Revenue

Thursday November 17, 2005 - 4:28AM EDT

I wonder how much there is in lost federal income tax revenue from the destruction of New Orleans and other areas. Does it dwarf the amount spent on cleanup or even the amount that could have been spent to upgrade the levee system? I continue to lament the lack of vision when it comes to the interconnection of human society. Everything is issue focused. There is a council of this or an organization for that. The unifing vision should be the job of world leaders. I've yet to see a world leader take action or even open discourse on ideas that take into consideration as many global interconnections as possible. They'd probably laugh that person out of leadership for being some kind of dellusional dreamer. All of these so called problems the world has just seem so obviously simple to me sometimes. I'm baffled by the entrenched ideology that people have come to take as intelligent analysis. Once an ideaology rises it spawns hoards of followers who are under the impression they are reasoning to a better future when all they are doing is following rigid idea structures. The ideaology of intelligent analysis is what needs to rise because there is very little of that.

I guess it's a clue to the inner conflict of the human psyche.

I often think about the excess wealth that people have. I think about when and why did humans start to gather excess wealth. I think about the raving criticism of those who have excess wealth for whatever reason. Is it the boon that the world society has trumped it up to be. How many people work for the wealth itself? Is it a trap as miserable as being poor. Think about an struggling actor who likes acting and makes it big. Now he is getting a lot of money for doing movies. Did he specifically ask for this money or did he just want to act and this is what was there. Not everyone makes it big, only some. What does this person do? They want to act and because of their particular sitation they get a lot of money. Now they are forced to conform to the mold or be ridiculed. They can't possibly be themselves completely because they are held to a different standard due to their wealth. A ridiculous standard imposed on them by those without wealth. The cry is, having money equals don't complain. Having anything beyond the basic needs equals don't complain. But that is modern human life. No one lives just within basic needs. Unless you are still foraging in the jungle than you are living beyond basic needs. The condemnation of the rich is puzzling when I think about it. They get their money from the lower rungs. They don't neccessarily steal it (mayabe some). But the structure of society facilitates this heirachy. Furthermore only a few are born rich the majority rise from the lower rungs. That is the truly disturbing part. There is a psychological gap between this rich poor thing. One that really shouldn't be there because rich were previously the poor. Do they forget when they rise?

Economics has become a huge force in shaping human society. Today's economics are driven by money. Just seems like that we are unable to exorcise money from everything in our lives. I think about my own student loans as an example. Just paying for school. This may sound like a dumb question but it isn't. Why do I have to pay to go to the college of my choice? Talking about money is taboo for some reason. This is exactly what needs to be examined but we have removed it from everyday discourse. All you are allowed to talk about is general terms of not having any or having too much. Seems to me that economics has grown from simple trading of goods to the monetary transactions of today. The system needs to grow more. We are moving from physical representations of money to simple electronics records. Some like to extrapolate that into the peverse future soceity in which individuals are governed and tracked by credit accounts. Your whole life becomes spending and consumption to maintain the system of electronic records. I guess some would say that is already the case.

I'd argue that most that attain great monetary wealth aren't exactly reaching for that goal. It is simply the intrisic structure of society that brings them there.

The advancement of technology is eliminating the mundane tasks that humans had to do before which should leave us to do more creative things. We shouldn't have to worry about things like finding shelter or getting sick. But we still do. I think about the rampant inefficiences in companies. Just think of the type of society we lived in if they were corrected.