Corruption - Broken at the Core

In hearing the word ‘corruption’ we almost automatically think of politicians, business owner, corporations and MONEY – more specifically: putting money where it’s not supposed to go and using power in ways it’s not supposed to be used. We think of all those people ‘out there’ doing it and how angry it makes us, because with THEM being corrupt, it leaves less for the rest of us ‘poor victims’. ‘If only there would be no corruption’ – ‘everything would be so much better’ – ‘how could they’ – well, I assume you know your own thoughts on the matter… Of course if we wanted to just keep reproducing the same thought patterns, there would be no need for writing blogs, sooo… have you considered the following:

What is it about corruption that makes it corruption? What is the essence or the nature of corruption? It really boils down to: acting in self-interest when you should be acting in the interest of the whole. When corruption happens on a ‘big scale’ – eg: when there is a lot of money involved, this really pisses us off, I mean: how dare they!? But when corruption happens on a small scale – then, it’s just ‘life’, ‘human nature’ or ‘only normal’. Just ask yourself and answer honestly: how much of your time do you act in the interest of all and how much of your time do you act purely in your own self-interest? You’ll find that most of the time you’re not even considering how your actions and words might affect other people. Does corruption only apply when it is done by people who are explicitly within positions of so-called responsibility? Aren’t we all always in a position of responsibility simply by virtue of us being here and the fact that we don’t exist in isolation of other people, of nature and of the animal kingdom – even if that’s how we have split things up and categorized them neatly in our minds?

So if we want to understand how ‘those guys’ can be corrupt and how to change it – all we really need to do is ask ourselves: why am I corrupt? What makes me choose self-interest over what is best for everyone? What do you think? What do you see?

Let's continue this discussion in the next post – in the meantime: ponder over these questions and leave your answers in a comment.

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Politics? Fun?? Have you Lost your Mind?!

One of the reasons it is so hard to push for substantial change is that – the way to do that is through politics – and trying to get people engaged and passionate about politics is not an easy feat. Just ask yourself – apart from the sentence I just wrote – when last did you hear the words ‘politics’ and ‘passionate’ in the same sentence together? It seems the two are each others' opposites. I imagine the following is actually how some people have defined politics in their minds’ dictionary:

“Politics: I don’t know exactly what it is, but it’s boring and I want nothing to do with it”

So – for those who ‘get’ that politics is probably quite important, but just can’t get themselves to read the newspapers for fear that you might die of boredom, I have good news. There is a show called ‘Last Week Tonight’ hosted by John Oliver, which may be just what you need. It’s a very funny show – sometimes bordering to, or just plainly grotesque, so breathe through those parts if it’s not your style. As with everything, you have to use your own common sense in relation to what is being presented. Yet, overall it’s really entertaining and while you’re being entertained, you’ll simultaneously be introduced to various different topics and problems on the world’s political agenda. You might actually learn more from watching this show than from reading the newspaper…

Seriously, watch it.



And if you have any suggestions for funny educational shows - share it with us in a comment!

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Humanity Washed Ashore

“The full horror of the human tragedy unfolding on the shores of Europe was brought home on Wednesday as images of the lifeless body of a young boy – one of at least 12 Syrians who drowned attempting to reach the Greek island of Kos – encapsulated the extraordinary risks refugees are taking to reach the west.

The picture, taken on Wednesday morning, depicted the dark-haired toddler, wearing a bright-red T-shirt and shorts, washed up on a beach, lying face down in the surf not far from Turkey’s fashionable resort town of Bodrum.

A second image portrays a grim-faced policeman carrying the tiny body away. Within hours it had gone viral becoming the top trending picture on Twitter under the hashtag #KiyiyaVuranInsanlik (humanity washed ashore).”

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/02/shocking-image-of-drowned-syrian-boy-shows-tragic-plight-of-refugees

This was an excerpt of just one of the stories about the boy. Over the last few days, dozens have been written and published on various major news sites. What is more striking than the content of the posts, is the comments that are left on these articles. What is humanity’s response to such images, to such news? If you have a moment, I would suggest to read through the comments. It ranges from expressing shock, to sending love and prayers, to abdicating responsibility, to assigning blame to the parents, countries, presidents, religions and then it just goes into back-and-forth bickering over ‘what kind of person you are’.

That just makes you wonder...

When I read/hear such events and news stories – what I see is that: we’re more and more coming to a point where we can no longer ignore the painful truth that what happens on this planet is a problem for everyone – they are no longer ‘far away’ – what we’re accepting and allowing, even just through our ignorance and complacency – is literally washing up our shores. Does it help, then, to assign blame? Does it help, then, to debate over the exact historical figure and events that led up to the problems we’re facing today?

We can no longer afford to think in terms of ‘us vs. them’ and ‘my country vs. your country’ or ‘my religion vs. your religion’ – because it’s simply not constructive. It’s a similar point with climate change – does it really matter who started it? Can we really afford to debate over who should take the first step?

When recently traveling to Belgium with my sister and her little boy, we spent a lot of time on playgrounds. It was fascinating to see so many families of different origins, with different cultures and speaking different languages all in the same place. Belgians were actually in the minority. But more interesting was to see the difference in how the parents interacted (or rather, didn’t) and how the children interacted with each other. The parents stayed away from each other, individually watching their children from the sidelines and stepping in when needed, kind of avoiding each other. The children, on the other hand – would all play harmoniously together on the playground. It didn’t seem to make a difference to them what the other child looked like, what they were wearing or even what language they spoke. They would actually adapt and use more body language to get a point across.

My point being… how the world exists today is one version of what can be – and is a result of our collective history. At the same time, there exists a potential for a different way of living together. If we wait, stand aside and refuse to look for solutions that will actually work for everyone – we know our children will end up doing the same – and that potential for a different world is lost.

We still have a ‘choice’ in how we address these global problems, or at least – it seems like we do – because we haven’t yet seen the worst of it. Despite problems escalating, there seems to still be a belief in many that ‘things will work themselves out’ – call it ‘Disney-brainwashing’. But if we’re going to find sustainable solutions, we better do it now – and we better include everyone in the benefits. If you follow the trends of the ‘state of the world’ – what we’re doing to the planet, what we’re doing to each other – it’s very likely our children will no longer have that choice, that chance to say: okay, let’s turn this ship around.

So, from one human being to another – we’re all here, all living and breathing – and all capable of working together if we choose to, all capable of focusing on formulating solutions that work for everyone, all capable of standing up and no longer assuming someone else will solve our problems for us.

