In this very long article I hope to discuss the dangerous cliff on which we presently stand.

I have lightly discussed revolution in a couple of former articles but this is an in-depth look at what can precipitate one.

The French Revolution of 1789 overthrew an absolute monarchy and ended a system of feudalism for the aristocracy and the Catholic Church.

The precipitating cause was a famine. This was most likely caused by crop failures caused by the eruption of the volcano Laki in Iceland in 1783-1784 whose sulfur fumes and dust clouded the northern hemisphere. It is estimated that 8 million tons of hydrogen fluoride and 120 million tons of sulfur dioxide filled the atmosphere.

Temperatures plummeted to such an extent that the Mississippi froze at New Orleans and there was ice in the Gulf of Mexico. This caused enough famine and hardship in France to make the people desperate.

When the system that is looked to for stability and the well-being of the masses falters, for whatever reason, conditions are ripe for revolution.

It can be an actual cataclysm or the perception of one that triggers a revolution.

After the overthrow of the French Monarchy a period of relative stability existed during which time the Industrial Revolution began to occur.

Machines were invented which could produce much more than men could individually.

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Between 1834 and 1846 France’s economy mushroomed as a result of the Industrial Revolution.

However, the means of production was in the hands of a few who could afford to buy the machines by accumulating enough money to buy them.

The machines displaced hand labor and caused a migration of people from farms to the cities which possessed the power to operate the machines—steam and water-power.

This led to a rise of capitalism and the middle class which ultimately created a class struggle. It became a struggle between the owners and managers of the means of production and the laborers.

About that time two people developed a philosophy that attempted to deal with this problem.

 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engles produced The Communist Manifesto in which they used the term ‘Proletariat’ to define the working class. These are the people in a Capitalist society who do not own the means of production but sell their labor for a wage.

The ‘Bourgeoisie’ were defined as the managers of the means of production.

Where there is a reasonable amount of freedom in a system of government, there will always be a conflict between these two groups. The laborer wants to receive the most financial advantage for each hour of his work while the manager wants to maximize his profit.

This is not the case in either a Monarchy or a Dictatorship. What you get is what you get. A person is essentially a slave in either of these systems.

How much material wealth is spread among the masses is a function of the generosity of the leader.

Unfortunately both the Monarch and the Dictator generally have other aspirations—grandeur or conquest—which permits no surplus for the masses to enjoy.

Socialism’s goal is to spread the surplus capital, the difference between what the actual generators of that production, the ‘proletariat’, have generated minus the cost of that production.

Of course, what history has shown is that this system kills incentive for investment because the would-be venture capitalist is not willing to expend the effort if there is no possibility to accumulate some of the surplus capital.

There is no point being the owner of the means of production if it is a ‘break-even’ venture. If a person’s expenses exactly balance his potential income there is no point in working harder.

The common laborer is also not likely to attempt to better himself and advance into the ranks of the owners of production when he realizes that he would be no better off to assume more responsibility and work harder.

This is the flaw in the concepts of Socialism and Communism.

The dream of Utopia is just that, a dream. The fathers of modern day Socialism/Communism , Marx and Engles, never addressed how this perfect state would come about. They produced The Communist Manifesto at about the same time as the French Revolution of 1847.They, like most idealists, would have enjoyed living in a system in which one could enjoy prosperity and leisure without trading the hours of their lives to achieve it.

Marx’s definition of Capitalism is a system based on the exploitation of the Proletariat by the Bourgeoisie.

The French Revolution of 1847 was precipitated by conditions not unlike those presently existing in the United States.

The Industrial Revolution showed people that if they could acquire the ‘means of production’ they could become wealthy. Machines could out-produce people but it required money to buy these new machines.

Those with aspirations could achieve that by borrowing money. This caused competition for money which raised interest rates and increased speculation.

The Russian people, through the actions of Lenin and Trotsky, became, for the most part, almost unwilling participants in the Russian Revolution of 1917.

The Crash of 1929 and the following Depression created a pattern of similar thinking in the United States. The election of a Liberal President who fathered The New Deal, Social Security and permitted a fertile climate for the labor unions probably averted a revolution in the US as its citizens looked toward the apparent success of the Soviet’s first Five Year Plan.

