Life In Japan: “Savings”

This first part of this story offers insight into the way the U.S. government works. The last part is another inspiring tale about Japan.

The summer when I was twelve-years-old, I had a thriving lawn-cutting business. Understand that I lived in a mobile home park. So my jobs were pretty much already “lined up”. In two rows on opposite sides of the single lane that serviced the entire community were somewhere around 200 trailers, each surrounded by tiny lawns.

(The photo on the right is a current one of the trailer park from Google Satellite Views. Now the entire area is entirely developed but back when I was a boy, it was surrounded only by fields and woods.)

Not bragging, I have to say I did a good job. So the word spread and I got very busy. After each day of cutting and trimming grass, I put my daily take in a jar.

About the middle of summer, the jar was getting extremely full . . . and very tempting. Gosh, there were a few things I really needed or wanted. So I started replacing the money with little white IOU slips. By the end of the summer, there was no money, just white slips. My savings now consisted of promissory notes.

And that’s how the U.S. government works!

Actually, it’s how most U.S. citizens function. The nation is up to its neck in “white slips” both personally and institutionally. I can honestly say I know very few people who are good at saving money. Piling up credit card debt appears to be the national pastime.

To be completely fair and accurate, however, in terms of actual personal savings rates in countries with advanced economies, Finland (-1.2%) and Poland (3.0%) are the worst, Sweden (17.1%) and Switzerland (17.6%) are on top, and the U.S. is in the middle (8.1%). By the way, these are figures from 2019. It’s certainly not as bad as I expected.

Anyway, to the point of this story.

Just this past May, a gentleman estimated to be in his 70s or 80s — who the man is still is unknown since he never identified himself and to this day remains anonymous — walked into a government office in Yokosuka City. He put six bundles of 10,000-yen notes, a total of 6 million yen, as pictured above, on the counter and announced: “These are my savings going back to when I was in elementary school. Please accept it as a donation.”

That’s the equivalent of almost a half million U.S. dollars.

Sixty-some years worth of SAVINGS!

Cash . . . not white slips.

I feel humbled.

[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . https://jdrachel.com ]

Life In Japan: “Savings” | John Rachel

The Real Debt Ceiling

 
Sovereign debt and its corollary, the federal debt ceiling, is arguably an illusion. These operate in a macro context where valuation of wealth and debt are essentially illusions, or at the very least, manageable artifices.

What is not at all manageable, however, is internal debt and wealth inequality. Why? Because in the internal workings of our economy __ and those of most of the developed countries of the world __ ownership and control of wealth are reinforced by rigid and unforgiving legal authority. As is becoming increasingly evident, the laws of this country now serve a very wealthy elite __ a tiny slice of our 318,000,000 people __ at the expense of everyone else.



This is not the 1%.

We're talking about the .1% and the .01% __ about 30,000 people __ the rich and powerful who actually run the country.

These are the folks you and I never see, because we can't get within fifty miles of them.

These are the people who operate in a bubble of incomprehension, so detached from the realities of our "ordinary" lives, the basics of survival are about as apparent to them as the emotional life of a Cambodian weaver ant is to you and I.

These are the folks who will repossess your car, foreclose on your home, garnish your pay when you fall behind on your student loan, make it impossible to get an apartment or job for the horrible crime of falling behind on your credit card bills.

They own.

We owe.

Home mortgage debt: $8.17 trillion.

Credit card debt: $3.34 trillion.

College loans: $1.2 trillion.

Auto loans: $955 billion.

Home equity loans: $550 billion.

Total household debt: $13.6 trillion!

The astonishing thing about all of this is that in the wealthiest nation in the world, none of this debt slavery is necessary. There is enough wealth to go around. We could all have the security and basic right to a minimum guaranteed income, a shared sense of community and country which would materialize from sharing our enormous resources and riches.

The ultra-rich could still live in splendor. After all, beyond a certain point, accumulation of money has no impact on the individual life style of a human being, no matter how absurdly rapacious that person is. More money just becomes a pathological numbers game.

