The Post Consumerism Blog

Population growth and climate change

2010-07-28T13:22:00.001-07:00

The United Sates Census Bureau predicts that the population of the United States will grow by another 100 million in the next forty years. In his book The Next 100 Million: America in 2050 Joel Kotkin sketches a mostly positive outlook on how diverse and optimistic Americans will cope with this population increase

Mr. Kotkin’s text is a serious study and richly footnoted. His anti new-urbanist view is in apparent. He puts forth that even with this new growth the density of the United States will still be many times less than the population density in Europe. His position on the growth of new extra urban mini-metropolises throughout the heartland of America, supports my view that telecommuting and information transfer technologies will make living in major urban environment a life style not a career driven decision.

If we take as a given that Climate Change will be upon us sooner than later, where ill those people live and what will this population growth mean to the rest of us.

While no one for certain, can say what areas of the United States will be suitable for human habitation in fifty years, one thing for certain some places in America will get better for humans and others will get worse. If you read, and fully believe Dianne Dumanoski’s book The End of the Long Summer you might not be so optimistic. However, as I believe that we are past the climate change tipping point, its a moot point. The population of the United Sates will grow significantly and climate change will shift our industrialized focus.

What does that mean to our future economy. Less consumer spending of scare resources and more group purchases or redistribution of resources through government. We will have to build new infrastructures to support our increased population and new infrastructure to support it where it lives.

Where will the new population go. No one knows for certain, except that it will go where the weather supports growth and to places (urban or otherwise) that provides for the spiritual and physical needs of Americans.

What does that mean?

More Local Everything

New villages, cities and towns that provide green economies in places that have good weather, rational water supplies and the potential for growing crops.

More small city growth where transportation and infrastructures can be funded locally without mega grants from the federal government.

More villages, cities and towns in areas with abundant green power of hydro, wind and direct solar.

More communities that provide local entertainment and opportunities to recreate in the outdo

Where will this take place?

Your guess is as good as any, my guess: the hill country of Texas, interior North and South Carolina, possibly Arkansas, Oklahoma and the Dakotas as well as the Intermountain West. It is unlikely to take place in the coastal states or anywhere with mega city growth has reached practical commuting and social management limits.

A reason for optimism for the United States

2010-07-17T12:25:00.001-07:00

I am mostly an optimist. I worry just a little about prosperity for future generations of Americans. As a post consumerist, I might define prosperity differently than a consumerist, but prosperity is a rational desire for either.

The population of Europe is stable or declining. Russian and China’s population are also stable or declining. European Union nations face a need to create prosperity without growth. This is a daunting proposition.

The United States, on the other hand, will grow by as many as 100 Million people during the next 40 years. Much of that growth will be through immigration. Many immigrants come to the United States as an affirmation of hope in the future for themselves, and for their children.

Although the trend is slowing, Americans are much more likely to have children than people in other developed countries. It is my optimistic belief that population growth will drive our economy during the rest of my lifetime (and then some).

Americans are are among the most religious and spiritual people of the developed world. We are much more likely to attend worship than Europeans or Russians. Religions of all types offer a reason for hope in the future and encourage families to have children. Hope and faith in our ability to meet the challenges the creator tests us with are among the greatest strengths of Americans.

The United States can expect that population growth and our hopeful optimism will drive our economy for the reasonable future. Other countries will not enjoy this gift.

We will face serious challenges, but our hopeful outlook will help us to confront those challenges head-on. I believe our spirituality will quickly bring us to a place where we will value human advance over acquisition of plastic goods. Our growth will be shared resources rather than personal acquisitions.

This post consumerist is optimistic about our shared American future, even in these dark days.

Blowing ourselves up with non-biodegradable plastic Chinese Fireworks is not the only way to show patriotism!

2010-07-06T08:57:00.001-07:00

Now that the Fourth of July celebration has come and gone from our small town in the Pacific Northwest, I am certain of the following.

Professional grade fireworks are legally bought and fired off by individuals in the State of Washington, in very large quantities.
I love our old fashioned parade for kids.
I enjoy watching fireworks with adolescent children.
I am appalled that community volunteers have to clean 25 TONS of Chinese made plastic crap off the beaches after the fireworks.

I was interested in finding out how much personal fireworks were sold in our state. I did a web search; I wasn’t able to get a complete handle on that piece of information, but we are talking millions.

I discovered:

That thousands of citizens on this great country are injured and permanently maimed by fireworks each year. This year a man in New York lost an arm to fireworks. The Consumer Product Safety Commission reports that In 2009 there were over 8,800 fireworks injuries treated at emergency rooms and two deaths from fireworks in 2009. (Eight deaths in 2008). With a conservative addition for non hospital treated injuries we are talking some serious damage. 75% of injuries were to men and 39% to CHHILDREN
Fireworks manufacturers and wholesalers invariably advertise wit the “Show your Patriotism” motto! They fail to say “Show your patriotism by polluting the environment of America” These armaments contain millions of pieces of plastic. This plastic is small, never breaks down, and is now in the environment and will enter the oceans, eventually and find its way to your children's plates through that can of tuna fish. I don’t think we should ban fireworks, just may be regulate them back to paper or biodegradable pieces. We are not talking lost jobs in the USA here. Fireworks sales in the U.S. is a $1 Billion dollar industry, but less than 10% of the sales are from U.S. manufacturers.
In our state, and judging from the fireworks manufacturers and wholesalers web pages, most fireworks are sold to consumers through non-profit fundraising. So while the church youth group gets to have a fellowship trip, the concerned citizens get to clean up the mess made by the buyers. Now I have no quarrel with the sellers, but maybe they ought to be on the forefront of the cleanup.

I am certain that fireworks will continue, but maybe we can hope they change to biodegradable, and the industry should consider this before the EPA gets into the act.

I am also certain there are many ways, other than blowing ourselves up with small armaments made in China, to show patriotism.

I suggest that patriotism is shown by ACTIVE involvement in community. That can include voting, being a church volunteer, making donations of time and money to local and national service organizations, being a scout leader, or just going out and helping clean up the mess that the self described “super-patriots” made on your beach.

Looking for little signs that mark the way to post consumerism.

2010-06-26T09:11:00.001-07:00

As observation and positive feedback is rarely a bad thing, I am always looking for large and small signs that we are emerging from the economic doldrums in the direction I have predicted.

When I was much, much younger, I learned that you find interesting things when you turn over rocks and logs in the woods. I rarely look for the obvious with my head up.

Today is June 26, Hands Across the Sands Day. Saying no to continued offshore oil drilling and yes to renewable energy sources. The oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico might have awakened us. The former Shell Oil executive John Hofmeister’s book Why We Hate the Oil Companies, is a good example of a rock to turn over.

Mr. Hofmeister makes no bones, that extracting oil is a nasty dirty business, that most of us do NOT want to know about how it is done. We want our cars and heat and light, but we do not want to know where it comes from. The oil spill in the Gulf is forcing us to to take a hard look at our addiction to oil. Mr Hofmeister states that while many oil companies are interested in renewable sources for fuel for the personal mobility industry (cars), it is up to Government to make the hard decisions, (forced by we the people, my comment) and set the policies that will take us towards renewable energy.

We just might be seeing the start of a small shift in the government in reaction to our changing outlook.

In a past blog, I predicted that everything will become local again. That also means that we will see changes locally first.

In my small home town of a few thousand souls, we hold a few touristy type “fairs” each year. I attended one last weekend. The turn out was as good as ever, and the number of vendors seemed to be stable from years past. Those would be signs of a stable local economy. However under the surface I noticed something different.

Fewer non essential type vendors, more clothes sales, utility items, more “green” items, more cash sales, with fewer vendors accepting credit cards. I asked a few vendors, if they had used credit in the past and they said they had. I asked why they didn’t now. COST and return. They believed that the cost of offering the credit was greater than the return. So these smaller than small entrepreneurs have returned to a cash basis economy (they did accept checks).

The most recent indications to me that we are inching away from a credit and consumer based economy.

An awakening about the fossil fuel economy.
A change towards thoughtful purchase of useful items rather than impulse no need consumption.
Fewer credit card purchases.

The season of dashing our children’s hope!

2010-06-14T11:00:00.001-07:00

Now that the college graduation season has just ended. it’s the season to dash the next generations hope.

I didn’t start out my work life in an academic career, I ended up there because of night of drinking (but that’s another story!)

For parents of recent graduates seeking careers in areas such as: global finance, international aid work, urban planning, architecture, sociology, history, etc., etc. and for teaching (this year). If we, the teachers, cannot perform simple mathematical equations, how can we expect our students to do the same.

If there are 500 corporations in the Fortune Five Hundred, how many CEO’s positions are available. 500 right!

How many business degree students do we graduate every year? In 2007/2008, 335,300 individual bachelors degrees in business were granted in the United States, that number does not count the tens of thousands of MBA granted.

Factoring that we graduate that many each year, and that CEO jobs come up about every five years or so, the realistic probability that your son or daughter will even get a chance to read that the CEO position has been filled for their Fortune Five Hundred CEO job sometime in their career is about .00007 or 7/1000 of 1 percent.

You can do the same math for most industries, and for many industries the question is not CEO positions, its just getting a job. In today’s economy, where approximately 50% of practicing architects are un or under employed, the chances of even finding a paying job as an apprentice architect are pretty slim.

I am not in the business of discouraging an individual’s hopes and dreams, but I am in the business of setting realistic expectations and goals for ourselves.

When I graduated from college with a Masters Degree in Engineering, I “hoped” to find a job (not a career) in the construction industry somewhere in the United States. I sent out 200 resumes, got three interviews, and then three job offers. I accepted the one with the best location: Flint Michigan. (The others were serious backwaters.) I was living in Massachusetts at the time, it was almost a 1000 mile move. I was happy to have work.

Yes, I know it was colder then, and we walked up hill both ways to school but: we as parents and educators have an obligation to encourage our children to reach high, but take a gentle slope, and for our children to be open to what opportunities the world presents them with (good and bad).

In our over enthusiasm, during the last decade, we have created a culture of unrealistic expectations for what the work place can bring us. For the most part, work is hard, mostly boring and does not pay much. The chance to strike it rich is still a possibility, but a small possibility. It is much more likely that we strike it rich by taking advantage of what is offered us and doing our best year over year. Seeking out opportunities for incremental advancement to our ultimate goals. Even with the recent disruption in the economy, incrementalism worked positively for many of my generation, and will work at for our children.

We need to remind ourselves and our children that our lives are incrementally lived and that we can continue to pursue our dreams as we stay open to new possibilities.

Some small prognostications

2010-06-02T16:03:00.001-07:00

Change is coming, as it always does. Just look back 26 years. In 1984 Canon introduced the digital fax machine and everything changed. We began to expect perfect information instantly. Within a decade we had the internet, and now fax machines are becoming harder to find than an honest politician.

As I work more and more from home, I have become a little more conscious of some of the good things that technology is bringing, which help us to become less “thing” oriented. Just a few things: no more massive stereos; music is electronically downloaded not shipped and stored in piles of vinyl or acrylic; no more need to shop for stuff, you can do it on line, and not buying something is easier.

Things to expect to go away within a generation:

Books, bookstores and libraries (as we know them today).
Cash money and checks.
Wrist watches.
Music companies, CD’s or any non-internet delivery of music.
The US Post Office.
Land line telephones.
Keyboards of any kind (voice recognition is coming soon to you)
Broadcast television.
Free unfettered news.
Daily commuting to work.
Travel agents.
Real estate agents.
Investment advisors (no money no need!).
Garage door openers and other remote controls (replaced by iphones).
Nearly free internet and broadband access.
The desk top PC.
Privacy (already gone)

Things that we can expect to decrease as a part of of “self evaluation” factors

Constant travel. (It becomes a seldom used luxury).
New gasoline powered automobiles.
Useless consumption.
$8 Lattes.
Our real estate portfolios.

Things that will never go away

A good pair of shoes.
The little black dress.
Sunscreen.
Cats and dogs.
Beer, wine and whiskey.
Movie theaters or their descendants.
Death and taxes.
Sunrise and sunset.

This has been a fun game, and I will play it again some time.

Prosperity without Growth

2010-05-26T09:32:00.001-07:00

I have been gone awhile, mostly doing optimistic things; like setting in gardens and starting up a new business venture. During that time lots of awful things have been happening to make one a little less optimistic for the future. (Oil spill, tornados, earthquakes, foreclosures) However there is one thing I am certain of: The future is always better than the past.

Human beings are pretty resilient; the future will bring the answer to our most complex questions.

To build consensus and begin to solve some of our non sustainability issues, an essentail questions is: “How can we have prosperity without growth”.

One of the sides in the U.S. political debate is focused on growth of consumption as the only way to create wealth. Those folks are well know for their mantra “Drill baby drill” and selected ignorance of the causes for global climate change.

For individuals, who use science as a rational guide to making decisions, it is clear: we are over accelerating the consumption of scarce resources in an accelerating way. The world wide economic slow down may be a good interlude to think about what we are doing to our grandchildren. The oil spill (certainly human caused) in the Gulf of Mexico just might be the unifying call to stop and think and maybe reset.

Sidebar: I recommend you go to the Hands Across the Sand to see what some folks are doing.

We can have prosperity without growth, but several things must happen, among them:

Have an honest and generous discussion about economic social justice issues.
Reset to a fully “green” economy, without fossil fuels.
Accept some reallocation of wealth from the very very rich to jump start a “green economy” (This cannot be done on the back of the least among us)

Being a loaves and fishes sort of person (see my post January 18, 2010, “Giving your home away……”), I don’t see any downside for the haves vs the have not’s. When wealth is created it always favors the wealthy.

