The US, Consumer Societies and Other Thoughts

Yesterday while doing my exercises, de Tocqueville’s “Democracy In America” fell off one of my book piles. Now, I’d like to read this, but generally knowing what he said, I realized that his understanding of Europe and what he saw in the US failed to really respect the important differences.

Today around us in the US and I’ll refer to the US, but there are more people in positions of various sorts of influence and ‘power’ who similarly fail to understand the key differences between the US in how we were established as a republic under the Constitution vrs feudal and neo-feudal Europe, its transition into modern Europe and along the way where the British have made their way. ‘

In the US we were never set up as a consumer society, nor were we set up to be like the Europeans and that way of existence with its feudalism and to whatever that has morphed in each of those sovereigns.

In the US, the voters are the owners whereas in Europe those people although now they may vote, they are not nor ever were the owners. Although Economics and the economists come from Europe and their observations about savings and investment largely observe what had been happening over there, bottom line here in the US we were and actually are but the Constitution was suspended:

1. We the voters are the owners.

2 We elect a board of ‘directors’ we call Congress

3. We have a management we call the Executive Branch.

4. We in our society have and were founded to enjoy Private enterprise that answers to the Constitution which we have not been under since 1859 when South Carolina ceceded from the Union and Lincoln was assassinated before he could require Congress to restore us to the Constitution. It’s left us under a provisional government and the people who realize this, have abused this with many of the following corruptions aside from the National Banking Act Lincoln signed in 1863 or 64 which was another reason they had him assassinated because he signed it largely to have a network of financial organs that would recognize paper money ie the “greenback” that was more universally accepted than the paper currency prior to the Civil War and the expense of waging it.

5. In that we were founded as a society that could own property, unlike in the way the people existed and exist in Europe where the ‘commoners’ could NOT own property, where the royalty and/or the wealthy own/control the land there, we in the US may and have the right to own property. We are allowed and have the right to save and invest and control capital.

In Europe, only the royalty and the wealthy were allowed to do that and a very small layer of the ‘common’ people. Voting in Europe was a relatively recent activity. In England although the magna carta was signed in 1215, voting for the common man was a late arrival and probably after we established the US.

Consumer Societies -
The attempt and the efforts to contort and destroy us into being a consumer society -one that does NOT save or invest, one that merely works and spends what they make to buy the necessary goods and services was NOT the way the Republic of the the United States under the Constitution the founders in 1787 ratified.

In Europe where the royalty and wealthy control the land, the capital and the commercial activity, a consumer society feeds that and lives symbiotically with that.

We only resemble that in the US’ erosion into increasing concentrations of power by way of ‘free’ enterprise and Supreme Court decisions that give corporate power 14th Amendment protection, direct taxation (European and British), a European central banking system protecting the financial cartel here known as the ‘Federal’ Reserve both under Woodrow Wilson’s administration, and now with ‘free’ trade beginning aggressively with Bush 1 with that start known as NAFTA to favor the Germans and its power in Europe, has the US eroded into a form of a consumer society, with little savings and investment and little private enterprise that isn’t ‘free’ enterprise and controlled by bigmoney of one sort or another.

Remember Article 1 section 8 of the US Constitution that establishes Congress, the Executive Branch, the Supreme Court and protects rights un-alienable by any State or power, while protecting State law, also gives us indirect taxation, otherwise known as duties tariffs and excise taxes described in Article 1 Section 8.

Consumer societies buy what the corporate powers own and control. Consumer societies neither save nor invest. The Greenspan remote way of reporting that US savings had diminished and was virtually non existent was like a scientist reporting in a typically remote way to a body of other observers about findings of research and subsequent analysis.

In the US in order for our society to truly thrive and enjoy the wealth effect that the Constitution and the Founders had left us, we have to shed what has crippled us and attempted to hijack and contort us into a Americanized/mayberry Mickey mouse version of the European societies, where the subtle feudalisms exist, where the ‘common’ people neither save nor invest a great deal, and where ‘free’ trade now is more abusing them than from the time after WW2 that has been being perpetrated throughout western Europe partly to erode the developed western European societies to slow growth and contraction to suit the Germans after its re-unification.

Beginning with the Bushs, aggressive ‘free’ trade was done to politically and economically align ourselves with what was happening in Europe with Germany having been its largest and most powerful financial footprint.

In order for us to return to society that broadly builds wealth and saves, invests, we need to shed what the has been lied to the people about what is best for the ‘masses’, and that actually is how the voting American, the Owner here has been treated by our Board of Directors and our ‘Management’ and the money changers and soothsayers/agency concentrations abusing power that our Board and Management which are bought and paid for by those wallets whose goods and services we’ve been buying as ‘consumers’. That also is another reason they’ve wanted to shed the Electoral College, which although it doesn’t usually deviate from the Common election, we’ve got it if we need it while the Europeans have NOTHING like it nor any checks and balances that really protected the voters because they didn’t have any until well after we were established.

