A more flexible society?

Regardless of how you view the mid-term elections, one thing is clear: at the very moment we need a thoughtful and responsive government, we are going to get at least another two years of gridlock. Only this time around it will likely be far more intractable than the merely contentious previous two years. Just as the House failed to extend unemployment benefits last Thursday, the Federal Reserve downgrades their earlier, more optimistic view of the economic recovery in 2011. So, it looks like we're in for long sputtering haul with high unemployment and a government that probably will not be able to make the bold moves necessary to alleviate socioeconomic conditions for the poor (1 in 7 Americans).

With the government incapacitated, it is up to Americans to do what needs to be done. And we can do it. Many already are doing it. So here is my suggestion, polyanna-ish though it is:

Folks on the right, as mistrustful of government competency as you are, now is the time to get involved in the kinds of community efforts that will help lift people out of poverty. Your best public philosopher, Francis Fukuyama, wrote an entire book on the subject!

Folks on the left, bent as you are on social equality, this is an opportunity to put your lefty activist cred where your mouth is. Get out there and start an NGO to connect people with jobs, training, or food!

Seriously, the time for rallies and placards and partisanship is over. We are far from out of the woods and we need to work together to pull through this rough patch--or else it may turn out far nastier than any of us can envision.

Things you can do...

1) Volunteer at a food pantry

2) Volunteer at a soup kitchen

3) Donate to charitable causes that help alleviate poverty... anywhere

4) If you are a business owner, create a new job

5) Start or join a community garden

6) Volunteer to teach job skills (computer applications, welding, car repair, horticulture... anything)

7) Start an NGO to... secure low cost or no cost housing; find/create jobs for the jobless; teach skills; increase community involvement...

8) Buy stuff! Not on credit, not irresponsibly, not at the expense of your own savings, but stimulate demand for goods and services in your community - preferably from locally owned merchants (more of the money you spend will likely recirculate back into your own area, rather than getting siphoned off to Arkansas - apologies to Arkansan readers)

9) If you have a friend, acquaintance, ex-coworker, who is unemployed (and who doesn't these days?), then be a job-hunting buddy. Help them meet their own goals for application placement, acquiring new marketable skills, etc. And then take them out for a beer/cosmo at the end of a long week of job-hunting.

10) If you can't do anything - too busy, can't easily get around, etc., then go online and donate cash, clothes (often they'll pick up), or optimism.

11) If you don't do anything, then, at the very least, ease off the vitriol you hurl toward your imagined political rivals. It's not about politics anymore.

People on the left and the right have deep traditions of helping others. Whether through your church or your commune, get involved, and not just through the holiday season. We're not nearly through with the fallout from fall 2008 - the outcome depends on us.

"Helping Hands" illustration by Chris Kasch

Economic refugees find shelter in tent cities

My grandparents knew them as hobo camps - groups of unemployed men doing what they could to get by during the hard times of the Great Depression. Today we witness a more troubling phenomenon. Tent cities have been springing up all over the nation in the last few years. Composed of a conglomeration of unemployed, underemployed, the working poor, and discouraged workers, this new phenomenon suggests that the current economic downturn is producing some disturbing features. The National Coalition for the Homeless has launched a new study in an attempt to better understand this growing social concern. What they have found is that municipalities have differed greatly in their response to the sudden, urgent need for housing among folks affected by the recession. Some cities (Seattle, WA and Portland, OR, for example) have set aside land, provided services, and attempted to alleviate the human suffering experienced by those displaced by the shifting economy; other cities (Colorado Springs, CO) at first worked with the homeless, and then, panicked by their increase in size and apparent permanence, broke up the tent cities and sent people packing.

With the disappointing unemployment numbers just out, the inability of our politicians to extend unemployment benefits, and a structurally weakened economic system, we must prepare to accommodate a growing number homeless with creative solutions. The "new study" link above compares different approaches along the west coast of the US and worth a look.

Love letters straight from the Heart

Apparently this email made the rounds recently -- it's the swan song of the utopian capitalist, the death rattle of the "survival-of-the-fittest" individualist, the last gasp of the crass materialist. It is weird how detached Wall Street bankers are from the so-called "Main Street" lives they assume they will be leading. $85K per year? Four months vacation? The median household income in America is around $50K and three weeks vacation is the average for someone with 25 years in at their job. To which Main Street does Joe Wall Street think s/he'll be moving I wonder?

