Bills and the Economy.

The CEO doesn't deserve his 50 million dollar bonus. What does he do to earn it? Much of the actual work is done by hundreds, thousands or even millions of employees whom he "manages". How does this person contribute so much compared to the whole of the working class members of his company? Does he not make his money off of the sweat of those Vietnamese children that assemble the shoes he peddles? Who cleans up after the toxic waste from the rubber? And who gets charged an extra 500% for a simple swoosh?

We do. Not us "Americans", not us "poor", or any of that - but those of us that actually participate fully in the economy. We have to earn, and we have to spend. More often than our media likes to admit, we live check to check and struggle for the next meal.

What does this CEO put into the economy? What does he have at stake when he retires at the sour old age of 35? He's got his money piled up.

Well not anymore I hope. If my 401k is a gonna be a 201k, I hope he's right there with me. What has he earned that I haven't? I'm not asking for a handout, I'm not saying we should suddenly be communist, but some reasonable limits regardless of their source, would be prudent. There is a reason that rampant inequalities are where revolutions are born. Afterall, banning child labor was a part of both the Communist Manifesto and that New Deal that helped stabilize the Great Depression until WWII brought us out - the jobs had to go to men and women, who needed them more visibly and were possibly paid better than the children. It was no longer just the wealthy that could afford to have only the adults provide for their families - it was the law.

There's some things I fail to see about this wonderful financial system we've broken - how is it supposed to keep going? It's not a situation where We'll never fix it! We're doomed! DOOMED!!! Instead, I don't understand how we were supposed to see it the way we did in the first place.

With the various levels of the money supply laid out in Macroeconomics, I don't see how M1, the most fluid money - cash, and checks - is supposed to do anything but get sucked into the M2, M3 and the shiny new M4 supplies, all of them various levels of savings and investments. Mortgages, student loans, and even credit cards are founded on this.

The theory goes that loaning it out creates new money - where the credit card gets the backing from all sorts of sources to lend to us, we get to spend the virtual (non-real) money now, and Jill's 401k will have it later. If Jill pulls from that 401k, the money spent on credit will come from elsewhere until we pay it back.

That's all well and good, but there's a couple of problems. We've been allowed to spend so thoroughly on credit to "stimulate the economy" as to grow the money supply to bloated proportions. This causes inflation, as the money supply overgrows the actual value in the markets. Nothing Revolutionary here....

But, during the 1920s, Rockefeller and other industrialists found similar mechanisms aid their growing empires - and History shows that the money supply actually contracted... How? Some never paid their bills, taking from the backing banks AND the stores they bought from. But large part was that most of the money was sucked up by too many millionaires. Today, that's billionaires.

When the majority of the wealth is leaked out by the trade deficit then concentrated in the savings of a very few, and credit becomes unavailable... we get stuck like this.

Why do they deserve enough wealth to jeopardize the entire economic system for everyone? We're not depending on our neighbors to spend their kids' college money out of patriotism - we're waiting on Rupert Murdoch to quit squeezing our world dry, and pay us for once. It's the only way we'll all be able to pay him for his "services" in the long run.

Rockefeller had the insight to see it. However, he was more of a direct witness to the carnage he unknowingly helped to create. His generosity with employment and the war effort were legendary and surprisingly direct. Our Arab oil peddlers, or Hyundai CEOs? Not so much. The way our market bundles our loans and savings into "securities" that are traded like commodities removes the human element that reminds each of us of our own responsibilities at the end of the day.

We, the working class know about our ultimate economic responsibility - to pay our bills. We get computers barking down our necks via email spam, junk mail, and harassing phone calls. Meanwhile, those who are more than just "the haves" don't seem to get it.

Getting Started

It's only recently, with my life changing so much that I have time to lay these thoughts down. I can't hold back my reactions, so I'd rather banish them to the internet for more public use. I can't exactly give them a good home in my head alone. It's a more elegant way to say that "I need to dump my BS somewhere that the right people may find it useful".