So, I invite you to – if you have an idea, if you are part of the solution – SPEAK OUT - let’s hear about ideas and solutions, start constructive discussions, connect and support each other.

Here is the solution I stand for: A Living Income Guaranteed for All – read about it and share what you think. Then share what you stand for! The Living Income Guaranteed crew hosts weekly hangouts, a platform where ideas and solutions are discussed and promoted. So, if you want your idea and solution to get some extra attention, you can also contact livingincome@equallife.org and be welcomed on a live hangout!

Let’s start a new trend:

#IAmPartOfTheSolution

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And Then You Crash - Meconomics

This blogpost is a continuation to:
Reality in a Bubble – Meconomics
Inflating Reality Much? – Meconomics
Do You Know the Stakes of the Bets you Place? – Meconomics
Have you Ever been Swept Off your Feet?

In this little series, we’ve been investigating the phenomenon of inflation, how we in our daily lives participate in ‘inflating our reality’ and so, how we are on a personal level participating in the same principles/dynamics that we see playing out on a bigger scale when it comes to inflation, speculative bubbles and financial market crashes.

We saw that there is actually a set process involved that we can roughly break down into three stages:

1.    the start/onset,
2.    the process of inflation,
3.    the popping of the bubble.

We discussed stages 1 and 2 in the previous posts, so let’s look more closely at:

3. The Popping of the Bubble

The popping of the bubble is usually a singular moment that can be experienced as a ‘crash’ or an ‘explosion’ – though the consequences of the entire process (stages 1, 2 and 3) can linger and last for quite a while as the domino-blocks start falling.

The popping of the bubble is in essence the sudden release of all the energy that had been accumulating and growing in the process of inflation. Energy cannot ‘keep on accumulating forever’ – it has a breaking-point – and that is the point where the bubble pops and we experience some form of a crash, explosion or release.

Looking at the example of the couple fighting, where the on-set was one person forgetting to buy toothpaste, the popping of the bubble would be the moment where a snap decision is made at the culmination point within the fight of: ending the relationship. This is of course an extreme example, where we illustrated the process of inflation over a very short period of time, but actually, you would be surprised how often such decisions are made not because of practical common sense considerations, but because of an energy that had been growing and accumulating to the point where it seems like ‘the only choice’ to make in a moment.

We also saw in the previous post that inflation can occur both with negative and positive energy. Remember the example of the teenage girls ‘screeching’ in excitement? Well, I used to be one of those – and let me tell you – I would experience quite a ‘crash’ afterwards – not necessarily in terms of a ‘fight’ or a ‘break up’ type of experience, but I would get absolutely exhausted and experience huge headaches after a day out with my girlfriends. Another example would be when you fill your ‘inflation bubble’ with ‘high hopes and expectations’ – where you can easily crash into a sudden experience of total disappointment and despondence.

The moment the bubble is popped – the energy releases and all that we are left with is the physical reality. The abrupt transition from being emerged within energy where everything you see, think, feel and do is influenced by whatever energy you are experiencing, be it positive or negative – can create quite a ‘shock’ as you are suddenly faced with ‘what is left’ – which is your reality. That’s how we often have those moments of looking back at something we did or said and regret it or wonder why and how we could have done or said what we did/said in past moments. Because when looking back at the event without being emerged in the energy – you can see alternative courses of actions and behaviors.

So – with the example of the couple breaking up – you might have experienced similar moments where you are suddenly ‘snapped back’ to reality and all of a sudden everything has changed and you don’t even clearly see or understand how it could have ‘come to that’. This is the immediate experience after the popping of the bubble, but at the same time it is the on-set of a series of consequences. Because no matter how you wish you could ‘take things back’ – you can’t – it is done, things were said and done and there is no way to ignore the new reality that you suddenly created for yourself.

Understand then – that when you experience a ‘crash’ – it’s not something that ‘just happened’ or ‘happened to you’, you actually created it over a period of time through your own participation in reactions and mental energy. So, then you can have a look: where did I make an interpretation/react to something that was said/done or that happened in my physical reality? Where/when/how did I keep adding energy, inflating a bubble and removing myself more and more from physical reality? What kinds of energy did I fill this bubble with? Now that you have an overview of the process that ‘leads to’ such a crash, you can trace back your steps and learn from the past.

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Have you Ever been Swept Off Your Feet? - Meconomics

This blogpost is a continuation to:
Reality in a Bubble – Meconomics
Inflating Reality Much? – Meconomics
Do You Know the Stakes of the Bets you Place? – Meconomics







In the previous blog we started looking at the different stages we move through when we inflate things in our reality:

1.    the start/onset,
2.    the process of inflation,
3.    the popping of the bubble.

We ended off our discussion of the start/onset of the inflation bubble with the following:

“You have to remember, we’re slowing things down here – in those moments, it all happens in a blink of an eye. You ask your partner about the toothpaste – he says he forgot – and next thing you’re already saying ‘Gee, you’re such an ass!!’. Everything that we looked at here, happens in that tiny fraction of a moment between hearing he forgot the toothpaste and speaking to him in response. Because it all moves so fast, we often don’t realize how it is in those fractions of moments that we’re actually busy creating/starting an inflation bubble. Yet, it’s in those fractions of moments that the first point of responsibility lies: you interpreted, you chose, you made a bet – and went forward with it.

What do I mean with ‘and went forward with it’. Once you’ve interpreted your partner’s forgetfulness as meaning that ‘he’s an ass’ – then that is how you see him, how you will speak to him, how you will approach him. In other words – you’re actually no longer speaking to your partner as the person standing in front of you, you’re speaking to your own interpretation of who you perceive your partner to be. This is the moment where you’re creating a shift/rift in your reality – from remaining grounded in the physical reality – to entering a ‘bubble’.”

So, let’s move on to the next stage:

2. The Process of Inflation

The process of inflation is that section of the event where things just escalate more and more and kind of start getting out of hand. The start/onset was merely, you acting on the interpretation of what a person did. In the example we used, the start/onset was exemplified by the saying of the words ‘Gee, you’re such an ass’.

Now – any person can see that these words (Gee, you’re such an ass) are not ‘neutral words’, they are charged words. Words are charged when we speak them with a particular energy. We charge our words positively when we speak words with for instance love or hope, (eg: I know you can do this, honey!) and we charge words negatively when we speak words with for instance anger, annoyance or frustration (eg: how many times must I tell you this!).

