The numbers are all a lie.

All the numbers are lies. Their system had required a continuous growth. So what did they do, a 1% of people has been making up the numbers. Everything from GDP, to job employment.

a) GDP = How much of GDP is caused by the Federal Reserve? Now $4 trillion, or $85 billion a month, or, 25% of GDP.
https://yanziyang.wordpress.com/2013/07/23/how-much-us-gdp-growth-is-thanks-to-the-fed/ Our debt is near that of our entire country’s GDP.

b) Unemployment= As of November, the 7.3%? Actually 10.8%. There is a 6 million in the United States, or 3 and a half percent, who aren’t actively looking for a job.
http://www.epi.org/publication/missing-workers/ With the video, “open letter to the 3.5%,” that means that there’s enough that’s a critical mass. When we realize who we are, their capitalist system cannot go on without us. If we are not even WANTING a job in a system we don’t find meaningful, that means there’s enough support for whatever happens next. Ladies, plan people? Our movement is that much stronger, what do we do?

c) Corporate America = runs the decision-making of the government. You saw it in Obama’s State of the Union speech! Capitol hill= [jobs, money.] Either one of the two you have a vote for they get in there and they’re just working for the corporations which pay for them. It’s like, Monsanto!

d) Wall Street= The entire recovery, in fact, has benefited mainly a 1% of people, and 90% have gotten poorer! Statistic: In the US, the wealthiest one percent captured 95 percent of post- financial crisis growth since 2009, while the bottom 90 percent became poorer. Via the Oxfam report: http://www.oxfam.org/en/policy/working-for-the-few-economic-inequality Much of the “growth” is not based on real things at all. Why: buying because it’s’ going up, and then selling it, is the logic of how a bubble is made.

e) US can’t support themselves. There’s enough debt, oil consumption, credit card consumption, war funds to Israel.

f) Natural imperative. In order for our continued existence on this planet, a step away from capitalism drastically reduced will be needed, or else the United States will continue to be a bad example.

and the stock market is a bubble.

Money does not necessarily equate with power. EC

The Oxfam Report

The major one that folks have to realize is this. http://www.oxfam.org/en/policy/working-for-the-few-economic-inequality

There is now a 1% which owns more than half of the world’s wealth. WTF?

The richest one percent of people in China,Portugal, and the US have more than doubled their share of national income since 1980, and the situation is getting worse.

There is now a reality whereby a 1% of people are vastly better off than most other people. In the United States, the 1% have captured 95% of income increases since they went down in 2009 (see other post). 90% of people have gotten poorer. Like, WTF? With all that we’ve been going through together, it appears that Occupy was right. (Reminds me of a recent post I read on Rolling Stone, the illuminati dissolves and, this is real: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/everything-is-rigged-the-biggest-financial-scandal-yet-20130425#ixzz2RfSq098J).

A recovery hasn’t happened, and it’s only a rigged trade balance with China and the poverty of the middle class that’s keeping inflation from happening, we have more debt than anything, and are trapped in wage slavery retail and fast food jobs. Eek! Can anyone say revolution?

Workin’ on these solutions….

The community reality

It is a great time to be alive and thinking about things (observing changes). Now is really a tipping point for technology, community-led social change, and world progress in an economic sense. In this post I explain some of the projects I have found myself in here, and how they fit into a bigger picture. You know Agua Buena from my last post and [this link], now here is the present situation.

International assessment on Agriculture Knowledge, Science, Technology and Sustainability

This changes everything.

This April, an independent project involving over 400 full-time researchers and 58 countries published a report. The full scope of the report is enormous, but you can view the summary here:
http://www.agassessment.org/docs/SR_Exec_Sum_280508_English.pdf

Some excerpts, which may echo well with what I’ve been saying here. (In fact the same thing that I observed from the farm 3 years ago, and have since dedicated my life to preaching…)

International Trade doesn’t work for poor people

My mind was blown today with a critical fact of Economics.

Returns to scale are a market imperfection in competitive markets.

The entire theory of competition, markets, and trade is based on the assumption of constant or decreasing returns to scale. This concept defines all trade theory, and largely defines the policy that affects entire countries and allocation of the great bounty of the world’s resources.
But returns to scale are a fundamental aspect of international business. Returns to scale, the idea that cost is cheaper as a firm produces more, is what leads to giant consolidated multinationals, concentrated market power (and lobbying clout), and factory agriculture. These are the industries that dominate in foreign countries, the ones that can take advantage of returns to scale. In fact, when we tell developing countries to open themselves to foreign investment, it’s these types of industries that are built.

Governments acting for free trade is acting for industry.

Then we have returns to capital. The people who own more, are more likely to grow. What if allocation of resources is originally uneven? And information is uneven? That might lead to initial conditions being exaggerated in the form of country inequality: rather than poor countries being able to catch up they are already behind on the big scalable high-wage jobs.

