Where Does It Come From, and Where Does It Go?

Money, money, money! Wouldn’t it be great not to have to think about it? Well, we’re all thinking about it these days, as Congress flounders around in the dark on what promises to be the worst tax bill ever fobbed off on the American people, but even in sunnier times most of us are curious about other people’s financial situations. So here is my basic story.

My income derives from the sale of books old and new. In the past I’ve worked a variety of additional part-time jobs, from teaching and tutoring and freelance editing to picking apples and doing garden maintenance, but more recently I have focused exclusively on my retail business. And it is a business, not a hobby. I don’t have a trust fund or a pension from some earlier career, and if I didn’t need the income, I would stay home and garden and write and raise chickens and feeder calves.

As to where the money goes, that’s simple, too. Monthly business expenses get paid and groceries bought before money goes anywhere else, and then the Artist and I have all the usual expenses of any other household, with the exception of frills like television (we watch DVDs and listen to radio and, of course, read!), air conditioning (we have window screens), and dishwasher (washing dishes is my kitchen meditation time). If we stay home all winter, there is fuel oil and plowing the driveway to pay for; if we go elsewhere, there are frugal travel costs. 

Still, charitable giving is something I take seriously. It’s on my mind now because Facebook reminded everyone this week about “Giving Tuesday” (I give in my own way and in my own time) and because December is when I make my largest annual donations. 

I’ve made adjustments to priorities in recent years, but, as it stands now, the five organizations to which I contribute on an annual basis are the ACLU; Save the Children; the Carter Center; Foods Resource Bank; and the Southern Poverty Law Center. I started years back with the first two and added the third, fourth, and fifth more recently (and in that order). FRB and Save the Children do primarily community work (FRB focused on food security), both in the U.S. and overseas; the Carter Center focuses on do-able health projects in Africa; and ACLU and SPLC are concerned with justice and freedom here in our own country. Healthy, food-secure, and just communities are the goals I have chosen to support.

Leelanau County hosts many worthy organizations — charitable, cultural, environmental — but what I’ve finally come around to with those here at home is that, instead of sending a set amount to the same few every year and ignoring the rest, I give to whichever groups people have chosen for memorial gifts, whenever appropriate. One person’s obituary might list the Leelanau Children’s Choir and Saving Birds Through Habitat. Another might name a church or the League of Women Voters or the Leelanau Foundation. Whatever their priorities, when I send a check with a sympathy card, I honor those wishes and in that way give locally.

The Artist and I take a standard deduction (we have thus far been fortunate in not having sufficient medical expenses to make itemizing advantageous), so our income tax situation is not benefited by donations to charities and other nonprofits. Giving is simply what I decided long ago that I wanted to do, and it is my good fortune that I am able, thanks to my bookstore customers, local and visiting, who buy books on Waukazoo Street in Northport. 

So thank you for your support of Dog Ears Books, and please know that your support goes further than you may have realized. You are not only keeping a little bookstore alive in Northport but helping strangers, in very important ways, far from northern Michigan. It all adds up.

For details and to see if you want to contribute to any of the organizations I support, please follow the links up in the fifth paragraph of this post. And thanks again! Being in a position to give is one of the gifts I have received over and over again along the path of my life, and I am grateful.

What Does It Take to Crack Open a Heart?

Some people, it seems, grow older without much change. With an unchanging personality, there is no epiphany along the way. Others change by hardening up and growing a shell. Chuck Collins belongs in neither group. His heart has been cracked open more than once, and new growth results every time. Born on Third Base is much more than his personal life story—we don’t even get his whole life story, but that’s all right. Chuck’s raison d’être has become working to reduce wealth inequality in America, and he makes his case in this book.

The great-grandson of Oscar Meyer was born into what we have begun to call the “one percent,” the wealthiest Americans. Thomas Piketty, author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century, calls a society governed by huge inherited wealth and power “patrimonial capitalism,” and Collins openly acknowledges that he had to do nothing personally to be wealthy. He quotes Edgar Bronfman, Seagrams heir, who said, “To turn $100 into $110 is work. To turn $100 million into $110 million is inevitable.”

