The Employment Myth

Between the ages of 18 and 40 I bought into "unemployment figures". 5% to 9% seemed like reasonable single-digit numbers that could easily be overcome. The comfort that unemployment numbers are not too high is a nervous consolation, in case you ever happen to find yourself there. The strong-minded will tell themselves, get up and finish the race. When you finally do pick yourself up and get back in the race, it could even make you embrace Republican values and  "laissez-faire" capitalism. The conservative assumption is that most of that 5% to 9% could be seen as a healthy, temporary number, and some of it is inevitable human nature - a.k.a. the lazy ones. As Mitt Romney thought he was saying privately during his 2012 presidential campaign, self-proclaimed victims who unaccountably rely on the government are a lost cause.

While a part of me never really thought 5% to 9% unemployment meant that 91% to 95% of the country was employed, I didn’t quite grasp the reality that more than 50% of America's total population is unemployed. That number includes children and seniors over 70, but in at least half of that segment someone still needs to work for them. Either way it has little to do with laziness: Capitalism is simply not designed to provide for 220 million jobs – the number of Americans over 16 and under 70. According to the Current Employment Statistics and Current Population Statistics, the total number of jobs in the U.S. is about 150 million. That's a 70 million adult deficit. It boils down to 22% of the total population, and 32% of the working age population.

We could drill down further and say that only about half of the 32% really competes hard for a job. That would be under the assumption that the other half are spouses or "significant others" who play a voluntary support role. It would make the true, effective unemployment rate in the US 16%. There's just one problem with that logic: the single job that pays for one adult mouth to feed also has to pay for two. While the two halves can economize and scale all day long, the single job per couple math reaches a tipping point sooner rather than later. You can pick which end you prefer, 32% or 16%. But either way it is still a far cry from "5.5%". I choose to go right down the middle, and I call the true, effective unemployment rate of the U.S. 24%. One-quarter of the nation, one out of four, is unemployed. From a macro perspective, 170 million Americans are not formally employed.

Counting new unemployment compensation filings every month (currently at 5.5%) is a dishonest collusion that both ruling parties have engaged in for almost a century. It looks better on their leadership record, and they guilt the ordinary citizens into blaming themselves more than the system.

It needs to stop. It's neither honest nor sustainable, and neither party knows how to fix it. The best argument conservatives have is that given the right incentives, able-people will eventually get off their asses and find a way to make themselves productive. The best argument liberals have is that there are way too many unable-people in our society – not lazy, literally unable. Unable physically, mentally, or a combination compounded by a true unemployment that lies somewhere between 24% and 53%. Ignoring them will not make them go away, and labeling them “welfare queens” who don’t understand trickle-down economics amounts to conservative smugness.

Neither argument by itself will ever work. If both sides acknowledge that both arguments working together is in fact the answer, then we may yet make America a greater society.

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Why I'm Not Feeling The Bern

First, I do feel the need to point out that of all candidates, Bernie Sanders is one of the most principled politicians the United States has to offer in 2016. One of the burdens of the U.S. is the unethical purchasing of political power. If anyone is doing an impressive job at minimizing the purchase of his/her campaign, and therefore her/his convictions, it's Bernie Sanders. Even "self-financed" billionaire Donald Trump is not last in outside / "dark" money (PAC): Trump is second to last in PAC funding, at almost $2 million as of March 2016. Sanders is dead last at under $50,000. (OpenSecrets.org)

Second, I also feel the need to point out that Sanders is one of the most socially empathetic candidates in the U.S. political mix today. The shaming of social empathy has traditionally been a dark political pastime of the U.S., even by moderate liberals. Conventional wisdom dictates that survival of the fittest is seriously eroded by "excessive" social empathy, like a mother and a father who tiresomely disagree on what nurtures and what weakens the child. According to the same conventional wizards, social empathy is the damning of the poor: it makes them lazy and weak (Ronald Reagan's "Welfare Queen"). This prevalent suspicion, embedded in the American quilt, is the fundamental reason the U.S. is in the bottom half of the thirty most developed nations when it comes to social progress. (Social Progress Index)

You would think that those two significant attributes would be enough to feel the Bern. After all, haven't we always turned a blind eye towards the darker side of politicians, as long as we believed they were enlightened in matters that are most important to us? (Something future generations may call Trumping, much in the same way we use the term Machiavellian today.) But more to the point: with those two impressive Sanders attributes highlighted, is there anything about him that would even require the old blind eye?

The answer to that depends on whether you believe that the dark side of socialist democracies are the lesser of two evils. With that I am offering the reader the courtesy of not insulting his or her intelligence, by taking it as a given that ALL man-made socioeconomic systems have a dark side.