What about comparative advantage? Poor people have no comparative advantage. There is no perfect awareness among non-Americans, as Winters et. al write “there is evidence that poorer households are less able to protect themselves or take advantage of positive opportunities by trade reform” (emphasis mine). Who produces these comparative-advantage goods? Savvy foreign entrepreneurs who CAN take advantage of opportunity. For them, they see cheap labor. And bring in technology that raises total country output/head. The poor not only lose what they were doing to import competition, but get unskilled, low wage jobs, the benefits of which go to capital owners and middle men who understand international systems, and their resources are used more intensively, not for them. Inequality is exaggerated (returns to scale, again) and most of the profit is siphoned into foreigners hands or reinvested in growth (capitalists are rarely satisfied to just make a profit). For what end does this growth aim? “Those that do benefit directly increase their input consumption, production, and consumption of goods and services.” The winners get to consume more. But CEOs and developed countries consistently score the saddest on international surveys! By making money, the poor remain a given (their wage will increase once everyone in the world’s does…) and externalize the things that do matter in the name of increased world consumption.

Jobs do not equal growth. Poor are not creators in capitalism. Those who earn more do not know happiness.

All free trade is based on fundamental assumptions. Decreasing returns to scale is one of them. In International Economics, everyone has perfect awareness of opportunities, and access to international demand if your idea is good enough. Unfortunately they’re stuck behind learning curves, and we tell them not to subsidize their domestic industry. This dynamic inequality impacts thousands of millions of people; the international flow of all goods and capital is based on a lie.

How can this fundamental feature be overlooked at phase 1 of Economic theory? How can the concepts of increasing returns to scale and market power be an oversight before any microeconomics graph is drawn? This changes everything.

I don’t know whether to cry or be angry at the institutions we’ve created. Thousands of people are starving, while their countries make exports for rich people. Poor people are told they can’t farm, because rich farmers and plantation owners are better at cutting costs. Poor people are not creators. And helping them isn’t profitable for business. Then we’d have to pay them more for our jobs.

-Eddie Miller
Boston University
A Global Organic Mindset: eddiemill.wordpress.com/

A couple highlights

edit: pretty technical post, read at your own risk!

The last 72 hours have been a masterpiece. If opportunity were a horse, I’d have just spurred to a gallop.
Socially Responsible Investing, Guest Lectures, Special Events, Research…

Some highlights/thoughts/questions:
-Development challenge: If people will buy organic food with higher price and now nearly unlimited demand, what is the best way for small farmers to produce it to scale?
*AND does the organic/local movement have to give up any of its ideals to be able to do so?

-Organic Farming “could feed Africa”: UN Environment Programme just surveyed 114 projects in 24 African countries. They found that yields more than doubled with the techniques of irrigation, crop rotation, and input access. Contrary to Harvard keynoter Thursday Robert Paalberg‘s recommendations, the survey suggests that money for development is best spent in education of farmers rather than developing Genetically Modified seeds and selling chemicals. Full link: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/organic-farming-could-feed-africa-968641.html

-The food crisis- why?
The causes are many, but mainly, systemically, it has to stem from global overproduction-> trade liberalization-> smaller farmers without education can’t produce any more -> food dependence and FAMINE. Famine is one of the worst human conditions. As Eleanor Roosevelt put it: “The hunger of our world demands our sympathy.”

-Alberto Gomez-Flores, Frances Moore Lappe: The two keynote speakers at the Grassroots International 25th Anniversary celebration, these two serve as some of my prime influences in their work. Gomez Flores is chair of the North America La Via Campesina, the largest organization of small farmer’s rights in the world. He talked through a translator in succinct, clear Spanish about the work for his organizers to translate campesino knowledge into institutions and goals: “Our challenge and our daily work”. “Frankie” Moore Lappe is one of my idols, author of “Diet for a Small Planet,” “Hope’s Edge,” and creator of Food First, one of the best sustainable ag. think tanks in the country. Now she’s working on inspiring hope, conquering fear in a world where “the lens is cracking”. I got to talk with her for 15 minutes afterward about our planet, vision, and hope. Really an incredible experience.

-Costa Rica: I picked up an interesting book in the Boston Public Library about a new historical hypothesis for Costa Rica, which disputes the claim of the pre-coffee “rural democracy” that has permeated Costa Rican culture and even inspired social revolution. A rural society never existed, he claims, but rather a distinction plantation/underdevelopment and simple separated landholders. If true, this changes everything.

-Life: Feels good! Finally asked a girlfriend, Libby Glen of BU ’11: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/profile.php?id=1236840042&ref=ts Here’s to that!

Coming up: culture, life, the vision for this country, and Costa Rica.

Stay tuned.

-Eddie Miller
BU ’10
eddiemill@gmail.com