My advice for everyone in the United States, focus on our future and make the personal and political changes that favor our grandchildren. If we continue to bicker, we will bicker away any possibility that the 21st Century will be good for Americans.

Watching a slow train wreck, and reducing travel.

2010-04-29T19:32:00.001-07:00

I have been falling a little behind in my postings, and my only excuse is that I live in Arizona and its like watching a slow train wreck. You can’t turn away even if the outcome is inevitable and horrific. This week Mexico recommended that its citizens not travel to Arizona as they would be subject to harassment and detention if their papers were not in order. I keep flashing to Claude Rains as Captain Renault in CasablancaRick, there are many exit visas sold in this café, but we know that “you've” never sold one. That is the reason we permit you to remain open.

I am wondering if I will need an exit visa to leave Arizona.

But I digress:

I wanted to post about the concept of “authentic consumption”. A couple of decades ago it was called “conspicuous consumption”. Consumption that reinforces your societal status. At the core, both ideas are about “showing off” by having something expensive, doing something different, or knowing someone who is cool.

“Authentic consumption” may be a fishing trip to the Yukon where you skydive in and you trek or are helicoptered out; it might be “eco-tourism” (to me that’s an oxymoron) or a trip to Antarctica. Call it what you will, consumption is consumption, and most consumption with travel attached is the most non-sustainable activity you can partake in. I suspect in the post-consumer economy its going to get a whole lot more expensive. I am starting to see the future, and I am more and more convinced that we are going to be group consuming stuff but still in a capitalistic way. I expect that we will start telling manufacturers and politicians what we want as groups rather than individuals. Sure their will be fashion clothes and other electronic gadgets, but consumption of individual automobiles will be replaced by consumption of buses and trains.

I recently read a report form a major university on how they would become carbon neutral by the year 2020. The biggest single challenge to the institution: how to cut a significant portion of their faculty airline travel. Without attacking this head-on, the institution didn’t believe they would ever become carbon neutral.

Buildings of all sorts and living in homes that use fossil fuels to heat cool and run them are our most wasteful activity. Travelling, of all sorts, is the second most wasteful activity we engage in. You might say travel is worse, because, fundamentally we do need shade and shelter to survive, maybe we don’t need as much and we seldom are forcibly made to travel., and for business and trade their are now options.

I have known, through my heart, rather than my brain, that travel by car or airplane is my single most wasteful activity. I knew I couldn’t stop myself from the seduction of travel by “cold turkey” action, so I set out to find a way to reduce my travel over a significant period of time.

In my corporate days, annually, I would travel at least 250,0000 miles by commercial air carrier air and about 30,000 miles in cars. A decade ago I set out to significantly reduce that. This year, I will travel by air twice (maybe three times) less than 10,000 miles and by car less than 6,000 miles including shared ride miles. No brag , jsut fact, and anyone can do it with just a little will and planning. Many Americans travel even less than I do. I just mad a small effort to put a value to society vs. my selfish desires on all my travel. Wasteful travel dropped off, and I found myself with more time for recreation and thinking. If you want to start, I suggest making a through to-do list daily and limiting your shopping trips to things on the list. Pretty soon you won’t be nipping out for a jug of milk at midnight.

So what will the travel starved post consumer and post “authentic” consumer do:

Lots more telecommuting, or work from or near home .

Lots more local recreating. If the fishing isn’t any good, work on cleaning up your local streams.

Teleconferencing for academics and scholars.

Lots fewer national trade shows. (There already a trend towards smaller regional venues)

Electric cars that don’t go very far.

More shared commuting by buses, and trains and “other modes”

I hope for a resurgence of national train travel, a calmer method of travel, and with wireless networks, lots of work can be done, and and classic and relaxing travel will return.

The Tea Party is looking a lot like 1960’s street theater

2010-04-22T16:34:00.001-07:00

Just for some fun:
Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachman
the 21st century replacements for the late
Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman

Are they the reincarnation of 1960’s street theater movement that eventually brought down the republican government of Richard Nixon? Is the Tea Party, the 40 year old payback by the Republican Party? Maybe, maybe not, but this year’s street theater is not about bringing down an unpopular government over an unpopular war, its about trading one ruling party for another.
You got to wonder? Alaska has a medical marijuana law and possession of one ounce or less of marijuana in the privacy of your home is legal. You can grow 25 marijuana plants in privacy, protected by the Alaska Constitution. They also have a no need to get a permit to carry a concealed weapon law. Arizona just passed their version and Vermont has one driven in from the left.
So lets hope that Sara Palin and Michelle Bachman are just exercising their right to street theater in the great American tradition. I do hope that Sarah and her family exercise their constitutional right, in Alaska, to grow and light up while carrying concealed weapons
Don’t get so upset. Members of the Chicago seven, eight or ten, depending on your view, were masters of the genre and used tactics similar to the tea parties. Outside financial support, and small numbers and gigantic big media wallop.
Let’s just hope no insane local or state government will gin up goofy charges against Governor Palin, or we will really have a circus. As a matter of fact, I expect the Arizona Territorial government might just do it to give the Tea Party a new platform.

It won’t be pretty but it will be ours.

2010-04-13T17:22:00.001-07:00

The post consumerism capitalistic world in the United States might not be pretty, but it will be ours.

Here is a truth, the working folks in the United States, who earn wages, pay more than their fair share of taxes. Just about 50% of the governments revenues come from wage taxes including social security. Another factoid: the top earners in the United States are (as you would expect) the top tax cheats. Its hard for we, who get wages, to steal from Uncle Sam when our employers withhold the cash and send it direct to Washington DC.

What does that mean: The Tea Party folks are right about reallocation of wealth by the government. They just have the direction wrong. We do not subsidize the poor, we subsidize the rich.

The working class and working poor pay a bigger portion of their earnings for taxes than the wealthy. I guarantee that Glenn Beck pays a smaller portion of his earnings in taxes than I, or you do. He surely pays more tax (I hope), but I give a bigger portion of my earnings to taxes, and I have little left for large houses or limos or even savings. (Sending off a check this week of April 15th so I rant a little.)

But hey! this a great country! Where else would workers have the opportunity to subsidize the ruling class, all the while thinking that their wage taxes go to support lazy non-workers.

Any way, as much as the demagogues rant about socialism invading the country, I have just read the constitution again, and we have the right to change our form of government through legislation and amendments so lets do it.

Lets get a 28th and 29th amendment.

The 28th limiting congress from exempting themselves from laws and the 29th to define that corporations are not “people”.

Now that “corporations” are people with rights, do they have the right to arm themselves under the second amendment? The Fox Network Militia vs. the MSNBC Militia to protect themselves. They could develop nukes!

The end of “Extraction Capitalism”

2010-03-29T09:12:00.001-07:00

Don’t get me wrong. I believe in regulated capitalism as a means of betterment for all. However, “Extraction Capitalism” is a means of betterment of the few at the expense of the many.

There is an evident fact that the mining and other “extraction” industries move away when the mineral resources is depleted.

But where do extraction capitalists go when they have wrung the last cent out of the many? They become extinct!

Let me step back and define “extraction capitalism”. Extraction capitalism is not about making products, or improving society, or about making jobs. Its not even about making money. Its about moving wealth from one class of citizens to another. In our present case its about extracting wealth from the poor, the working poor, and the former middle class. The “extracted” wealth is then moved to the media/governing/banking class. I do not use that class term lightly. The media class is dependent on the governing class for something to do and the governing class is dependent on the banking class for financing its survival..

How does the media/government/banking class reallocate your wealth. Its simple, every time there is a monetary transaction on the planet the banks “extract” a share of the transaction. Because the banks “extract” a fee from your grocery store for credit card and debit transaction, all groceries are more expensive. The banks “extracts” wealth from you when you buy groceries. They extract wealth from you whenever you buy goods and services. They extract wealth from you when your put money in even the safest “savings” accounts. They extract wealth if you invest in stocks and bonds. They extract wealth from you when the government “borrows” money to keep the media/governing/banking class operating. I even pay a fee to pay my taxes with a credit card.

How can it be that the banks had their best year ever last year, when everyone on Main Street “lost” a significant segment of their wealth. Most of your wealth was not “lost” it was transferred to the media/government/banking class,

I watch the “Tea Party” movement and on TV, they are mostly middle aged and older and white, and I ask myself, how much of their wealth are they willing to give to Fox News, Sarah Palin and their bankers before they realize that the “other side”-the bad guys, the young and diverse are in the same peril of giving their wealth to the same media/government/banking class from the opposite direction. Either way the wealth, has been, and continues to move away from Main Street.

The bright side is that, like all “extraction” industries, extraction capitalism will just go away when the resource has been depleted. So when the money is gone from Main Street and there is no where for the “extraction” capitalist to look for wealth, the “Tea Party” members and the “Left Wing Socialists” on Main Street might just have to sit down together and figure out where we would like “capitalism” to go in the future.

Healthcare and Weekly RATS. We are now officially part of the way there.

2010-03-22T13:49:00.001-07:00

Having recently returned from a vacation, without television or regular news, I need to get back into the swing of things.

Sunday brought us a good way towards some rational national health insurance system. The rest of the world laughs at us: “How can you have small business women and men making jobs when their jobs come with crappy pay and no healthcare”.

As much as the conservative insist the end is nigh, and socialism is run amok, this country needs some social purchases. As rugged independent individuals, we have been unable to build a system that cares for the sick, aged and dying. To build a good system for that, we will act together, much like Medicare and Social Security. yes it will take taxes, but we are among the least taxed people in the world and we get what we pay for.

Any way, the world as we know it is not coming to an end, and we will explore health insurance for at least a generation before we get it right.

Here comes “Weekly Rats”. All is not good on Main Street in my town. A local roadside motel is advertising "weekly rats".

I can’t be sure if that’s a benefit, or an offer to reduce rates to meet the lousy prospects on our Main Street.

I can tell you, on our main street , jobs are still being lost, wages are being reduced and we are resetting how we go about living the “good life”

Who is that man behind the curtain?

2010-03-08T12:51:00.001-08:00

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain… says the mighty OZ to Dorothy.

Who is that man behind the curtain? By now everyone who is not a member of the media/government class knows there is no one behind the curtain and we are on our own. Rationalizing your life style is not what corporations want. They want you to spend and buy in a credit less economy.

Banks are making money and its almost impossible to get a loan for a home. How is this possible?

This morning I did get a home loan, but as an investor not as a homeowner. I wasn’t exactly planning to buy as an investment, I was trying to buy a smaller home to move down.

I found a home that needed to be gutted and rebuilt, but that fit our near and far term needs better than our present larger and more expensive home. This morning I discovered that moving down market is considered an INVESTMENT move and not subject to the tax credits you get for moving to a new home, which only apply when moving up in price. In addition the term rates and down payments etc are higher for investment mortgages than owner occupant purchases.

I am pretty sure that I won’t get to buy this gut and remodel unit because of other bidders, but who knows? Now I have credit to buy another property in the near future if we find one that suits our needs.

The point of the matter is that everything the government, banks, financial institution and wall street are doing is an effort to rebuild a “consumer” economy.

I am pretty certain that without credit, consumer capitalism is dead in the water, so don’t count on either the Mighty Oz or the man behind the curtain, neither of them have a clue whats going on on Main Street..

American Capitalism Is Not Designed to Create Jobs

2010-02-25T08:49:00.001-08:00

American capitalism is designed to MAXIMIZE SHARE HOLDER WEALTH not to create jobs.

Never in the history of the world has so much wealth been transferred to so few for so little work, and the amazing thing is it continues.

Yes, we are having a recovery, but by the evil genius design of our system is that livable wage jobs will not become part of that equation.

During the years leading up to the CRASH of 08’ the financial industry set up a system (intended or not) to redistribute wealth to the banking class elite from the working classes. They succeeded in transferring massive amounts of wealth and then driving the system into shambles that put EIGHT MILLION families out of work. The wall street geniuses then convinced the governmental class that the fault and damage should be laid on Main Street leading to the bailout of the banking elite class. Over a year later little if any help has arrived on my Main Street. We are being subtly blamed for the crash and punished for our wrong doing.

This is CLASS WARFARE in its most insidious disguise. The U.S. citizenry has been complicit in the largest and quickest transfer of wealth in the history of the planet. Jobs will not be coming back any time soon as our system is meant to reduce costs and increase profit not make jobs.

So if you can make l=oodles of money with no employees why hire the pests? U.S. financial institutions are again wealthy enough to hand out massive bonuses, while families struggle against their own economic self interest to stay in their homes, borrowing against hope and destroying their financial futures.

Low wage, no benefit jobs will become the norm. Healthcare, if it is not fixed now, will become a privilege for the rich and all others will die early and hard.

Profit over people is NOT a sustainable governance method.

One doesn’t have to look too far back to see what happens when the government no longer serves the people. When the USSR unraveled, the USSR central government lost its credibility because it could not serve even the basic food and shelter needs of the masses. Orders were given and bureaucrats, soldiers and police refused because their mothers, fathers and brothers were in the crosshairs. The undoing of the USSR was a civil disobedience action that rivals the one led by Mohandas Gandhi in India.

Government unraveling can happen here in the United States. It will be assured if more livable wage jobs are not forthcoming, but our system is not made to make jobs but to transfer wealth and that’s its fatal flaw, that we must fix. How do we convince our lawmakers to take a hard look. They usually just react when crisis cannot be avoided. So maybe when bands of highly educated, unemployed, undernourished and drug addled young citizens take to the streets we might have some change, or at least some fun.