Even more importantly, the answer to the blind eye question depends on whether you believe that a vastly less homogenous nation like the U.S., vastly larger, with vastly more significant technological and scientific contributions to the planet, can or should wear the "Nordic Model" skinny jeans (the Nordic Model is the socioeconomic system of five European nations: Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden). If you believe that the shiny side of the Nordic Model is not heavily fueled by a fiercely "offshore" capitalist model, then you might want to challenge your own sense of social fairness. The offshore dog-whistle by the way is in great part code for "let's do our dirty business in nations where they give much less of a shit about social fairness than we do". If you have not considered that the Nordic Model is still greatly benefitting from the war chest of its non-social heyday, then you might want to vet Bernie Sanders' idealism a little better. Don Corleone's way of life did not magically clean itself up after a whole new generation. You can put lipstick on a pig, but you're still addicted to bacon.

Here's the heart of the matter: the conservative rich are not laughing at Sanders because they think he's a dreamer; they're laughing at him because they know where the money that will be used for "free" healthcare and "free" education comes from. And they know how it's made. Because it's not your mom and pop's money from back in Pleasantville. In case that doesn't sink in, please think back to the Scandinavian heyday war chest. And to the Corleones: Bernie is like Kay Corleone (Diane Keaton), when she begs the conscience of her husband Michael Corleone (Al Pacino), "I thought you weren't going to become a man like your father... Because this all must end... this Sicilian thing that's been going on for two thousand years."  

The Corleone boys don't do lipstick, Bernie.

..

This is not the election of a lifetime. The elections you make for yourself every day when you wake up are the elections of a lifetime. Stop falling in love with politicians preaching change, and be the change. These are not the droids you're looking for. 

This is also not a call for a non-vote. By all means, do vote. The democratic process, as frustrating as it may be, is still the healthiest way we have so far in our evolution to propose a general way forward. But destiny is not up to our leaders. It never has been, and it never will be. There is only one destiny, and it's the collective sum of all individual destinies. The only thing you can do to help change the world is focus on your own destiny. Only then will your vote truly count.

Just be aware of one slight rule of engagement, when it comes to focusing on yourself: the more you take without giving, whether in love or in profit, the more insignificant your destiny will be. Even if it makes you a billionaire. Especially if it makes you a billionaire.

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The Ghosts of Freedom's Future

It's that time of decade again. The political football that every four years inflates to the size of the Hindenburg has taken flight, and it's about to crash-land... oh the humanity. Come Christmas of 2016, one side or the other of the United States will feel like they just got Scrooged. Haunted by ghosts of elections past.

There's the ghost of Bill Clinton. And the ghost of Jeb Bush, who literally scared himself out of the running. There's the ghost of Evita Peron, reincarnated into the body of a peculiar old man promising free stuff to everyone. And then, there's the scariest of them all: the ghost of fascist past. Wait, what? Fascism in the land of the free? Oh the irony.




Freedom is a painful human illusion. It exists, but it is not what we think it is. To illustrate in real life, take a walk down the dark side of American history for a moment. But I have to warn you: to borrow a term from our champions of marketeering, you may experience disruption. (In case you don't keep up with our roving marketeers on LinkedIn, they have been tripping over themselves to see who can use the word "disruption" more often.) So get uncomfortable for just a minute, this disruption won't hurt. Much. Oh, and before you report me to the ghost of McCarthy: grow up. Everyone has a dark side. The sooner we confront it, the sooner we can truly honor our founders and work on that more perfect union. Now let the disruption begin.




During its first one hundred years as a "free" nation, the United States enslaved people. Legally. Then for another one hundred years it "segregated" them. A sanitized term if I've ever heard one. Good guys segregate, bad guys apartheid. Really bad guys apply the final solution. All in the name of freedom. And in the name of God. An odd God, if I've ever seen one. And quite a perverse definition of freedom, to say the least. (How's that uncomfortable feeling? Hold on a little longer, just one more disruption...)




Mine was the first generation ever in the history of mankind that was born into a nuclear age capable of mass annihilation. Mutually Assured Destruction was the sanitized term of our time. It was indeed a world gone mad. Complete with evil empires. But... here's the thing about evil empires: to earn that title, don't they actually pull the nuclear trigger? As in, drop the bomb on live, urban populations. Targeting not just military operatives but their families as well. Just as ghost of fascist past says we should. 




Uncomfortable enough yet? I hope so. Because if there is no pain... you are receding. Into a very dark place, where they build very high walls. The kind that even Republicans like Ronald Reagan called on to tear down.

Disruption over, at ease. The founders of this great country, with all their human imperfections, were indeed some of the finest men this world has ever seen. I have nothing but deep respect and admiration for them. As I do for those who have made great efforts, and in some cases great sacrifice, to carry the torch. The innovation, imagination, work ethic, and scientific achievements of the United States are awe-inspiring. No, it is not the only nation in the world with impressive contributions. But the potential for another 250 years of great contributions to humanity is too important. By then, this great land will surely double in population, to almost 700 million people. Because history has consistently proven that leaders who tear down walls always trump the ones who build them. 

