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Speechless I am . . .

We here in our humble abode have always experienced the principle of lagom over the past 40 years. In every facet of our lives. One cannot fall far when never climbing above one's own means... And that always allows enough for others who have slipped.

Highly highly highly recommended!

~OGD~

"I'll be all around in the dark. I'll be everywhere. Wherever you can look, wherever there's a fight, so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad. I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready, and when the people are eatin' the stuff they raise and livin' in the houses they build, I'll be there, too."

-- John Steinbeck
"Grapes of Wrath"

Worth remembering that if no one is buying, no currency has any meaning, so wealth is dependent on the masses believing in it.

In contrast, food is still food, love is still love, and a roof still keeps you dry. You can't eat gold.

Thank you. This is a very thoughtful, thought provoking and insightful post.

The vast and utter failure of our economic, civic, and political leadership is evident wherever one looks in America today. The common people are well aware that the orgy of greed and irresponsibility at the top has come to fruition now and they know that whatever solutions are reached it will require them to do the yeoman's work of recovery while the fools and incompetents at the top take credit for it once again despite their culpability for the disaster.

The common people have always been the strength of the republic and of our economy and they always will be. It is important today as it was in the last depression that it be made crystal clear to every citizen, old and young alike just who caused this catastrophe and why. I am not referring to the Republicans here though they are involved and a crucial element in enabling the disaster. The last depression was caused by the unrestrained greed of predatory wealth and this one has the same origin albeit the details are somewhat different. The Republicans are only the tribunes of those directly responsible for our economic collapse. The Republicans and sadly far too many Democrats have been little more than the paid help of the irresonsible and gluttonous malefactors of great wealth whose love of self is obviously much greater than their love of country. Those same people and forces, in their relentless pursuit of greater wealth and pwoer for themselves and their class, are also responsible for the lion's share of our social disorder and deterioration of the family since the end of World War II.

Employers have always demanded workers work more for less and produce more for less but that was tempered by New Deal legislation and the power of unions for a time. But beginning in the late 60's and early 70's, As the wealthy began gorging themselves on an ever greater piece of the economic pie they, demanded more work for less pay and benefits from the workers they employed. The insatiable demand for more, more, more on the part of businesses reordered the lives of American families such that parents were putting so many hours toward work they could no longer attend to their families as would have been the case in the past forcing parents to choose between being able to pay to have enough for their families to live in decent homes, etc... and being able to take the time that is necessary to guide and teach the young. Workers whether blue or white collar have been asked increasingly for more, they have been asked for sacrifices large and small, they have been asked to work longer, produce more and expect less for decades now. These unceasing demands on the part of predatory wealth have destabilized and even destroyed families, caused not only hardship but substantive economic decline for a wide swath of the population. The growing stress from the inability to support one's family on the wages available in today's economy has caused incalculable harm. What is truly criminal about this is that it isn't as though the wealth of our nation was not abundant enough to provide adequately, even generously to our people. No. There was plenty of wealth being generated. It was the greed of those at the top and the unending demand for more from them that necessitated that the vast numbers of honest, hardworking people do increasingly without.

As in the 1930's, the nation now lays prostrate and helpless in the aftermath of the inevitable result of the unrestrained greed and parasitism of the business leadership of the nation. The "Masters of the Universe" label was never accurate except in their own minds, except for one word: "masters". The nation's workers have been in virtual slavery to the whims of these people whose self-centered greed and sense of entitlement was extolled as a virtue since the rise of the racist Republican southern strategy. Unions, the only organizations dedicated to the improvement of the common worker, have been systematically crushed for decades and unjustly villified by the malefactors of great wealth and their legions of poltroonish courtiers in the Republican Party and even some Democrats. The sensible efforts of liberals to improve the lot of workers and the poor to strengthen the entire nation have been increasingly denigrated and scoffed at as the naive pandering of "bleeding hearts" who coddle the lazy and whose heads are in the clouds.