PS I am not without hope. I formed another LLC yesterday, but as a small business owner I guess that I might be making maybe one part-time no-benefit job for a friend or relative.

The Myth of Small Business Creating “JOBS”

2010-02-19T07:45:00.001-08:00

First let me tell you I am a free market capitalist, and that I admire entrepreneurs and small business women and men. I support government aid for small business.
However, the major media (including FOX) and the federal, state and local governments are foisting a complete fraud on the American people. Although small business do make jobs, many of those new jobs come with low wages, no health care and statistically shaky career prospects. So when they talk about helping small business make jobs, they are not really talking about the florist down the street, they are talking about the “larger” small business. They are pandering to all the really small business men and women who will not survive this recession, in the hope for their votes. (both parties are guilty here.)
Here are some facts, make your own decision about my points.
Small business are defined by two things (see SBA). The first is $ volume of trade and the other is number of employees.
A SMALL BUSINESS CAN HAVE 500 EMPLOYEEES, in some categories as many as 1000 employees. In construction a home builder is a small business until they build $33,500,000.00. That is not a “small business” in my mind.
Some other statistics from the SCORE Website:
Small Business Openings & Closings in 2008:

There were 627,200 new businesses, 595,600 business closures and 43,546 bankruptcies. (THATS A NET NEGATIVE in 2008, 2009 must be worse)
Seven out of 10 new employer firms survive at least two years, and about half survive five years. (That means lots of employees employed for short durations, a cup half full or half empty)
Findings do not differ greatly across industry sectors.

Other statistics.

The estimated 29.6 million small businesses in the United States
Employ just over half of the country’s private sector workforce (Remember what the definition of a small business is)
Hire 40 percent of high tech workers, such as scientists, engineers and computer workers (That’s a good thing, but my guess is that they are employed in the “larger" type small business, not in the cottage industry down the street.)
Include 52 percent home-based businesses and two percent franchises
Represent 99.7 percent of all employer firms (So 0.3 % of employers employ just under half of the nations employees. )
Generate a majority of the innovations that come from United States companies (That’s a great thing, but my guess is that larger businesses then swoop in and either steal them or buy them at deep discount.)

The final take away 0.3% of employers (the big guys) in the US employ almost 50% of workers. These few firms have the resources to make work and sustain employment. Half of all start up bsuiness close (for a variety of reasons, not always failure) within five years.
Now here is something you do not hear:
OVER 20% OF SMALL BUSINESS EMPLOYEES ARE OWNER OPERATORS, AND A SIGNIFICANT NUMBER OF THEIR OTHER EMPLOYEES ARE FAMILY.
Really small business CAN NOT SOLVE the unemployment problem and they certainly cannot help in the long run without a national health care system to support their activities.
I love the folks down the street who start a plumbing or high tech bsuiness and I wish them the best as they do their small part to help, but it is absolutely unfair for the government to insist that they will save the day!

“Living the Good Life”

2010-02-09T18:02:00.001-08:00

Seventy-eight years ago Helen and Scott Nearing left New York and moved to a farm in Vermont. The Nearings left the city for political and social reasons during the height of the “great depression”. They were seeking a simpler life.

Here is a quote from “The Good Life”. My how things have not changed a whit in over 3/4 of a century.

…. demonstrating one possibility of living sanely in a troubled world. The ideal answer to this problem seemed to be an independent economy which would require only a small capital outlay, could operate at low overhead costs, would yield a modest living in exchanged for half –time work, and therefore would leave half the year for research, reading, writing and speaking.

Sounds good to me.

I remember in the early 1970’ listening to a speech by Scott who spoke while Helen sat on stage knitting. I can’t remember if she sat in a rocking chair or not, but she was definitely knitting.

Scott had to be at least 90 years old then; he lived to one hundred years. Helen lived a shorter life passing away in her 90th year.

The Nearing’s were perfect for the 60’s as the gurus of “back to the land”, but they were really not about abandoning the world. They were about eliminating the…. obstacles to a simple quiet life-complexity, tension, strain, artificiality, and heavy overhead costs.

I highly suggest you pick up a copy of “The Good Life”. I don’t suggest you quit your job and move back to the farm, but you might just find something here that helps you simplify, and the Post Consumerism blogger is all about simplifying.

“We have met the enemy and he is us”: Economic crises, an essential part of consumer capitalism.

2010-02-02T10:53:00.001-08:00

The more I read and study about consumer capitalism, the more certain I become that recurrent economic crises and near collapse are an integral part of the capitalist system. These crises are even more essential to economic systems based on personal consumption. These crises act as a sort of “dead person” switch that shuts the engine down when no one is tending the accelerator pedal. Economic crises protect us from ourselves. From the immortal words of Pogo..”We have met the enemy and he is us”

from: http://www.stuartngbooks.com/walt_kelly.html

Wall Steet and Bankers see themselves for the first time! Or is the mirror of Dorian Grey?

Since humans first came down from the trees (or were expelled from Eden, and either scheme works for me), all economic hierarchical systems have been about redistribution of wealth and power. The direction of redistribution cycles between redistribution to the wealthy and then redistribution back to the poor when the economic disparity results in the worker class having too little of the wealth. The workers withdraw their labor from the system, and eventually the system resets or the wealthy acknowledge that to keep their wealth they need to share it. (Witness the French Revolution in all its parts). True lasting slave systems do not build sustainable economic systems, although slavery can build a temporary aristocracy (see pre-civil war U.S. History and history of the Roman Empire for examples). I look at wage, wealth and power disparities not slavery as teh fundamental economic driver.

Our most recent crisis (that will continue for a least five years) represents a tipping point, I think, towards redistribution towards the worker class. For a generation workers have not been sharing in productivity increases in the western industrialized countries. This is a redistribution towards teh wealth owning classes of society. Right now it looks like bankers are getting away with the same old crap, but that should rectify itself within a short duration by another crisis. (Witness the 1937 economic collapse).

As an aside: Systems seek balance. Astute observers try and predict how systems work so that they can harness the system for a variety of reasons (both good and bad).

Why should we expect a crisis and a reset of our economic system?

In 1962 Ed Thorpe figured out how to beat the Vegas Black Jack Tables. In 1967 he devised a system to beat the stock market, and it works. Others followed and we suffered Black Monday, October 19, 1987 and again we suffered in our most recent meltdown and near collapse of liquidity. However, as Scott Paterson recounts in his book The Quants: How a New Breed of Math Wizards Conquered Wall Street and Nearly Destroyed It. Ed Thorpe is a worrier, he knows instinctually that any time you try to outwit a system, you change the system by your actions. You create a feedback loop that consumes the observer into the system. The observer lives in the fantasy world of the system with the feedback loop providing constant positive reinforcement until the systems blows up and deflates.(Like a bubble)

Essentially all bumble economies are the same, those inside the system are unable to see that the system is failing until it has completely collapsed. Many who live the fantasy of the bubble continue to believe in spite of hard empirical evidence to the contrary. (The present case of Wall Street and Washington D.C.)

As I sit here: Wall Street pundits, economists, and elected officials are living in a fantasy world. They keep telling us that if we would just go out and spend money on things, everything will be all right. That won’t work, Main Street has less to spend and our employers are sending signals that we should expect even less in the future. However, it might be better if we just let the crises continue their trajectory and we reset to a new “post consumer capitalism” system.

Like many, many people on Main Street, my discretionary income is down about 20%, my health care and insurance costs are soaring and my nest egg (life savings) is down 30% or more. I am 58 years old, where am I going to get more money to spend on useless or even senseless consumer products? I am an average person who will get by nicely, I will thrive in the future, but I won’t judge my success by how much I consume beyond my needs for food, medicine and shade and shelter.

I don’t begin to know what our new system will look like. I am pretty sure that the politicians and Wall Street won’t recognize it when it bites them, but as I read history: humans are resilient and we will build a survival system that suits our needs. I am not sure that the new system will suit the needs of consumerism capitalists or even support the current scheme of governance in the United States, but it will be interesting to watch for the next twenty years.

Any one for more legroom on an airplane?

2010-01-29T09:43:00.001-08:00

The post consumerism blogger doesn’t travel as much as he once did, so my recent cross country trip from Portland, Oregon to Boston, Massachusetts and return, was full of surprises.

First surprise: Much smaller crowds at the airport terminals, shorter lines and less harried customer service agents.

Second surprise: Shorter or non existent lines at vendors kiosks and restaurants. (My mouse went south, so I needed to get to the electronics kiosk. Another positive: I had a an amusing conversation with the kiosk clerk.)

Third surprise: Fewer delays. (Due to a significant reduction in domestic flights.)

Fourth surprise: United Airlines offers an upgrade to what they call “Economy Plus” which provides 5 inches more leg room with 6 across the row vs 4 in first class. For my own justification I calculated the upgrade as $10 per hour ($40 from PDX to ORD, the airlines website quotes Denver to Seattle as $49). An added benefit was that there were very few takers for the upgrade and on all four legs the middle seat was empty. I arrived fresh and returned home fresh and the $200 round trip upgrade was well worth the reduced wear and tear on my body and mind.

The economy section was full six across in every row. They looked cramped back there.

I don’t travel as many miles as I once did, one of the big benefits of a post-consumer world to all sectors of society. Travel had become stressful and really, really resource wasteful, in my personal view. Changing careers and working on-line was both a health and personal life style choice for me. (that choice turned out great.)

In the post-consumer economy where we buy fewer goods and services I expect (hope) that businesses will reset to smaller volume operations. We can expect companies to try and extract small premiums for small luxuries. I really hope that more business will look at being more profitable through added value services and providing goods with a longer life expectancy rather than just squeezing us more.

I look forward to a less stressful non consumptive (irony?) life style.

PS: I am all for added baggage fees. Being a former professional traveler, like learning to ride a bicycle, I have not lost the ability to pack light. One small overhead with my notebook PC for a week on the road. I found that I took too many things.

PPS: I enjoyed breaking out my wonderful Italian fine wool overcoat, purchased over a decade ago and using it. During the winter months, back east, men still wear overcoats, so I didn’t look silly or out of style.

Giving your home away for charity and the "loaves and the fishes".

2010-01-18T16:01:00.000-08:00

Hannah Salwen (Chronological age: 17, Wisdom age: ancient) and her father Kevin have a new book, "The Power of Half" due out from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on February 10th. You can already order at Amazon.

Without giving away the details ( I read them in the Jan.17th Parade Magazine), Hannah and her family sold their McMansion and moved into a house half the size of their dream home. They gave the profits to "The Hunger Project". The book recounts their journey to half size their lives. Funny thing happened, their lives actually grew exponentially when they de-linked happiness from ownership of a precious thing (the dream home).

Today I fiddled with another of my throw-away gadgets that cannot be fixed, and I struggled again with how wasteful I have been in my life. I am certain that compared to my peers and colleagues that I have been exemplary, but that doesn't rid me of the nagging thought that I can do more as far as getting rid of "stuff"

In prior posts you have read how my wife and I are on a simple journey to a place with "just less stuff",.

The Salwens embarked on a journey of Odysean proportions. They have learned that stuff just makes you miserable by separating you from the people you love and from doing the things that bring you the most joy. I don't think cleaning a large house, or worse yet supervising the household help brings joy unless you are really bored and not too, too bright. I am certain Hannah Salwen registers high on the brightness scale. Kevin related that the family had been more "lucky" than most. (Kudos for the reality check) His children are capable of complex thought. If your children are not capable of complex thought, do not despair. I caution patience, expect it to happen after age 21. I will post, what I have learned recently, about neurological science and learning. (Academic types had it about half right, stay tuned to the post on learning skills and complex thinking).

Well anyway, here is my tale of caution for the Salwens; From the Gospel of John (Please don't read anything in here, just because it's Biblical doesn't mean it lacks truth for our time)

The crowds followed Jesus on foot from the towns. When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their sick. As evening approached, the disciples came to him and said, "This is a remote place, and it's already getting late. Send the crowds away, so they can go to the villages and buy themselves some food."

Jesus replied, "They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat."

"We have here only five loaves of bread and two fish," they answered.

"Bring them here to me," he said.

Jesus directed the people to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the people. They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over. The number of those who ate was about five thousand men, besides women and children.

My wife and I believe in "the loaves and fishes". We have seen it time and time again. The simple truth is that the more you give away the more you get back. People see you giving and give to the community and you get rewarded with more stuff to give away. The cycle then continue unless you break it.

The Salwens are on the second half of the cycle and they have already received immensely in their personal lives. They are heading further into the payback period, with book sales earnings, speaking gigs, personal appearances, endorsements (yes! for good services and not for stuff I hope) and offers of full ride scholarships for Hannah and her brother Joseph.

I begrudge them nothing, they did not set out to make a movie or even think about profit, but they will profit materially. I sincerely hope that they recognize the best way to keep what they have earned is to keep giving it away.

Good luck to Hannah and Joseph, I hope they remember "the loaves and fishes" throughout their lives.

PS: The Salwens were given a great gift in their timing. If most of us sold our homes for charity we would be asking the charity for the credit check to satisfy the mortgage, and yes I understand that Kevin is a journalist and this was a good story to boot.

"You want your actual life back?-sign out." Suicide Machine.org merges with The Mafia Boss and takes over Second Life.

2010-01-10T09:49:00.000-08:00

Eliminate yourself from the virtual world of the web and re-enter reality. Please!