We Americans are facing a series of hardships with the loss of enormous wealth in auto manufacturing, investments, home and business values that we may be on the verge of acceptance of either a total socialistic system or a revolution.

Socialism stifles investment and creativity; revolution creates chaos.

Utopia is an impossibility and Marx and Engles realized it.

It is unfortunate that the followers of their philosophy do not understand this and are willing to create a revolution to lose everything in the hope of achieving that which is impossible. Revolution has only led to a long period of misery.

Today we are seeing the possibility of a revolution in Iran.

Could a revolution there create a ‘fall-out’, as the volcano Laki did to France,

that would affect the United States?

There is a connection between conservatism and greed but it is not an absolute “A=B”.

One can be ‘conservative’ (as I am) and not be greedy (as I am not).
Greed stems from conservatism but is not necessarily the end product. Too much conservatism is greed.

In other words, I want to be self-sufficient and in so doing I must accumulate enough of the  ‘implements’ to do so. In primitive times this meant arrowheads, wood,  skins and dried meat.

Today it is money. I feel money is a vehicle (a bartering medium) that will allow me to trade for those things that lead to my survival.
It has never been my goal to accumulate more than I feel is necessary to meet the goal of survival in a modern world– a world of taxes and shelter and fuel (energy) and transportation and food and some left over for pleasure.
Without some pleasure life becomes merely existence.

Those who accumulate simply with that as a goal are indeed greedy and that breeds resentment in those who are truly deficient.
This leads to extreme ‘liberalism’  using the vehicle of guilt to take from the truly greedy….and give to perhaps the less greedy.

How much is ’sufficient’? Who evaluates how much pleasure one is entitled to?
How much money do the apparently  deficient allocate to pleasure that gives them the appearance of insufficient means of survival?

My grandfather’s favorite expression was, “Moderation in all things.”

In short be conservative (self-sufficient) but not greedy.

At a cost of about $700 billion dollars that comes out to about $233,000 to create each new job.

Am I missing something in the math????

I’d like one of those.

Where do you apply???

For a number of years I have been going to the same resort in Jamaica. Quite a few years ago I met the man who picks up trash and plastic cups from the beach, arranges the beach lounges and chairs for the next day and then rakes the beach.

He’s a Rastafarian as is his father and was his grandfather. They eat vegetables and some fish but not meat. They don’t believe in violence or war. They don’t drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes but they do smoke marijuana. (A topic that I have planned to discuss in a future post).

He’s an interesting old guy who leaves the resort at the end of the day and walks to his home in the mountains.

He has been doing this for a long time. He told me that he had to cut off his ‘dreads’ that had reached to his knees in order to get this job.

I returned home yesterday bringing with me an interesting topic.

While sitting on the beach near the end of the day Pablito noticed that I started to pick up a plastic cup not too far from my lounge.

“No mon, leave it. I pick it up.”
I told him that it wasn’t mine and that I wouldn’t leave a cup on the beach.

“I know,” he said. ” Inside you Rasta too. But if everyone was like you who didn’t leave trash on the beach, I would have no job and my family would go hungry.”

Slobs do, after all, have a place in ‘the order of the universe”.

I have just read an article that appeared January 22nd, on NEWSMAX HEALTH.

I feel that it is important to spread this information because many home remedies from Latin American countries and India use incredibly high levels of lead in their preparation.
The CDC reported 12 cases of lead poisoning in 2004 from using ayurvedic remedies in Texas, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York and California.

High levels of lead have been found in ayurvedic medicines, which are used in India and in South Asian immigrant communities in New York, Chicago and Houston. These medicines include ghasard, a brown powder given to relieve constipation in babies, and mahayogaraj gugullu, for high blood pressure.

Lead poisoning can cause lethargy, confusion, learning problems and convulsions. Too much lead can cause irreversible brain damage and death.

The article stated:
“Traditional medicines may account for up to 30 percent of all childhood lead poisoning cases in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates 240,000 U.S. children were diagnosed with high blood lead levels in 2004 to 2006.”

