If You Really Want to Close the Gap...

If you want to close the gap, you redistribute the money.

When Henry Ford doubled the wages of his workers, he did not redistribute his wealth. He redistributed the money.

"Wealth is what you have. Money is what you make."
Slim Fairview

What Henry Ford did was to launch the creation of the Middle Class.


What Really Created the Gap?

Some of the contributing factors to the wealth gap have taken place over the course of decades.

1.  Planned Obsolescence:  Forcing consumers to buy shoddy products to replace the shoddy products they bought the first time.

2.  Sending Jobs Overseas: Any one, two, or ten companies can outsource to cut costs to increase the bottom line.  However, as a national policy, this is bad.

No matter how much you cut costs, you won't sell a lot of Oldsmobiles in a country where people make $5, a day.

Witness Japan:  Japan sent jobs overseas.  The Japanese auto companies built Japanese cars in America.  They labeled the cars "Made in America". They sold Japanese cars to American consumers. (To American auto workers.)  The Japanese paid American workers American wages and still made a profit.  Those profits went to Japan.

"Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it."
Santayana.

"Those who remember history are able to repeat it."
Slim  Fairview.

The Japanese did what Henry Ford did.  Made it possible for American workers to afford to buy Japanese cars.

China also created a consumer class.  
China created an investor class.
China gave 800 million Chinese people a vested interest in the success of the Chinese economy.

3.  NAFTA :
NAFTA was bad for the Economy.
NAFTA cost American jobs.
NAFTA was a disaster.
Nancy Pelosi on 
Reliable Sources on 
CNN before the election.

4.  Conspicuous Consumption and the vulgar displays of wealth as consumers celebrated the lifestyles of the rich and famous.  (And embraces a television show by the name, Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.)


SOLUTIONS:

Tax cuts for the rich to enable them to invest money doesn't work.  It can't work.

The American Widget Co. will not hire one additional Widget Maker until it has an order for one widget more than it can produce when operating at maximum capacity and optimal efficiency.

"If you grow faster than your market, you tie up capital. If your market grows faster than you do, you lose market share."
The Quotations of Slim Fairview (c).

Tax benefits to companies for increasing wages will do more to close the gap by increasing wages and benefiting the economy. Through increased economic activity business will recoup the outlay.  But there is a twist that will make this work.  That is why I wrote

Tax Policy to Increase Wages $5 an hour. Now!


Invest in people starting their own businesses because small businesses (SMEs) create jobs.

A worker makes a paycheck.
A worker with a raise makes a bigger paycheck.
The owner of a business makes a paycheck and a profit.

Profits grow the business.
The business hires more people.
and so on.

The Multiplier Effect

And this only scratches the surface.  The reality of the economic benefits will illuminate the rest.

Ascribed Value 

Limiting Demand

Another Hidden Inflation



Regards,

Slim


If you find anything here to be helpful, please don't hesitate to send me a really tricked-out Mac Book and to tuck a few dollars into the envelope along with the thank you note.
Slim.

Bob Asken
Box 33
Pen Argyl, PA 18072



Copyright  © 2019
Robert Asken
All rights reserved.

The Next Challenge is Here

First:  This in an Economics Lesson.  

Focus on the Economics ONLY!

The haves are increasing arithmetically. The have-nots are increasing geometrically.

The real challenge is not the difference in the number of dollars between the haves and the have-nots.

The real challenge is the difference between the number of people between the haves and the have-nots.

This is not a sustainable model. Period!

What Politicians discuss is only what Western Nations can wrap their brains around.

Politicians say Mexicans take jobs Americans don't want.

Politicians say people in the Middle East are escaping war, genocide, and starvation.

Politicians say that migration in parts of Asia is the results of ethnic groups escaping ethnic based violence.

And of course, the scourge of the Earth, human traffickers.


Now, Remember when I said the real challenge is the difference in the number of people between the haves and the have-nots.

To grasp the concept, we will reference a few principles of physics to establish the metaphor.

We are witnessing an incontrovertible law of physics.

