Post No. 5: We Need More Jobs Here at Home to Truly Be a Strong Nation

© 2014, the Institute for Applied Common Sense

This is a tad longer than my typical post of 750 words, but I feel that we Americans need a tongue-lashing, since we can’t whip one another since the Adrian Petersen muck-up.  (This post is not only directed to my primary audience, college students, but to all citizens.)

My other blog, The View from Outside My Tiny Window, is about personal responsibility, choices, and making decisions, and is directed toward college students. However, what I have to say here is directed to all citizens.

We "killed the messenger" when Jimmy Carter tried to “warn” us in 1979 during his speech which has been derisively referred to as the “Malaise Speech.”  He described it as the greatest threat to American democracy.  The truth be told, we Americans have become lazy and spoiled.

We do not like being inconvenienced or questioned.  Our notion of personal freedom and pursuit of happiness may always outweigh what is needed to defeat the enemy we find embodied in the current group of terrorists, unless we have 9-11s of greater intensity and more frequency.  The changes we had to make as a nation since 9-11 are relatively minor inconveniences.

In my view, Americans are the most spoiled people on the planet, and most of us still are not satisfied.  It is why we seem to want our cake and eat it too, and have difficulty balancing competing interests so that they add up to a 100% course of behavior or conduct.  Instead, we want 50 here, 60 there, and 20 in some other place.  It’s one of the reasons why we are incapable, as a nation, of solving problems.  Right now, we are a nation which wants the terrorists to go away, but at the same time, not engage in a war which might accomplish that goal.

The intransigence and polarization we are experiencing are not solely attributable to the current President.  It is who WE have become as a people, and consistent with that notion, we decline to take responsibility for that as a people, especially on an individual level.  Instead, we point the finger at easy targets.  However, it is unfortunately what happens to humans who have grown accustomed to comfortable lifestyles and seen economic conditions improve for so long that they become “expectations” and “emotional entitlements,” pretty much through no effort on their individual parts, only to see things later fall apart.

When I traveled throughout Europe in the 1980s, my bags were regularly searched, the heels of my shoes torn apart, and I had to undergo extensive interrogations.  Flights to certain cities (London to Athens and Cairo) were cancelled for extended periods.  It was a royal pain in the ass; however, I was just a visitor.  Just before I was scheduled to go to Cairo, the militia started storming the tourist hotels near Giza because they found out that they were going to have to serve 3 years instead of 2 years.  I was in Europe very close to the time of the Leon Klinghoffer killing and the taking of the Achille Lauro in 1985.  The people of Britain and Europe know what it is like to have bombs raining on your homes and exploding in your subways.

In the mean time, we’ve become a nation of dilettantes, yours truly included.  Consider what Americans did to VOLUNTEER during WWI and WWII (real, practical, substantive, and tangible activities), and what they were willing to do without.   (Tangentially, this summer I generated an incredible number of yellow squash and cucumbers from one plant each, and when I showed them to my 93 yr old Father with dementia, he said that he remembered people here growing Victory Gardens during WW II.)

While making a selfie or posting support on Twitter for our troops or revolutionaries in the Middle East may provide some personal satisfaction, pounding a keyboard is not going to be very effective against ISIS.  Right now, you see very few people over the age of 30 voluntarily doing anything to aid in this fight.

Instead, we leave it up to others to handle, and sit comfortably in our homes ingesting an overwhelming diet of sitcoms.  The constantly changing, theoretical, individual right to keep and bear arms, to protect us against our government’s activities, those with whom we disagree or feel are undeserving, and those who strike fear in our hearts simply when we encounter them, seem to outweigh those things that we could do to effectively make this a better, stronger, and more secure nation for our collective benefit.  But we bitch about “someone else's” handling of the mess, which is a classic human mess, and not one really specific to our time.

And do you really believe that a legitimate, major, world power can function with a volunteer army?

These factors are also the same factors which, if we allow them to continue, will contribute to our decline as a world force.  We’re dun fur if we do not think more comprehensively, and come to the realization that we are part of the global community, and that others have values dear to them which are different than our values.  (Thus the subtitle of this post on my other blog, "They Can't Be Bought, and Don't Seem to Mind Dying.")  There is an argument to be made that we might rally a little bit during the next 20 – 30 years (and I sure hope so), but I’m afraid that we collectively do not care enough anymore.  We’ve learned to dodge inconveniences.

Add that to the fact that we allowed Corporate America, although its conduct was legal in nature, to sell us out to China (who was our ideological enemy not that long ago) thus decimating our middle class and creating a massive security risk.  We no longer even have the manufacturing capabilities to transition into making arms and supplies should we really get into a war like we did in WW II, not to mention a war with China. Furthermore, our internal infrastructure is so poor and in need of critical repairs, that if the enemy landed on our shores, we’d be hard put to mount a credible defense.

Having adequate, decent paying jobs here at home is what really matters.  People need to have a sense of purpose, a feeling that they can provide for their loved ones, and a little self-esteem.  The terrorists feel that they have something of value for which they are fighting.  What are we fighting for?  Another big screen TV, DVD recorder, jet-ski, ATV, or vacation home?  Do those in poverty have the wherewithal and resources to fight the terrorists, or are they too distracted fighting for their mere survival?  Jobs, also by the way, contribute to tax revenue which helps us all.

We need to come up with some new solutions for some historic human problems if we intend to continue as a legitimate world power.