These energetic charges are key to understanding the process of inflation, because generally speaking, something interesting happens when we speak words that are energetically charged. You can see it for yourself by looking at any memories where a person spoke to you and their words were energetically charged: how did you feel? You might not be able to name the exact experience you had, but you definitely felt ‘something’. That ‘something’ is your energetic reaction to another’s words.

So – when we speak within energy and our words are charged – the person we are speaking to is more than likely going to now have their own energetic reaction to that. If they then speak in that moment while they are having this energy moving inside themselves, their words will also be energetically charged. What happens then? Well now, we are going to react again upon hearing these energetically charged words. Are you starting to see how this works? You get a back-and-forth argument as every time a person speaks, the other reacts and ‘wants to say something back’. As this back-and-forth argument continues, what happens inside each person? Each one’s energy levels are increasing and more and more the energetic experience becomes the driving force in each one’s words and actions. In other words – the argument gets more and more emotional and less and less rational.

Dependent on whether the initial charge of the words were positive or negative, you will start creating a bubble between you and the person you’re speaking with that is either filled with positive energy or with negative energy.

When the initial charge of the words spoken was negative, then the other person is likely to respond with a negative energy/experience and their words will also be negatively charged. That is the case in the example we’re working with. The initial words spoken (let’s say by person A) were “Gee, you’re such an ass”, which are words that are negatively charged. The other person (call it person B) will react negatively in return, and their words will also be negatively charged. The negative energy that person A is receiving from person B is now intensifying and supporting person A’s original negative experience, and so it gets bigger. Each time person A or person B speaks with negative energy, they are in essence ‘feeding’ the negative energy within the other. So, both are now being swept up in a cycle of negativity that builds and get bigger. That is the bubble that is being inflated. Inflated with what? With negative energy.

The same dynamic can take place with positive energy. If a person speaks while experiencing positive energy like excitement, their words will be positively charged and the person they are speaking to will probably experience a positive experience in return (this is what is referred to in sayings like ‘her enthusiasm is rubbing off on me’). In the same way, this can lead to a back-and-forth conversation where the positive energy just builds and builds more and more. Have you ever heard teenage girls screeching and shouting with high-pitched voices in absolute excitement – well, this is how they ‘get to’ that state. The only difference is that the bubble they created was inflated with positive energy.

In both cases – whether the bubble was inflated with positive or negative energy – the participants in the bubble are being swept away further and further away from actual physical reality and start to see everything either ‘extremely negatively’ or ‘extremely positively’ – neither experience is grounded in reality – because the physical is neither positive or negative – it just is what it is.

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Do You Know the Stakes of the Bets you Place? - Meconomics

This blogpost is a continuation to:

Reality in a Bubble – Meconomics
Inflating Reality Much? – Meconomics

Read the previous posts for context.




I ended off my previous post with the following:

“When we start reacting inside ourselves (in the experiential reality/dimension) to what we hear/see in our physical reality, we change the way we perceive reality. If your partner forgot to buy toothpaste, then in physical reality, this means: your partner forgot to buy toothpaste. (Okay, that may sound silly, but it’s actually so silly that most of us don’t recognize how complicated we make our lives.) In your experiential reality, if your partner forgot to buy toothpaste, it can mean: “My partner doesn’t care about me”; “My partner is unreliable”; “I have to think of everything in this relationship”, “I do so much for him/her and he/she can’t even do this one little thing for me”.

So – we have this nasty habit of inflating something that happens in our physical reality through interpreting it and reacting to it in our experiential reality – making it seem bigger than it actually is. I’m sure you can relate to such moments, they occur so often that we have come to accept them as ‘normal’ – but let’s continue looking at them a bit further so we can really grasp and understand what it is we’re doing in such moments and how it creates a direct line of responsibility from ourselves to the phenomenon of speculative bubbles and the consequences they create in people’s lives.”

We can identify three stages when it comes to inflating things in our reality:
1.    the start/onset,
2.    the process of inflation,
3.    the popping of the bubble.

Let’s look at each of these stages in turn so we can really go into the nitty-gritty of how this works, what we participate in, how we actually create these bubbles. When it comes to meconomics – the better we understand ourselves, how these things work in our own personal lives on a small scale, the more empowered we are to understand and change how the same is manifested on a large scale in the economy.


1.    The Start/Onset of Inflation Bubbles in our Lives

We’ve looked at how we’re working with two realities or dimensions of reality – the physical reality and the experiential reality. We saw how, when something happens in our physical reality, that we pick up with our physical senses, we often INTERPRET these events to have a particular ‘meaning’. So – you’ve got your physical reality, you’ve got your physical senses like hearing, touch, smell, etc with which you take in information of what happens around you – but then – you also have an inner experiential reality through which the information is ‘filtered’ and where you add additional meaning and interpretations to what happens in your physical reality.

So, if we take the fictional example of your partner forgetting to buy toothpaste – what you pick up through your physical senses is just that: your partner forgot to buy toothpaste. But now – that information gets filtered through your inner experiential reality, which can be for instance all the memories of when he forgot to do something, or all the memories where you went out of your way to do something for him when he asked you to – and then together with that – all the experiences, emotions, feelings you’ve had in those previous memories. So – even though the information that is ‘coming in’ from your environment is: “your partner forgot to buy toothpaste” – what you end up experiencing and perceiving can be “he’s such an ass”.

(Little side-note: I’m here using the viewpoint of a female and the partner who forgot to buy the toothpaste as being a male to cut down on having to write him/her – but obviously, you can switch the roles and genders around, it goes both ways. So, if you’re a guy reading this, then just imagine the partner being a woman who forgot to buy toothpaste and the eventual experience being “she’s such a bitch”.)

What is interesting about this, is that it is actually a form of speculating. What is speculating? It is to “form a theory or conjecture about a subject without firm evidence.” In this example, the conclusion or theory is that ‘your partner is an ass’ and that’s why he forgot to buy tooth paste. You don’t have any firm evidence, because you’re just using your own memories and experiences as a reference and assuming that they provide you with solid proof, but they don’t really. In terms of what happened ‘right now’, in that ‘that’ moment – all you’ve got is that your partner forgot to buy toothpaste, everything else that you think about it or feel about it, is based on speculation.

When it comes to speculating in the financial market, the same happens – you’re looking at different indicators and factors, what direction things seem to be moving in – from that you make assumptions about what will happen in the future and from there, you make your investment decisions. You have no certainty beforehand, you’re only interpreting data and trying to derive ‘meaning’ from it and then trying to project this meaning in the future to see where you would best invest. Speculation in the financial market is an investment with the hope of gain, but with a risk of loss – wherein your decision-making is based on assumptions/conjectures/guesses. In other words: you’re placing a bet, you’re gambling.