“Mexican remedies such as greta, azarcon and rueda – powders that are given to treat constipation in children and contain as much as 90 percent lead. In New York City and Rhode Island, high lead levels in the blood have been tied to litargirio, a powder containing up to 79 percent lead. It is used by Dominican immigrants for such ills as foot fungus and body odor.”

“In Harris County, which includes Houston, traditional medicines are blamed for nearly one-fifth of all cases in which children were found to have high levels of lead. In Arizona, home remedies account for one-fourth of childhood lead poisoning cases.”

How many high lead level cases are not reported if the child doesn’t become ill enough for the parents to become aware that it is their home medication that is causing problems?
If there are minute traces of lead in paint on toys, I wondered when I wrote the previous article, how many toys that have minute traces of lead in their paint must a child eat to cause the levels of lead absorbed and detected?
My point is that before we make drastic and costly decisions we should not make assumptions. The scientific approach of ‘cause and effect’ seems to have been forgotten recently. Opinion and emotion seems to prevail over solid scientific fact.

Today, there was a news article on the Internet from The Christian Science Monitor. It was an article written by Mackubin Thomas Owens who is Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I.

In it he writes, “This week, New Jersey became the first Northern state to apologize for slavery. The resolution expresses “profound regret … for the wrongs inflicted by slavery and its aftereffects in the United States….”

The reason I am writing this is that last week I met an extraordinary man, Dr. Jefferson Wiggins. Dr Wiggins started out life as the son of share-croppers in Alabama and his first recollection of his past was when the Klan came to his house to lynch his father. They came because his father had sold a bale of cotton that the family had picked and he was told not to sell until prices rose.

The family had not eaten for four days and this was their only means of survival.

They were no longer officially slaves. Slavery had long before been abolished but they were not free by any means.

Dr. Wiggins rose from that frightening beginning to enlisting in the US Army during WWII when he was well below age.

His story is of the long struggle that racism inflicts on people and his efforts to become not just a “boy” in Alabama but to a commissioned officer in the US Army.

It is truly an amazing story and is the subject of his book that I highly recommend to every American. “Another Generation Almost Forgotten.”

Dr Wiggins is Chairman of the Wiggins Institute for Social Integrity in New Fairfield, Connecticut.

As I see it there are four  types of poverty:

1. By birthplace.

2. By circumstance.

3. By choice.

4. By mental inability to survive in a social setting.

Taking the first case, poverty by birthplace. There are children who are born into areas that have had their natural resources depleted by either overpopulation, warfare or weather changes. Usually weather alone is not the cause. Overpopulation results in depletion of wood both for building, cooking and heating.

Regarding wood, I experienced a startling example of this a few years ago when we had our motorhome at a campground in the New Hampshire woods. The sites were separated by about 200 feet and all around was fairly dense forest.

Because of the distance from our home we only went to the campground about 5 times a year during the summer months and stayed for 3 days at a time.

We used ‘windfall’ wood and we only used it for cooking.  There were 2 meals cooked the first day and only breakfast the last for a total of 9 meals each trip or a total of 45 meals a year.

For cooking alone I had used all available wood without cutting any trees or branches or going into the area of the other campsites that is, an area of  approximately 20,000 square feet.

Imagine the wood requirement for even a small village using wood for cooking, heating and building shelter.

In addition to windfall wood, trees would need to be cut down to support the requirements of the people. If the population was sufficiently dense in a very short time the area would be bare and subject to erosion by rain which would wash away the fertile topsoil and preclude any possible survival by agriculture. This scenario is well documented in Jared Diamond’s excellent book, “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed”.

Inter-tribal warfare for competition of any available resources would end the possibility of survival.

This has been going in many places since antiquity and particularly in Africa today.

Poverty by circumstance is the result of natural disasters—floods, fires, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis and mudslides. This can occur to anyone regardless of where they live. It can happen in jungles or in the most populated cities.

Those affected may range from those already living in poverty to the extremely wealthy. The wealthy usually have investments away from the area of disaster so they can survive. The poor lose everything. Even the middle class can lose everything unless they have excess money in banks or other investments. Today, the middleclass is so deeply in debt that it is unlikely that they can survive catastrophic events.

