they do need to be paid in full, not made a mockery of. Then, if rate increases are necessary, by all means the wealthy should pay more, since they benefit more from the system.

Why get into a fight with Republicans over raising rates, when the effective approach would be to say "let's close all the loopholes". Who could argue with that? and, "let's not let the wealthy hide their money in overseas tax shelters", how could the Republican rank and file not understand cheating.

And if hardware store purchases are taxed, why not a tax on stock transactions, and other business dealings?
So many loopholes, exemptions, untaxed transations, hidden funds; why aren't Obama and the Democrats looking for revenue from these sources, which would provide massive revenue?

i am not necessarily against raising rates on the upper brackets, and i am certainly for the end of the Bush giveaways, but it's a joke to raise rates when the current ones aren't even being paid.
-----
This article gives a few numbers
http://www.alternet.org/economy/ten-numbers-rich-would-fudged

from article above
3. An amount equal to ONE-HALF the GDP is held untaxed overseas by rich Americans.

The Tax Justice Network estimated that between $21 and $32 trillion is hidden offshore, untaxed. With Americans making up 40% of the world's Ultra High Net Worth Individuals, that's $8 to $12 trillion in U.S. money stashed in far-off hiding places.

Based on a historical stock market return of 6%, up to $750 billion of income is lost to the U.S. every year, resulting in a tax loss of about $260 billion.

This website is worth looking at
http://www.taxjustice.net/cms/front_content.php?idcat=2

http://www.intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/past-debates/item/775-the-rich-are-taxed-enough
following excerpt cut and pasted from transcript of above link

the question of fairness. Is the system, as it is now, at tax rates that exist now, in a
system that -- the one that we have, is it fair? Art Laffer.
Arthur Laffer:
Yeah. No, it's not. It's totally not. And let me use an example if I may, Warren Buffett.
He was sitting there asking my friends and I need to have higher tax rates, and I looked
at his letter to the New York Times, and he said he paid a little less than 7 million in
taxes, and he said his tax rate was 17.4 percent, which I did the math, hold back, I'm a
wiz, but I divided it. He had adjusted gross income of $40 million in that year.

I then went to Forbes. His wealth increased from 40 billion to 50 billion. I went to the
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and what you found there is he gave 1.75 billion to
the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, not counting his sons’ foundations or his
daughter's foundation. Now, as a definition of "income," to me income is what you
spend, what you give away, and your increase in your wealth. It s called the Simon
definition of income.
 if you look at Warren Buffett,
his income that year was $12 billion, and he paid 7 million in taxes. That is a tax rate of
six 1/100th of 1 percent on his true income. 

That is obnoxious. But it's not because of
any rates raising would change that tax. You've got to broaden the tax base by getting rid of all these exclusions, deductions, eliminations, and tax true income at low rates.

And that is what's fair. The guys who play the game, and you look at the Forbes 500 and you see all of them with their tax exemptions, look at all the 501c3s, all the loopholes.
That's what we've got to go after, not raising tax rates on the last three people who actually pay it.

-----------------------
the following is a cut and paste from site below
definitely check this site out

http://payupnow.org/

General Electric made $44 billion from 2008 to 2010, but received over $4 billion in tax rebates! (Listen to more...)

Bank of America (BAC)
Forbes asked in 2010: "How did Bank of America not pay any taxes on $4.4 billion in income?" Bloomberg explains: its financial statements were “delusional” (Listen to more…)

Oil giant Exxon made $34 billion of net income in 2009, but paid no income taxes in the United States…(Listen to more)

Citigroup had 4 quarters of billion-dollar profits in 2010, but paid no taxes...(Listen to more)

Wells Fargo (WFC)
Wells Fargo purchased Wachovia and claimed a $19 billion tax credit, despite a record net income of $12.3 billion…(Listen to more)

HP's U.S. income tax rate was 4.3% in 2008 and 2.3% in 2009…

Verizon's 10.5% tax rate is "due to its...venture with Vodafone." Vodaphone has been the primary target in UK Uncut's protests…(Listen to more)

Chevron (CVX)
 Of this year's taxes, just $200 million were paid in the U.S." That's a 1% tax rate…(Listen to more)

Boeing (BA)
 Boeing paid no U.S. taxes on over $4 billion of income in 2010. In fact, they got $124 million back from the taxpayers…(Listen to more)

AIG helped individuals trying to shelter hundreds of millions of dollars in profits from federal taxes…(Listen to more)

Carnival (CCL)
 Carnival Cruise Lines paid 1% in taxes on its $11.5 billion profit…

Koch Industries (private)
The government subsidies and tax-free benefits that accrue to the "libertarian" Koch brothers have been well documented…(Listen to more)

How to reclaim government-It's time

Why is it that business owns government, that so many laws and regulations benefit the rich at the expense of everyone else, and how can we change that?
And why is it that businesses seem to get away with doing whatever they want, regardless of the effects on the public? often, as Ralph Nader puts it, privatizing profits while socializing costs, meaning they get the profits while we pay the bills to clean up the messes they leave?

