TO quote Lee "SCratch" Perry--note the nickname scratch!! He says Money me a Bloodclot, and I concur!

One year (late 1990s) I grossed $32,000 which to me was an enormous amount of money. Once (1984) my wife and I bought a new Mitsubishi pickup truck for $6,000. Only new vehicle I've ever had. Now a new pickup costs $30,000.

What is middle class? Not many years ago there was a paper put out showing that 80% of the population made under $50k a year, and 50% of the population made under $30k. What was the percentage of people making under $20k? Who cares?

Half the population made under $30k so I only hit the upper half big time once in my life.

We are losing 300,000 jobs a month in this country. But it's "down" from a high of 500,000 so OF COURSE we are in a "recovery" from the 'recession" especially since Wall St is doing better after having stolen $2.2 trillion in "bail-out" extortion money from "our" representitives in DC. We have lost 11,000 jobs an hour since Dec. 2007. There are six applicants for every shit burger-flipping job in America. McDonalds isn't even hiring, and when you see 30 & 40 years olds behind the counter one has to wonder just what jobs are even open to the young.

Most of the jobs that took our grandparents or parents out of the poorhouse have been "outsourced" to dictatorships by American corporations to increase profits in the last thirty years. First to the American South, then to Mexico, then Centro America, then China, and now Viet Nam and Burma etc etc. Bluntly, it has become "fuck you america" in favor of sweatshop slave labor. Prices sure haven't gone down any with all this savings in labor costs, but the quality certainly has. Bought any dog food from China lately? Or Mexican e-coli spinach?

What does money mean? It's the difference between life and death, being warm in a room or freezing to death in winter. Between having food to eat or stealing food to eat. This country judges YOU on how much money/possessions/things you have. And only the 1% top have gained since 1980 while the rest of us are actually making LESS than we did (in buying power) in the 1970s.

We're becoming a country of mostly have-nots. The trend is not going up by the way....

Here's what just happened in one city (a snippet):

Published on Thursday, October 8, 2009 by The Detroit Free Press
Thousands Stand in Line for Help Paying Bills in Detroit
Chaos Reigns at Detroit Aid Event
by Tammy Stables Battaglia

Thousands of people swarmed Cobo Hall in chaos this morning trying to get applications for housing and utility payment assistance from the city of Detroit.

People fainted, others fought as the Detroit Police Gang Unit tried to keep people in line --- some since last night --- and in check.

"It's a disaster here," former assistant Detroit Police chief and city council candidate Gary Brown said, handing out water. "This is dangerous. Very unorganized, very dangerous."

The City of Detroit Planning & Development Department was to pass out 5,000 applications to those standing in line. But a line of people snaking back and forth inside Cobo, down Washington Boulevard and around the corner to the circular parking deck far outnumbered the applications available.

The program is part of the city's Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program. By 11:30 a.m., the Detroit mayor's office was asking people not to head to Cobo.
......
How many people showed up? Another snippet view:

www.wsws.org/articles/20...ad-o08.shtml

An estimated 50,000 residents of Detroit filed into Cobo Hall convention center on Wednesday seeking assistance to pay utility bills and keep from being evicted from their homes. City officials, who expected around 3,000 people to apply for the aid, were overwhelmed by the turnout.

Money is life or death. Economic reality? It's like the Republican Health Care Plan: Don't get sick, or if you do die quickly.

Being a student has everything to do with the "expense" of our ability to proliferate what it is that compels us to learn. So, my capital is all this ascetic derived ideation. However, usually there is NO IN for me in the human marketplace, because this stuff is conceptual and almost contrived...and yet there are two women authors whose depth with which I keep getting inundated beyond my norm. Karen Armstrong gives me fantastic dreams (her latest which I purchased (buying books is what I waste a lotta money on, say rather than going to a bar and imbibing libations) at Morris' Bookstore down the street, is called A Case for G-d), but lately I've dreamt about something Wendy Doniger related: the Horse Sacrifice. My ex's (Alison's) Mom made silks, and I've dreamt about horses, and my ex of late. According to the Brahmanas --early Hindu scripture, I think, what it is we do IN this life will be done to us in the World-To-Come. (The World-to-Come in the Book of Ethics--Talmud, is how paradise is translated. Because "paradise" sounds too much like a goal that would take us out of the temporal world, World-To-Come is the preferred statement for this sense of impermanence in the world of men/women.) If we eat rice unceremoniously now--or a fish, or a horse, they will eat us in the next world. According to the Hasidim, the animals that are our denizens surrounding us in our habituation with intercourse & ritualization with them & G-d, have the souls of our ancestors mitigated thru their sentience...which is one reason suggested in Chagall's Hasidic upbringing, why we treat all creatures with respect/halakhah (kosher). IT would be interesting to note that Judaism is an Agricultural religion--lots of harvest ideation & festivals, Christianity is Pastoral, and Islam is Urban.

That's so true - none of us need much. Needs and wants are two different things, and society will convince us all that we need far more than we actually do. If survival were the true goal, we'd be astonished at how little we need and how simply our needs can be met. It's truly far more rewarding to be able to do with less...and so freeing.

There does seem to be some kind of subconscious law operating in me that says I can only have money if I work and/or suffer for it. I'd like to get rid of that!

I like money as a medium of exchange but I would prefer that it be "real" money, based on something of mutually agreed value (like a gold standard), and not be flickering numbers on a computer somewhere. It's convenient. I also like the idea of having plenty of money, because it is darn useful, prevents suffering (even though it might not bring happiness), very important it provides options to the person who has it, so their energy has a wider field in which to operate and they have freer choice and thus a feeling of more freedom overall. But my favorite thing about money is that it can work miracles when used properly.

I do think though that everybody should have their basic needs met and money should be for optional stuff. We've certainly discussed this at length before.