I will confess I make a significant portion of my living on-line. I have a Facebook page for friends and a LinkedIn site for professional colleagues. I get many of my ideas for blog postings from newspapers, but I search for the latest information on-line. I spend less than 3 hours per week in causal web interactions, including the time to write weekly postings for two different blogs. With that confession:

"You want your actual life back? Sign out." Those are two of the scrolling headlines on an exciting new web site.

Web 2.0 Suicide Machine.org

As a recommendation to check it out, Facebook has banned their access to Facebook.

The premise of the organization is to gain back your pre-web lives and as another quote suggests "actually meet your neighbors." The owners of the site make the claim that it takes more than 9 hours to manually remove yourself from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other "social networking" sites. To see and hear the full NPR story on Machine Suicide try: "Erase your virtual life".

One beautiful things about posting a blog, is the ability to point out connections. Just a week or so ago USA Today had a story about sales of "goods" in the virtual world. If you are unfamiliar with (as I was) of sites like Second Life its seems that people create avatars who are their alter egos and then build a fantasy life. Others in second life create goods and services for avatars, and real cash is exchanged for those Prada Like shoes that your avatar wears. Aside: I wonder if counterfeiting that Gucci Bag on Second Life will get you time in the virtual slammer?

For the full story see Unlike reality, virtual retail sales are hot, especially for avatars. Here are some excerpts that provide story color.

LaWanda Johnson loves buying virtual jewelry gifts for her online avatar friends and beams with pride when she sees them wearing necklaces she bought. Johnson, who is on disability in the real world, can be far more generous in the mobile social and gaming community Cellufun, where she can spend less than $1 or earn credits to buy for others, create a wardrobe and decorate her "home" for Christmas. The attraction of that proposition has made avatar fashion and possessions including most everything you'd buy or want in the terrestrial world must-haves for millions of people who play games on Facebook or dabble in virtual worlds such as Cellufun or Second Life.

"Virtual goods cost a fraction of what goods cost in the real world," Kingdon says. "You can get a beautiful pair of white ice skates for … less than $2."

Still, virtual commerce can be confounding to non-participants. From pets to pretty eyes, everything's for virtual sale. Sure, if you're OK with a dressed-down avatar with no stuff, you can play without paying in most worlds or games. But, hey, this is America, and everyone's keeping up with the virtual Joneses.

I am certain that if we all committed virtual world suicide, when we get up and look over the top of the monitor, we might find there is a great deal to see, learn and do. I do not denigrate those with a real need to "connect" through virtual reality such as Ms. Johnson, but I am pretty sure there are tens of thousands of individual web denizens who have become lost in the Internet and who have forgotten the value of real relationships, and real service to others. I humbly suggest that some of the time spent on line by the lost, might be used in face to face interactions with shut-ins and disabled. Meals for Wheels comes to mind. Simply asking the elderly neighbor lady if she would sit on the porch and chat with you occasionally. See that as a privilege not a duty, and it really becomes something of value.

There is an on line gaming community called The Mafia Boss.com where you don't have to you can just rub out others. Below is the lead in from the Mafia Boss website:

Enter the The Mafia Boss World, where you will become a boss of a crime gang. You have the choice to collect money from your casinos, whorehouses, loan sharks and gambling dens. You could also produce drugs, liquor and Counterfeit money. You will use bribes, and minor crimes during your daily routine. You will embark in street wars against other gangsters for control. You can bring your gang forth to join a Crime Family with a well structured hierarchy or even form your own Crime Family. The options are endless under a proven business logic with extra scope for illegal businesses and use your legal businesses to clear out the money.

Anyway here goes the suggested connection:

Suicide Machine.org merges with The Mafia Boss and takes over Second Life. If you want you put out a contract on yourself, someone else gets to "rub you out" for pay (sort of virtual suicide by proxy). You can rub out those avatars you hate or who "disrespect" you or hire some else to kill them off. A virtual "Hit Man". How about "protection" fees for the local Crime Boss. The ideas are endless. New super heroes emerge, and a Rudy Guiliani avatar.

The idea of a $1Billion plus market for virtual stuff for you avatar deserves a whole posting for itself. $3 Billion will feed the hungry of the world.

Some post-consumerism suggestions for your New Year resolutions.

2010-01-04T14:08:00.000-08:00

Its that time of the year (or was a few days ago) to make resolutions for the new year.

Here is what I resolve to do and how I will go about making it easy.

I resolve to:

Buy less stuff this year by earning less money, by not working as smart or hard as I have in the past. I vow to stop acquisition as a measurement of goodness. U.S. employers are making it easier to make less money by furloughs, wage freezes and benefit cost increases.

Invest more in the individual betterment of others through peer to peer lending or through organizations such as Kiva.org. This is easy and done on-line.

Move my money to a local community bank or credit union. This might take some time because I have bundled almost all my bill paying to be done automatically on-line. See Move Your Money for some inspiration. I will strive to get this done during the summer months when I have some time and "extra" cash. See Newsy on this issue.

Give to away more things away for a "second life". Things that I own, that I deem not essential for my care and comfort will be donated to charity or given to friends. I have been doing this over the last few years, but I will accelerate this year. My wife and I give to charity, two items of clothing for every "new" clothing item we buy, our closets are getting cleaner and "newer". I am mildly obsessed with cleaning out the garage and closets. (We have no basement or attic, making it easy, "no heavy lifting". The new house we built has no attic, basement, garage nor storage shed.

Spend more time with my friends or just in a coffee shop.

Buying individual or family carbon offsets? How about trading offsets for being a jerk!

2009-12-28T13:15:00.000-08:00

Now you might consider this posting a little bit of a rant, but that's ok.

As a disclaimer. I know what carbon offsets are. I own a wind turbine that creates clean energy (no carbon emissions) and when I am not using that energy, it goes back to the grid. In a real sense I am doing something personal to help, and it costs me real money. We expect a payback in about ten years or so, if the wind keeps blowing.

I also know what "cap and trade" is. In the 1990's we used "cap and trade" to significantly reduce acid rain production caused by power plant emissions of sulfur dioxide (SO2). It worked. We should expect that "cap and trade" for carbon emissions to work for industries by setting a market price for carbon emissions. The market provides an incentive to bring new technologies on-line or retire old polluting technologies. Eventually the market disappears when the pollutant is no longer emitted.

Now for the crazy part. There is a market for your individual carbon production. You can pay companies like TerraPass (aptly and ironically named) $369.00 for your families offset. Here is what you get for that half house payment:

2 Car decals,
2 bumper stickers,
4 luggage tags
1 fridge magnet

a "certificate", (read it and weep) and a promise:

Where your money goes

When you buy a carbon offset from TerraPass, your money supports clean energy and other projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Our offset portfolio consists of a mix of clean energy, farm power and landfill gas capture. If you want to decide the quantities of these projects yourself, you can build your own portfolio.

How the market set the price of $369 is a mystery to me, but I would guess they sat around a table passing a bottle of McCallan single malt, smoking Cohibas and laughing about how much they could get out of a well meaning family for a couple of pieces of paper and a promise to do good.

OK, you want to do good for the planet and feel good about doing bad things like making carbon emissions in the first place. How about recycling, walking to work or the bus stop, or, god forbid, skipping a trip or two on an airplane. Get rid of the extra car. (no need for the second bumper sticker then).

I don't even want to get started with the big guys who jet around in private aircraft, watercraft and limousines and live in multi mcmansions and then claim to save the planet by buying offsets. It just doesn't work that way. Witnesses to that were Mother Teresa and Ghandi. If you want to change the planet, you need to act as if it needs saving, not just by buying a "get out of jail free" card.

However, you got to admire the TerraPass team, with a straight face it's a slick way to raise some cash in exchange for a bumper sticker and a certificate.

Taking a cue from TerraPass, I will be opening a business called JerkPass.

Ever made a mistake, cut someone off while driving, accepted the wrong change from the clerk and not gone back, made an offhand remark that hurt someone, forgot to flush the toilet or put the seat down, been insensitive to your spouse.etc. Well JerkPass can help.

We promise to do nice things for the population of the planet. We will hire well groomed and friendly people to hold doors for others, to give up their seats to the elderly or disabled, to NOT park in handicap spaces. We promise to spend our money on things that help others. We promise not to waste and always be respectful and cheerful. To be part of the solution, buy one of offset packages or send a gift certificate to the most un-thoughtful person you know. Make them happy in their ignorance.

What you get for $369.00 is

A certificate that allows you to offset your actions as a jerk, by saying "...HEY, CHILL OUT MAN, I HIRED SOMEONE ELSE TO BE NICE TO TOHERS.."

Two bumper stickers that say.

I hired someone else to drive their own car rationally!

You also get the peace of mind that you are doing something (albeit vicariously) good for others while you can just be yourself.

Personal carbon offsets, what will they think of next?

Anyone got some other ideas for other "OFFSETS"?

Merry Christmas, my gift of hope to GenX 'ers and Millennials

2009-12-21T12:56:00.000-08:00

One thing a significant downturn in an economy always does is help the next generation afford the things that the previous generation has taken for granted and that they have overpriced.

For instance, maybe homes and maybe the stock market.

With home prices continuing to fall (and they will until all the defaulted mortgage and excess capacity is absorbed or demolished), and when our recent college graduates and Gen Xers start to recover they will find the cost of homes to be within their reach. In a few years a hardy bunch of young home builders will get out there again and start building small, energy efficient and affordable homes

I expect that the government will continue to find ways to keep home mortgage rates as low as possible. However, the curves of price and interest must meet to keep home ownership costs affordable. I think this is a given and maybe the economists idea of supply and demand will make sense again sometime soon.

Although the convergence of low mortgage rates and cheap money helped create our economic predicament, the politics of homeownership is not over by a long shot. (the poster's humble opinion).

When the bankers come to their senses and dump their stock portfolios to take their profits and resume traditional banking again, the prices of stock ownership (again, in my opinion) will return to a realistic level.

In the post-consumerism world, stocks will be priced on a company's ability to make and share profit (that used to be called paying dividends). Stock prices will not be based on your bet that there is someone willing to pay you a higher price for an overvalued stock. (The theory of the next greater fool.)

An added benefit:

In other areas, millennials and GenXers will find that, as the generation that screwed up the economy leaves that economy by death, retirement or other means, interesting jobs will open up. Some of those interesting new jobs will be in post-consumer businesses, green energy, and climate change adaptation.

So with the cheery time of the year upon us my gift to millennials and GenXers is HOPE that:

they may be able to own their own mcmansion (suitably downsized)
they may gain wealth through industrial ownership.
they may find jobs more exciting than grocery bagger or barista.

And to all a good night!

Swimming in a sea of seasonal waste!

2009-12-15T13:12:00.000-08:00

A recent post at the The Pink Slip Blog pointed me to Scroogenomics:

In the U.S. alone $25 Billion, that's billion dollars, worth of gifts have no value to the receiver and then just become waste, according to Jel Waldfogel economics professor at Wharton.

We are not the biggest seasonal spenders, 12th out of the top 26 nations, isn't that amazing.

Add to that the waste of lighting, packaging, and wrapping, fuel etc and we are swimming in seasonal waste.

The more I think about that, the more I want to scream "I'm as mad as hell and can't take it anymore!" Peter Finch in Network, 1976.

Should this solstice celebration be a completely wasteful season?

No wonder we get crabby and our familial dynamics fall completely apart.

It is like a Potlach (see my July post). A Native American practice where wealth is given away or burn up to prove how wealthy you are.

But this year's waste comes at a time when we shouldn't be wasting precious resources, we need to be investing in our future and investing in those who have been hit the hardest by the ongoing recession.

So my suggestion for gifts this year:

More money given to charity and valuable non-profit organizations. I upped my amount significantly.
Gifts of time and energy to friends and families. Certificates for babysitting, dog walking, errand running, etc.
Gifts of stock in green/sustainable companies for infants and responsible older children.
Home made food" gifts that necessary, used up and create minimal waste.
Re-gifting, recycling, reusing.

So I am promising myself to redouble my efforts to use less next year. I have already started thinking of strategies to be much less wasteful and more post consumerist next year.

32% of all mortgaged properties in the US are worth less than the mortgage.

2009-12-06T18:38:00.000-08:00

As of June 2009, more than 32% of all mortgaged properties in the U.S. were “underwater,” meaning that the homeowner owed more on their mortgage than their home was worth, according to Brent White of the University of Arizona in his paper Underwater and Not Walking Away: Shame, Fear and the Social Management of the Housing Crisis.

Caveat: before you read this blog and react, make sure you live in a non-recourse state. That's one where if you default on your mortgage the banks can only take the house and are barred from coming after your other assets to make up the difference.

While he doesn't quite come out and say "WALK AWAY YOU IDIOT", I will do it for him: if you are a slave to your bank for their blessing of a roof, run away. You don't owe them your soul. If you can continue to pay the drowned mortgage, continue to do so. (I am able to, so I do.)

In my world view your contract with your bank is just that a "contract" and not a moral obligation to a life of servitude. We had that before with the plantation owner making the slaves build their cabins and stay obligated to the master for food and clothing. We rejected that notion 150 years ago.

If shame and fear are holding you in mortgage slavery, shake it off, there are plenty of rental properties out there and over time you just might be able to save a ton of money.

For the sake of honesty: I am completely underwater on my main residence. Its worth exactly zero dollars. How do I know that? Half the homes in our subdivision are for sale, some for over two years. There are no buyers, nor are there any lenders, so the market value is zero.