If we bring this back to our personal lives where we interpret what happens in our physical reality by filtering it through our inner experiential reality, we’re actually placing a bet as well. It is a choice, for instance, to believe your perception and interpretation that ‘your partner is an ass’ to be true – you’re betting on it being true. And what are you placing in the balance? The future of your relationship.

You have to remember, we’re slowing things down here – in those moments, it all happens in a blink of an eye. You ask your partner about the toothpaste – he says he forgot – and next thing you’re already saying ‘Gee, you’re such an ass!!’. Everything that we looked at here, happens in that tiny fraction of a moment between hearing he forgot the toothpaste and speaking to him in response. Because it all moves so fast, we often don’t realize how it is in those fractions of moments that we’re actually busy creating/starting an inflation bubble. Yet, it’s in those fractions of moments that the first point of responsibility lies: you interpreted, you chose, you made a bet – and went forward with it.

What do I mean with ‘and went forward with it’. Once you’ve interpreted your partner’s forgetfulness as meaning that ‘he’s an ass’ – then that is how you see him, how you will speak to him, how you will approach him. In other words – you’re actually no longer speaking to your partner as the person standing in front of you, you’re speaking to your own interpretation of who you perceive your partner to be. This is the moment where you’re creating a shift/rift in your reality – from remaining grounded in the physical reality – to entering a ‘bubble’.

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Reality in a Bubble - Meconomics

Here’s a fun topic to explore – BUBBLES!!!

What do you know about blowing bubbles?
1. It’s fun
2. You blow air unto a film of soapy liquid and it starts creating a bubble
3. The more air you blow into it, the bigger the bubble becomes
3. Blow in too much air – and the bubble pops.

Bubbles exist in economics as well – they’re called ‘Speculative Bubbles’.

Here’s a definition from Investopedia (don’t worry if you don’t understand everything):

“A spike in asset values within a particular industry, commodity, or asset class.

A speculative bubble is usually caused by exaggerated expectations of future growth, price appreciation, or other events that could cause an increase in asset values. This drives trading volumes higher, and as more investors rally around the heightened expectation, buyers outnumber sellers, pushing prices beyond what an objective analysis of intrinsic value would suggest.

The bubble is not completed until prices fall back down to normalized levels; this usually involves a period of steep decline in price during which most investors panic and sell out of their investments.”
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/speculativebubble.asp#ixzz3dmyCNpUB

In the simplest terms, what is said here is: Air is put into a bubble and then the bubble bursts. What happens, is that the value of assets is inflated beyond their real value. So – you have an asset, say a house – that has a particular intrinsic value – say 3 million dollars. Through speculation, the price of the house is driven up, for instance from 3 million to 5 million dollars – but the actual value of the house doesn’t change – it’s still only actually worth 3 million dollars. The 2 million that gets added on top is just air – and the bubble bursts when the price decreases at a fast pace from 5 back to 3 million.

You can imagine how these bubbles can create economic disasters – because in the end, economics is about sustaining lives. When you don’t know whether the ground you’re walking on is real or could collapse any moment, you’re working with instability and uncertainty, which at the moment are two words that are embedded in our economic system, partly due to the nature of these speculative bubbles.

To give you an idea of the far-reaching consequences these bubbles can have, just think of the recent financial crisis. Greece was herein the unfortunate ‘posterchild’.  On the 17th of June the Debt Truth Commission, set up to investigate the truth about the Greek debt, presented their preliminary findings to parliament. I suggest you read through the entire article (http://cadtm.org/Summary-of-the-first-day-of-the), but for the purpose of this post, specifically read the following paragraph:

“The scientific coordinator recounted the history of the Greek debt in a way that has not been done by the mainstream medias during the last five years: “We realised that the usual explanations of a disastrous state of public finances were not confirmed”; he said. A strict analysis of the facts and the figures has allowed the commission to look at past events differently. As from the moment that Greece entered the Eurozone private capital rushed into Greece where it earned high yields. Wherever capital converges speculative bubbles are created! We have the figures that prove this happened: between 2001 and 2009 household loans increased sevenfold and small business loans increased fourfold, while State loans only increased by 20%. At end of the 2000s the finances that were suffering were heavily indebted private finances not State finances.”
http://cadtm.org/Summary-of-the-first-day-of-the

Speculative bubbles were right at the center of the on-set of economic instability in Greece – this instability rapidly escalating and spiraling out into these disastrous consequences:

“• –– Vicious circle of recession.The continuous drop in GDP, in 2011 surpassing the historical maximum for the entire postwar period, led to a rapid reduction in domestic demand. Lower production led to dismissals and the loss of thousands of jobs, further amplifying recession.

• –– Unemployment had already more than doubled within the first three years of austerity and reached 25.4 percent in August 2012. More than half of the population between 15–24 years old is unemployed (57 percent; Eurostat 2012), while thousands of jobs have been lost under conditions of insufficient social protection. Given the continuation of the crisis, the new unemployed become the chronic unemployed.

• –– Rapid labor deterioration, as shown by the increase of precarious and uninsured work, insecurity, degrading payments, weakening of labour rights, and deregulation of labour agreements.

• –– Strangling of the lower middle class, traditionally consisting of small and medium sized enterprises. A great number of such enterprises (family-owned or not) were unable to survive declining consumption, lack of liquidity, and emergency taxes. More than 65,000 of them closed down in 2010 alone, resulting in a “clearance” of such enterprises and disaffecting the people dependent on them.

• –– Migration of younger, highly educated people has risen (“brain drain”), while those studying and living abroad are discouraged to return to Greece, and those who previously would have stayed, are now leaving.

• –– Homelessness increased by 25 percent from 2009 to 2011. Along with the pre-crisis and “hidden” immigrant homelessness, a generation of “neohomeless” now exists who include those with medium or higher educational backgrounds who previously belonged to the social middle.

• –– Suicides hit record levels, increasing by 25 percent from 2009 to 2010 and by an additional 40 percent from 2010 to 2011.

• –– Deterioration of public health evidenced by reduced access to health care services and an increase of 52 percent in HIV infections from 2010 to 2011. Drug prevention centers and psychiatric clinics have closed down due to budget cuts.

To this, one could also add a worrying political impact – that a country with a traditionally weak far right now has one of the largest organised Neo-nazi movements in Europe. In the 2015 legislative elections the ‘Golden Dawn’ secured third place in the popular vote.”
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-greek-economic-crisis-the-social-impacts-of-austerity-debunking-the-myths/5431010

So – perhaps economic bubbles are not as fun as the bubbles you blow as a child. But what about the bubbles we blow in our daily lives – what do economic bubbles have to show us about the human condition? That’s what I’ll explore in posts to come. After all – the economic system is a human creation – created in our image and likeness.