Our inability to get anything done anymore is reflected in the way we wage battles against most everything these days – like a corporation making a cost-benefit, risk analysis, and only doing what it can on the cheap with the hope that it will accomplish its public relations goals in the short term, and that the guys at the helm will be gone when the long term negative consequences come back to haunt us.  While I'm a technocrat at heart, and that might be just fine for corporate governance, in theory. However, it’s a bunch of crap when it comes to taking care of a nation of real, live people as opposed to financial investors.

Unfortunately, we are relegated to management by committee under our current governance model, and lack the ability to think about, and plan for, the long-term. Perhaps somewhat related, I recently heard someone on C-Span talk about Eisenhower’s concern regarding the threat posed by the Military – Industrial Complex.  Apparently when the speech was first drafted, it read “Military – Industrial – Political Complex.”

A good buddy of mine has a quote attributed to Albert Einstein in his signature on all e-mails he sends out:  "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."   Although I generally disagree with him about 98% of the poop he puts out there, he is spot on about this one.

Post No. 4: Why We Need to Start More Small Businesses in America

© 2012, the Institute for Applied Common Sense

There are two things we do religiously, neither of which has anything to do with religion. 

First, we watch Turner Classic Movies daily.  By doing so, particularly those out of the 1920s through the 1950s, we re-visit many societal issues. (And you thought we were simply entertaining ourselves.)

Second, we read two books simultaneously.  One is invariably a school textbook, circa 1960s or 1970s, and the other is a book which students were forced to read, and which might be termed classics from other eras, such as Don Quixote, Death of a Salesman, Wuthering Heights, Bulfinch’s Mythology, etc. 

By engaging in these exercises, we’ve come to appreciate the meaning of the phrase, “The more things change, the more things stay the same.”

The textbook we've been reading here recently is Technology in Western Civilization.  What we’ve taken away from our re-reading of this book is that the most powerful forces in society affecting individuals are forces over which individual citizens have the least control.  Individuals respond to movements and do the best they can to survive.

The movie which caught our attention featured Barbara Stanwyck as a mail order bride. (Imagine that!) In The Purchase Price (1932), Stanwyck is on the run from her mobster boyfriend. She heads to North Dakota during the Depression to marry a struggling farmer.  Months later, she visits a neighbor’s home to lend a helping hand, only to find the woman on the floor with a new born baby.  Stanwyck takes charge of the situation.

The next couple of minutes dazzled us.  Our former big city girl unleashes an arsenal of survival skills, and sets about wrapping up the delivery, cooking, sewing, milking, repairing, hammering, and doing anything necessary, followed by trekking home in a blinding snowstorm.

And then it hit us - why we’re so anxious, debate the role of government, and ministers daily suggest that we’ve pissed God off. 

Except for our families, and perhaps fellow parishioners, we’re pretty much out here all alone.  We don’t mean to suggest that government should do anything for its citizens other than defend our borders, and provide police, and maybe fire services.  However, after reading Technology, we have a better appreciation of how government stepped in to assist people, long before the New Deal, after throngs left (by choice?), their rural, agrarian roots for major industrial cities during the 19th and 20th centuries.

Few of us can do the things that Barbara did.  Instead, we “want to be like Mike.”  We’ve reached a point where most of us are totally dependent on cash revenue from some source to pay others to do things for us.  Also, we’re generally not that talented in basic survival skills (like sucking rattlesnake venom out of a wound), although we might be great computer people, electricians, ad execs, doctors, or truck drivers. 

We all get compensated with cash for our services.  According to Technology, currency was one of the great inventions of humankind.  But it came with a price.

What we came to realize by the end of the movie is that we are far less capable, at least as individuals, of helping one another because we are not sure whether we can help ourselves.  We’ve become dependent on employers, customers, clients, or worse yet, the government.  Very few voluntarily chose the route of the 47%.

King Kong ain’t got nothin' on insecurity.

A half-way decent job in a manufacturing plant, enabling one to take care of one’s self and one’s family (and develop a little self-esteem along the way), was a big deal at one time.  And then they shipped trinket making to cheaper real estate, and warned us [via Toffler’s Future Shock (1970), and The Third Wave (1980)] that we were transitioning to a service economy.  But the provision of services and the assembly of information don’t amount to much if no one is willing to pay for those services.

As a wise man once said, “Something only has as much value as someone is willing to pay.”  And connecting what one has to offer with someone willing to pay became far more difficult in the global economic expansion.

There’s little question that we are anxious, and even some are angry. And that debate about the extent government should be involved in our lives is a legitimate one, because there aren’t any other obvious options.  And while it is true that families aren’t as large, connected, and based in the same field as they used to be, it’s not God doing it to us because he’s pissed off.

We’re doing it to ourselves.  And only we individual citizens have the solutions.

And that’s only common sense.

Post No. 2: Start Your Green Business in Alternative Energy Areas

A friend of mine works for Recurrent Energy based in San Francisco.  Her CEO recently generated an article in Fortune suggesting that President Obama might consider creating jobs in the solar energy area. Click here to read the article.

Someone interested in starting a business in the alternative energy area would benefit from using Starting Your Business – The Fundamentals: A Comprehensive, Thinking Business Owners Guide

Starting Your Business - The Fundamentals

I have generated a guide for those individuals interested in starting their own business, and for those managers of existing businesses, who now realize that they should have employed more structure and planning at the start.

You will receive the benefit of years of my experience.

Come join me on the journey to financial and vocational independence.

You Need This Guide to Assist You. It Contains All of the Issues of Which You Should Be Aware.