Saturday, October 18, 2008

An Ignorant Man Asks For Help


Time to demonstrate my ignorance. Put it all right out there. Lay it on the line and show what an absolutely uneducated, misguided, ignorant fool I am about matters financial.
I don’t understand.
I don’t understand why it is OK to give 700 billion dollars to banks, mortgage and credit card companies who have grown obscenely wealthy from providing credit to those who only needed it because there was no other way to buy a house, get groceries and medicine, send a child to college or pay their medical bills?
I don’t understand why they call it free market capitalism when the people who actually provide the goods and services benefit so little from their labor that they have had to rely on debt to maintain a fairly simple middle-class life, or in many cases, a life of obvious poverty - while those who supposedly use those services and sell those goods have lived lives of extraordinary luxury and have taken away obscene amounts of wealth?
I don’t understand how a bank can take the money I deposit and make billions from investing it and then charge me a fee. I don’t understand that when they loan me money I pay 12% interest plus fees but when I loan them money I get 2% minus fees.
I don’t understand why so many working people have believed that this form of capitalism has benefited them? Is it because they have a computer, car and house to live in that doesn’t really belong to them? Do people really think they own that SUV when they still owe $20,000 on it? And by the time they do own it, what do they think it will be worth?
I don’t understand why Americans, who work the longest hours in the world, have the highest debt and lowest savings in the world?
I don’t understand how our government can stand before us and tell us that their policies are designed help us by restoring this credit-based economy before the “real” economy suffers more? Hasn’t the “real” economy always suffered from the fact that the debt side of the credit-based economy has always been ours and the profit side always been theirs?
I don’t understand how they can keep a straight face and tell us that, for our own good, we must give these bankers more money so that we can borrow more for our homes, jobs and education?
I don’t understand why people listen to and follow the advice and philosophies of corporate CEOs, Bankers, Stock Brokers, Senators, and other Masters of the Universe who have always taken the results of our labors and turned them into gigantic profits for themselves and let trickle back down to the rest of us just enough to allow us to buy on credit whatever new fad they can conceive of?
I don’t understand how Joe the Plumber can think his small business will ever really be his when he needs to be in constant debt to these financiers just to stay afloat? Doesn’t he realize that the reason he needs to borrow to pay for basics to run his company is because he does not get a fair and equitable price for his labor? That for every dollar his company generates, 80 cents goes to someone else?
I don’t understand why my fellow citizens believe this system is either fair or, in the long run, good for anyone but the very wealthy? Where does he think the CEOs get their million dollars a week? Where does he think the hundreds of millions of dollars it takes to elect a bunch of senators and presidents come from? Where does he think the media sales empires, multinational corporations, drug companies, arms merchants and international financiers get their funds? Does he think that IAC CEO works so hard in one day that he personally creates $1,000,000 more in real value? I cannot comprehend that this guy who sells me cheap goods on TV makes $1,000,000 a day? How does he do that selling cameras that cost $19.95? And how much did he pay the guys who made that camera? Or the ones who worked in the mines digging up the raw materials?
I don’t understand how we can tell ourselves that we are good people who give our wealth (and our children) to bring freedom and prosperity to Iraq when we know that most of the Billions we are borrowing from China is going to benefit the Executives and stock-holders of banks who move the funds and corporations who supply the arms and sell the oil? And that none of that debt (in money or flesh) will ever be paid by those who reap the rewards?
I really don’t understand.
I don’t get it. Isn’t debt what you owe someone else? If I work hard and earn $500 a week and the cost of my home, food, clothes, transportation, insurance, education, taxes and so is $800 a week, aren’t I living beyond my means? And if my boss makes $180,000 a week and his costs come to $8,000 a week, isn’t he taking beyond his means?
I don’t understand why you call me a socialist or a communist when all I want is a fair deal? I don’t want to stop anyone from getting ahead; I simply want him not to get ahead by enslaving me with debt. I want fair value for my efforts. If you gave your child two dollars for mowing the lawn and the guy at the local stored took it all for a soda that cost him 15 cents and told your child to bring back another $1.25 tomorrow to pay what he still owed, wouldn’t you get angry? Or, would you say, “Hey, that’s free market economics. Good for all of us?” I don’t get it, it sounds like theft to me.
So, will someone please explain it to me?
Really.
I don’t understand!

2 comments:

Randall Sexton said...

Holy crap, that is good! We're doomed I tell you!

Robert Ierardi said...

Ted, you just don’t get it. We’re just children and we should be seen and not heard. We should just sit in front of our TV sets and our video Games and EAT! And get fatter and fatter, and let the big people make all the decisions. Because we're children and too stupid to make them for ourselves! We should thank Jesus H. Christ (Our Lord and Savior!) that we have a low paying job at Wal-Mart when all the other jobs have been “Outsourced” to India and Pakistan. We should just consider ourselves lucky when the Oil Companies decide to lower the price of gas, or when The Great White Father in Washington smiles on us and gives us each $800 to pay our rent and buy food and get health care. We should just keep our mouths shut and take it, because otherwise we might be considered un-American, or worse: Un-Christian and when that happens; The Terrorists Win. Now does it make sense Ted?

When does The Revolution start?