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The Humpty-Dumpty Effect - Meconomics

This post is a continuation to:

Meconomics: I need my Wants and Want my Needs to be Satisfied
Meconomics: Wants and Needs in your Daily Living
Meconomics: Do you Spend your Money Objectively or Subjectively?
Meconomics: Can you Buy Happiness?

In the previous post we started looking at why and how it is that we can experience certain wants as a ‘need’ or a ‘must have’, where we looked at the role of expectations:

“Realistic expectations of fulfilling a want stand in direct relation to the actual properties and functions of your want. If you like the taste of coffee, then you will enjoy drinking that cup of coffee and coffee has the characteristic and property of keeping you awake and more focused for a little while – those expectations stand in direct relation to your want, which is coffee. Acceptance however, is not directly related to a smartphone – it’s not within its power to give that to you. When you buy a smartphone, what you will get is a smartphone – acceptance is not really part of the package.

It is when we have such unrealistic expectations of fulfilling a particular want – that the experience of ‘want’ can be experienced as a ‘need’ or a ‘must have’.”

There’s many things we feel we are lacking, not on a physical level, but on a… let’s call it ‘beingness-level’ – be it acceptance, freedom, passion, intimacy, happiness, etc. Those are things we cannot buy and that we cannot even get from something or someone else – they cannot be ‘acquired’ or ‘given to us’. They are things we have to give to ourselves and that we inherently feel ‘should already be part of ourselves’. So, when we feel we are lacking them, it’s like we’re not complete as a being, as a person. If you add to that a shiny new smartphone that you wrongfully believe will give you, for instance, ‘acceptance’ – you have the perfect recipe for a very strong urge and desire to go out and get that smartphone.

Most of the time we take our desires for granted – “I feel I want it, therefore I want it”, lol – when actually, it’s not, for instance, the smartphone you really want, but the smartphone is representing ‘acceptance’ to you. So – on a conscious level, all you’ll feel and be aware of, is a strong urge to get that smartphone, where you probably don’t really understand why the urge is so strong and maybe you will give yourself reasons by summing up the specs and telling yourself how good of a phone it is, but the underlying reason is missed. You might even try to tell yourself you don’t need the smartphone, and give yourself all the rational reasons why you should and can wait – but damn, that urge is still there – it just doesn’t go away – and what’s more, it’s building!

I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but when positive energetic experiences, like desire, are very strong and keep building and are not ‘moving out’ – it can become quite uncomfortable. There are sayings like ‘I love you so much it hurts’ – well it’s kind of like that. No matter if the original experience was ‘positive’ – like desire or love – if it just keeps building inside you and you don’t know how to give it direction – it becomes uncomfortable, sometimes even feels like emotional ‘torture’. And it’s there that the want will start feeling like a need – because pain and discomfort is how needs make themselves known.

In the end – the reason why we can mistake a want for a need is because we’re not really aware of ourselves and we accept any impulse or experience at face value. Somehow we don’t know or forget that we actually have the ability to look at a want and go: okay, what are my expectations here? Are they realistic? If they are not realistic, we can look at what it is we expect to ‘gain’ from our purchase (say freedom, acceptance, etc) that we should actually be giving to ourselves – then how do I give that to myself? How do I create that in my life? Once you see how this works, and start applying this reasoning – you’ll see you can direct your wants and your inner experiences quite easily. So long as you ‘remain in the dark’, you’re powerless and at the mercy of what your experiences dictate and you can become quite a dysfunctional human being. Take the example of addictions, what are they but an extreme form of the confusion between wants and needs?

I started this series to investigate the cornerstone of economic theory: the economic problem of satisfying ‘unlimited wants and needs’ in a world with limited resources. To determine whose wants and needs will be satisfied, purchasing power is used as the criterion. I zoomed in on the fact that ‘wants and needs’ are treated as one concept with the same characteristics, when actually needs are limited and so we could at least start with satisfying everyone’s needs and then afterwards design a system that determines whose wants will be satisfied. Since the concepts ‘wants’ and ‘needs’ are used in such a sloppy way in economic theory, I wondered if the same is true on a personal level – applying the principle ‘as above, so below’.

So what is the conclusion? Lol – I think it’s clear those two little words ‘wants’ and ‘needs’ can create quite a bit of havoc in our personal life if the distinction isn’t clear and we don’t look further than the tip of our nose. It’s no wonder we have failed to eradicate poverty so far. And yet, maybe that is all that is required – or at least it is a start – to clearly define the words ‘want’ and ‘need’ for yourself and begin to approach ‘wants’ and ‘needs’ appropriately in your own life. It is one way to start taking responsibility for the ineptitude with which we’ve been attempting to confront global economic problems. If we can address wants and needs effectively in our own life, then we can do the same on a large scale – first making sure everyone’s needs are met and then we can start looking at how to satisfy desires.

A political and economic proposal was designed with this purpose in mind – the Living Income Guaranteed Proposal by the Equal Life Foundation. Please share and create awareness on this proposal, because it simply is not acceptable that millions suffer just because two words are not clearly defined in our dictionary.

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Meconomics: Can you Buy Happiness?

This post is a continuation to:

Meconomics: I need my Wants and Want my Needs to be Satisfied
Meconomics: Wants and Needs in your Daily Living 
Meconomics: Do you Spend your Money Objectively or Subjectively?
 


I ended off my previous post with the following:

“So – we have looked at how wants can in a moment override a need – where we identified subjective experiences and time as important players – but we can look a bit further and ask: why does it sometimes feel like we ‘NEEEED’ the things that we ACTUALLY don’t need. Objectively speaking – they are wants, things you can go without – and yet, you can experience a sense of ‘urgency’ and ‘must have’ and ‘I need it’ towards that which you want. Now wants really start messing with your sense of priority, lol. It’s one thing to be clear on the fact that what you are enticed by in a moment is not something you truly need, but you want to indulge yourself anyway – it’s another to feel like you actually NEED it when you don’t.”

Let’s do an exercise: search for one of those moments in your memory – a moment where: you felt that you absolutely NEEDED to have something, where, if you look back at it now, you didn’t ACTUALLY really need it, but you wanted it so bad that it FELT like you needed it. Now zoom in to the actual experience of need and ask yourself the following: were you experiencing physical discomfort? Were you deprived of something on a physical level, which needed replenishing to ensure you remain functional in your body? Were you in physical danger?

