engagedinattempting
Padawan Learner
Citizens of a number of countries have been enjoying such luxurious, comfortable, lush and sybaritic lives that their excesses have imperiled entire economies. Stern measures named austerity are being invoked or demanded, and it's worth a look at the word to see the nature of the plans.
If I choose an austere life for myself, that's one thing; if it's decreed for me by those with no intention of sharing it's defining conditions, that's another thing entirely. These circumstances are desired for the many by the few because the many have had too much for far too long, the few tell us, and nevermind that it doesn't work as advertised anyway.
Bill Black, author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One and an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City tells us:
In another article, Black discusses the beleaguered Greeks:
Many Greeks are already faring poorly, as Kate Kelland explains today for Ekathimerini.com:
The Engineers of Austerity are obviously lacking the virtue of compassion, but how lengthy is the stretch of road between lack and discomfort for the majority of citizens and death houses for the dispossessed? In Greece, some prisoners of the State are already pretty hungry:
Why am I using Greece as an example of the widespread pain and deprivation that seems to be intended for the world at large? I read a story about a Greek pensioner identified as Alexandros who, in debt and unable to pay, hanged himself in a park in Athens this week, and recalled the kindness, generosity, and ever-smiling warmth extended to me by the many Greek Americans I knew as a kid growing up among them in a small, west coast Florida town.
The Greek Americans I knew were not big spenders living wildly above their means and neither, I suspect, are the inhabitants of their native land. Perhaps Alexandros made some shortsighted business decisions, but he saw the long view of his probable future in an all too clear manner for him to be able to bear. The story about Alexandros ends with this:
There's some real austerity guaranteed to warm the cockles of the heart of any modern-day robber baron. When will enough, finally, be enough?
We Americans are perceived as being comparatively well-off and it seems we are, yet 51.4 percent of us appear destined to live in poverty at some point before age 65.
http://www.bread.org/hunger/us/facts.html
Until any so-called austerity measures affect Tom Wolfe's "Masters of the Universe" and their brethren commensurately with those of us comprising the great unwashed, I view them thusly: a 21st century plantation owner's metaphorical whip that is, in the end, no kinder than the actual tool. In the good old days when slaves were owned openly, my attitude in this would have been described with, "That boy don't know his place."
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/austere
If I choose an austere life for myself, that's one thing; if it's decreed for me by those with no intention of sharing it's defining conditions, that's another thing entirely. These circumstances are desired for the many by the few because the many have had too much for far too long, the few tell us, and nevermind that it doesn't work as advertised anyway.
Bill Black, author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One and an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City tells us:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/05/bill-black-new-york-times-reporters-need-to-read-krugmans-columns.html
In another article, Black discusses the beleaguered Greeks:
http://www.benzinga.com/personal-finance/financial-advisors/12/05/2603045/will-the-new-york-times-reporters-ever-admit-that-
Many Greeks are already faring poorly, as Kate Kelland explains today for Ekathimerini.com:
http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_wsite1_1_31/05/2012_444780
The Engineers of Austerity are obviously lacking the virtue of compassion, but how lengthy is the stretch of road between lack and discomfort for the majority of citizens and death houses for the dispossessed? In Greece, some prisoners of the State are already pretty hungry:
http://www.protothema.gr/news-in-english/article/?aid=200481
Why am I using Greece as an example of the widespread pain and deprivation that seems to be intended for the world at large? I read a story about a Greek pensioner identified as Alexandros who, in debt and unable to pay, hanged himself in a park in Athens this week, and recalled the kindness, generosity, and ever-smiling warmth extended to me by the many Greek Americans I knew as a kid growing up among them in a small, west coast Florida town.
The Greek Americans I knew were not big spenders living wildly above their means and neither, I suspect, are the inhabitants of their native land. Perhaps Alexandros made some shortsighted business decisions, but he saw the long view of his probable future in an all too clear manner for him to be able to bear. The story about Alexandros ends with this:
http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/world-news/in-greek-suicide-note-financial-despairpolitical-rage_711359.html
There's some real austerity guaranteed to warm the cockles of the heart of any modern-day robber baron. When will enough, finally, be enough?
We Americans are perceived as being comparatively well-off and it seems we are, yet 51.4 percent of us appear destined to live in poverty at some point before age 65.
http://www.bread.org/hunger/us/facts.html
Until any so-called austerity measures affect Tom Wolfe's "Masters of the Universe" and their brethren commensurately with those of us comprising the great unwashed, I view them thusly: a 21st century plantation owner's metaphorical whip that is, in the end, no kinder than the actual tool. In the good old days when slaves were owned openly, my attitude in this would have been described with, "That boy don't know his place."
― Thomas Wolfe 1987, Bonfire Of The Vanities
― Thomas Wolfe 1980, In Our Time
― John F. Kennedy, Kennedy's Inaugural address of 1961.