When an area suffers widespread devastation to the point where employment is not possible members of the middle class can be pushed into poverty from which they may never recover. (See Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference“)

The third type is poverty by choice. It occurs in First World countries which permit people to choose if they wish to work or not. Those choosing not to work are provided with assistance from the Government, churches and groups of people who feel guilty because of what they have.

The majority of those who ‘have’ have achieved it by hard work but are made to feel guilty about it. Ayn Rand’s novel, “Atlas Shrugged”, deals with this subject and what can eventually occur if this attitude by the ‘takers’ becomes powerful enough.

 It is sad that in this country that there are so many ‘taking out of the pot’ when they are fully capable of adding to the pot to provide for those who cannot provide for themselves.

The final group is comprised of those who cannot fend for themselves either through sickness, old age or mental incapacities. There are some who have either never adjusted to living in a society or are incapable of doing so.

In the area where I live don’t know of any remaining state-funded institutions that care for those who are mentally incapable of interacting with society. The “State Hospitals” have closed and dumped the mentally ill onto the streets

When I lived in New Hampshire years ago there was a truly humane system in place. It was a cooperative called a “County Farm”. Indigent people were provided a place to live but they contributed by growing food and taking care of the buildings, grounds and each other.

I would like to see this system brought back on a national level where instead of compulsory military training every high school graduate or school drop-out would be required to spend a mandatory year in social service to their country. Besides making life a lot easier for the truly poor and infirm it would generate responsibility in our future generations.

I am in no way advocating socialism or communism just public service

Finally, we should not group those people in the world who are living as their ancestors did as living in poverty. Comparing them to a First World country one would assume that to be true. If those people have sufficient food, shelter and enough free time to enjoy life, they are not living in poverty.

It is only when you compare their annual income to that of those who live in First World countries would you consider that.

People who live in First world countries require houses with electricity, heat and sanitation by definition. Large populations cannot exist in close proximity without that. Large tightly-packed societies require a means of food distribution and waste removal. To satisfy those conditions an infrastructure of roads and administration is required which requires that the inhabitants must be gainfully employed to pay for those services.

Therefore a much higher level of income is required to survive.

Regions that are so completely devastated as has happened in Africa present  an incredible problem. Some groups have attempted to start “cottage industries” by supplying materials and instruction to small groups of those people but if there is no market for their products it becomes a futile effort.

This approach also creates resentment by those who have not received the same help and leads to theft of the materials.

Giving seeds to people who are starving so that they can plant next year’s crop is ludicrous because they will eat the seeds immediately.

When I was a kid in junior high school I stocked shelves in a small neighborhood grocery store. The owner, Harry Levine, was a quiet, honest and wise man. I remember him telling me about his coming to America.

WWII had ended that summer and the Russians were occupying Eastern Europe as a reward for their participation in the war.

He said, “This will be very interesting.” He continued, “When I was a young man in Russia many of my friends were excited about the coming revolution. They said, “Comes the Revolution we will be dancing in the streets.”

Harry said that he then said, “Comes the Revolution we will be sleeping in the streets!”

That’s when he decided to come to the United States.

His assessment was not that far off according to Ayn Rand in her book, “We the Living”. Revolution can only occur when there is a large enough group of people who have been squeezed almost to the point of starvation, the point at which they feel that they have nothing to lose.

We are all aware that societies stratify into a small wealthy class, a large middle class of workers who produce the bulk of the goods and services and the poor.

A small group of very poor people can do little to influence historic events. As long as there is a large middle class who are reasonably satisfied with the conditions of their lives, everything runs smoothly.

However, things are not going smoothly at the moment. The bottom tier of the middle class in the US has been sliding into the ranks of the poor.

Unlike most countries in past history, the United States is unique in that there is a system in place that supports the poorest of the poor through social programs. As long as these people are fed, housed and have their medical problems taken care of they will never revolt because they have too much to lose.

It is the middle class, those who have worked hard to raise their living standards and accumulate assets to guarantee their future comfort, who are the most discontented today. They are seeing their home values drop, their savings go into their heating oil tanks and automobile gas tanks and food prices climb.

It is their security that is most deeply affected.

As the middle class is pushed into the poverty strata, they will require social benefits themselves which will add to the demand on available money.

