An Open Letter to All Americans

Interesting views and opinions about the at-large American public.  The Wall Street greed is stunningly real and were it not for the media scrutiny, the billions of bonuses would have gone unnoticed by the public.  The bail-out is the taxpayers' dollars, regardless of political persuasion and personal belief about capitalism, therefore those companies that accepted the monies must be held accountable for every single cent they're spending.  It is called an audit. Undoubtedly, there are defenders of these companies because these people are projecting their own sense of entitlement. 

Your first big mistake is to believe America and Americans are some sort of unique thing, and that they are the 'best' in the world. As can be seen from reality, America and Americans are not the best in the world; not even close. The US has degenerated into a cesspit of crime, greed, amorality, disorder, chaos and seething, just-under-the-surface violence. Creating a list of three things, or five, or even ten, won't go anywhere unless you address the underlying morass. It's like taking the best car in the world, filling it with the best gas, and then getting a crackhead to drive it. The result will not be pretty. Sadly, I think the US has become too big, too crass, and too complex to be salvaged in its current form. It can only go down.

Re : what part of your article appealed to me, it might help if
you glanced at my profile and go from there. I am an Indian
by birth and moved permanently to the USA as an immigrant in '76.
Although we originated from different parts of the world, I believe
we are now older and somewhat wiser as to how the rapid changes in
our world are affecting all our lives, regardless of financial, social or
marital status. Short of hitting a huge jackpot this is life today for
the unfortunate, older, frustrated, ignored and overlooked such as
ourselves.

Homeless as a child for over a year, raised in a foster home,
I never married nor do I have any offspring that I am aware of.
So I cannot even begin to fathom the level of stress you have undergone.

As a single person trying to survive on my wits and a B.A. in English
Litt., alone I have faced many struggles to survive. Now, as I go through
my final year of being in the Fifties' age group, (will be 60 next year)
what dreams have I left to build on ? I don't have Medical, Dental or any
other insurance besides the basic auto insurance mandated by Texas law.
Watch and wait and hope is something I've done for many decades and now,
after being shunned from many places because I'm old, not 'qualified enough'
and not Bi-lingual, I have to be thankful that I at least have a job TODAY.
Already our workhours have been slashed and so I work 70 hours weekly.
That gets me an apartment, uitilities, food, laundry, gas for my car, phone
and hi-speed internet. Hooray, and I really mean it, because I am ever aware
of the plight of those who have no roof over their heads and wonder where
their next meal is coming from.

So Joey, I have no strategy to offer, as I realized after evacuating during
Hurricane Ike (which is another story in itself). All I have is Faith. Faith in
today because I woke up breathing normally and got to reply to you.

Sorry. Hang in there, you never what tomorrow brings !

May you be blessed, there, Fred Miller. A lot of men in their fifties and sixties are in similar situations. I would bet that the majority of all the town car drivers such as me are college graduates.

For me, the path downhill began in the sixties after we had used an incredible amount of our wealth to move from the city to the suburbs, destroying our cities by abandoning them and adding to the destruction by building highways to take us in and out even faster.

Then we started to move our industries to the suburbs, then to the states with weaker unions, and then finally overseas.

That is what really destroyed the US. More later.

Stumbled upon this from CNN.com, seems to be a regular eye-grabber

nowadays :

(CNN) -- As Walter Thomas knows, it's hard to look for a job when your stomach is rumbling.

The 52-year-old from Washington, D.C., started skipping meals in early January when his savings account was running dry and his kitchen cabinets were almost empty.

Thomas at first didn't want to turn to the United States' food safety net, the food stamp program, for help.

But after being laid off in July from what seemed like a steady job in sales at a furniture store, Thomas swallowed his pride and applied for the monthly food aid.

"It lets me think, 'OK, well, tomorrow I'll be able to eat. If nothing else, I'll be able to eat,' " he said.

With the national economy in meltdown, more Americans than ever are relying on the federal aid program to keep from going hungry. In October, more than one in 10 people -- about 31 million -- were using the food stamp program to get by, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture....

Hey Fred,

Good luck to you sir!  Being a student of history, I found some interesting parallels in your comment to that of other first generation immigrants.  Gives new credence that what was once old is new again.  What part of Texas do you hail from?  I am located in East Texas. 