You’ll see that the answers to those questions are ‘no’ – because the apparent ‘need’ was not experienced on a physical level – it was instead experienced on an ENERGETIC/ EMOTIONAL level – where we feel we are being emotionally tortured so long as we don’t go and buy whatever it is we’ve now fixated on wanting to get. If those are not actual, physical, genuine needs, then what are they?

Here we need to actually look at different types of wants or desires. And more specifically – how realistic our expectations are of fulfilling these wants and desires. See – you can want to have a cup of coffee, because you expect that for a moment you’ll really enjoy drinking that coffee and it might assist you being more focused and awake for a short period of time – and when actually having that coffee – that’s exactly what you’re experiencing and what happens. That would be a want with realistic expectations. A want with unrealistic expectations, would be for instance if you want to buy the newest smart-phone because you think your friends will accept you if you keep up with the latest tech trends. What you actually want here, or expect to gain – is acceptance – that is the underlying want you are looking to fulfil. Now smartphones can increasingly do very impressive stuff – but giving you acceptance in yourself and your life is a huge and unrealistic responsibility to place on any phone. Realistic expectations of fulfilling a want stand in direct relation to the actual properties and functions of your want. If you like the taste of coffee, then you will enjoy drinking that cup of coffee and coffee has the characteristic and property of keeping you awake and more focused for a little while – those expectations stand in direct relation to your want, which is coffee. Acceptance however, is not directly related to a smartphone – it’s not within its power to give that to you. When you buy a smartphone, what you will get is a smartphone – acceptance is not part of the package.

It is when we have such unrealistic expectations of fulfilling a particular want – that the experience of ‘want’ can be experienced as a ‘need’ or a ‘must have’. And this is known by the marketing industry and is deliberately used within advertising strategies. I watched a series the other day where one of the characters, who was a car salesman said: “I don’t sell cars, I sell freedom”. As an exercise for yourself, you can look at advertisement and try to see what unrealistic expectation they are trying to create within their viewers – and as a fun challenge within that: try to see how many products apparently will give you passionate sex, lol – advertisements of all kinds of products, from soft drinks, to cars, to perfumes – implicitly play on the desire and urge for sex to sell their products for them. 

So what is it about those wants where we have unrealistic expectations, that we would experience them as a ‘need’?

I’ll continue exploring this topic in my next post.

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Meconomics: Do you Spend your Money Objectively or Subjectively?

This post is a continuation to:

Meconomics: I need my Wants and Want my Needs to be Satisfied
Meconomics: Wants and Needs in your Daily Living

In my previous post I started looking at how wants and needs are confused in our daily living. Needs would be the things you cannot go without and so, common sensically, they would be your priority when deciding what to spend your money on. Wants are things you can go without, but you would prefer not to. Often we lose sight of this distinction – where we will forget about or compromise on our needs to fulfil a want. Then we looked at the following:

“Most of the time, we don’t feel needs or are even aware of our needs, it is only when we lack our basic needs that we suddenly start being affected by them, first on a physical level – and if we see we can’t satisfy our needs, we’ll go into anxiety, stress and survival-mode. But when our needs are being met – they are ‘silent’ and go unnoticed, we feel they don’t really ‘add’ anything to our lives, because we have taken them for granted as just being a part of our daily living.

Desires on the other hand – do give us an energetic thrill or rush. We feel better thinking about our desires and fulfilling/satisfying them, we look forward to fulfilling them, they occupy our minds and lead us to daydreaming, they make us feel hopeful that we/our lives will be better once we satisfy them.”

We’ve been hardwired to lean towards positive experiences, so with the insight that we’ve given wants a positive connotation and needs a negative or neutral connotation – it is easy to see how we can experience wants as an overriding factor on a subjective level. Objectively – we can all quite easily understand that needs come before wants and that satisfying wants is secondary to satisfying needs – but on a subjective level – the level where energetic experiences, emotions and feelings determine what we value and think is important – the opposite is true: wants are more interesting, because they ‘give us’ more pleasant experiences than needs.

So – the problem doesn’t seem to be our rational understanding of needs and wants – but rather that our subjective experiences can in a moment cloud what is most important. A person can for instance make a budget plan, intending to have sufficient funds set aside to pay off bills throughout the month in consideration and understanding of the importance of doing so and the consequences of not doing so – and yet, can in a moment indulge in an enticing want, that ends up compromising the person's available funds at the end of the month. Because in that one moment – when the desire is experienced – the decision is influenced by the subjective experience that comes with fulfilling a want – objective rationality is denounced in the name of a feeling. Some might be able to relate to such moments more than others, as it will depend on your own relationship to your feelings and emotions  - to what extent you place value in them / to what extend you include momentary experiences in decision making.

Here we can also highlight another dimension that plays a role in deciding what to spend your money on – which is: time. Objectively – we know that if we don’t plan ahead to ensure we have enough funds to cover our needs – be it certain or uncertain ones (for instance, having savings for unexpected medical emergencies) – we will come to a point in time where we will not have enough and be in trouble. Yet – subjectively – short-term gratification can override long-term satisfaction – where we will be willing to ‘risk’ not having enough funds later on, to be able to indulge in a satisfying a want in the present moment. This often goes hand in hand with an idea that there is ‘time’ to figure things out and find another solution for the problem we are about to create later down the line – and also, unfortunately, often goes hand in hand with regret when we get to that later moment and realize: we got something we desired in that moment, but didn’t actually have alternatives/magical solutions to sort out/generate other funds to cover the need.

So – we have looked at how wants can in a moment override a need – where we identified subjective experiences and time as important players – but we can look a bit further and ask: why does it sometimes feel like we ‘NEEEED’ the things that we ACTUALLY don’t need. Objectively speaking – they are wants, things you can go without – and yet, you can experience a sense of ‘urgency’ and ‘must have’ and ‘I need it’ towards that which you want. Now wants really start messing with your sense of priority, lol. It’s one thing to be clear on the fact that what you are enticed by in a moment is not something you truly need, but you want to indulge yourself anyway – it’s another to feel like you actually NEED it when you don’t.

Let’s look at that dimension more closely in the next post.

