To Live Not Alone.

I don't want to live alone, not knowing my neighbors, in that self-imposed degradation of community we call “the american dream”.

I have lived that way, suspended above abyssal dark by stretched straining ropes I alone maintain repair rethread rewind if I can, breaking because I cannot.

I have fallen that way, evicted to car, to tarp, to hidden places, to
patches of wood, to rentless backyards within friendly bounds.

I have parachuted that way, letting go “the dream” to find arms and encouragement, friends and fresh starts.

Gravity itself has upended me that way, rooting me in a richness of souls, reaching
me toward the sky, growing me in the nutrients and water and light of the web of us.

I want to live not alone, to know my neighbors, soiled and growing the root works of long days and years to come.

I want friends around me, not at the end of a phone line or ten miles away, but there, to sup with coffee in the morning and plan a day, to carouse with books and the news by night fall, to sweat with in the sun over picked dirt boulder, chain-sawn firewood logs, long line fences, and to cry over in the end.

I am a human being and when else in human history until now did we live without the many souled super-self to cradle and nest old lives and new lives that make lives entire?

I want that crowd around in that middle bond between couple and stranger, given capable hands and loving hearts to share the undercourse of life.

I want not to blot the limitless sky of the newest America, interlaced with wires and satellites to any point any place any person on our planet, but to place our dreams in the solid soil of souls redeemed to living in place!

Here I go, not for me against you, but for me for you for all pulling toward all living
amicably, healthily.

I will I declare only once live, and in this once give and get as much as I make the exchange alive!

I alive, hands open, mind open, heart open, look to you.

When the Market Collapses

I strain under the objections to spending. I ask, which would be better for the economy:

1a: Federal Government incurs debt,
1b: gives money to people (spends money on tax refunds),
1c: people spend money on private needs (stimulus #1),
1d: no common needs met (stimulus #1 undermined),

2a: Federal Government incurs debt,
2b: pays people to work (spends money for productive work),
2c: People spend money on private needs (stimulus #1),
2d: Common needs are met through work they do (Stimulus #2).

Is there something I am missing? I am not hearing it in the public debate. Government spending packs twice the stimulus value, or more, of just giving tax breaks. What is so horrible about improving the public infrastructure? (I have heard Obama suggest this point.)

I just bought a van - for two months of my income, $1500 - from someone who wasn't using it. It will make a huge difference in terms of what I can accomplish, And my neighbor now has money to spend.

How much would it hurt me just to borrow the money and GIVE it to my neighbor? I would be NUTS!

Do I not do us both more good by getting this vehicle or his services in exchange for my money? Then I have improved my situation AND he has money to spend.

Please tell me, when will Progressives and Democrats finally bring this huge rhetorical lever to bear on the debate? Why are we not speaking this obvious and huge distinction?

The United States Government does not need debt. The People of the United States DO need to rebuild things we SHARE, AND WE ALL BENEFIT FROM, - like roads, schools, Broadband, Green energy infrastructure, US parks, etc. To meet economically beneficial common needs, debt is acceptable.

Suppose, as was told to me yesterday, that the entire stimulus package was sent directly to tax payers (That disenfranchises me) and everyone got $50,000. They would all, of course, spend the money to meet personal needs. How would the Government recover any of this to pay for common needs? By TAXES of course!

So either, without taxes, the universal infrastructure continues to decline, or, with taxes, all that money that was sent to taxpayers under government debt, has to be returned to the government. What is the stimulus value of this?

The stimulative value of tax rebates or refunds is unitary: People have money to meet their needs, which is then lost because these same tax payers must repay those loans. Even if the economy expands under the tax-relief-only, how does the government recover funds to pay off the loans? By skimming off the extra value produced by the economy! This is self-defeating.

The stimulative value of work has two parts 1: the general value to the economy of the product of the work, and 2: the income that enables people to meet their needs. Then, when government spending adds the double whammy of the huge productivity of all the labor it bought, PLUS the money it injected into the economy, the economy will improve dramatically enough to pay off the loans without depressing the economy.

The relative value of the work may vary, but the most useful way for the US Government to spend money is by buying labor. As demonstrated by the New Deal Works, the benefits can be felt a century later. Public spending is one way we become a nation with a vigorous economy.