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Ah, the Big Apple, center of wealth and power of America.Let's talk about New York a bit, shall we ?
If any of you live there, you have most likely experienced Sandy and the after effects of that storm. And if i had more time i would like to talk about the preparedness for the storm, or more honestly the LACK thereof.
If you watched TV during that period...ok hold on, let me back up, if your TV WORKED , and you watched it, you would have seen the mayor of NY ( Mayor Bloomberg ) and the governor catching as much as time in front of the camera as they could to tell us basically two things:
a) that this was the worse storm the world has ever seen and
b) that some of the first responders were genuine heroes.
Nothing to complain there, most of the first responders WERE heroes and the storm was indeed very bad. But what the purpose of this was, was to avoid having to answer the question :
Why on Earth after 10 years of BILLIONS of dollars spent on "homeland security", designed to prepare us for dealing with these exact crises, was their response so HORRIBLE !?
It's really stunning.
And here's some fun examples that an uncle of mine living in NY told me.
After a few days into the storm, without power, people's cellphones were running out of juice. They couldn't even communicate anymore with the outside world.
So, the GOOGLE corporation ( oh the irony of me saying good words about a corporation ), out of their own volition brought in power trucks where people could - free of charge - plug their phones to get more power.
( this happened mainly in lower Manhattan )
The city of New York never though of this.
Just like they had never thought what would happened if, i dunno, the people stuck on the 40th floor of a building who's lost power who had a very serious problem - which would turn critical if they had medical needs or food needs or whatever.
Neither did they think that maybe ONE of each uneven numbered avenue could be freed up for traffic for emergency vehicles - this only occured to them DAYS within the storm. Stunning.
A stunning display of incompetence. One really has to wonder what it means.
And as a hint to the answer to what it means, the thing that takes a society that is on the brink, and brings it over the edge is what we call a "natural" disaster, because it galvanizes the disfunction(s).
For example the Cernobyl accident was a crucial part of the end for the USSR, which collapsed shortly thereafter, due to the lying, the incompetence and corruption that plagued that society.
Fun fact: one of the most successful movement was the Occupy Sandy, the one that the mayor threw them out of the park and they were quiet for a while but later came back to do for the people what the city and officialdom could not, or would not do.
Nice.
Ok i am going to connect this with two topics that have caught my eye.
First of all, i want you to think about - and probably some of you have - some of the implications of things said in the presidential campaign and afterwards.
Or more specifically, the remark by Mitt Romney about the 47% of people he "cannot reach" because they are "permanent democratic voters because they get benefits" or "are dependent from the government" and stuff like that.
The second one - shortly after the election when he said something about the democratic party winning the election ( or Obama ) because of the "gifts" ( his exact words ) they give to people who vote for them.
The third part was an article written by his campaign manager ( or one of his key advisors i can't recall who ) who did an empirical study and who discovered that Obama got a bigger majority among people earning 50,000$ or less, than the majority Romney got from the people who earned 50,000$ or more.
Message: Poor people made possible for mr Obama to win.

The truthfulness of the study is irrelevant. Let's set aside the problem of "who gets the most GIFTS from the government" because you'll see in a moment that mr. Romney's ideas are silly. I want you to focus on what's being said.
Mr Romney and his party BELIEVE what he said there. And let me use another words:
The United States is now divided in two communities - this is what it is saying. The first community is people who work hard, are self-reliant, pay all the taxes and are successful human beings.
Another part is people who are lazy, shiftless who can't be self-reliant , who have crappy lives and jobs, are bitter and ( cue republican thinking ) leech off the government.
The first community's taxes enables the second community to survive.
And therefore "all of us" ( Romney ), all of us republican ( and potential republican voters ) need to PROTECT ourselves from the claims of the lazy bums who suck us dry and ruin our great country.
The reason why that's important - besides understanding the power or speeches ( Romney got, what? 47% or votes ! ) - is it's a mark of that society ( the one saying this ) that they're no longer willing to say the story of "how we're all americans" how 'we're what America needs"and so we should vote for them.
They're really not saying that in a very fundamental way.
What they say - and they feel comfortable saying - is "we're not all together in this, we're on two types!". And I ( Romney ) want to protect YOU ( who see this and vote for me ) from THEM.
Another language for this? This is class war.
It's setting up the argument of rich VS poor, and it's a "call to arms" from one side to protect themselves from the "attack" of the other side.

