On the elementaries of crisis...

[RedRoses]

Isn't it peculiar that the same banks that were assisted by our governments in 2008, have reported mass winnings over 2010. And yet; the governments, who are now suffering low budget, are denied loans from the banks?

Which leads us to cuts in the social, health and educational system. In other words; we're tearing down the foundation of our society as these are our basic needs. Not to mention the needs of our children. The needs to ensure a better future. People are getting depressed, gloomy about today and tomorrow. The figures of violence within homes have risen. While we are falling into pits of hatred. We are all looking for someone to blame for the losses we suffer. Nationalism becomes clear in the media. Minority groups are being plagued by insults. It becomes "us" against "them". Every day it will be the question who either party is.

As in Spain the demonstrators on the streets have put it: "there is no crisis, this is a trick". The economical crisis may have been real, but the spin-off may very well be self-sustained. Keeping the profit in an elite-group for their own benefits, guarding their money like a mother crocodile protects her eggs.

From whatever wisdom I've learned; for economics to work, money needs to roll and spin, not kept locked away. That for a society to work, those who have made profit, should skim off the cream from the top of their Latte Grande to give to those who can't afford to poor sweet clouds into their bitter black poison.

I wish people would come to see that giving and caring is what a world at crisis really needs.

That would be my plea for today.

[Firmus]

I think a major problem with society (at least American, it's all I know) is that people don't know how to fail anymore, let alone be allowed or accept failure. Failure has such an overburdened hype to it anymore, despite it being a natural part of life. I put too much milk in my oatmeal this morning, so I failed at making it tasty. It's not a scarlet letter, it's just a mistake, and I go on. A scientist forms a hypothesis, then finds out it was wrong through experimentation.

But we have systems built in place now that do not allow for failure. Society demands perfection, regardless of what's at stake. I work in the IT world, and if you ever see literature talking about "five 9's" for system uptime, they mean that it's guaranteed reliable 99.999% of the time. That equates to 5.26 minutes PER YEAR it's allowed to go down. If a person pulls the wrong power cord, there's 3 minutes for it to boot back up right there.

For an average small business, the economics are simple because it's all locally controlled. If I open an ice cream shop, and nobody buys, or I don't charge enough to cover my costs, then the business fails. Its easy and straight forward who is "at fault". There's nothing wrong or bad necessarily, nothing malicious. It just didn't work out as expected, so it failed.

I think too many societies have placed too much faith in too many external entities that are well beyond any normal amount control. Blame is convoluted into a system so nobody can really be at fault anymore. For example, it's insane that a little country like Greece with it's few billion dollar crisis can affect the US stock market as drastically as it did. Not to chest thump, but we have states that have higher dollar exchanges than Greece. But, it's because too many things are out of hand for too many companies, so that everyone just has to roll with punches as they come in now. It's not just a matter of letting bank X fail.

Naturally, it doesn't help that for every action, there's an unequal and nightmarish reaction by our media. Simple stories that at best would be a 10 minute quip get reported on for days and days. News isn't news anymore, it's entertainment. Case in point, the Casey Anthony trial we just had. How much effort and resources was wasted reporting about this drivel? Not to sound callus but there are moms that kill their kids "all the time", but it's not packaged and paraded around like this.


(The below, again, is from my American viewpoint. I have no idea what type of systems are in place elsewhere.)

As for the social services that get dismantled, I may be alone but I say "good". I very much would like it to have people back in control of their own lives, the accolades and the failures. We have so many systems in place that are too easy to be abused, and conversely herd "good people" like myself into them even if I don't want them. For example, I think my healthcare should be my responsibility, and if I choose to smoke and it kills me then it's to be expected that it's my failure. I would not put blame on others, or tobacco companies, etc. I also think the education of my children should be education only. Not 100's of services, not free breakfast/lunch/dinner, not sports programs, music, drama, etc. All those are things that parents should be responsible for external to the education system. Government education should just be that, education. Language skills, math, communication, sciences, history, social sciences, and the like. Parents have given up so much control of what their children do and learn in school that now the burden of responsibility for the child is in the school's laps, and not the parents. Schools are now looked at as "failing the child" instead of "the child failed the material".

Ok, I'll get off my soapbox. That's probably my most convoluted post ever.

[RedRoses]

The Netherlands has a very social system, so perhaps that point of view should be taken into account. The few private schools we have can probably be summed up on one piece of paper or less, as do the private clinics. You could say we all throw money into the big pot so that we can all take care of eachother. Those who make more money are also expected to throw in a bit more. The day that they have aged, gone bankrupt and can't eat their own meal, we will pay for a nurse to feed them. That's the general idea. Even though we're facing problems of a too rapidly aging society and our recent governments liked tearing bits and pieces of the system, it still works well enough. I guess that if we wouldn't be in the world's top 10 competing economies as well, the US would have probably thought of us as communists ages ago and had never placed those secret warheads with us in the Cold War (uhmmm yes, they were a secret, until it showed up in a public record as a question to the US when they would finally come and pick those damn things up )