Realistically, I am sure if we auction it, we might get something. Maybe about 1/4 of its former price point. I can afford to live in this home because the payments are under control, for the next four years anyway (and then I retire). I expect we will sell it for the mortgage amount or maybe a shade over/under.

I have no fear of having crappy credit. I have great credit and half my credit card banks have raised their rates to the state usury limits (or nearly so). I am lucky that none have cut my limit, so I have plenty of credit but at rates that make loan sharks look like a kinder and gentler business model.

PS I just bought my last car (should last the rest of my driving life) and I have a significantly diminished stash of cash for my impending retirement.

I would guess that if you are considering walking away from your mortgage, you already have nearly wrecked your credit. If you are safely making your payments and you like your house stay, its not worth the hassle.

However if you have $25,000 in credit card debt, no savings accounts, an income of less than $30,000 and a negative home equity of $100,000, then I can't see the downside of becoming a renter. Maybe you should have been a renter all along. If you need to be a mortgage slave to feel good, then I suggest finding a financial life coach to work through the issue of bonded servitude.

In the bloggers humble opinion, we should expect single digit increases in home equity over the next decade: so factor in that the boom is over and the "value" of your home will never go back to the heydays of your youth.

In a nutshell here is what Brent has to say about the non-walkers...This norm asymmetry has lead to distributional inequalities in which individual homeowners shoulder a disproportionate burden from the housing collapse. (WHITE ,2009)

If you want to read the whole paper, and I highly suggest it you can get it here.

http://api.ning.com/files/CdXtKqMgxHL4M8EYE8FhdO8KVYCEx0nMLUYAjpPIbVo_/walking_away_paper.pdf

Does your Post-Consumer business have a lifestyle coach for your clients?

2009-11-27T16:48:00.000-08:00

If 70% of our economy is based on consumer products (and I think food, shelter and clothing are included in that category) then we are going to continue to buy plenty of stuff, it's just going to be a different kind of stuff.

BEA says personal wage earnings are up, those results must come from some world I can't see. If 500,000 people lost their jobs last month and there have been no new jobs in a year, where is the wage growth coming from? Maybe those pesky banker's bonuses have driven up the earnings in gross dollars.

If the incomes of U.S. citizens and residents are down 20% or more (not counting the losses in your savings and real estate), it follows that we will be spending 20% less. We will continue to spend on what we deem to be "essential" to a rational modern lifestyle. We haven't completely made up our minds about what defines a rational modern lifestyle, but we will.

I am sure that only a very select group of Americans are reading the Robb Report (The global luxury source) to define rational modern lifestyle. But power to those who have more money than sense. (Until the revolution, and don't think it's not coming, history tells us otherwise. Just pray that it is peaceful)

I digress, so let's move on to the central theme of this posting.

I choose to define post-consumerism products/services as something necessary to carry on a rational modern lifestyle, they are not necessarily product made from recycled materials or a "green service". (Although that is a good idea).If you are selling a post-consumer product or service what added value can propose to your potential buyers

How about a Post-Consumer lifestyle coach for your clients?

If your product and service sales force doesn't include lifestyle coaching services, it ought to. Potential post consumerists number over 300 Million in the U.S. alone. Many of us are casting about for someone to show us how to reset our lives and live rationally without moving into a cave and eating raw roots and tubers.

So here goes, five good reasons for adding a post-consumerism lifestyle coach to your small business retinue.

1. It's a about being positive and upbeat. Hey, we can help. use our product to live better!
2. It's about moving forward and not being left behind waiting for things to return to normal. Frugality is the new normal!
3. It's about being rational. If your product or service can lead to a more sustainable world, then go for it.
4. It can satisfy your need to do good while getting rich! I never worried about making money as long as my products and services helped others to live better.
5. It's about the money. Extracting a little extra from happy clients is what capitalism should be about.

Think I'm crazy? The other day I was talking to Bill Inglis of Inglis Homes LLC in Phoenix. The core values of Bill's company are sustainability, renewability, responsibility, and affordability. (Sounds post-consumeristic to me). When I suggested a lifestyle coach as part of his services, he laughed and said that he had just added one to his service consultancy. http://www.inglishomesllc.com/

PS Dubai has asked the banks to delay repayment of $60 Billion of their debt, so don't say the world hasn't changed!

The times, they ARE a changing. Back to basics and the "New" Consumerism.

2009-11-18T12:08:00.000-08:00

I apologize for staycating and missing last weeks blog, but here is today's.

Parade Magazine, not the bastion of negative thinking nor teh hot bed of radical thought reported on the economic crisis and its effects on common Americans.

How the Economic Crisis Changed Us
by Michael J. Berland and Douglas E. Schoen
published: 11/01/2009

The Recession Hits Home

79% have personally felt its impact
42% delayed or canceled their vacations
27% pursued extra work to make money

Americans See Benefits, Too

52% are forming stronger bonds with spouses
63% have become more do-it-yourself
30% are volunteering more for charities

The first numbers aught get the attention of government leaders and market makers. The second set aught to get the attention of all of us. My postings about post-consumerism over the last few months have been pointing out indicators of a change in the way ordianry Americans are going about adjustign to the new economic relaities.

Humans as a species are adaptive, and we Ameircans are especially receptive to change.

Over the last two decades we have gotten way too wealthy and accustomed to having easy times.

It appears with these difficult times we are looking for what's important, and the advertisers have inevitably figured that out. If you google "back to basics" you will get 15M plus hits, by the time you read this, the number will be higher.

I'll grant that "back to basics" as a phrase has been around for a long time and it resonates with us, but "New" Consumerism as a term for scaling back and shopping around for deals, strikes me as kind of weird.

"New" consumerism is the new normal. Yikes.

I really liked the Allstate ads for back to basics of spending more time with family and friends, finding pleasure in simple things. Now we are faced with the "new normal", spending our time in stores searching out the best deals. In this model just run to WalMart as they price compare. I do too: I know that this week milk and soymilk are cheaper at Safeway than at Sam's and that wine on sale (as it always is) at Safeway is way cheaper than Sam's. But if we follow the new normal our shopping time will be increased and advertisers will be assured at work trying to find new ways for us to part with our cash once we hit the inside of the mall.

But we can be assured that AARP is on the ball: The 10 commandments of new conumerism were posted in the e bulletin

Best post crash business: Travel to Washignton DC.

2009-11-03T17:37:00.000-08:00

The best post crash business is Hotels in and around Washington DC and the airlines that serve DC.

Every hick mayor and city manager and their official posses have been descending on Washington DC for the past six months or so. Wink, wink, trying to make sure they get their piece of the stimulus pie. Our hick mayor has burnt the city travel budget in four months of DC sightseeing. My guess the 4000 college and university presidents in the United Sates and US Samoa have also done their best to help the DC service industry rebound.

With the massive influx of money, DC cab drivers might be called on to restart the consumer wave rolling again!

What they should be doing is trying to balance their city budgets with a dose of reality. What I have observed around here are government officials with their heads in the sand or up their _____ peaking out their navels, waiting for the recovery to begin.

What recovery, as far as I know 15% of American's are without work and deeply in debt and the vast majority of American households are down 10-40% in their earnings while fundamental household costs of necessary stuff like healthcare and heat and electricity goes up.

Why can't our leaders get their heads out of the sand? Because everything they have been taught and observed revolves around buying stuff. George Carlin pray for us!

If 100% of our income goes to cover basic costs (some extra for food and clothing maybe) and our savings are a few thousand a year, how can we can spend more without getting the country further in the hole.

My suggestion: get over having stuff, and begin to save, and that includes the federal government (Save, for crying out loud!)

When we save enough to feel comfortable, then we can begin to figure out how to spend our incomes. I think we will spend them on common good issues, and not buying useless crap made in China.

High-Speed Trading, the final blow to your 401K and the end to disposable income.

2009-10-27T14:09:00.000-07:00

High-Speed Trading, The legal replacement for derivatives in stealing the wealth of a nation.

As simply put as possible, your friendly hedge fund manager Mr. Friendly, leases space for his computer in the same building that the NYSE has its computers.

Your computer is on your desk hooked up by modem to one in Des Moines Iowa (or Dhaka Bangladesh) which is then hooked up to the NYSE via a complex route that takes time..

You and others like you see a trend for Acme Products and offer to buy. Your friendly hedge fund manager sees this also. Mr. Friendly buys, his exchange is an nanoseconds, yours take one second. In that second minus a nano-second Mr. Friendly has driven up the price of Acme Products and your profits are diminished (or losses increased).

Every time you trade you lose. The more you trade the more you lose and the more Mr. Friendly wins. Eventually you are tapped out, because Mr. Friendly has deep pockets. and you are in Ocean Park, Washington.

If the mavens of Wall Street and our government agents in Washington want the consumer boom to re-ignite, they need to make sure more money flows down to Main Street, and so far I see the money going one way. Straight into the hands of the 1% enters.

Henry Ford knew that to have sustainable consumer growth, employees must be able to afford the products they made, and the time to use what they bought. Hence, Ford's paid better wages than others and made sure his workers had time to use the product up. (enough wages to buy a model T, and the forty hour week to drive it into uselessness). Ford also sensed that more than 40 hours per week diminished productivity and also decreased the number of potential buyers for his product. Once you bought your Model T he didn't have anything else to sell you with your overtime pay, so that money went to hire more workers. (of which there was a steadily increased supply).

That's as simple as it gets. Wall Street wants and has all our disposable income and if you let them have your meager savings, they will eat the rest and leave you nothing.

The inevitable outcome of unregulated capitalism, is the transfer of all wealth to a few.

For the Wall Street investment bankers and politicians, read some history of the French revolution and the Bolshevik revolution and you might see why it could be a good thing to let a little wealth trickle down.

I'm betting that I am right, and in future postings, I will be musing about paradigm shifts and trends rather than causes. I will keep my eyes open for new ways that the system will re-allocate your wealth.

When we get through this mess, we will not be worrying about fashions and ipod upgrades but more fundamentally useful things like friends and family and a shared common wealth (good).

Simplify your life. Six easy and small ways with a link to 72 more.

2009-10-20T14:54:00.000-07:00

I know the "baby boomers" are begining the de-acqusition phases of their lives. As I talk to my old and new friends, who are age peers, they are looking for EASY and SMALL ways to simplify their lives.

They are not looking for leisure retirements, they are looking for ways to dump impediments to continued productivity.

For example, if taking care of my large yard is getting in the way of my volunteer work, something has to give:

I dropped the yard work!

So here are few EASY and SMALL ways to simplify your lives:

Make all your bills into e-billing and direct pays. Most e-bills can be put on credit cards so you don't always face over charging yourchecking account.

Reduces paper mail coming in and reduce recycling or waste.
It also saved me $15/month in postage, and the monthly drive to the post office for stamps.

Give to charity all the clothing you have not worn in one year. (Of course save the raincoat, even if you live in Arizona, you might travel)

This simplifies your decision making on what to wear. It also keeps you more up to date.
It makes it easier to organize your closet.

Take ALL your books and magazines to the used book exchange.

This simplifies cleaning the house and the inevitable internal question of "Tell me again, why am I saving this?"
Lets you return those "lost" library books!
Porvides you with a little income to maybe buy a current novel, or self-help book.

Burn all that lumber you have been saving for that "project". Skip the project, you don't need a yard shed. (See above: drop the yard work)

Clears the garage for the car and makes getting into the house easier. I did this one!
Might save your life, if you need to get out of the garage quickly.

Drop all memberships that don't contribute to the benefit of others (than yourself).

Lots fewer meetings.
Lots less junk mail.
More time to be productive helping others. (A very post consumer view.)

Have your home phone disconnected (We did!)

No false emergencies at our houses. (We do have cell and email for close friend.)

Thats my list of six.

If you really want the full monty go to this website. Zen Habits

There are seventy-two ways to simplify. If that's too many read this excerpt from the site.

The Short List

Identify what’s most important to you.
Eliminate everything else.

Indicators of change to post consumerism society.

2009-10-11T19:36:00.000-07:00

New indicators of a change in consumerism towards post consumerism.

Main stream media government and “wall street” keep telling us to buy stuff as the recession “has ended”. What a crock. At the same time they are bemoaning consumer spending they are saying look out for more job loses next year. You can’t have it both ways: If we are rightfully fearful of our future employment options why should we buy into their self serving demands.

This week, as your ever watchful post consumerist, I plucked these tidbits:

• Condé Nast looses big and closes four publications.

Condé Nast will be down $1 Billion in advertising revenue this year and will close four magazines and 200 staff are to lose their jobs:

Gourmet,
Elegant Bride,
Modern Bride
Cookie

Will added stress from these loses decrease the cost of weddings (another blog opportunity) or raise the rates of bridal suicides. On the upside Bon Apetit and Brides magazines will continue to publish, so we won’t be completely bereft of very glossy very consumerist offerings in this area.

• JD Powers find Gen Y to have negative attitudes to car ownership

Mark Zimmerman of the LA Times reported that according to JD Powers and Associates (the perennial toastmaster of the auto industry) Gen Y teens and early careerists have shifted their perceptions (negatively) towards cars ownership and the auto industry. (Japan is showing “decline” in car ownership).

"The negative perceptions of the automotive industry that teens and early careerists hold could have implications on future vehicle sales," Chance Parker, vice president and general manager of J.D. Power's Web Intelligence division, said in a news release. (LA Times)

What implication? Less car sales I think, or is it: “If I hate your product and have found a way to live without it, you will still find a way to sell it to me. Think again auto execs. A silver lining: the Chinese are wild about buying cars, and that’s a big market if you consider China has two nations (one the size of the US who are rich consumerists and the rest of their country that is illiterate an poor).