At age 26, Collins made the decision to give away his inheritance but acknowledges that he still had the advantages of American citizenship, education, freedom from debt, white privilege, and a supportive family.

Touring the country in 2003 with billionaire Bill Gates to clarify the federal estate tax and why the wealthy should pay it gratefully, Collins and Gates told their audiences that even first-generation American entrepreneurs are not “self-made” because they had the benefits of our economic system, laws, roads, other transportation and communication systems, education systems, public libraries, and public investment in new technology. Collins gives the key moment of one talk to Gates, who spins a tale in which God’s heavenly treasury is running low, and She [this is the way Gates told the story; I am not editorializing] came up with a plan: the next two spirits to be born could bid on the country in which they would be born. The winner of the auction would be born in the United States, the loser “in an impoverished nation in the global south.” Gates then asked the audience what it had been worth, to them, to be born in the United States—and, so, how much of their net worth they were willing to pledge to leave behind for the common good.

Paying the estate tax (which applies only to households with wealth of $10.8 million and so has little or nothing to do with small family farms, though lobbyists and advertising against the tax would have the public believe otherwise), Collins and Gates proposed to their audiences, is a way of showing gratitude for social benefits received. It is a way to pass benefits they received along to future generations.

Booksellers, authors, and others are often asked, from one administration to the next, “If you could have the president read just one book, which one would it be?” Born on Third Base is my answer to the question today. Hmmm. I wonder if I could get our new U.S. Representative to Congress to read it? That would be a start....

But this is a book for every American, rich or poor, influential or left behind, for a couple of important reasons.

Why should you read this book?

First, one change of heart Collins had involved the language of class warfare, the “bottom-up antagonism expressed in rhetorical attacks against the rich....” He had used it himself in his early campaigns for social justice, but no one, Collins realized, likes to be hated,  and hating the wealthy will never turn them into allies. So it’s a losing game. He goes further in the other direction. In the same way he invites the rich to get to know their financially less fortunate fellow citizens, Collins invites members of the “99 percent” to reach out to the wealthy—not with a hand out but with the empathy and respect every individual deserves. A lot of rich people, he says, are very isolated socially, and they, too, whether they should or not, have financial fears. Empathy is a theme that runs through every chapter of the book.

Second, this is not just another book telling you what’s wrong in our country and the world and how it got to be wrong, because another important theme is change. Collins tells stories, gives examples, and offers concrete, specific suggestions. If you’ve been downhearted lately about the unleashing, once again, of predatory, extractive capitalism, this is the book you need to read. You’ll find in it steps you can take, beyond protest, to help bring about the changes you want to see.

Empathy and change. Change begins with empathy. We’re all in this together. Yes, we can!!!

Born on Third Base: A One Percenter Makes the Case for Tackling Inequality, Bringing Wealth Home, and Committing to the Common Good

by Chuck Collins

Chelsea Green, softcover, 267pp w/ index

$17.95

The Higher and Higher Costs of Higher Education

Rainy prospect

Recently a Facebook friend posted a link about college costs, and I followed it to read the article, “Students in Debt, Professors in Poverty – What’s Going Wrong?” because I’ve thought a lot on this subject and talk to other people who think about it a lot. 

The article turned out to address a single issue: the replacing of fulltime faculty with adjunct instructors, most with equivalent qualifications in terms of degrees but paid only per course, with no benefits and no future job security. None of this was news to me. I’ve taught as an adjunct and know the reality of it from the inside. The article calls it the “subcontract business model.” Okay, but what about those students in debt? What about that part?

Focus on the orchard or focus on the trees?

Not long ago I had raised the question with another friend: “If schools are paying less for instructional employees, what’s with the astronomical and mounting tuition?” I’d wondered a long time and never gotten an answer better than the one she gave me: “States are no longer funding their so-called ‘state’ universities, except at a very minimal level.”