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Meconomics: Wants and Needs in your Daily Living

This blogpost is a continuous to:

Meconomics: I need my Wants and Want my Needs to be Satisfied

To gain context on 'Meconomics', read and watch:

"Meconomics": ME-Economics
[83] Introducing Meconomics

In my previous blog I wrote about the word ‘wants’ and the word ‘needs’ and how, in economic theory, the two words started merging together into ‘wants&needs’ – treating both words as though they have the same properties and characteristics – as well as how this new merged term was then used as a justification for ineffective distribution processes in our capitalistic economic model wherein some people’s needs are not being satisfied, whereas others can satisfy virtually all their wants and desires.

In this post we’re going to apply the principle ‘as above, so below’ – keeping in mind that the economic model is a human creation – built in the image and likeness of its creator – it is worthwhile finding out where within ourselves we confuse the terms ‘wants’ and ‘needs’ in our daily living.

Have you ever been in a situation where, you realize you need to pay a water or electricity bill, but realize you’re out of funds, because you bought something in the last few weeks that you really wanted, and kind of forgot to keep money aside for these essential expenses?

Or have you ever been in a situation where you learned about a new product or gadget, like a new playstation, iphone, cooking utensil – you name it – where you just couldn’t get it out of your mind and felt you ‘had to get it’ and would feel kind of restless until the moment you bought it?

Or have you ever postponed studying for an exam, and a few days before the exam date, suddenly realized you spent most of your time on entertainment, going out with friends, watching movies or partying?

How does that happen? How come we don’t prioritize our needs over our wants?

That is actually something you can answer for yourself, have a look:

How often do you get excited over the idea that you will continue to have electricity in your house?
How often are you exhilarated by merely thinking about eating your sandwich in the cafeteria during your lunch break?
How many of your days are filled thinking about the new plain dark blue socks you’re going to buy because most of your current ones are worn out – where you enter a daydream and feel so absolutely excited and fulfilled imagining buying those new socks?

For most of us – that doesn’t really happen. For most of us – our needs are ‘boring’. Fulfilling our needs forms part of the basic support that we have and give ourselves, but they don’t give us a ‘thrill’, they don’t make us ‘ecstatic’, they don’t even get us excited. A need is not something you ‘feel’ on an energetic level – they don’t make themselves known through a rush. Rather – a need will make itself known through physical discomfort: hunger shows you a need for food, painful feet shows you a need for new shoes, the discomfort of taking showers in ice cold water shows us the need to pay our electricity bill. Needs make themselves known through ‘negative’ physical experiences.

Most of the time, we don’t feel needs or are even aware of our needs, it is only when we lack our basic needs that we suddenly start being affected by them, first on a physical level – and if we see we can’t satisfy our needs, we’ll go into anxiety, stress and survival-mode. But when our needs are being met – they are ‘silent’ and go unnoticed, we feel they don’t really ‘add’ anything to our lives, because we have taken them for granted as just being a part of our daily living.

Desires on the other hand – do give us an energetic thrill or rush. We feel better thinking about our desires and fulfilling/satisfying them, we look forward to fulfilling them, they occupy our minds and lead us to daydreaming, they make us feel hopeful that we/our lives will be better once we satisfy them.

I’ll continue opening up this point in my next post – stay tuned…

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Meconomics: I Want my Needs and Need my Wants to be Satisfied

The economic problem – the corner stone of economic theory – is defined as the satisfaction of unlimited wants and needs in a world with finite/limited physical resources. This implies that not all wants and needs can be satisfied, so the questions economic models attempt to answer are: How is it decided which wants and needs will be satisfied? How is it decided whose wants and needs will be satisfied? In our world today – the answer is: “those who can pay for the satisfaction of their wants and needs will see them satisfied, those who can’t pay for it – well, sorry, we have to draw the line somewhere”.

As I was reading about the economic problem for the first time – I found it fascinating that they used the words ‘wants’ and ‘needs’ in the same way and treated them as one term – like this: ‘wants&needs’ – lol. The difference between wants and needs was briefly explained, but then both words were thrown under the ‘wants&needs’ banner – as though ‘needs’ carry the same characteristics as ‘wants’ and ‘wants’ carry the same characteristics as ‘needs’. When you approach the economic problem by reading the words ‘wants’ and ‘needs’ as ‘wants&needs’ - then the world as it is today might make sense to you – then the economic problem might actually be a justification for the desolation and lack in which millions live. Perhaps that is how economists want us to read the words, so that we won’t hold them accountable for not yet having come up with a better solution.

‘Wants’ and ‘needs’, however, are two very different things. ‘Needs’ are things you NEED – that you cannot go without or you will be physically and emotionally compromised. ‘Wants’ are things you WANT – they go beyond what you ‘need’ – you can go without, but you would like or prefer to experience them or have them in your life. It is true to say that if you tally up all the individual wants of all the people on the planet – you will end up with ‘unlimited wants’. The same is not true for needs, however – there are certain things no human being can go without – say food, water, shelter, social interaction, medical support – where this is the same for every single person by virtue of them being ‘a human’ – and where for some, dependent on personal situations and circumstances, the list is expanded to include a few other things as well.

Considering that needs are limited – we may actually be able to satisfy the needs of all the human beings on the planet – and it is known that we can. So – instead of trying to work with ‘wants&needs’ where the task seems impossible and full of ‘sorry’s, we have to draw the line somewhere’ – we could start with the part that IS possible – satisfying everyone’s needs – and only then design an additional system or model that draws lines for ‘wants’. Our current model is one where some are able to satisfy all their needs and most of their wants, while others are not supported in their basic needs – which, you have to admit, is quite an insane situation. Part of why this is allowed is due to… ‘wants&needs’.

Now – this blog is part of my ‘Meconomics’ series – so you can already guess where I am taking this discussion next… For this situation to be as it is – with so few raising their voice and spurring into action to change the status quo – I started wondering how the same point exists within ourselves. The same point, meaning: do we in fact have a clear understanding of the difference between ‘wants’ and ‘needs’ inside ourselves and do we approach ‘wants’ and ‘needs’ appropriately in our own personal lives?

True story: Earlier as I was writing this blog and came to the section of clarifying the words ‘wants’ and ‘needs’ – I first took the easy route of simply looking up the words in the dictionary and copy/pasting the definitions in my blog. But! I couldn’t use those definitions, because they would have perpetuated the confusion between the words rather than clarifying the difference between them. Have a look:

If the dictionary uses the word ‘want’ to clarify the word ‘need’ and uses the word ‘need’ to clarify the word ‘want’ – we can be sure we’re on to something. Does this mean that wants simply imply needs and that needs imply wants – because the dictionary says so? No. Remember, dictionaries will reflect our own language usage – so if the word ‘want’ has been used over time to indicate a ‘need’ – then it becomes an ‘accepted use of the word’ and is reflected in the dictionary as such. In the same way, the word ‘need’ has been used to describe ‘wants’ – and so it has become ‘normal’. What the dictionary then shows is how we have confused the meanings of the words ‘wants’ and ‘needs’ for ourselves and started using the terms as synonyms.