Ok, i'll explain in a future article the whole thing about "GIFTS" and who exactly gets them in our society. Clearly mr. Romney had in mind poor people, people on social welfare, food stamps, etc

I'd like to do a little history with you for now:
America is a great country, it is, but most of dunno why it is. Go ahead, walk around Times Square and ask around see if anyone know - msot don't.
Here's one reason though that i do know and probably many of you haven't thought about.
From 1820 ( shortly after our birth as an independent state ) up till the 1970s the following phrase is true:
The average level of REAL WAGES ( the number of good and services one can buy with his salary ) has increased steadily every decade.
This in turn meant americans have gotten used to expecting to live better and better than the previous generations - and we know how deep that is in our political speeches where we talk about the "American exceptionalism".
That is why so many immigrants have come here for..as long as we have existed as a nation, hell, even now!
The "american dream" and all that.
Everyone understood that if they came here they could get a better PAY for the same amount of WORK they did compared to the place where they were - so they came. Millions of them.
Most you are sons and daughters of immigrants.
Why is that?
Well shortly after they arrived in America, the settlers started killing of the indians to expand.
But as they expanded they encountered a problem - LABOR SHORTAGE.
And since dead people don't work very well, they had to :
a) entice workers from the old world - Europe then, today parts from anywhere BUT Europe.
b) keep the worker interested by raising their wages because if they didn't the worker would just leave and move west to his own patch of land and live exactly as he had lived back home - "So long Screwie see you in St Louis!"
So for 150 years ( long time ) wages kept going up. That's ok, the productivity went up also, we started using machines to supplement human labor or make it more efficient.
Then 1970s came, and several things happene😛
a) the invention of the computer in 1966 meant that a lot of jobs disappeared. it used that in supermarkets ( and if you're old enough you would remember ) we had these people called "inventory checkers" who were running around checking how much stuff to sell there is left of one product and another.
We don't need these people anymore, now you got a nice scanner who tells you that X units of product Z have just been sold and the computer which calculates how many are left and at the end of the stock a buzzer tells a disenfranchised teenager staring mindlessly at a computer to press a button and more product Z is shipped from the factory.
b) Feminism - women, no longer satisfied with sitting at home wanted to get to work and that means the demand for jobs almost DOUBLED in several years while the offer did not.
NOTE: Many of the women felt it as liberating and indeed for some it was, but the truth is if the family was going to consume the way it had prior to 1970, and since the husband was not going to get higher wages EVER AGAIN, she had to go out and do her part.
But when the wife goes out to work all sort of things change - in the US women held together the emotional stability of the family.
When a woman has to get dressed, prepped up, and work 8 hours and then come back and cook dinner and handle the kids and....she CAN'T do it anymore.
She may not face that fact, the may deny it or struggle but she CANNOT do it.
Starting from 1970s the divorce rate in America exploded - the relationships wouldn't survive.
Ok, you'll say , but at least they solved the money problem, right?
No...no..
And here's why.
When mom goes out to work she needs a 2nd car because we don't have such a good public transport system. And she is too tired to cook or clean-up so all of this is bought: prepared food that makes your kids and yourself sick or is not really healthy.
We're the country that invented fast-food, and now you know why, we don't have even TIME to sit down to dinner, grab something to eat ( that God knows where it's been or what's it made ) and you rish off to work.
c) The off shoring of jobs.
The greater rise of american wages and strength of american unions gave a greater and greater INCENTIVE to corporations to find an alternative.
In the 1970s with the coming of the computer they've found it.
China, India were all waiting.
Why build this Apple phone or this whatever for 200$ in the US and sell it for 500$ when you can give it to some poor dirty chinese person who's happy with a dollar a month and you can sell it for 500$ to the US.
More profits !

All of these contributed to the rise in DEMAND for workplaces but in the DECLINE of jobs. With so many offers employers didn't have to raise wages anymore, you'd take the job or 100 people behind you would.
And the reality is that's what happened.
Jobs were disappearing left and right and americans were as desperate as they could to get one. And the results are:
- your job - if you have one has LESS security ( how long you can keep it, how dangerous it is ), LESS benefits ,etc
- you are paid LESS than you are worth, sometimes you aren't paid at all. We got those "INTERNS" who are basically slaves who work for nothing and at the end you get something to write in your resume, but MONEY they do not get.