How many Bentleys, private jets, wading pools full of caviar, diamond cuff links the size of grapefruits can you own?

I've referenced this in a prior blog. But it's worth reviewing.

To spend the Koch brothers incomprehensible fortune at $10,000 per day, it would take almost 28,000 years __ it would be 29,394 C.E. when you finished your shopping spree.

Spending one million dollars a day, it would take 214 years to go through the monumental wealth of Gates.

The fortune of the Walton family __ owners of Wal-Mart __ totals more that the bottom 42% of Americans. One family has more money than 134,000,000 people.

This is insane.

This is the system we have in place.

This is what the laws of this country have cemented into our national landscape.

Wealth inequality on this level is inhumane and grotesque.

Worst of all __ and the subject of a whole other blog __ the economic infrastructure which locks in this kind of excessive capital aggregation is destroying our planet, and may lead to human extinction. I can't improve on Naomi Klein's lucid exposition of this, so I won't try.

Just taking the narrow view of the social consequences, and the destructive impact wealth inequality has had on our democracy, we need to ask ourselves . . .

Is this sustainable?

One great thing about a rhetorical question is that the answer is so obvious, you don't have to answer it.

But we certainly need to do something about it . . . before it's too late.

Other than a handful of legislators __ Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren certainly are talking about it __ and our president who gives lip service to this critical issue, there is no one in public life who is serious about addressing this threat to our existence as a nation.

No one!

Just about everyone in elected office __ to a man, to a woman __ needs to go.

Stuffing them all in a massive launch vehicle for a mission to Mars might be too drastic. But getting them out of office and replacing them with officials who represent the needs and values of every American __ not just the privileged elite __ is not.

Just do it.

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[ This originated at the author's personal web site . . . http://jdrachel.com ]

Debtor’s Prison

We see constantly in the media economic experts and pundits decrying the sorry state of the economies of several European countries __ Greece, Portugal, Italy, Ireland. Yet as this chart shows, Americans are individually responsible for more debt than any of the citizens of these troubled nations.

Japan is even worse. Its national debt last time I checked was 228% of their GDP. The Japanese are in hock up to their hairlines. But there is a big difference. 85% of that debt is owned by the Japanese people. They have invested in their own country and owe the money to themselves! American because of its borrowing spree owes everyone else in the world __ China, Germany, France, Japan. Next time you go to a Chinese restaurant, you might want to thank them for not foreclosing. Yet anyway.

I personally see no problem with a nation running constructive deficits. Under the current flawed relationships between banks and national economies, it is a necessary evil to both sustain and promote growth.

What is objectionable is having no genuine say in why we borrow. Granted that various social support and entitlement programs benefit us all. But the astounding and insulting truth to those of us who actually believe we live in a democratic country, is that America spends somewhere around $700 billion for war. Yet if you look at any unbiased polling, Americans don't want war. We want peace.

The defense spending of the U.S. nearly equals the total defense spending of all other nations in the world combined. Why do we spend so much to arm ourselves against real and imagined but all relatively weak, if not totally powerless enemies? Our leaders say its to protect our "national interests". This is but a euphemism for world domination and access to the resources of the countries we attack.

This investment in imperial control of the world comes at a price. It costs the lives of soldiers who go to fight pointless, self-destructive wars; it has eliminated the last shreds of credibility we once had in the world as a nation which stood for the most noble principles; it is sapping us of our national pride, the spirit that once drove the country's belief in its mission to spread democracy and lift the living standards of everyone on the planet.

We borrow for bombs.
We borrow to spread death.
We borrow to create enemies.

Someone has to pay for all of this. It's you and I. The invoice is in the mail. Soon it will be stamped 'Past Due'. Not long after that it will say 'Account Closed'.

To live in a country which has borrowed up to its eyebrows to build bombs and promote war is incarceration at its worst. It is living in the confines of a shameful and ruinous nightmare.

We truly live in a debtor's prison.




[ This originated at the author's personal web site . . . http://jdrachel.com ]