In my next blog I will continue exploring how the ‘merging’ of the words ‘wants’ and ‘needs’ as ‘wants&needs’ affects and influences us on a personal level so that we can get a better understanding of the world as it exists today within the principle 'as above, so below'.

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Top Economist says: “Universal Basic Income is Not Affordable”

This is an article by Paul De Grauwe translated from Dutch.

You can find the original article here: http://www.demorgen.be/opinie/een-universeel-basisinkomen-kan-nooit-van-de-grond-komen-a2166604/25mXp2/

A Universal Basic Income Will Never Happen

Top economist Paul De Grauwe, professor at the London School of Economics, writes weekly about people, the world, the economy.
30 December 2014

The idea to provide everyone with a basic income exerts a strong intellectual appeal towards both the left and right side of the political spectrum. The appeal for left is that a universal basic income that is sufficiently high can ban poverty. For the right, a universal basic income is popular because it will remove the unemployment trap. In the current system of unemployment benefits, the unemployed lose their benefits upon finding a job. That discourages the search for a job. This shortcoming disappears with a universal basic income. Because in that system, the unemployed retain their basic income after finding a job.

Affordability

With such broad support you would expect that the universal basic income is already a reality. But that is obviously not the case. And that has everything to do with its affordability. Due to the fact that in such a system everyone, both rich and poor, working and non-working, receive the same basic income, the government requires to organize a massive money stream.

A numerical example: Suppose that the universal basic income is 1000 EUR per month (which is not that much if it is intended to ban poverty entirely) and that the basic income is given to all adult Belgians. This would mean that government expenses would increase by 100 billion, or 25 percent of GDP.

The universal basic income of course makes it possible to save on large portions of social security. Unemployment benefits and benefits for illness can be scratched; we could also save on pensions. But an important part of social security is not dropped. For instance, health care, child support and the portion of pensions above 1000 EUR remain.

Andreas Tirez from the think-tank Liberales has done an interesting exercise on the subject. He came to the conclusion that after deducing the savings on social security that would become possible through the basic income, there is still a shortage of about 35 billion EUR. That is about 9% of GDP.

It then also means that, after the introduction of the basic income, tax revenue would have to increase by 35 billion. The total tax burden that now represents about 51% of GDP, will need to increase to 60% of GDP.

Weakening work incentives

One can argue over these numbers. Do they overestimate or underestimate the costs of a universal basic income? The reality will not be far off in my opinion.

A universal basic income that has the ambition to ban poverty from the world, is then immensely expensive. That doesn’t need to surprise you. To give the poor (a minority in society) a basic income, you have to also provide a basic income to the large majority that doesn’t need it. This leads to new problems. The working majority receives a basic income that stands loose from labor efforts, but will have to pay extra taxes (and not a small amount) on their labor incomes. And that is the best way to weaken work incentives.

Conclusion: The only realistic system is one where the basic income is limited to those who need it. A universal basic income will never happen.

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Fighting for Survival - Where is the Right to Life?

“The leader of a violent gang that controlled life inside one of America's most notorious jails testified that he directed guards motivated by sex and money to smuggle in drugs and cellphones and facilitate attacks on inmates who challenged his authority.

Tavon "Bulldog" White described a culture of corruption inside the centuries-old Baltimore City Detention Center, led by a gang that has its own language and laws and authorities. The Black Guerilla Family's hierarchy includes a "minister of education" who quizzes members on gang literature and a "minister of finance" who manages the profits sent by cellphones from behind bars.

The gang's smuggling schemes even fund the bail that frees gang members who can't pay to get sprung from jail, he testified this week.

Gang leaders, not guards, are the ultimate authority inside the jail, he said.”

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/inmate-sex-drugs-cash-fuel-jail-corruption-27348277

I really suggest reading the entire article as the snippets of stories being told in it are quite astounding. This is not the synopsis of a TV show, but an example of what actually takes place behind the walls and fences of a prison – it goes beyond what anyone could imagine scripting for a movie or a show. When jail time is seen as a solution to crime, this is the results we start seeing – not only do gang members ‘go back’ to a life of crime, they continue the same participation and behavior for the entire time of their incarceration. Now – I don’t mean to say it is like this for everyone. I’m sure there are those individuals who get a wake up call from spending time in prison – or in other words, who actually use that time to reflect on their lives, what they’ve done, who they’ve become and whether that’s really who they want to be.

But when criminal behavior is the result of lacking the financial means of doing anything else with one’s life, then being in prison is unlikely to facilitate any form of personal transformation – because they know that once they get out, they’re back to where they started,  however much they may want to change – their opportunities in life do not.

Reading some more on Baltimore, it’s clear that it is a city that is struggling with a high crime rate, in a second article, I came across he following:

“Interviews with community leaders and residents show that few are looking exclusively to police for the answer. Though many believe street-level officers should be more visible and work to strengthen ties in the communities they police, most point to jobs as the only way to reduce gun violence.

"A lot of these cats got dreams — they don't want to do this [drug dealing]," Lawrence Davis, 35, of the Coldstream-Homestead-Montebello neighborhood, said as he looked on at the shooting near City College. "There aren't enough opportunities, and this is all they know."

City Council President Bernard C. "Jack" Young said police need to boost foot patrols. But he placed much of the blame for the increase in violent crime on the economy.

"Until we're able to create employment opportunities for our citizens in Baltimore, and to address the drug problem that we have in Baltimore, I don't see where we're going to really get out of this," he said.”

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2013-12-29/news/bs-md-ci-year-end-crime-20131228_1_violent-crime-batts-lost-year

Can Baltimore wait for employment opportunities to be created to reduce its level of violent crime? Can we continue to entertain the illusion that it is possible that enough jobs can be created for everyone who needs one with the increasing tendency to replace jobs through labor saving technology? When the root of the problem is the need to survive then the immediate solution is to provide these means. Every other measure comes second – because those measures would facilitate a transition towards a new life – but no new life can be written if the right to life is not recognized in the act of giving a living income when no other source of income is available.

Visit/read:

http://livingincome.me
http://livingincomeguaranteed.wordpress.com/the-proposal/
https://www.youtube.com/user/LivingIncome
https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/117690749220880074672
http://www.twitter.com/LivingIncome

And watch:

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