Once you know what to look for, the information is not hard to find. The first article I turned up in my search is very detailed and might tell you more than you want to know – but then, you don’t have to read every word. It’s definitely worth a look. The shortcoming of the picture presented there, in my opinion, is that it only looks back as far as 2007.

The second story I’ll direct you to, "State Funding: A Race to the Bottom," is more focused on state funding and goes beyond a look at “pre-recession” levels, going back to 1975 to present a much longer history. Here we learn that since 1980 48 states have reduced state funding to their own universities by anywhere from 14.8% to 69.4%. 

Extrapolation from data can be a lot of fun. Take, for example, one of my favorites, the rising number of Elvis impersonators. Extrapolating from the trend one can forecast a year in which all Americans will be Elvis impersonators. The trend in reducing state support for education is not nearly as funny. 

Colorado has reduced its support for higher education by nearly 69.4 percent, from $10.52 in fiscal 1980 (and a peak of $13.85 in fiscal 1971) to $3.22 by fiscal 2011. At this rate of decline Colorado appropriations will reach zero in 2022, 11 years from now. Projections using more recent data find that Colorado could hit zero as soon as 2019.

By the way, the phrase "race to the bottom" fits so many areas of human economic life these days, doesn't it? Work harder, accept less pay, or lose your job!

It's easy to get distracted from the big picture.

Adjunct faculty are hardly the only ones hurt by funding trends in higher education. Yes, those of us with higher degrees are exploited, but, much more to the point, states are no longer seriously investing in higher education. The term "state" university is becoming a misnomer. The school bears the name of its home state and may have a board elected by voters at the state level, but increasingly low levels of state funding shifts the burden of tuition more and more to students and their families. These are now largely private schools flying under state flags.

The cause for tuition hikes may be news, but the consequence is familiar to all informed Americans: astronomical levels of student debt. Some economists even think the idea of student loans as investment is a replay of the housing bubble. And as usual, families and students with the least are hurt the most.

Libertarians and others who have been trying to "get government out of education" have been winning the day behind the scenes, privatizing higher education behind our backs, and our children and grandchildren are paying the price. Will our entire country soon find itself paying the price, as more and more jobs requiring higher education cannot be filled by educated Americans?

How do you see this complicated picture? And were the funding facts news to you?

Where are we going? Is it where we want to go?

This is an important topic, one I'd like to discuss at greater length, but at the moment I need a break. Time to turn once again to Chaucer and his entertaining fourteenth-century pilgrims.

Guest Blogger: Laurie Attends a Video Conference in Spain

My friend Laurie in Kalamazoo writes as follows:

All--

Here are notes I took on a video of an excellent Master Class speech given by Chilean economist and environmentalist Manfred Max Neef.  The talk was given at the International University of Andalucía (Huelva, Spain), on December 1, 2009. Says Wikipedia,  

Max Neef, in 1982, won the Right Livelihood Award, known as the Alternative Nobel Prize, for his work in poverty-stricken areas of developing countries. He has worked with the problem of development in the Third World, describing the inappropriateness of conventional models of development that have contributed to poverty, debt and ecological disasters for Third World communities.

Here’s a link to the video of the conference http://cuva.uta.cl/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=1042:600-a%C3%B1os-de-un-mundo-sin-hambr

Below are the notes I jotted. (I apologize for any glaring errors – I was listening in Spanish and jotting in English.) Well worth reading. 

Laurie Kaniarz

THE WORLD ON A COLLISION COURSE


Manfred Max Neef


(Laurie’s Notes)



When FAO (Food & Agriculture Organization) announced in October [2009] that 1 billion people around the world are hungry, and it would take $30 billion in aid annually to save these lives, at the same time, 6 Central Banks (US, EU, Japan, Canada, England, Switzerland) injected $180 billion into financial markets to save private banks, and have continued to do so, so that, as of September 2009, they’ve injected $17 trillion into the private banks.  $17 trillion is enough to save the world from hunger for 600 years. Where is that money now?