• America’s Top Chef show acknowledges people are entertaining home in latest episode.

Bravo’s show Top Chef acknowledged that in these difficult economic times more people will be having dinner parties at home. I have found that to be a change in my personal life. Although we are not big on eating out except when travelling and as an occasional luxury, we have found ourselves at more and more backyard diner parties (we live in AZ and on the Washington coast so al fresco is then norm). We have probably held twice the number at our homes that we have in past years. Check out the Bravo episode of Top Chef and see how ten chefs in one home kitchen can really make a mess.

• Live music in our back yards.

Two weeks ago, I spent my Sunday afternoon in a friend’s back yard with fifty folks listening to one of the widest types of music you could imagine. From 16th century harpsichord, to Tom Lehrer’s satires from teh 60's to Gershwin to Joan Osborn. Flagstaff’s long time troubadour Jimmy Deblois.(see his YouTube hit) has teamed up with classical pianist Charles Spinning. They have performed at a variety of community venues and are planning more “backyard’ concerts. The highlight of the afternoon, was Groucho Marx’s ditty “Everyone says, I love you” from “Horsefeathers” sung for the wonderful young couple (and their gracious family) who were having there wedding reception next door, and never called the police

How the stock market works to redistribute wealth and the Vegas Sports Book

2009-10-04T17:30:00.000-07:00

In the post consumer world two things will rule. Regular folks will have figured out the stock market is run to move small wealth from workers to large wealth capitalists. No more no less. Its an elite form of lottery with some winners so you can point to them to get the perpetual losers to ante up. Secondly, regular folks won't have superflous money to speculate heavily, like we have for the past two or more decades. Speculative investing will return when we have created a healthy balance of post consumer wealth.

I hadn't set out to write this post, but I can't get it out of my mind I believe in investing as a long term strategy, but I know I can't be an outsider and expect to make money. I have decided to make my speculative investments outside the stock market and in the local "slow money" movement. (See a future posting on "Slow Money")

Most people understand the Vegas sports book, there are winners and losers and the house always gets its cut of he action (win or loose). Simple, if I bet against Duke and they win, I loose, those who bet for Duke win. Except there is the "spread" where no one wins or looses and that's where the house really gets wealthy.

All stock exchanges work exactly the same. I bet that GE is going up and the seller bets that GE is going down, and the traders take a commission from both then buyer and seller. The traders just need to keep the uninitiated convinced that the market is always going up and the only losers are those sitting on the sidelines. (There are derivatives and futures, but at the fundamental level its the same thing, but stupider for the outsider).

The truth is that the stock market is a sports book, where very smart folks who went to the same universities or whose professors went to those universities make the rules and run the book. mnarket makers know that if they are betting against other smart folks with the same educations they will get a net zero result. Except the house always makes its vig or juice. The "vig" is what you pay the bookie to have the right to make a bet. In the stock market its the traders fees or commissions.

So if the stock market can't work when only smart folks are betting, how do they get it to continue to seemingly work. That's where advertising, propaganda, and the included media come in. The market needs an unending number of "bigger fools" who will be willing to buy your questionable investments at a price higher than you paid. If there are an infinite number of bigger fools, you keep winning. When you are the last of the fools, the market collapses, and you keep lowering your price until you find a buyer.

Where are we now. The market seems to be going up, but that's a ruse. The "smart" fools who make and own the market are artificially driving the market up to convince those on the inside rail to get back in. However, if we buy now the insiders make a profit because they bought their stocks at trash prices from us when we could no longer stand to loose more. My post consumer mind tells me that the whole idea of buying and selling speculatives is a thing of the past that is running on its own momentum and will surely come to an end when the insiders come to realize that there is no one on the sidelines. We were wiped out, and have nothing to go back to the market with. There is another view that the sideline money is the really smart and really rich money waitng for the market to completely tank and buy based on the real value of a firm based on its ability to make profit and pay dividends. Paying dividends as a valuation method was one thing that seems to have disappeared sometime in the early 1990's when the market decided that real value was in "potential to make money" rather than actually making money.

Where do we go. I don't know, but I am moving forward but its not in the stock market. Right this minute, my best investments are at Kiva.org.

NEXT WEEK: super fast trading EVEN THE TRIAL LAWYERS FIND THIS PRACTICE OBJECTIONALE

"Survivor Island, The Hamptons" Sales of $1M plus homes down by 55% from July 2005 in California!.

2009-09-27T18:04:00.000-07:00

Maybe a Million Dollars IS what it used to be. Check out these stats on home sales in the Hamptons.

According to MDA Dataquick sales of million dollar plus homes in California in 2008 was less than half number of 2007 (55% less) and 30% less than in 2004. My guess is that the year 2009 will see even fewer Macmansion sales.

If California leads the country in millionaires then the rest of the nation will see the same shift.

From: LuxuryBrokers Listed at $19.5 Million (not for the faint of heart)

This leads us to a obvious question: if there are many fewer folks buying (or able to buy) these Macmansions, what happens to them when the banks own them through foreclosures.

A few suggestions:

The bank owning them should present them as bonuses to executives. The banks can then recover any loss by listing them at the foreclosed amount (not the market amount) to the recipient
Turn them into lavish branch banks to serve the currently wealthy in the neighborhood. No problem knowing who still has wealth, check to see if the taxes are paid to date.
Convert them into company housing. This was common practice in the 19th and early 20th centuries. No reason to reinvent the wheel. Offer company script again instead of wages and let tellers and clerks rent the space. (Add vending machines and charge for other amenity use like the pool or sauna.
Convert them to private hospitals for those with cash or select health insurance carriers. This will cut down on commuting time for Dr's. if the macmansion has a golf course just page her in.
Ask ACORN to convert select mansions to brothels. Pay off the local law enforcers with sweet deals on other homes in the new "hood".
Turn them into luxury hotels, resorts, retreats. This is already being done. A colleague stayed at a WAMU (former bank) macmansion that was used for bank executives and is now open to other private companies for rentals.
Deconstruct them and use the salvaged materials to build entire villages in developing countries. This will create construction jobs (sort of) in the US and abroad. If we get ahead of the curve on this new industry, we can send contractors to Russia and China to do the same, but the salvaged materials will stay in those countries for low income development.
Downsized shopping malls for those left with purchasing power. With less buying, retailers will need less floor space, a 50,000 SF macmansion/mall, with pool and valet parking might be more economical than a 2 million SF mall in the suburbs.
With NO apologies to Mark Sanford, let politicians use them as free-trade zones for importing their Argentine mistresses without fear of the paparazzi. They are in gated communities usually, aren't they?. This way our tax dollars stay in the U.S.
Convert select gated communities to public parks. Eventually the lack of taxpayer concern will cause the macmansions to become derelict eyesores and crack houses. Then burn them down and let the grounds return to forest (reducing green house gasses and slowing climate change). This is the current method if deaquiring parks buildings in California.
MY FAVORITE: More reality shows. "Survivor Island-The Hamptons" where contestants have tribal council around the indoor fireplace and contests take place in the "game room". Maybe now is the time for the ''New Beverly Hillbillies". This was potential reality show that was deemed to be in too poor taste a few years back. Let's take another look at it after "Tool Academy" has been aired.
Suggestions Please?

Fashion Week Sept 10-17. Lots of jersey knit, cheesecloth and Snuggies.

2009-09-20T15:58:00.000-07:00

I am clearly not fashion minded, I shop discount on line, my wife and I do however enjoy watching any show with Tim Gunn, one of the last gentleman left in any kind of media.

Following the fashion business gives me a good idea how really smart young people (my sister calls them "painfully hip") in New York, Paris and Milan, think about the rest of us. Forget the fashion, think the business! Be prepared to hit the links in this post, because I believe seeing is believing.

Fashion week NY ain’t like it used to be.

The Spring 2010 fashions were rolled out this week at the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week.

The economic malaise hung over the week like a storm cloud. Few shopping bags, nearly nonexistent swag bags and not even a C-list celebrity poet to close the G-Star Raw runway show (past seasons have included Dennis Hopper and Benicio Del Toro). From: LA Times

Fashion week used to be for the designers and the buyers, but over the past few years it’s about the celebrity and the wannabe celebrities and for the fashionistas to be seen. In recent years there has not been as much buying. This year has seen a return to the past. The question is:, What can we sell and at what price?

If you want to see what’s up, NY Fashion on-line helps a lot.

Check out the Subversive Jewelry line where you can buy a semi-mass produced Galileo Pendant Necklace for $960. My guess next week, its knock-off on e-bay China for $29.99. I noticed that you can shop direct and skip the middle man’s mark-up. Or are you paying the extra vig to the clothing line owners and cutting out your local business woman/man?

Lots of old stand-by (and inexpensive) materials were seen on the runway. Jersey and even cheesecloth.

Final proof that we are entering a post-consumer economy. Snuggies at fashion week on display 5 Million sold so far.

Post consumerism indicators

2009-09-14T19:15:00.000-07:00

What are some of the latest post consumerism indicators.

Smaller homes.
Americans loose their appetite for Mcmansions

For the first time in nearly 14 years, the median size of a new single-family home decreased, to 2,215 square feet last year, from 2,277 square feet in 2007, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

That doesn't seem like much, but in this case the market is not exactly open. Most homes are still built on speculation, most need to have a mortgage (which limits who is currently buying-teh better off) and the consumer has not completely adapted.

This summer my wife and I completed and obtained a final inspection on an 1,152 SF two/three bedroom, two bath home, with 250 SF of covered deck and another 250 SF of open deck. The kitchen was middle level, the floors were upscale as was the exterior (cedar shingles) and a hefty roof. My wife's, comment, "I could live in this house", and we do.. Our main residence is about 2200 SF and I have mapped out where my wife and I live (along with the five cats). We live in about 1000 SF of the house. The rest is for show and to house our collection of stuff. As we are rapidly de-aquiring it will soon become obvious that we don't need the extra space. The trick then will be to find someone who needs and can afford it.

Less room to keep stuff. No problem, get less stuff, to bankers chagrin.

No credit.

Consumer credit fell a record $21.6 billion in July from June’s. U.S. Federal Reserve Bank

Consumer credit dropped to $2.56 trillion in revolving and non-revolving lines of credit, a 10% decline at an annual rate. The amount of consumer credit has been falling for six months. Without credit card buying, consumerism is dying, however those embedded in the system are still in denial.

Those lousy replacement jobs aren't going to get better.

So you lost your job in banking, but you always wanted to be a baker anyway. You cashed your children's college fund to go to culinary school for six months and you've opened up your cake shop down the street. But wait, where are the customers? You tell yourself, that when things pick up in few weeks (months, years) your family will be on easy street again. Don't count on it! Small business account for most bankruptcies. Small business bankruptcies jumped by 81% in June. (FindLaw.com)

Small businesses are described as those with fewer than 500 employees. So what chance do you have with your dream job. My guess working as a baker a Sam's club if you are lucky, (benefits of a sort) or at the local coffee shop for minimum wages and no benefits.

Oh, if you are a boomer and have traded down from a $100K+ job to a $50K job, don't plan on moving back up. This is just one of the benefits accruing to employers. A rush to the bottom in wages. When things improve, you will be asked to do more. (while continually reminded of your luck to have a job).

PS. College educated youth will be shut out for a few more years. Ask your friends whose sons and daughters received their MBA's or Law degrees this year how the job search is going. Be prepared to offer condolences, and sympathetic advice that things are getting better.

Continued increases in unemployment.

No sense in belaboring the point. Just read the government reports yourself. (no media filtering)

Most indicative: The bankers are blaming consumers for not consuming enough as they blame them for consuming too much before the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

Solution: Borrow from the local loan shark, the rates will be better than the banks soon, and the transactions support your local economy, and yes, its not likely that you will get that far behind on your payments that your default will bring down the global economy.

BOGO's A sign of the economic times, frugalistas and recession redefined.

2009-09-05T14:43:00.000-07:00

It seems that even plastic surgeons are experiencing tough times.

FOX "News"

I hardly need to comment on this "post consumer" world, consumer "sweetener" so I will blog about something else.

Current Factoids:

89 US Banks have been closed so far in the united States this year.

9.1 Million people working part time for economic reasons - like no jobs. (not considered unemployed). These individuals indicated that they were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job.

16.8% unemployed or under- employed (highest figure ever)

We may already be out of the recession (I doubt it!) but I am pretty sure that my savings has not been restored to post 2007 levels, has yours? So my tendency will be to spend less, save more and be frugal.

There's a good word "frugal" M-W definition: characterized by or reflecting economy in the use of resources.

During my childhood "frugal" was always a complement, so when I say someone is frugal, I don't mean "cheap" I mean one who reflects on the economical use of resources. Thus should make sense to the "greenies" and I might be one, I have a wind turbine to make my electricity, and a car that gets 37 MPG, and I drive it less than 5000 miles per year and my flying has been reduced to a few trips per year, down from around 50 or more.

Wait there is more, in 2008 the Oxford Dictionary folks short listed the best new words in the English language and one was frugalista, defined as “a person who lives a frugal lifestyle but stays fashionable and healthy by swapping clothes, buying secondhand, growing own produce, etc.” This could become the nom de guerre of the “recession warrior" From NY Times on-line William Safire (thank you Bill)

But wait there is even more. Frugalista has been co-opted to mean a person who spends their hard earned money on new "less" expensive things. It no longer means what it did as recently as December of 2008.

