Month: March 2008

American life and society is based on the concept of Capitalism. Its antithesis, Communism or Socialism, has become the anti-Christ of the American dream. Yet Capitalism has fostered dreams of success that have become nightmares for many.

What is Capitalism? Does it reign supreme over Communism as the rightful heir to the next world order, or is there a third way that engenders the concepts of both Communism and Capitalism, lifting the poor out of poverty, yet preserving the rewards for the entrepreneurial that Capitalism fosters so well?

Capitalism is based on competition. To better understand the concept of Capitalism, we have to observe more closely the effects of competition.

This is best understood by relating to football. I don’t pretend to understand the complexities of American football, but football is football, and football by any other name, like ‘soccer’, will smell as sweet.

Football is made up of many teams all competing for the opportunity to win some magnificent trophy. After many play-offs, teams are eliminated until only two remain. These winners of the semi-finals, compete for the final prize – the grand trophy. Only one can be champion.

But, what of the the other teams who were knocked out in the earlier stages of the tournament? In the excitement of the Super-Bowl, everyone’s forgotten about them.

Yet, in our analogy of competitive football and Capitalism, those ‘other teams’ represent the bulk of ordinary Americans. Probably around 99% of the US population.

In our analogy, they are the losers – the forgotten teams. Competition is about beating everyone else. For every winner, there are a legion of losers.

In reality, Capitalism is about maintaining a few winners, while creating a host of losers.

Of course, in a perfect world, the winners care for the losers by providing jobs and salaries for the losers to live in relative comfort. It’s called ‘sharing wealth’. The winners cream off the bulk of the rewards, leaving the scraps for the losers, who do most of the work.

Communism, or in the Western world, its slightly more acceptable cousin, Socialism, differs from Capitalism by recognizing that those who do the bulk of the work deserve the bulk of the reward.

While Capitalism is fostered by the powerful few as a means to keep the many under control, threatening loss of jobs, recessionary consequences, and general suffering as the results of over-zealous demands on the system, Socialism endeavors to spread the bounty Capitalism bestows on the few, around those who do most of the work i.e. the other 99% of the American populace.

That seems a much fairer system to me. Yet, every year, the Rose Bowl is won by some high-fallutin’ banker CEO who walks away with $100 million or $200 million dollars or more of cash earned by the brow-sweat of ‘ordinary Americans’.

Of course, if you mention that fact to those ‘ordinary Americans’, they’ll likely spit in your eye and call you a ‘commie bastard’.

America is Capitalism; Capitalism is America.

Commonsense plays no part in the equation.

Filed under: Capitalism rules, ok?

Over the last months, Sparrow Chat has commented a number of times on the appalling state of the US Social Security Administration.^[1] Increasingly heavy workloads on the shoulders of fewer and fewer employees has led to unacceptable delays in payments to disabled claimants, ridiculous waiting times at field offices, and a general submersion into gross inefficiency at all levels.

Now, it seems the monstrosity that is the SSA may be finally waking up to the rot in its system, though whether that will result in any improvement is a matter for conjecture.

Below, is an excerpt from the minutes of a 17th January, 2008 conference call of the National Council of Social Security Management Associations Executive Committee. NCSSMA is an organization of Social Security management personnel:

“The state of field offices was a hot topic of discussion. Conference call participants weighed in with comments about the impact our resource shortage is having on the Field Offices and the Teleservice Centers [TSC]. Field/TSC employee morale is at an all time low and the number of employees retiring is growing. Employees do not feel supported by the agency, and so are more prone to retire as soon as they can. Many have over 30 years of service but are at the end of their ropes because there is no hope in sight. …Some of the regions expressed the concern that new hires seem to be targeted for urban offices with little done for suburban or rural offices. New managers are overwhelmed with the decreased staff and increased workloads. Managers are increasingly involved in processing direct service workloads and tabling traditional management activities as they have no other way to provide the public service. Rising expectations from area, regional and national components to clear work are unrelenting, with new reports, listings and additional workloads being piled on field office employees. The pain needs to be felt by other components including ADO [Area Director’s Offices] and regional employees. There is a sense of doom – Field Offices are being left to wither without any assistance. …With the usual dedication, employees have been very creative in their approaches to handling staffing losses with all pitching in across the board and doing the best they can. Maybe it is time that we quit trying to prove that we can do the same amount of work, or even more, with fewer resources. The despondency and anxiety in the field and TSCs continue to grow, but our staffing losses do not seem to concern Central Office.”
[my bold]

Admittedly, the NCSSMA is only an SSA management association, but if discontent is being loudly voiced at this level, there is hope of pressure on those higher up the ladder to make improvements in service and staffing more of a priority.

Unless, of course, the rundown of Social Security over the last five-ten years has been a deliberate political ploy, designed to provide an excuse to the nation that the only sure way to fix it – is to privatize it.

Should that turn out to be the case, and privatization of Social Security is allowed to proceed, it will prove a disaster for those most in need of its help; the disabled, the sick, and the elderly.

^{[1] Sparrow Chat posts on the state of the SSA can be found HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE.}

Filed under: Social Security

I first came upon what you are about to see on a blog I read regularly. The opening lines of the post read:

“This is the most heartbreaking video I have seen in a long, long time. I cried and cried.”

The lady who writes this blog isn’t prone to crying without very good reason, but even so, I doubted it would have a similar effect on me.

I was sadly wrong.

The situation described in this video did not come about in the last eight years. The blame for it goes back much further than that. Yet, George W Bush is at least as much to blame as all the presidents before him; all the senators and members of Congress who betrayed their own people so shamefully by allowing this situation to arise, and fester, and grow like a great, suppurating, carcinoma in the body of a once-proud nation.

This video makes no political statement, yet of itself it is a condemnation of all who lead, or have ever led this country – both Democrat and Republican alike.

Watch and remember – then, be sure to remember again this coming November, before you cast your vote for the next president of these dis-United States.

Unless, of course, you’re one of those Americans who just doesn’t care.

^{My thanks to “WiseWebWoman” for the link to this video.}

Filed under: Real US heroes