(Regarding the law of supply and demand: there’s much more demand for bread than plastic surgery, more need for a cure for malaria than haute couture dresses.  We need a referendum: do we want to save lives or banks? There’s never enough for those who have nothing.  Always enough for those who have everything.)

This is the most repugnant news I’ve ever heard.

There’s a 4-way convergence:


1. Exponential climate change


2. The end of cheap fuel


3. Diminishment of genetic natural resources: fresh water, energy, forests, fishing, wildlife, subsoil, coral reefs


4. Gigantic speculative bubble – 50 times greater than the real economy (interchange of goods and services)



The causes of this convergence:


1. The predominant paradigm of present-day economics is that we tend toward economic development at any cost, and this stimulates corporate greed.


2. Devouring fossil fuels propels that economic greed


3. Promotion of consumerism as the road to happiness


4. Destruction of traditional cultures and values to improve the industrial economic model


5. Scorn for the planet with the production of waste



There is danger in this for the environment and society.  Global warming implies the loss of productive soils, storms, hurricanes, desertification – all having implications for the poorest people on the planet. All systems are dependent on fuels.  There will be a further diminishment of species by 50% in the next decades.

 We have to accept the limits of what the earth can handle.

 We must move from “efficiency” to “sufficiency,” and solve inequality, because without equality, peaceful solutions are not possible.  We must replace the dominant values of greed, competition and accumulation with solidarity, cooperation and compassion.  Adjust ourselves to lower levels of production/consumption, favoring local economies. LOOK WITHIN once again, rather than outward.



We’re in the 21^st century, trying to solve our problems with 19^th century economics, even though we no longer use 19th century physics, biology, anthropology, medicine, etc.

 Economic “neo-liberalism” is a pseudo religion.  It conquered the world in a few decades, which religion [Christianity, Laurie?] couldn’t do in 2000 years.



Myth 1: Globalization is the only way to development.  Between 1960-1980, “don’t import what you can produce at home.” Between 1980-2000 this was replaced by deregulation, privatization, elimination of international trade barriers, and full openness to foreign investment.  Between ’60-’80, the poorest developing countries grew 2%.  Between ’80-’00, they had declined 0.5%.



Myth 2: Greater integration in the global economy is good for the poor. But it causes the poor countries to look outward rather than at their own people’s needs.  The 7 richest countries are 50 times richer now than the poorest 7.



Myth 3: Comparative advantage is the best way to ensure prosperity – “free world trade.” Prices can be lower, but 
costs to society & environment are enormous.



Myth 4: More globalization + more jobs. There are fewer jobs in countries of origin, more sub-employment in the outsourcing countries.



Myth #5: Globalization is democratic and transparent. Decisions about world commerce are made by unelected bureaucrats who work behind closed doors in Geneva [World Monetary Fund - WMF].  Their decisions cannot be appealed.  If a country that receiving translational investment has an inconvenient law, it must abolish the law. This affects the very idea of democracy if it has to adapt to the interests of the corporation. 

The WMF has no rules about child labor or labor rights.  All rules benefit the corporations.  Poor countries are prohibited from producing their own generic drugs, for example: they’re obligated to buy from transnationals. Africa has the resources, but can’t produce its own drugs.  The WMF is dedicated to ensuring that corporations govern the world.  Imports and exports are not between countries but between corporations.

Myth #6:  Globalization is unavoidable. ANYTHING arising from politics is reversible. What needs to be done is to take back local decisions that bring consumption back to the local market.  A human-scale economy.

New rules could be: 

- Profits flow back as much as possible to their place of origin.  Unsustainable – taking up huge amounts of resources – is transport over huge distances. In Chile, in the huge, state-of-the-art dairy producing region of the country, I unwrapped a butter packet that came from New Zealand.  It’s cheaper if you look at it from the point of view of an economist, but prices never tell the truth.  The cost of the environmental impact of shipping, to economists, has a value of “0.” Plus, the shipping was subsidized by New Zealand – also a value of “0.” The fact that local producers will go bankrupt – “0.” Same with energy: “This type of [alternative] energy is more expensive.” End of story.