Target Stores has a new advertising campaign for frugalistas, the ones who buy new stuff, not the ones, like my wife, who often shop "lightly worn" stores.

Now here is a revisionist definition. Recession: A short period in the business cycle when lots of people choose not to work and everyone stops to count their money.

Cash for Clunkers: Stimulus Street Theater and Sideshow, with Automobile Death Panels

2009-08-23T17:00:00.001-07:00

from" ProCrushers.com

Abbie Hoffman may you rest in peace, you taught them well.

Wikipedia defines street theater and sideshow as follows:

Street theatre is a form of theatrical performance and presentation in outdoor public spaces without a specific paying audience.

In America, a sideshow is an extra, secondary production associated with a circus, carnival, fair or other such attraction.

So my take is the Cash for Clunkers program was both street theater at its best and brightest and a sideshow to the main event of the stimulus program. (albeit as small sideshow).

I will admit here, up front, that I had a front row seat for both.

My 13 year old jeep (191,000 miles and less than 18 MPG) was threatening a large expense in the near future, so I could not resist the chance for the federal government to fork over the down payment (or 18 months worth of payments). So OK I am a communist by "far right wing " definition, but so are 500,000+ other financially challenged citizens.

I would bet that there are some folks who were, and still are, vehement anti-stimulus activists who took the cash.

If you feel guilty about taking the money, repent!, and send me the cash. I promise to use it well.

One of the degrading parts of Cash for Clunkers was the meeting with the "Automobile Death Panel". I am pretty sure health care reform proponents were testing the final care consultations and end of life guidance, e.g. "death panel" as an idea slated for health care reform. (The consultation was eliminated in health care but it was NOT eliminated in the CARS program).

When you hand over the keys and the proof of registration and insurance (for the past year). The auto death panel walks you through the gruesome and painful last few minutes of your faithful ride.

The Clunkers are drained of their oil and given a lethal injection of sodium silicate (liquid glass) that hardens the engine. The engine runs coughing and spitting for a few minutes or more. This is a painful death for sure.

My last thoughts walking off the lot were of Dylan Thomas' great poem of dying:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.......
...........................................................................
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

But hey, my new ride gets up to 37 MPG on the highway and I bought the 100,000 mile everything warranty so this ride won't be meeting my old ride in car heaven for a while.

PS. The CARS program ends today so be mollified that although you missed the show, you won't have to face a "death panel" when deciding the fate of a long standing companion.

We are all hoarders at heart.

2009-08-18T12:40:00.000-07:00

A&E network is launching a new reality show called Hoarders. The trailer is an intriguing look at “hoarding” taken to the extreme. It's extrodinary look at "consumerism" at the extreme.

This week, my wife and I returned from a summer away.

We looked at our life’s collection (accumulation) of junk in a different way. What would an outsider view as of lasting value in our spaces?My wife and I have plenty of "stuff" we need to shed, so that those we leave behind others don' have to do the shedding. (We don’t plan on going any time soon, but its good to get an early start on any journey.

My sisters tell great stories of dispensing with my parents stuff in a forty foot dumpster. My wife dispensed with a lot of her parents stuff by having a contest called "stump the chump". The "good helper" relatives and friends would look at an object from the attic, they would try figure out what it was? or what it had done?. After making the best guess they put the object by the side of the road with a "free” sign and guess how long it would last before someone would drive by and pick it up. Try this when you are cleaning out the garage or basement. Pretty soon, complete strangers will be stopping by to help you get rid of your junk.

Don’t get me wrong, because my wife and I are "loaves and fishes" people. (the more you give away the more you get in return,) we have been forced to be brutal about dispensing with the unnecessary, trying to focus on "things" with intrinsic beauty that will find at least a single "new" life after we have moved on to some other plane.

Another helpful thing is that we have packed up and moved over twenty times in thirty two years of marriage. When all your stuff needs to fit in a Uhaul truck, you make good choices of what is necessary and valuable and what is just junk.

I am sitting in my new office at work. It’s a complete shambles with the detritus of a lifetime of work, absurd plastic awards and plaques, pictures of things I have worked on and hundreds of books (none rare) and a cascade of business training crumbs. There is a faded copy of my master thesis about a topic that is obsolete today. That's going in the paper recycle bin: a copy is in the library at the University of Missouri if I ever need it.

The crappy awards from defunct companies and from groups I can't even remember-in the recycle bin if there is any post-consumerism possibility.

There is hope for me. After the office let’s tackle one of the garages.

PS: TIPS for non-pathological hoarders.

Pack things in boxes, seal the boxes. If in six month you can't remember what’s in the box, throw it away without opening it. Chances are you won't miss anything.

Move often. And to smaller and smaller homes.

Buy a car with a smaller storage trunk or hatchback.

When promoted, throw away everything from your past work that will NOT enhance your career. Trust me, the cheesy award plaque from when you worked in the mailroom as an intern will not enhance your chances for the next VP slot.

Throw away your spouses “stuff” when they aren't watching. Apologize and buy something nicer to replace it, if you get caught.

Marketing Luxury Goods in the Post Consumer Era? Is this an Oxymoron?

2009-08-07T16:20:00.000-07:00

In a April 07 Blog by David Armato ( L+E ) presented a great graphic portraying the post consumer marketplace from his point of view. I have copied it here without permission but with citation. By David's own blog this an example of "word of mouth advertising" he should be thankful for the positive lift.

lifted from: http://darmano.typepad.com/logic_emotion/2009/04/why-marketing-in-a-post-consumer-era-wont-look-like-marketing.html

If you read my Blog Britney Spears, Facebook, Twitter and the Post Consumer World. Aug 2, 2009 you already know some of my opinions about marketing in the post consumer era.

Marketing won't die, it will just get more cut-throat, insidious and subliminal.

My response to the subliminal: I will try to avoid buying anything I see advertised or "think" I have seen advertised, without a walk around the block before I make the purchase. Exempting breakfast cereals and other non-branded food items. For me, basic food is non-discretionary spending. Others might consider an iPhone more important than food, and who am I to judge?

What will change in the post-consumer world is discretionary spending. We will have less to spend. (Anyone with a 401K plan, a job that earns normal wages, or a home as part of their equity already has less.)

There will always be those who can afford luxuries without thought. (The One Percenters) Most of us, the Ninety-nine Percenters, will have smaller credit lines in the post-consumer era and our luxury purchases will be fewer and hopefully better thought out.

Maybe the post-consumerist will become a more deferred gratification type luxury buyer. Skip the daily $8 coffee and buy the $400 espresso machine from savings only fifty work days later. (no credit card charges).

Many economists, including Alan Greenspan, say that the same conditions of the human spirit will lead us back to the same place we were in 2007. I agree, however it took us 25 years for the stock market to reached its pre-1929 levels. If thlast year was akin to the great crash then we won't be back to our old ways soon, even if the banks change their current tightened lending. See my July 7th posting for information on the consumer lending crunch.

In the post consumer era, luxury goods will command even higher prices due to a shrinking market place and increased costs in marketing and delivering those luxury goods. (Economics 101).

Will luxury markets ever die. NO, they just will become just that "luxury markets". I might find it necessary to have a laptop computer for my work, but will I buy the most expensive one. I used to, but now I think not.

Some of the post-consumer literature contends that a loanership economy might grow, others like the Eden Project think the Big Lunch will increase social activism and community in the post- consumer era.

I will explore these and other "post-consumerism as social change catalyst" ideas in future blogs.

One thing I am sure of: high powered marketing of stuff you don't really need will continue unabated in the post-consumer era.

You can't make this stuff up. iPhone commits suicide?

2009-08-02T16:45:00.000-07:00

I found the following blog "information" both interesting and troubling.

I can't make this stuff up. This was the title of the blog.

iPhone suicide throws light on China's gadget black market

I thought maybe that either iPhone's could commit suicide (good idea in the post consumer world when you don't have money for stuff), or two that the tragic individual used his iPhone to commit suicide, thus obviating Dr. Kevorkian and the Hemlock Society.

But it was simply that a factory worker in China stole a fourth generation iPhone prototype and the committed "suicide". The prototype is suspected to already be in the hands of the Shenzhen's industrial counterfeiters.

"The copying of prototypes certainly happens a lot in the electronics and IT industries," said Dane Chamorro, a regional general manager with consultancy Control Risks. "You don't have to steal them, you just have to borrow one for a day."
In an earlier interview with the New York Times, Foxconn's general manager for China said that Mr Sun had previously lost products "several times" before getting them back again

I saw a blog the other day, and for the life of me I can't find it again, that suggested "virtuality" will replace actuality in the post-consumer world we won't need to buy any stuff that needs to go to the dump (what we called in the pre-post-consumer world the landfill) anymore.

The example used to illustrate this important point was an iPhone gadget spirit level which will replace the "spirit" level used by countless construction and maintenance workers. I swear it! Can you imagine Tom the carpenter, out in the rain, tossing his $300 iPhone into a re-cycled paint bucket after he levels that 20 foot long three hundred pound beam for your deck. I can't. Maybe you will use it to level the really neat giclee print you just bought for $850. But in the post consumer world who will be buying $850 framed prints, not Tom the carpenter.

If you want some real fun with virtual gadgets go to the iPhone Apple Store.

These are the kinds of virtualities that some post-consumerism thinkers believe will eliminate real stuff. I am not one of them.

I didn't go to the details, I just read the Apps headings and wondered outblog!

Apps for working out. Lifting iPhone repeatedly to ear for bicep exercises. standing up with iPhone to increase leg muscles. making faces ion iPhone to tone your facial muscles and reduce dependency on plastic surgeons.

Apps for around the house. Doing dishes with your iPhone or more likely calling for Chinese and insisting on the post consumer cardboard cartons and the recycle service plate. Keeping up with eBay, buying used stuff. Now that's a real "post consumer" activity (no really it is). Decorating with iPhone. if you don't like the wall color just hold the iPhone between your eye and the wall (blocking all view) and put a color on the page and imagine the wall painted a nice soothing color. No painting debris stuff to the dump. Get cooking: virtual food only for this overweight post consumerist.

Apps for travelling. No more leaving the house. Just call it in to Florence Italy and your surrogate will go to the Uffizi for you. No jet lag. Don't want to learn the language, just speak into your iPhone and then hold it up to the lady at the gelato shop and you might just get something to eat, or have your surrogate do it for you and skip the calories.

Apps for getting things done. Tracking expenses. What expenses? Again I swear I can't make this stuff up. Ambiance. Download wind chime music to soothe your soul after having the kids give each other wedgies and scream while you burn the roast and then your wife calls to say she's bringing the boss home.

You can fill in ideas for Apps for Managing Money (what money?) and Apps for Fun and Games.... It doesn't involve going to a sunset walk at the beach. Apps for Going Out. (why bother?)

Better yet apps for bloggers with too much time on their hands.

Britney Spears, Facebook, Twitter and the Post Consumer World.

2009-07-28T19:56:00.000-07:00

The July 24th Issue of USA Today Money page B1 had three interesting articles that are best read together. I will take the editorial license to combine them here. In Rally pits optimists vs pessimists the core argument was that the optimists see companies making profits by slashing costs as proof that the economy is recovering. If your revenue is going in the tank and you can increase profits continuously the argument goes, you can make lots of profits on no work. (Sort of like the mortgage industry was for a while) The optimists were gloating that the pessimists were "missing out on gains"

The second article was about the Candies ads with Brittany Spears that were not released on TV but were first introduced on "Facebook" and "BritneySpears.com", as well as to Britney's 2.5 M Twitter "followers" (as they are called) Isn't that what hey called Jim Jones disciples?

See this full article in USA today Back-to-school Pitches go social

Hidden in this article was a gem. Back-to-school spending is expected to be down 7.7% this year. That means your teenage daughter will still get the $199 Bebe jeans, but she just might have to cut down on her designer cosmetics to the tune of about $50. Or god forbid, have to wear something twice. My prediction, lots more teenage crime to get the stuff that they can't live without. Keep your eyes out on that trend.

A 7.7% decrease doesn't sound like much (I think it will be more) but it comes on top of last year's falls and precedes next year's fall in consumer spending. Something will have to fill that consumer need gap for our teenage and pre-teen children. I don't know what it is, but I sure am trying to figure it out.

On another note, in the same article Forrester Research predicts social networking advertising to children will rise from a paltry $455M in 2008 to $3.1Billion in 2014. That's a big bet, and predictably that's a necessary one for consumer products makers who are facing a real decline in available cash for discretionary consumer spending.

All things considered with education costs and health care and other non-discretionary costs rising and wages falling, discretionary spending for students will be heading south for a long long time.

The last of page 1B articles was about the increase of the minimum wage to $7.25. That news should be a counter to post-consumerism. More money for the masses to spend on stuff they don't need! Alas! a good portion of that article was about reduced hours for most minimum wage earners. they have more time on there hands and less cash to spend.

So this is what we should read. Page B1 in one run-on sentence.

The optimists think we can get back on track by cutting costs to zero to increase profits, marketers think we need to spend eight times as much on Facebook and Twitter to chase 7.7% less spending and the minimum wage is rising while wages are falling.

Sounds like a post consumer alert.

The Effluence of Affluence.

2009-07-16T10:28:00.000-07:00

From The WiseGeek

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the average American produces about 4.4 pounds (2 kg) of garbage a day, or a total of 29 pounds (13 kg) per week and 1,600 pounds (726 kg) a year. This only takes into consideration the average household member and does not count industrial waste or commercial trash.