The comment about Walter Thomas is a great indicator of what lies ahead.  I have family in Alabama that have worked at the same plant for the past 20 years.  This past Friday they were laid off with no notice.  This morning they filed for unemployment and were told there was a 60 day waiting period.  When asked why, they were given two answers.  First, there isn't enough money to go around and two, they don't want to encourage people to not seek employment.

Thinking this was a fluke, I checked my notes about a friend who was laid off from a company in Md. right before Thanksgiving.  I called him and he confirmed that even in Md., he has yet to receive his first unemployment check.  His 4 brothers have combined their resources and moved their families into one home so that they can get by. 

For some parts of the world this would be the norm.  After all in many parts of the world, families include multigenerations in the same household.  It is fast becoming a stark reality for many Americans too.

Roy, I agree completely with the mass exodus from cities to the suburbs and the subsequent consequences that resulted from that exodus.  As I mentioned above, historically speaking there have always been only two solutions out of this economic mire.

I get a chuckle when I hear about excess capacity or surpluses.  Why? 

Would it help popularize this article if we were to add a graphic or image?

Great!  Well  help me out.  I haven't got a clue about what to post.

What kind of graph/visual do we need?

What is needed is a graph of how much life in America has sucked over time! And it would be geometrically up since the early '70s.

We need to bring back ECONOMIC NATIONALISM.

Regardless of religion, everyone decent believes in the Golden Rule of "do unto others as you have them do unto you". And, I want to add what Rabbi Hillel (?) said about egotism, right off the Dr. Bonner Castile Soap bottle:

"If you are not for yourself, who are you for? And, if you are only for yourself, what are you?"

Now, let's put that in macro-economic terms:

"If you are not for your country what are you for? And, if you are only for your country, what are you?"

Nationalism has been given a bad name by its worst practicioners who, of course, used nationalism as a vehicle for their own demagoguery in an attempt to exalt themselves.

But, strangely and ironically enough, the left loves nationalists as long as they are against the West, Malcolm X as black American nationalist, for example. Actually, if you really know his story, you have to admire him.

Anyway, what I propose is a system of barter and credit exchange in which Americans and legal immigrants could participate in a system of product and service exchange that would go on inside our own system.

Alvin Toffler, author of Future Shock and the better Third Wave, has already pointed out that as we move from industrial society with its emphasis on synchonization, specialization, standardization, concentration and maximization, to the post-industrial model, we get what he calls a Power Shift (in the book of the same name).

For example, supermarkets used to be marginal operations getting dictated to by P&G and all the major manufacturers of consumer products commonly sold in stores.

Then along came that bar code process. All of a sudden,  the supermarket has all the information about the consumer and the real value of their shelf space, aided by giving us discounts for joining as members to the store, recording our buys and helping them figure out what is what.

The table turned. Now the supermarkets began dictating to the big consumer companies what the shelf space would cost because they knew its exact value.

We need to do something on that scale.

We need to become pro-sumers. We need to grow a lot of our own veggies, potatoes, maybe even some chickens. Fix our own cars. Make our own clothes. Find out stuff about health, such as combining cod liver oil, picosanol, pomegranate extract and slo-niacin to do better what the expensive drugs such as Lipitor do without the cost and without the side-effects. You know, prevent your own heart disease at minimal cost.

The prosumer produces for himself and others. It is what we were when we were farmers. Nobody didn't eat because of a bank failure a hundred years ago. You went back to the relative's farm and contributed and got fed.

Right now, we are over-specialized and find ourselves totally screwed when our system collapses and leave us without a place to exchange our specialized activity for money.

Minimizing our dependence on a system extraneous to ourselves would create independent-minded people who could reflect on what was offered them in the context of taking care of themselves and their own loved ones.

Dang Roy,

There's not much else I can add to this except a resounding agreement especially concerning the area of self sufficiency.  I read an interesting article this past week about the pending crisis facing us should the economy go belly up. 

Specifically, most urbanites would starve to death before a national response could be garnered.  For instance, the city of Los Angeles only has 3 supermarkets for every half million residents.  Granted, there are plenty of corner markets and whatnot, but the assumption would be that those stores would evaporate almost overnight in the event of a major economic event.  The comparison was made between markets and fast food establishments.  In comparison, there is 1 fast food restaurant for every 100 residents in the same area.  Since most fast food establishments depend on just-in-time inventory, it only takes one aspect the food chain to fail and citywide starvation could become a stark reality.

Reverberating your contention that most people aren't capable of coping with this, I would shutter to think of the consequences.  I recently read a book on bartering and it make a lot of sense!