But it’s only “more expensive” depending on how you make the calculation.  If you give value to the impacts, that which is deemed “more expensive” becomes cheaper. 

- Bring back safeguards to local economies with tariffs and quotas to avoid monopolies.

- Ecological taxes.  Taxes on energy use that causes pollution and negative impacts.  We’ve created a “fun” society and we pay taxes on that.  We should pay taxes on the bad, too. They tax you for working, for investing, but not for dirtying, polluting, destroying – you get to do that for free. You should be taxed for how many kilowatts you use rather than on how much you earn.  This would have a formidable impact on world economy.  They are doing this in Scandinavian countries.

- In Sweden, eco-municipalities receive the benefits of income tax, not the State.  You pay your tax and immediately see – and have influence on – how it’s used, in the place where you live.



I propose this new economy for the 21^st Century, with 5 principal postulates:



1.  The economy should serve the people – the people should not serve the economy.


2. Development has to be with/for people, not objects


3. Growth is not the same as development, and development does not necessarily need growth.


4. No economy is possible at the exclusion of the services provided by ecosystems.


5. Economy is a subsystem of a great system – the biosphere – and so permanent growth is impossible.



A fundamental principle value I propose to sustain the new economy:

 No economic interest, under any circumstance, should ever be held above the reverence for life on the planet.

 But what we have today is exactly the opposite of what I have postulated:



- We’re in a world in which each of us is at the service of economic interests, not the opposite.


- We identify economic development as who has the most cellphones, computers, etc.  The human being disappears in the process.


- There is an obsession with growth as the only measure, but growth is a quantitative measure, and development is a liberation of creative potentials.

 All living systems grow until they stop growing, but they don’t stop developing. We’ve all stopped growing, but we’re in this room [at the conference] because we haven’t stopped developing – more ideas, more information.  Growth has limits, development doesn’t.



My hero, a man I consider the greatest thinker, Kenneth Boulding, said, “Anyone who thinks permanent growth is possible on a finite planet is either crazy or an economist.” [Kenneth Ewart Boulding (January 18, 1910 – March 18, 1993) was an economist, educator, peace activist, poet, religious mystic, devoted Quaker, systems scientist, and interdisciplinary philosopher. He was cofounder of General Systems Theory and founder of numerous ongoing intellectual projects in economics and social science. - Wikipedia]

No economy is possible at the exclusion of the services provided by the ecosystem.  The economy is a closed system that doesn’t relate to families or nature.  Economists think they don’t need to know about pollination.
 Growth can’t be infinite on a finite planet.  If I want to blow up a big balloon, I can’t blow it up bigger than the room I’m in.

There is a need for reverence for life. Too many people say, “Life doesn’t mean anything … as long as I can do business.” Millions of children are slaves. According to UNICEF and other organizations, in the 21^st century, there are more slaves in the world than when slavery was abolished in the 19^th century. Tens of millions of slaves, two-thirds of them children.  It doesn’t show up in the news.  “With so many kids in the world, who cares?”  Why doesn’t it show up?  SLAVERY IS GOOD BUSINESS – YOU CAN MAKE GOOD MONEY AT IT.

Don’t expect the solution to come down from Mt. Sinai.  It’s up to us.  It starts with each one acting according to his/her belief system and loves.  Don’t ask yourself, “But what can I do?”  That’s defeatist.  ANY ONE OF US can do something at any moment that could change history.

 Examples:  Gandhi got sick of being discriminated against as “colored.” He started out being a nobody, a lawyer, but defeated the most powerful nation on earth. Rosa Parks sat in the white section of a bus and said, “I’m too tired to move.” She was [considered] less than nobody, but sparked the civil rights movement.  They both acted according to their beliefs. 