"We are Wall Street. It's our job to make money. Whether it's a commodity, stock, bond, or some hypothetical piece of fake paper, it doesn't matter. We would trade baseball cards if it were profitable. I didn't hear America complaining when the market was roaring to 14,000 and everyone's 401K doubled every 3 years. Just like gambling, its not a problem until you lose. I've never heard of anyone going to Gamblers Anonymous because they won too much in Vegas.

Well now the market crapped out, & even though it has come back somewhat, the government and the average Joes are still looking for a scapegoat. God knows there has to be one for everything. Well, here we are.

Go ahead and continue to take us down, but you're only going to hurt yourselves. What's going to happen when we can't find jobs on the Street anymore? Guess what: We're going to take yours. We get up at 5am & work till 10pm or later. We're used to not getting up to pee when we have a position. We don't take an hour or more for a lunch break. We don't demand a union. We don't retire at 50 with a pension. We eat what we kill, and when the only thing left to eat is on your dinner plates, we'll eat that.

For years teachers and other unionized labor have had us fooled. We were too busy working to notice. Do you really think that we are incapable of teaching 3rd graders and doing landscaping? We're going to take your cushy jobs with tenure and 4 months off a year and whine just like you that we are so-o-o-o underpaid for building the youth of America. Say goodbye to your overtime and double time and a half. I'll be hitting grounders to the high school baseball team for $5k extra a summer, thank you very much.

So now that we're going to be making $85k a year without upside, Joe Mainstreet is going to have his revenge, right? Wrong! Guess what: we're going to stop buying the new 80k car, we aren't going to leave the 35 percent tip at our business dinners anymore. No more free rides on our backs. We're going to landscape our own back yards, wash our cars with a garden hose in our driveways. Our money was your money. You spent it. When our money dries up, so does yours.

The difference is, you lived off of it, we rejoiced in it. The Obama administration and the Democratic National Committee might get their way and knock us off the top of the pyramid, but it's really going to hurt like hell for them when our fat a**es land directly on the middle class of America and knock them to the bottom.

We aren't dinosaurs. We are smarter and more vicious than that, and we are going to survive. The question is, now that Obama & his administration are making Joe Mainstreet our food supply…will he? and will they?"

A Year's Hiatus

At the end of April, 2009, I decided to stop blogging about what seemed, then, as a looming global economic collapse and started to practice what I was preaching. I finished my postgraduate degree, started "leveraging" my skill-set to make a little money, and I have been working at being less spendy and more attune to the value of free stuff - you know, the good stuff, the stuff with substance and meaning: family, friends, art, music, literature, living well, and living less encumbered. Still working on the last one. It's been quite a year. Here are a few things I've learned.

1. Your skills and talents are valuable and there are people who are happy to pay you for your knowledge.

2. Getting out from behind the computer is the best, maybe only, way to live.

3. Despite the neoluddite sentiment of point #2, meetup.com is a great site to find groups of others with similar interests...

4. and craigslist.org is a good way to get the word out about what you have to offer the world.

5. Jogging keeps one sane and fit (two things we should all strive for).

6. Making a good soup is the most important skill one could possess.

So, why am I blogging here again? I guess things are getting pretty bad politically, environmentally, and economically and 1) attention needs to be paid to, let's say, alternative reactions to calamity, 2) blogging is one way to build community and, truth to tell, it's something that I have missed, 3) I find that blogging helps me place events in perspective and makes me spend some time carefully considering how to articulate with the future.

What's new after a year? Not much economically. The unemployment rate is higher and likely to climb; there is an oil slick covering the Gulf and threatening to catch ocean currents, spreading it even farther; Europe is in crisis; the stock market is slumping...again...

How about the positives? CO2 emissions drop in 2009 due to the recession; consensus on important issues is starting to emerge - e.g. the US National Academy of Scientists have agreed that global warming is real and due to human activities; a new deal protects millions of acres of forest lands in Canada; the recession has prompted a record number of startups in the US; contraction is the new growth (which is not necessarily a bad thing).