The wallet of the voter has been so abused that not only are many Americans barely able to afford necessary goods and services that are provided by the concentrations of corporate power aka, ‘free’ enterprise, but many Americans are unable for themselves to participate in the increasing costs of private enterprise in comparison to ‘free’ enterprise that agency controlled ‘free’ enterprise has hijacked (and artificially ‘lowered’ the appearances of the costs), and an eroding commercial environment fouled by non tariff’d’ ie, ‘free’ trade and US agreement with international interests such as the G20 and those ‘treaties’. It is for this reason that US made goods and services nominally are more expensive – ie – in their appearance than imports although imports in the long run are more expensive all in and in externality costs than buying what is US owned and made domestically. The British, the Europeans and Germans all understand this and for that reason have a well established public relations/controlled social forum and associated discourse that condemns this as ‘isolationist’ and/or ‘protectionist’.

I respond that condemns not only the founders and our Constitution but that generally calling us Isolationist or protectionist in effect says the US voter is ‘too’ expensive to employ. That’s why the drug companies, the medical system, and large corporate management in general wanted socialized health care, although they don’t want to pay for it.

Again, understand that without keeping Article 1 Section 8 of the US Constitution and reigning in abusive corporate power and especially agency abuse at the BigFinancials and their neo feudalism, this all makes it difficult for many Americans again to save and invest in any real volume, and keep in mind when the economists were writing about savings and investment they were referring to the wealthy and/or royalty in those modernizing feudal societies. Realize that the numerous ‘free’ trade agreements all that had contributed to eroding the US commercial framework and thus, our economy, generally were obscured and exacerbated by the credit bubble and its purposed collapse when the markets needed to correct and the bogus real estate contracting and associate paper and bogus structured finance product and ‘financial’ innovation in the financial ‘engineering’ and the OTC derivatives contracting, all were to obscure the financial contraction, further aggravate it in its own collapse, while hiving away the assets from the hands of the many into the hands of a few.

Again, unless we have the appropriate decisions by the voters to at least – and it’s expensive and condemned as being ‘protectionist’ but the Germans and Europeans do it virtually all the time – is to buy what we make here (if one can find it) or not spend if one doesn’t have to, and save while one can and absolutely avoid in as much as possible what is made in societies that really tyrannize the people, such as China and other Asian societies, although the Japanese are better. It and Germany are export driven societies, and that too is another reason why we under the ‘free’ trade agreements off-shored our production into the former colonies of our allies, so that the Germans and Japan would have less competition for us. Without planned obsolescence in the US, we had had more reason to buy what we made and we were the largest economy and with production here. We had no problem finding and buying what we made. We made anything and everything. Planned obsolescence, again has fouled with this and suited the interests of the Germans and Japanese, but again, if we decide we’re going to do something or build something right, eventually by the Grace of God we accomplish our task.

WE need to require our Board and our Management to follow the Rules such as Article 1 Section 8 of the US Constitution again the abrogation of which only RECENTLY started in 1993 under Clinton but developed by Bush1 became a ‘policy’ of sorts.

We need to shed the conflicted self interests that corporate power has enjoyed and bought by stacking the deck everywhere: Congress, the Executive branch, the regulators and FASB, and the universities and think tanks, the service organizations like the accounting firms and the management consultants, where these all have been in bed with ‘free’ trade, ‘fair value’ and International Financial Reporting Standards, US compliance with international interests deleterious to the US owner/voter – the depositors, the shareholders as mutual fund investors, 401(k) investors, home and property owners, etc. These all have been hurt by the US ‘coordination’ with the G20 agreements again which were to suit the Germans’ hammered economy and associated self interests after the fall of the Berlin wall and the German reunification. Most people haven’t put together the puzzle pieces to understand the elephant in the room that’s been sucking the air, parasitically eating the food, leaving its waste all on purpose and also attempting to make us a ‘consumer’ society rather one that is the owner, the one of private enterprise that saves and invests and broadly develops wealth with capital to invest.

And that Dr. Leichsenring’s observation that the multilateral banks such as the World “Bank” are banks was dispelled publicly by former World Bank Chairman Paul Wolfensohn in 2000 at the Harvard Club at a Foreign Policy Association meeting when I asked him about how and why the World Bank never requires many debtor nations to pay back what to the US voter are characterized as ‘loans’ because that’s how we understand banks. He responded, that the label ‘bank’ isn’t quite the way it always operates and some countries are given grants. Now it’s really far more complex than that, but that’s for another post because unless there are valuable resources and a reason to lend or grant into the former colonial regions of our European allies, it’s generally not done in any real volume or amount. Unless there are corporate interests that want access to that region for some reason and thus don’t themselves want to spend to develop it and the World Bank then steps in on the voters’ wallet to pick up the development tab, that region generally was not going to see development money, or probably only the former colonial power that controlled that geography would lend into it, with its multi-lateral bank and in the case of the Europeans it’s the IMF, would also lend or grant into that.

Then there’s post WW2 world domination but again that’s a post for another time.

Andrea Psoras

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