My interest in this wasn't much concerning my nation or us Dutchies. More like: all the countries and all the people that are now suffering from this crisis. What inspired me to start this thread were several news-flashes that I've connected together in the post above, which admittedly: concerns Europe primarily. There are clearly too many that make use of this crisis, while the banks report xx millions of profit. The real crisis is not economical. It's the spirit of the people that seems to get scorned because of it. And that is what worries me. Sociologists predict that Europe will soon be functioning on hate. The first signs of this are getting fascinatingly visible. An effect that is rather sad and seems to be so unnecessary. You could say it's useless to start a fight against the "big guys". I say; that's true. But companies are the creation of humans. Societies are made up out of people. Our governments are chosen by us. And each person carries an individual responsibility. Like you; I couldn't agree more on that. It is why I wish for each of us to become more giving and caring. After all; one (wo)man can change the world.

[EvilEvilKitten]

This is a "stirke of capital" - that is, those with the money to invest, to build factories, to hire people, etc - are out on strike until they get some 'incentives'.

They like to blame this strike on "taxes" and "high wages" - anything except the truth which is they want more for themselves. They are competing amongst themselves, you realise: playing the power game 'who has more billions'.

They're fools.

And because they are like this, we end up with governments doing what they were supposed to be doing - if they had paid decent wages, parents wouldn't need breakfast/lunch/dinner in schools because then the parents could afford to feed their kids. That's just one example. I have others.

Money means nothing unless and until it is put to work preferrably to the benefit of everyone involved because no one needs a billion dollars a year in order to live a decent life but you do need more than the $500 USD Tata pays its assembly line workers in its car factory in India.

And do you remember what began all of this? Deregulation.
It puts me out of all patience with them.

[lnt1103]

I have to agree with EEK wholeheartedly. Let me just add that the fact that there exists abuse in social services doesn't mean you end the services. Because if you end the services, people die. You do the best you can to thwart the abuse and waste, with the understanding that nothing and no one is 100% failsafe.

Two points on education: A-it's about helping a child grow into a well-rounded individual. Think about the Magna from Harvard who ends up in an engineering career he hates because there was nothing in his early life to help him develop his true passion of music or acting. Or that same Magna dying of a heart attack at 40 because he was sedentary in front of the TV his whole upbringing and didn't learn about good nutrition.

And you're going to tell me that finding that development and teaching that exercise/nutrition is the responsibility of parents. And, yes many think it is to a degree, but it leads to my second thought: you'd be floored at the number of parents who think education only happens 8am-3pm Monday through Friday and that since the child is in the presence of teachers during that time, the teachers are the only ones responsible for the education of that child. These parents don't help with homework, they don't read at home, because the child's education is not their job because they're not the teacher, the teacher is. They accept zero role in their child's education. "When my kid is in your presence, s/he's your responsibility and so is his/her educational attainment." It happens more than you care to acknowledge.

[EvilEvilKitten]

Whereas I was taught that the class room is just the beginning of your education. There's a library - use it. Info is everywhere and you can learn something from everyone.

It isn't ONLY your parents' job, your teachers' job - it is also YOUR job to become as educated as you can as quickly and as well as you can; to the best of your ability.

And that's where the problems begin - to the best of your ability. We aren't alike in our capabilities. We don't all have the same 'clock speed' nor do we all have the same amount of RAM or ROM, to use a computer metaphor. And some of us are not tempermentally suited to the usual classroom.

You help when and where you can. But to refuse to help - that's a crime and not just to others.

[dlb]

Greed, greed, and more greed. And an attitude of I've got mine so screw you. Not just banks, international corporations too. I can't forget the General Motors execs who as soon as the US government bailed GM out in 2008 gave themselves hefty bonus checks and went on luxury vacations in private planes to celebrate. There is a generalized lack of social responsibility and morality in western society these days. You might have read or seen a report on TV about millionaire U.S. representative John Fleming (Louisiana republican) who complained that raising taxes on the wealthy is unfair because, ""Since my net income -- and again, that's the individual rate that I told you about -- the amount that I have to reinvest in my business and feed my family is more like $600,000 of that $6.3 million ... and so by the time I feed my family, I have maybe $400,000 left over..." Median income in the USA is a little under $50,000 a year while the lowest paid member of congress makes $174,000 - on top of their private income.
Of course the USA is not as heavily socialized as the major European countries, but the social programs from which Americans have benefitted for generations are in dire straits: infrastructure, public education, social security, the libraries that Evil Evil Kitten mentions... Meanwhile the USA and other governments have spent trillions of middle class tax dollars on wars which have been of no apparent benefit to anyone other than Big Oil and the defense industry. The 10% (or less) of the population who hold 80% (or more) of the wealth are the ones whohave benefitted from this vast government waste and they scream "class warfare" at any suggestion that they give some of it back for the common good. They claim that they shouldn't have top pay taxes because the ultra wealthy create jobs and wealth. If that were the case why are so many people unemployed or underpaid; and in such a situation who do these billionaires create wealth for other than themselves.
I am not against money or wealth, but I think that these people are trying to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs which they are hellbent on protecting.