All the lessons learned by our citizens in the Great Depression have been unlearned since our nation fell captive once again to the propaganda and greed of predatory wealth during this restoration of laissez faire capitalism and social darwinism. Even now, this very week, prominent Republicans and "conservatives" continue to propagate the lie that FDR's New Deal "didn't work" or was "a failure" and that the New Deal only made things in America worse. Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of history understands what calumny and nonsense this is, yet the corporate media blares the message out unchallenged in almost every case with their false equivalency reporting as though they simply cannot discern difference betwee a transparent lie and the truth on anything from evolution vs creationism to whether or not torturing people is torture!

So yes it is a time to reorder our priorities but it is a time forreorder that takes on the proportions of a genuine revolution in our political and economic order. The people of this country are sovereign, not the wealthy, and we should not work toward a restoration of the scheme that brought us to this economic calamity.

We must have a new America, a second and much better and stronger New Deal, that provides the public supports and investments that a civilized nation requires for it's people to blunt the harsh realities of capitalism as all our close allies have had for decades. Ironically, all the protestations of the wealthy and powerful notwithstanding, the New Dealers understood this very well and we have once again reached the point where that is the only way capitalism will survive in the long run because it is a naturally self destructive thing that requires regulation and balance it cannot provide or maintain for itself. The logical, predictable outcome of unregulated capitalism is exactly the disaster we see all around us today. This is no revelation at all to those of us who have remembered and understood history. Capitalism by defnition is a beast unable to restrain itself from eating it's young as it once again has done in the present case. It's core principles are brutal and destructive to the point of being self-destructive. If this fact isn't self-evident to all right now then as the depression grows and deepens it will become so. We ignore the evidence of this plain truth at our peril.

As part of the revolution our nation requires, we must now demand a government that is beholden only to it's citizens and strong enough to resist the corrupting influences of corporate wealth and privelege. The only way to achieve this is to free all our elected officials from their dependence upon and addiction to the campaign contributions of the well-heeled interests that have controlled our government at every level now for decades.

Public financing of all elections is the only way to do this. There is no other way and there should be no compromise on this point. It is clear that this is an essential safeguard for preservation of our republic by, for and of the people.

Politicians respond most to those that help them stay in office. The way one stays in office is to get re-elected and that takes money and lots of it. If that money is provided by the public alone and the influence of corporate money is totally removed from the system we will see our elected representatives once again paying more attention to the needs of the people instead of the needs of those with deep pockets and bad intentions whose money they currently depend upon for reelection.

There are plenty of other things that also must be done but we must clearly recognize and identify those responsible for this mess (our business leaders) and those who were the handmaidens of those people (primarily Republicans but also to varying degrees "Blue Dog" and other centrist Democrats). We must realize also that they are recalcitrant and obstinate in their denial of reponsibility for the calamity they caused and will resist as they have always done, every step of the way. We need to realize that the fight to return our nation to prosperity and stability is only just beginning and that we cannot allow our essential recovery efforts to be slowed or watered down by those who, despite having been completely discredited, still hold power and continue to use it in the very same malignant ways they have for the past 50 years.

My apologies for rambling on so. But sleepin inspired me.

There's a wonderful synergy occurring on this thread. And others as well. Let's keep the circle going! Let's have more and more spin-off blogs.

All of this reminds me again of the problem of "corporate personhood." The citizens only cede power to elected representatives to the extent that those representatives carry out the people's will. If they carry out instead the will of corporations or a corporate oligarchy, then the people may need to rise up in some manner and set things right.

I like this post, SJ.

We've had our differences and still do, but I as well am hopeful that this crisis will retore some of the character in the people of this country that made it great in the first place.

Everyone wants a better life, and there's nothing wrong with consuming per se; but the irresponsible spending and debt creation of the past decade or so is beyond the pale.

The problem is that we have a generation of people willing to owe more than they're worth; not that we have opportunities for them to spend more than they're worth. Temptation is not an excuse for sin.

At some point since 1950, "consumer culture" replaced what used to be, possibly ethnocentrically, the "Protestant work ethic" and "American Dream" (Which used to mean giving your children a better life than you have). That was a bad thing, and if it takes another Depression to beat some sense into us, maybe we deserve it and maybe we will benefit from it.

Doesn't mean we'll get one, but it appears we'll at least get a nasty recession as a wake up call.