Anyway so the real wages stopped. And the american people could have simply said :
"Oh well tough luck son, i am was the last to live this well, you are going to live crappier than me"
But they couldn't - no parent usually CAN say that or even think that.
So what did they do? Well one was to send mom to work.
But that didn't work so americans ever inventive came up with a second solution which stressed them to hell and back: they started working longer hours.
A really nice article i read a few months ago states that the average american works nowadays MORE than the average japanese - that should tell you something.
But that didn't work either, consumption was still TOO great for the budget of the family. And not only the family was thinking about the kids, but this is America and advertising was born here so all companies make sure to tie in ALL products with "being american", so if you don't own/buy something, then you're not really "living the american dream", you're not really american, or whatever.
The psychological effects is very strong and worth looking at if you're interested.

But that wasn't enough, working themselves to the bone WASN'T ENOUGH.
So they did something else: they went on a borrowing binge the likes NO working class has EVER seen before.
Starting with 1978 the level of american savings rate collapsed - we stopped saving money. And not only we stopped SAVING money, we BORROWED money.
Like crazy.
And this further traumatized families and relationships. And here come the fun part.
If the wages DON'T go up, but productivity DOES, the difference is accrued to? Profits, that's right.
So what did the corporations who were flushed with money do?
They - and sit down when reading this - turned around and loaned it ( through banks ) to their employees.
This is as close as nirvana as capitalism gets !
Instead of paying your workers more, you give them a LOAN, which they have to give BACK to you WITH INTEREST !

Ok now, if you are raging, good but not yet. Because that's not the whole story. These people who we all blame and think are responsible for the crisis aren't really 'evil', they just follow the rules of the game and do what the game REWARDS them for doing.
In a sense they aren't any different from you and me. If you win the lottery, you get a bit crazy. People around notice it, and hope it will not last long.
So it was with these guys, they had so much money from not paying their workers right that they did not know what to do with it. And they started investing.
And they poured their money in the "dot com" business, until that one failed in 2000. But they still had truckloads of money so the madness moved to the next bubble, HOUSING.
Suddenly everyone went completely nuts buying and building up houses, condos, a house with a swimming pool, a house by the beach, a house with a tennis court, etc
An example of this monumental insanity, in the middle of the desert, a couple of real estate developers ( most of them americans ) built a new city from scratch, with buildings, towers, offices, everything.
That city is called...DUBAI.
And so, in the months of 2008 the leader of Dubai, sheikh...something ( i don't really remember their weird names ) announced to the world that the 60 BILLION dollars debt will not be payed because they can't.
So the city in the desert sits there, losing millions of dollars everyday.
In 2007 we came to the end of the line for the working class - they were exhausted, they couldn't do it anymore, they have violated everything that their parents had told them, to save up for rainy days, they were in debt, some even over 100% of their earning power, they were stressed out of their mind.
And - here we go - they started to DEFAULT on their loans, mortgages, etc

At first there was great panic but then everyone went: "it's ok, it's ok, these loans are insured" and went to AIG ( hello! ) and said "look here's the insurance, they aren't paying so..you need to make good on your word".
This was a great moment - sept 2008 - at which the leader of AIG turned to them - WITH A BIG SMILE OH HIS FACE AND SAI😨
"I don't have the money, have a nice day!"
And at that point the US government was starring into the abyss, because we all now use credit cards, "cash" is something we either see in the mob movies or European countries - they are moving towards this credit economy model too but much slower.
So to make it personal, you would have gone to the store, handed them your card, the people there would return your card to you and laughingly tell you : "you DO NOT HAVE credit anymore".
And since most of you carry less than 20 bucks in your pockets in cssh you would have a serious problems.
Factories wouldn't pay their workers because the difference between sale time of their products and "payday" is covered by bank deposits / loans ( imagine credit as the oil in your car engine ).
Nothing would run.
No buses, no trains, no metro, no airplanes, NOTHING.
At that point the government stepped in.


And with that i'll end for today my little rant - join again next time for a little chat about :
- a who gets "gifts" from the government
- more on outsourcing of jobs outside of the US
- more on social stratification of America and its effects on medic aid.
Happy reading.