Of the last two formidable fascists in the history of civilization, one was shot and hung for public display, the other took a bite into a cyanide pill rather than be captured and tried for the worst crimes against humanity the world has ever seen. The United States of America was instrumental in that conclusion. These formidable fascist enemies, by the way, were not Muslim, or Mexican. They were card-carrying members of the “master” race. And as for the “mother of all wars”… no, it hasn’t been “terrorism”, not even close. After the Master Racists, the Civil War killed more Americans than any other foreign enemy.

As I find a way to bring my thoughts here to a useful conclusion, I can’t help but notice out of the corner of my news feed that 700 people are lining up in the rain, right here in my own hometown, to hear orange wall-man talk about his great wall. If I were to walk over there and listen, I imagine I would be in an auditorium with 700 angry people chanting for the wall. Being surrounded by 700 angry people is surely a scary thing, been there done that. But a moment of fear is no match against a lifetime of it. In true Machiavellian, fascist form, wall-man is at this exact moment frightening 700 of my fellow hometowners that the 700 million are coming. And that only he and his wall can save them.

Fortunately for this great country, it will continue to be great, in spite of the darkness that men like wall-man create. And perpetuate. By Christmas of 2016, the ghosts of election past will all go back to sleep.

“The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever.”   (Charles Dickens, “A Christmas Carol”)

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Of Hawks And Men

"Try to understand men, if you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and nearly always leads to love. There are shorter means, many of them. There is writing promoting social change, writing punishing injustice, writing in celebration of heroism, but always that base theme. Try to understand each other.”  - John Steinbeck

In “Mice and Men”, Steinbeck is concerned with a few aspects of human nature, but especially oppression and abuse. When I first read the classic back in high school, I wondered if the “mice” imagery would come through as a condemnation of cowardice within humanity. I still wonder that to this day, though that is the one animal imagery from the book that is not necessarily intended to represent cowardice. But one important understanding has tipped for me since my high school days: my view of what a coward is has evolved dramatically.

At its most simplistic stage, I used to think of a coward as someone who was afraid to fight. Immediately following were those who would attack or abuse those who are significantly less powerful (that much was central to Of Mice and Men). Soon enough, the definition began to include those who would blindside or backstab you. That of course is a delicate expansion of the definition: given the benefit of context, it can be argued that sometimes you have a justifiable option to blindside. But only to someone who has proven to be a serious (and presumably unprovoked) threat to your existence. And therein lies a huge complication to the moving-target definition of bravery.

For almost forty years since I first read Steinbeck’s masterpiece, that’s roughly two generations, I have observed a peculiar thing about some fellow humans: the tendency to over-generalize out of what can only be irrational fear. It typically manifests itself in derogatory labeling, grouping, or stereotyping of nationalities, races, and religions. Predictably not our own.

I have also noticed that a certain percentage of the generalizers “double-down” on their generalizations. Meaning, when intelligently challenged on their logic, they simply repeat it louder. Not unlike when simpler minds travel to foreign countries, and speak their own language louder when natives cannot understand them. It seems to me at that tipping point that only two things can possibly be taking place: they are either intellectually limited, or they are just intellectually lazy. In the latter case, they have conditioned themselves to be highly suspect of any use of the intellect for purposes other than work and immediate family.

While I can certainly understand the plight of those who possess less than average intellectual reasoning, I found myself frustrated in recent years with the intellectually lazy. They are the ones who know better, but choose not to. Their reasons vary, but I have come to understand they boil down to two: they have either indoctrinated themselves in the suspicion of intellectual thought and reason, or they have become addicted to a greed-driven existence.

Today I see a coward as someone who hides irrational fears (aka hate), or unchecked fears in the case of the lazy ones, behind a hawkish bravado. By contrast, someone who is afraid to fight, and admits as much, is nowhere near as cowardly in the ultimate scale of bravery.

There is no doubt that sometimes we have to fight. That’s a given. There is no doubt we have to be vigilant about potential threats to civilized individuals and society. But the false hawks, ultimately the true cowardly ones, always have been and continue to be a major complication in our mission to evolve. For all practical purposes, they are an evolutionary liability. 

Yet here lies the ultimate challenge: it’s not their fault. It’s actually ours, those of us who claim to know AND act better. Because we have too much contempt for the false hawks. Which makes us, at the end of the day, a hypocritical part of the problem: we hate the haters.

Steinbeck was right. We are not going to change the world by hating the haters. Our only hope is to try to understand them. You don’t have to agree with their views and actions. But understanding them better will finally earn you that moral high ground that we automatically, and mistakenly, assume is ours.