So many causes, so many issues, and underneath so many of the problems of America, 2 main roots:
1) the fact that we don't have elections, we have auctions.
2) Corporate Personhood is a licence for crime, an incentive for bad behaviour, a get out of jail free card (actually you never get charged, you get rewarded for crimes). Individual responsibility is the basis of morality and ethical behaviour, at the minimum not doing something you will be punished for. With Corporate Personhood, CEOs and other executives have protection from consequences, which encourages them to make decisions that will boost their own profits and salaries, even if people die.

1) if we removed the money from politics, totally, so that we didn't have a system of legalized bribery, in which those with the most money got what they wanted, and
2) Individuals were responsible for intentional violations of the law, and criminal negligence (of course there are normal mistakes, and this is not what i am talking about), then
the government, elected officials, would be a lot more likely to deal with issues on their merits, not just whose money they need.

Ok, everybody knows the problems, here's one important suggestion for a solution:
What if every separate group working on fixing all the problems formed a united front, came to the realization that there are underlying master causes that result in all the specific problems, realize that until the government is not bought and paid for by the highest bidder, and until the CEOs have personal responsibility for the havoc they wreak, that it's going to be a whole lot more difficult to create positive change (and it can still happen).

It like complaining about a crab apple tree producing crab apples. What do you expect. The system is totally corrupted, and until the rules of the game change, what do you expect. I get so frustrated by all the well meaning people who don't seem to understand this.

So what if Greenpeace and MoveOn and everybody else got on the same page and started a united campaign to talk money out of politics and end Corporate Personhood. It's time.

and as for the environment, global warming, pollution, etc, the key issue is that the costs are not factored into the price paid. Stuff is cheap only because the total costs, the costs of disposal, of pollution, the costs on human health, the costs when the earth and the oceans and the atomosphere get polluted and degraded, the costs are not included in the purchase price. As a society, America is in denial that stuff is very expensive, when all factors are included.

So, all costs need to be factored into purchase price, a very inconvenient truth indeed, which i believe is one intention of carbon taxes. So then we get into issues of factories closing, which brings up the whole issue of an economy founded on material production and consumption, which is inherently unsustainable.

2012 Poems

2012 Poems

i realized after typing this that i had already posted these poems on 4/26, however i made some slight editing changes, so these versions are slightly different.

Awakening (written 3/26/12)

Awakening from a long dark dream
a dream that has lasted lifetimes
a dream that started when I got so hurt that
i turned bitter, cynical
a dream where everything i saw
by which i mean all the conceptions and
interpretations i held in my mind of what I
"saw"
in the "world"
in "people"
was filtered through a dark layer
a layer of smoke, of disappointment
disappointment in myself
disappointment in others
and most especially
disappointment in God

a focus on the negative,
the stupid, the greedy,
the selfish, the cruel
who needs the newspapers, or the evening news,to present
their distorted, slanted litany of war, greed and atrocity
when i was carrying my own filter
a filter which even the buddha or jesus would have trouble being seen through
if they were here in person, not just some ideal in the mind

Awakening to find that
there is suffering, and
there is joy, and
there is a choice, and
it takes work, and
it has been done, and
if one person can do it,
anybody can do it
i can do it
so can you



My heart is a locked box
4/11/12
---
my heart is a locked box to which
only you hold the key
if only i knew who you were

i have never met you, and so
i wait aimlessly
only half believing that you will ever come

INTERNAL WEATHER
4/26/12
----
internal weather
mental, emotional, physical

the forecast early today is for
obsessive, frearful thoughts
often focussing on politics and the environment
often as a result of reading Internet websites, but
sometimes more personal
resulting in raging emotional storms
often invisible to the outside world
resulting in upset stomach, back trouble,
headaches, feelings of bodily weakness, and
many other troubles

Later today expect periods of calm
resulting from practices such as
meditation, tai chi, yoga, forgiveness
resulting in remission of symptoms, for now
until the next storm breaks out

it's that time

Like many other people i know, i have been going through big changes. The life i lived for years, bouncing around a few weeks here a few weeks there, low income, invisible to the greater world (for the most part), the wandering sadhu, wandering minstrel, blahblahblah; i appreciate, honor and am grateful for all the experiences i had, lessons i learned, people i met through that mode of life, and i'm feeling done with it, ready to begin something new, a more rooted, more visible, more manifested in the world life with a home, band, steady relationship, real income, honor, recognition and reward. Bring it on.