If this sounds like a staggering number, you would be surprised to know that Americans are not the number one producers of garbage in the world. In Mexico, the average household produces 30 percent more garbage than in America.

http://www.wisegeek.com/how-much-garbage-does-a-person-create-in-one-year.htm

I think the reason that Mexico has more waste than we do is that they get almost all of our junk that doesn't end up endlessly recycled through "garage sales". The ultimate resolution of Reagan era "trickle down " economics.

My search for "garage sales" on Bing resulted in 30,7000,000 hits. Searching "yard sales" added another 20,600,000. There are approximately 110,000,000 households in the United Sates, then for every 2.05 household in the U.S. there is one "garage sale" or "yard sale" website.

One of the more interesting hits was the Henrik Bering review called "Royal Yard Sale" of The Sale of the Late King's Goods: Charles I and His Art Collection by Jerry Brotton.

The book and review describe the disposition of the art collection of Charles 1 of England. Who, it appears, acquired a lot of his work at a variety of distressed "yard sales" of his fellow monarchs.

When Charles fell on "hard times" he fell hard, culminating with his revolt against Parliament and his beheading on January 29, 1649. Parliament decided to pay for some important things with Charles art so the first recorded Anglo-Saxon yard sale took place. (I am sure there were earlier prototype but this is a good one)

The sale commenced in October 1649. Things did not get off to a great start. By releasing enormous quantities of art all at once, they flooded the market. Some former royalists were naturally hesitant about the idea of buying their late king's possessions, while Puritans were not supposed to harbor such aesthetic desires. This did not prevent three enterprising colonels, acting on behalf of international buyers, from making excellent buys, snatching up some of the best pieces. Others just sat back and waited for prices to fall............ The sale petered out when Oliver Cromwell was installed as Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland in 1653. Cromwell was no fool. .......

http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/4884421.html

The royal yard sale netted $26,500 pound (1649) a large sum but my guess is the appreciated value of some for this art in 350 years is staggering.

Another interesting hit was the Interior Design Institute of British Columbia they held a garage sale on June 20, 2009 http://www.salari.com/node/296. it was to benefit "Habitat for Humanity", but the idea struck me as interesting and I bet there were some very chic and over priced tchochkes on the tables.

I couldn't find any "institute", "organization" or other national or international agency for "garage sales" . The closest thing would be eBay but that's on-line and not "live performance" so there is a window of opportunity for a wise Post Consumerism Blog follower.

Another item I think deeply about, could we pay off the national debt by collecting taxes on garage sales. Would we tax the sale price or the "value price. (more on that later) I am not alone here

At a recent Longmont (Colorado) City Council meeting, councilwoman Sarah Levison was so concerned a local estate sale was not collecting sales tax that she called authorities to "go out there and figure out what was going on."

Levison voiced her concerns during a Tuesday's City Council meeting, which was exposed on the Longmont Advocate blog written by local activist Chris Rodriguez.
The councilwoman's words say it all.
"I noticed that they were not collecting taxes for the city of Longmont," said Levison. "I wonder if there is any system to check on when there are professionally run estate sales to ensure that we are collecting taxes. I hate to think that we might have lost several hundred dollars of tax income that day. I'm also wondering whether or not we could connect with the state to find out if they reported the amount of state sales tax and if we could go back and try to collect it. We need every dime we can get these
days."

http://facethestate.com/buzz/17184-longmonts-levison-digs-deep-tax-revenue

In my neck of the summer woods, in the Pacific Northwest we hold a 28 mile long Memorial Day wekend community garage sale. Lets say 5% of the community takes part or 150 homes. If each sale nets $1,000 and the tax rate is 8% that's $12K lost sales tax to the state.

If there are 110,000,000 home in the United States and 5% have annual garage sales that's 5.5 M homes times $80 tax or $440,000,000 lost revenue. Not enough to make a dent in our problem, but it's still spending money for government.

Back to the sale price or the value price issue.

Neither I, nor my wife, are garage or yard sales shoppers. We do buy most of our clothing and shoes on-line from trusted discount retailers with attractive return polices, like free shipping of return items. My wife sometimes orders two sizes and then returns ones that don't fit. She also likes to shop at second hand stores, and we both shop at the discount clothiers, but we don't normally do yard sales.

That said, I had decided to punish myself this summer (a very early American idea) after getting a $268 speeding ticket, by forgoing a new gas barbeque grill.

Our charcoal grill of 20 plus years is still hale and hardy due to an obvious manufacturing defect that made the steel too thick, to either rust out or burn through.

The other night, we were talking to our neighbors, who are wonderful and frugal folks. Amoung their recent yard sales purchases were two motor scooters with 160 kilometers on them, helmets included for $1000 (for both). Retail sale new about $2200. We were impressed. We mentioned that we might be buying a gas grill at a yard sale deferred until "next summer" due to my punishment.

A few days later they stopped by to say a yard sale down the street had a decent grill for $20 with a tank. Tanks retail for about $33 (plus tax) at your local home and yard store, so the grill was actually thrown in for free. I went down a few blocks and the price had been reduced to $15 and the tank was at least half full and the igniter still worked. The retail for this grill and tank is about $135 plus sales tax. My price at yard sale is about a 90% discount. I did have to power wash it though.

I must have the bug, but I will be careful. Saturday I was dropping my considerably less than 29 lbs of weekly garbage off at our compactor/transfer station and spied a really dirty outdoor chair in the "Freebie" area. Upon closer observation it was completely coated with dirt that a good power washing would resolve. Now I am the proud owner of a $15 lawn chair, perfectly good and clean.

My question is should I list this as income on my federal tax returns next year?

The BIGGEST POTLACH of all time.

2009-07-14T16:36:00.000-07:00

Poltach is a ceremony or a series of ceremonies from Pacific Northwest Indigenous Peoples . During the ceremonial gathering, a family or hereditary leader hosts guests in his family's house and holds a feast for invited guests. The main purpose of the potlatch is the re-distribution and reciprocity of wealth.The host and his relatives lavishly distribute gifts to guests, who were expected to accept any gifts offered with the understanding that at a future time they were to reciprocate in kind.

Items ready for Potlach in the 1880's

Potlatching was made illegal in Canada in 1885 and the United States in the late nineteenth century, largely at the urging of missionaries and government agents who considered it "a worse than useless custom" that was seen as wasteful, unproductive which was not part of "civilized" values. The US ban was lifted in 1951, which means it was still going on underground well into the second half of the last century.

Potlach is still practiced by indigenous peoples today, as well as by registered Lobbyists and Congressional staffers. The Potlachs are planned in Washington DC and held at a variety of resorts worldwide.

If it was illegal due to morality issues, why did the United States just engage in the granddaddy of all Potlach. During the great depression we redistributed wealth to the poor, in the 2008/09 US Potlach wealth has been redistributed from the poor to the wealthiest corporations (shareholders and executives) on earth.

I recently heard a news report (unverified) that my portion of the Potlach to Citi Bank and others was $10,000. The politician, making the report, asked if I felt wealthier because of this redistribution of my wealth. My answer was, of course I don't, but the bankers probably think so.

A traditional Potlach between rival groups might involve extravagant or competitive giving and destruction, by the host, of valued items as a display of superior wealth. He who burns the most stuff must be the richest and most powerful. Based on that, the executives at Chrysler,GM, AIG, BofA, CitiGroup etc. must be pretty powerful to burn the wealth of a generation. Lets see, if AIG burned $80B of our wealth and GM burnt only $18B which of these executives should get the highest status?

If we follow the rules of Potlach to the absurd, AIG executives should have a higher status in the world than US Senators and the president (leader) of at least 150 countries in the United Nations.
Under the rules of Potlach is Bernie Madoff being unjustly incarcerated instead of feted?

One of the unstated rules of Potlach is that the receiver was bound to reciprocate in the gifting. Do you think Obama expects that GM will be delivering my gift car to my doorstep any time soon?

The potlatch ceremony involved dancing, feasting, and ritual boasting, often lasting for several days. This sounds a lot like the Congressional hearings on the "stimulus package, but I would go more for singing and dancing, drinking and eating.

The New Potlach for the United States.

My suggestion to congress: declare a new Potlach Day, May 30th, (for good weather most places).

Citizens are obliged to go outside singing and dancing in the streets. We can leave the ritual boasting to the President and the appointed loyal opposition spokesperson of the day.

The federal government feeds us all the surplus food they have stored up in silos. Lots of dried dairy products I'd bet.

At midnight every street has a big fire and we ritualistically burn all our clothing, furniture and electronics and smash our cars so that on June 1st we have to go out and buy new stuff with our credit, thus readying ourselves for next years Potlach Day.

Now that sounds like a fun governmental program, and also a way to avoid living in any kind of post consumer world.

Why we are enterring the post consumer economy.

2009-07-07T17:47:00.000-07:00

This blog will be dedicated to musings (factual or fantastic) about why I believe we are entering a new "post consumer" economy and what it might look like.

I will post weekly, but just in the last few days the web has begun to sprout a considerable volume of "post consumerism" rhetoric (748,000,000 Google Hits) so maybe we will have more to say more often.

Why is the capitalist/consumer economy destined to change from a consumer product based system? and what will the replacement system look like?

The simple answers are: WE HAVE LOTS LESS MONEY TO BUY STUFF WITH, as to what the economy might look like, that's the subject for future postings.

I revisited the George Carlin monologue on "stuff" and its more relevant today than it was 25 years ago. To get into the correct mood for the new "post stuff economy" its worth re watching the master in his prime on YouTube. George Carlin on Stuff http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac

MY PERSPECTIVE

Beyond the issue of massive price losses in 401K's and home equity for individuals, and beyond the falling consumer outlook numbers, and beyond the real un and underemployment rates of 16-20+%. Two things strike me as essential data that supports a fundamental change in how our economy will work in the near and mid term future.

1. The historical pricing for housing suggests that housing prices will return to the norm after dropping below the norm. (Many of you have seen this Case-Shiller Chart . Oh! gosh this chart is a little misstated. If you look at the ups and downs the pricing needs to fall way below the average before it seeks steady state. The graphic developer kind of tapered the final dotted line out at the norm. That's not how a pattern would be repeated. To repeat the pattern you need to see a significant drop below the norm before it spikes up again, so read it and weep or worse. I think the worst is yet to come).

My guess, at least another 40% DROP IN THE PRICE of a single family home price, which will mean a lot more foreclosures based on the following WSJ article. This will bear out if the banks push the mortgage rates to 10% or above to improve their interest spread positions. Monthly mortgage costs will have the effect of pushing the cost of the houses down. Exactly the opposite effect that we have seen over the last 15 years as mortgage rates fell housing prices rose.

New Evidence on the Foreclosure Crisis by Stan Lieboiwtz.....What is really behind the mushrooming rate of mortgage foreclosures since 2007? The evidence from a huge national database containing millions of individual loans strongly suggests that the single most important factor is whether the homeowner has negative equity in a house -- that is, the balance of the mortgage is greater than the value of the house. This means that most government policies being discussed to remedy woes in the housing market are misdirected.....

From The Wall Street Journal http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124657539489189043.html

I have to admit that of the three homes I live in, I own two and the bank and I own one. The shared ownership one is upside down for both me and the bank, but I like it, and the mortgage is still bearable. I got one of the last pesky interest only ones based on LIBOR (which I knew was a lie in my favor) before the mortgage system collapse. However, that mortgage doesn't reset for four more years and we will be in the new "post consumer" world by then, and I can wait a little while to predict what that will mean to me. (See future posts)

2. The financial industry is squeezing credit and trying to increase the net interest spread between their cost of money and the price that they sell that money. In 2008 financial institutions have significantly cut consumer credit card limits. Financial instituions will continue to cut consumer credit limits., and raise interst rates.

Bloomberg.Com reported in March that credit card companies will cut $2 Trillion in consumer credit in the next eighteen months. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=adCwmmkzFI3U

That's $2 Trillion less in "stuff' Americans and Europeans will be buying from around the world. If you adjust that for some cycling of funds, say 6 times a year or $12 TRILLION NOT SPENT on "stuff" in the consumer market.

What will this amount of spending be replaced with in the "post consumer" economy?

My guess we will have much smaller private consumer product buying and selling , and more public sector buying and selling. We might also see some of that "green energy" development for our investment of the money we will save by not buying "stuff".

The folks down the street won't be getting a swimming pool,. but they will be pushing City Hall to build one for the community.

We won't be buying new GMs Fords or Chrylsers, but pushing City Hall for more mass transit, or maybe keeping that clunker running a bit longer by using it less.

We won't be working overtime for more cash to buy stuff, but we will be pushing our employers (who are cutting wages and benefits) to cut back our work weeks or at least let some of us work at home or bundle our hours into fewer days of commuting.

We won't be buying more wasteful big plasma screen TV's and we won't be wasting more electricity in our homes, but we might by that "big ticket" photovoltaic system (PV) for our roof or wind turbine for our backyard. (I did.)

This is the first post and in future posts I will be covering things like.

Everything the bankers and economist's think they know about the recovery is wrong.
The definition of Potlach.
Who will be the new captains of industry in the post consumer economy?
The "Slow Money" movement.
Everything we do becomes local.
The resurgence of brands that don't change their look every time the wind blows.
Products for the "post consumer" economy.
Service industry for the "post consumer" economy .
Higher education in the "post consumer" economy.
Careers for the "post consumer" economy.
Living the good life in the "post consumer" economy (for some of us).

And anything that is suggested or comes up.