I have touted this before, yet as I think about it I do not tout it enough.
First though a comment to the pretentious left. Yes, we know Trump is not the most admirable person on planet earth and yes Putin is probably trying to destroy our country using him to divide us. Stop the madness though. You cannot go all in on every twitter comment or every comment in general that tells us Trump is being a bad boy or saying something crazy. You need to concentrate on making sure you talk about what you can do if Biden becomes President. You aren’t changing Trump supporter’s minds, but you have to convince the undecided that you have better ideas. Right now all this slapping each other on the back every time you tweet something snarky is not going to win the Democrats any elections. On to better things.
And back to the economy. If you really want to improve the wealth gap, the wage gap, the disproportionate allocation of resources, just things in general you need to reverse years of the one percent consolidating their wealth.
In general our economy is more than the stock market, but somehow Fox News, the brokerage houses, and now the big banks convinced millions of Americans that it is the economy and that everyone needs to be all in on buying stocks or you are not successful. Everything about money or wealth is tied to the market and in some respects it is a lagging economic indicator that reflects what people thought was going to happen. The banks want you to think it is a leading economic indicator so you may get confused. They want you to believe if the market is going up the economy is doing well and will continue to do well. That is their sell. There is much more to this discussion because in general I have to prove some of my points in this paragraph for you to understand why I eschew a bit of a contrarian view point on the market.
Today though isn’t about the market, it is about something more important.
Today is about undoing the consolidation of wealth that has been going on for decades. And that is finding ways to encourage the break up of large companies which may not be that fruitful. Or better yet the development of regional economies that create new industries, new business and new companies in existing industries.
Lets break this down using some simple examples. Right now big oil makes a fortune developing plastic products. And they have done a fine job creating all sorts of plastic products from bottles to clothes to so much more. This creates a two fold problem, it destroyed older more established products and companies and second plastic just isn’t good for the environment so an excessive amount of energy and resources are used combating the drag on our lives with all this plastic.
For some reason recycling is a negative word to too many people, yet overall there is so much benefit, but to change minds we need to change the approach. Some of you may remember buying soft drinks in glass bottles. First remember how good they tasted coming from glass bottles. I feel with 100% certainty that if you could drink from a glass bottle you would appreciate the difference. Think about this, beer is sold in glass bottles. Why not every marketed drink? Now some of you may also remember for the soft drinks you had to pay an extra 5 cents and then when you returned it you got your 5 cents back. Seemed a bit of a hassle. So you have two choices, you could just pay extra for the product or pay the deposit. Either way you have a better product. And glass is something that could be produced in regional plants creating two businesses. One glass manufacturing and two potential recycling of the glass since it can be recycled. You introduce the deposit again. People will balk at first but over time they adapt. They always do. Some will fight for the convenience, but you have to stick with it. And nowadays with debit cards and customer loyalty cards the exchange of the deposit could be seamless.
It seems trivializing, but start applying it to other businesses. What clothes are the most comfortable? Clothes made from cotton and wool. Yes a very light weight wool fabric is still comfortable in the summer. So you bring back clothing manufacturers and work with local agriculture to develop cotton and wool suppliers. And yes cotton is best grown only in some regions, but at least the farmers can sell to a much larger customer base if more people made clothes. And sheep thrive better in certain climates, but either way you work to spread out the growth of the entire business chain.
Some people will still want the cheap plastic clothes so I know you cannot get rid of this product completely, but if you create very strong public policy that encourages the change and discourages the products that aren’t beneficial then the change can happen.
What people have forgotten with all the consolidation is quality. Glass, wool, cotton create a better product. And it is worth it to pay a bit more because they last longer and once you have finished your soda or the clothes have worn out, you can recycle which helps to keep supply costs down, hence retail costs down. And people have forgotten that cotton and wool clothes last longer, look better, and feel better.
The idea is to bring back products where quality is important. Why, because to produce quality products you need to put more work into it, which means more jobs and better paying jobs because you have to pay for better work. The end retail costs may be a bit higher, but the products are better and last longer.
The corporations wanted us to believe convenience was more important to us. They created behaviors that benefit them, not the consumer. Convenience and marketing ruled our day. We lost touch with being consumers and customers. The Democrats created bureaucracy to protect us from our own misguided consumer principles and now we have no idea on how to shop well. Too much government, not enough common sense.
And I always struggle trying to create a succinct message on this change. I know too many people that will shoot down the idea because they are programmed to believe large corporations are shining examples of capitalism when in reality they are anti capitalists. It benefits them to reduce competition, to dictate what we know and how we act. Their lives are easier when they create an illusion our lives easier, but we do not benefit in the long run from these conveniences.
We are subject to their whims, when they make a mistake there is no competition to turn to and show them they need to do better because we can go elsewhere or have more choices. Some will argue too many choices are counter productive and I agree there is a saturation point, but we are far from that right now. We may see a hundred different shirts or blouses in a store, but the real choices are few and far between. We need to bring many industries back home. This may sound a bit Trumpish, but that is one of his selling points. We do need more industries and better jobs here. He knows the message, but has no desire to actually implement the change. And he gets away with it because we are programmed to accept certain words and messages without digging into the reality. He sold a bill of words in 2016 that so many people wanted to hear, but that is all he did was sell words. We need real bill of goods.
Again I struggle with communicating my ideas to redistribute the wealth. We do not need socialism we need true capitalism. So public and tax policy that brings back industries throughout the country is a goal we should strive to achieve. This will not be easy because doing what is right never is easy it seems. Hammer me on the particulars because I get bogged down here something fierce. Make me flesh it out. I feel very strongly that for our country to actually thrive again, we need to open up the country and have people start new businesses that build quality products using natural resources not plastic and convenience. It may seem odd sounding that I am encouraging going backwards in some ways, but technology will still be used it is just reconfiguring where productivity and resources are applied.
Okay enough for the evening. It is September the weather will be changing soon, hopefully we can change too.
Cheers