This leads to one of two choices: reduce benefits or increase taxes. Either choice leads to further discontent but raising taxes drives more people into the ranks of the poor which compounds the problem.

There were 36.5 million people in the US below the poverty level in 2006. With rising fuel costs, which also raises the cost of raising and transporting food, the poorest people will suffer the most whether you consider those below the poverty level or those in the lower middle class. Food, heating and utilities take a greater percentage of income for those who can least afford it.

Those under 18 also fare the worst because if they are considered to be in the work force at that age they are probably high school drop-outs with little hope to rise above the poverty level. They have the least working experience so receive the lowest wages.

Discontented younger people are rioting in France as I write this. France experienced serious riots by young people in 2005 also.

Revolution can bring on far greater hardship than exists under present conditions of discontent in most countries. Again I make reference to Ayn Rand’s book, “We the Living”. There are always opportunists willing to step in for personal gain when there is upheaval. Consider the looting that took place during the Watts riots of 1965, Detroit in 1967 and after Hurricane Katrina. These are relatively small localized areas.  Extend that chaos to an entire country and one can see it is far better to avoid the conditions that lead to riots and revolution than try to live with them after they occur.

When I read something by Ben Stein I feel that it is not simply someone’s opinion but information that has been well considered.

While chasing another subject, I recently ran across an article that Stein wrote last year regarding the cost of Medicare that made the hair stand up on the back of my neck.

I was pursuing the trend of the Euro against the Dollar and wondered if crude oil was really increasing in price or whether the US dollar was becoming worth less.

If the trend continues the dollar will not only be worth less, it will be worthless!

Today it takes $1.48 US to buy 1 Euro. Six years ago a Euro could be bought for $0.835. That’s a 77% increase in the value of the Euro over the dollar.

Crude oil was selling for $51.80 in January of this year. This week it’s around $99 a barrel. That’s a 91% increase in less than a year. An oil barrel contains 42 gallons so at $99 a barrel that means crude oil costs $2.36 a gallon before any refining.

The following is a quote from Stein’s article of July 2006 entitled “Your Golden Years Don’t Have to be Tarnished”.

“Inevitably, barring some strange turn of events, this means that foreigners will want to hold less of our currency and bonds. This will lower the value of the dollar and raise the value of the currencies of other nations that export more then we do. This, in turn, will mean that oil and gasoline and other commodities will be more expensive in dollars.”

He was correct in forecasting what we are experiencing today. I mentioned in a previous article that there is pressure within OPEC to no longer accept US dollars.

Getting back to Medicare, it was in this same article by Stein that he forecast where the costs were heading.

Stein projects that the cost of Medicare alone will total or exceed the assets of the entire United States during the coming century.  That may or not be correct but at the present rate of medical cost increase it will certainly be an amount that the present tax structure of the country can not support.

In “the old days” people would put away money to pay their own medical bills. People took a great deal of pride in their self-sufficiency. They were ‘conservative’. People generally had too much pride to live beyond their means and find themselves having to ask for a hand-out.

That was a reasonable way of life in a realistic world. That was when a hospital room cost twenty to thirty dollars a day. Today, a visit to an “Emergency Room” can cost a person $1800 to have a foot X-rayed. People cannot be expected to have that kind of cash on hand particularly when the price of heating oil and gasoline has risen to such a high percentage of the average worker’s paycheck.

One of his solutions is for Americans to save more than they are presently doing and to consider investing in stocks of emerging countries like India, China, and other Southeast Asian countries.

That sounds like a sensible thing to do but the average person has nothing left over at the end of the month to either save or invest.

The future doesn’t look very bright. Perhaps we should consider that’s it’s a lot less expensive to maintain rather than repair, whether it’s a house, a car or a body.

A return to “the good days” might be a reasonable partial solution to the cost of medical treatment by reconsidering “natural healing” and “home remedies”.

It apparently kept our ancestors alive long enough as evidenced by our being here today.

The large pharmaceutical companies are still investigating the tropical forests for potential cures so perhaps we might start to apply what we have already proven.

If the herb doesn’t work then we still have the option of the high-priced high-tech pill.