This won’t happen to you if you always adapt to what you don’t believe in.  Don’t act according to what’s best for you – advice we all get – but what’s best for all.  We all get this bad advice – I’ve given it myself, and I apologize to anyone I’ve ever given it to: “You’ve got to see your goals clearly to know where you want to go.” If you look toward one fixed goal, you won’t see the people you trample on to get there.  It’s a miserable life if you do what you “should” rather than what you MUST do.  The way you can have a happy life is living according to your beliefs.



Here’s some better advice: Drift and steer in a state of alert/attention.  This doesn’t mean you’re at the mercy of the current.  Life is like surfing: you can’t decide where you’re going to end up on the beach because you can’t predict what the waves will do.  But if you’ve got all your antennae up, if you make judgments about what to do as each condition comes up, you’ll end up somewhere along the beach. 

Creativity encourages us to create a world in which we are all relatively happy.

People who know where they’re going never discover anything because they’re obsessed with where they’re going.  But “obstacles” are all the adventure.


Manfred Max Neef’s bibliography includes:

0.Max-Neef, Manfred A (1992) (pdf). From the Outside Looking In: Experiences in Barefoot Economics. Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation. pp. 208. ISBN 1-85649-188-9. http://www.max-neef.cl/download/Max_Neef_From_the_outside_looking_in.pdf. Retrieved 2011-02-15.

0.Max-Neef, Manfred A; Antonio Elizalde, Martin Hopenhayn (1991) (pdf). Human Scale Development. The Apex Press. pp. 114. ISBN 0-945257-35-X. http://www.max-neef.cl/download/Max neef_Human_Scale_development.pdf. Retrieved 2011-02-15.

0.Max-Neef, Manfred A; Paul Ekins (1992). Real-Life Economics: Understanding Wealth Creation. Routledge. pp. 432. ISBN 0-415-07976-4. http://www.gettextbooks.co.uk/search/?isbn=9780415079761. Retrieved 2011-02-15.

Laurie Kaniarz is a graduate of Kalamazoo College. She has lived and traveled in Spain and South America and is currently employed by Foods Resource Bank in Kalamazoo. FRB is not an emergency aid organization but works to move people in poor countries toward long-term, sustainable food security.

...old photo of Laurie and me in Leland's historic Fishtown....

In Northport and Beyond

Do you recognize him? It’s Bruce Viger on the roof of the future Garage Door Bar & Grill, just to the south of Dog Ears Books on Waukazoo Street in Northport. And when we say “future,” I'm sure we’re talking near future. I don’t yet have an opening date from Bruce, but as soon as he gives me the word, I’ll pass it along.

On the national bookselling scene, it took a female David to stand up to the online Goliath bookseller. Governor Nikki Haley said South Carolina wanted a big distribution center but not at the expense of in-state retailers who collect sales tax for the state. “We don’t want to be known as the state that is desperate to grab anybody and anything,” she said, pointing out that it’s important for South Carolina to do right by its home-grown businesses by insisting on a level playing field. You can read the whole recent article from the Charleston Regional Business Journal. Meanwhile Tennessee rolled over for the sake of new jobs, and the hell with the old jobs that will be lost and businesses that will go under because of preferential treatment for the newcomer. Here’s the rest of that story.

Someone in Chicago thinks there should be a federal law regulating the payment of state sales tax by online retailers. I don’t think so. Sales tax is the business of each state—whether or not to have sales tax, what to tax, how much, etc. I’m sure a lot of chief executives and legislators would be happy not to have to make decisions about online sellers, but those decisions are part of their job. As for me, I’m cheering for South Carolina’s governor, because if enough other governors had her guts the behemoth would no longer be able to call the shots.

Businesses selling books in Michigan should be paying Michigan sales tax. I don't have a problem with that; why should the Big Guy? He'll only play if the rest of us are hobbled and he rides free? Readers, please think about where and how you buy your books and how your bookseller does or does not support your community.

This is my Lenten rose, hellebore, still blooming well after Easter. Of course, my forsythia are still holding their buds tightly closed, so there you are.