Date:         Fri, 22 Jul 2005 09:56:54 -0500
Reply-To:     Jim Felder <felder@KNOLOGY.NET>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Jim Felder <felder@KNOLOGY.NET>
Subject:      Re: LVC/ Re: Why Americans Are the Jerks of the World!
In-Reply-To:  <13d.17a8ecb9.3011a455@aol.com>
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>  I mean what is the  actual
> cost.


This is the question we should all be asking ourselves, and demanding
from our so-called leaders.

What is the cost of a chicken-growing plant that passes along all of
its  environmental impact to its neighbors, and not the consumers who
buy the product?

What's the real cost of land destroyed forever in order to put
nice-looking landscaping rocks in Home Depot for cheap?

What's the real cost of a gallon of gas when the result of keeping a
steady supply of it is that people fly airplanes into our buildings and
blow up our subways?

What's the real cost of a gallon of gas when you factor in how much of
your income tax goes to support the huge armed forces that keep the
shipping lanes open?

What's the real cost of that thing you bought at walmart what came in
the huge cardboard box that you paid more in your garbage fee to have
hauled to the landfill than you paid in the sales tax you complain
about?

What we Americans have become good at is not creating wealth based on
any kind of real value, but creating wealth based on moving costs
around and passing them along to someone else.

In the last 25 or 30 years, your purchasing power has increased about
5%. For the wealthiest Americans, it has increased several hundred
percent, 1100% I seem to recall for the top 3% of the country, but I'm
not certain. Anyway it's a lot. Adjusting for inflation, most of us are
going backwards economically. So that we will feel that we are moving
forward and becoming prosperous, we're flooded with cheap junk from all
over the world, not just China. If we had to buy American goods, the
gap that's been created would be exposed, and the economic failure that
we've participated in over the last 30 years would be exposed.

As long as the cheap stuff keeps coming in, we're happy. When Bubba
walks out of Walmart with a $200 television, he's too stupid to realize
that it cost him his job. And it doesn't help that in many cases, the
quality of the import is higher (toyota vs GM) than the US version it
competes with.

Nor does it help that we have a tremendous industry in technology,
which always drives cost downward. Fifteen years back I had a major
modem manufacturer as a client. Modems were $700 apiece. There was a
lot of money in each modem for marketing materials and tradeshows and
therefore there was money for me. Today, modems are free in that you
can't buy a computer without one. The client is gone, the building is
empty, the engineers and designers were laid off, the trade shows
aren't held anymore and the printer who printed all the marketing
materials is out of business.

Technology is crack. We who control and use it aren't even as smart as
a virus, which knows that if you don't control your ability to kill
your host, you run out of hosts to kill. We have allowed our technology
to create wealth for a few who, backed by a system of economics and
laws that promote hiding the real costs of what we are doing while
driving down the cost of our own livelihoods to the point of economic
extinction.

It's not the Chinese. It's not the Indians. It's us.

Jim