1.  People are moving from a greater concentration to a lesser concentration.  The high-density impact on emerging nations.  Populations are increasing--land mass is not.

2. Money. Money in the industrialised nations will reach  a saturation point if it has not done so already.  At this point, it will be necessary to move money from industrialised nations to emerging nations.

This was one of the proponents in my article Greek Proposal. The article is located here along with Dear. Mr. Varoufakis, and Antigone Defeats Merkel. To understand Europe, one must read Antigone Defeats Merkel and, by extension, Antigone. To understand Merkel and Germany, one must read The Anatomy of Human. Destructiveness. by Erich Fromm.  


Solving the Emerging World Crisis

Forming an E 20 

Emerging Nations Economic Union

Third World First. Okay? 

Micro-Finance: $10. to the Road to Prosperity

G - 20 Summit! E - 20 Invited?

Warmest regards,

Slim

slimfairview@yahoo.com   

Copyright © 2015 Bob Asken
All rights reserved

Limiting Demand: Slim's Paradigm

In my article “Mr. Putin’s Economic Theatre of Operation, I cited “limiting demand” to explain a Russian Iranian Oil Deal.

For most people, supply and demand is the simple concept of economics:

If more sellers (supply) show up than buyers (demand), the sellers must drop their prices to sell their goods.  They are competing with other sellers.  The more perishable the product, the faster they must sell it, the more willing they are to drop their prices.

If more buyers show up than sellers, the price goes up because buyers to not want to go home empty handing. Specially if the product is in great demand.  That is the premise.

Now on to limiting demand.

Slim’s Paradigm

“Limit supply and drive up prices. Limit demand, bypass the market, stablise the economy.”  ~ Slim Fairview

Look at what is happening from the standpoint of the two articles I wrote on the subject:

Putin’s Overture in Eurasia Minor

Mr. Putin’s Economic Theatre of Operation

In addition:

China: Not the What the Where.

What is happening? 

Russia and China: Nat Gas Deal

Russia and Iran:  Oil Deal

Russia and Germany: Nat Gas Deal

China and Germany:  Have we forgotten that China and Germany are trading partners?

If Slim’s Paradigm becomes the new normal, all the forecast numbers will have to be recast

.

A few years ago I wrote an article “Energy Independence” (Then What?)  In that article I said that the Middle East must find new customers to protect oil revenue.  China was the obvious choice.

I also wrote, “It is a universal condition. We refuse to accept that all alliances and enmities are transitory.” The Quotations of Slim Fairview © 2014.

The Global Economic Landscape is shifting. Please allow me to present a soupçon of evidence:

NAFTA

OPEC

APEC

EEU

Eurasian Economic Union

And, soon…

A Union of Emerging Nations Economic Unions. 

And, an 

E-20

The world is fragmenting into economic (not military) power zones.  Asia, Middle East, Africa, Europe, Eurasia, Latin America, North America.

One important factor of the new paradigm and the recalculating of the numbers:  it will replace the following, specially regarding China.

“When the numbers are bad, the Wall Street experts gloat.  When the numbers are good, the Wall Street Experts doubt the numbers.” ~ Slim Fairview.

The concept of limiting demand will enable long term economic planning with a reasonable degree of stability by rendering market forces irrelevant.

In addition, we seldom see ourselves as others see us.  Look at us from the perspective of emerging nations.

• ·       Chinese People have suffered poverty and hunger.
• 
  
• ·       Russian People have suffered poverty and hunger.
• 
  
• ·       Americans are rolling in dough.
• 
  

Remember! The perspective of people starving to death in emerging nations.

I will explain what I mean by limiting demand using golf as a metaphor.  

This is a lesson about Economics.  Golf is a metaphor.  The takeaway is: Economics!

Golf Course # 1.

Public (municipal)

Fees: $50, per round in groups of four.

Anyone can play.

The demand exceeds supply.

Many are turned away.

Golf Course # 2.

For Profit.

Anyone can play.

Demand often exceeds supply.

Fees: $50, per round base rate plus extra fees with high demand.

If few people want to play, the fee is $50. As the demand rises, the fees may rise to $100 or $150 per round.  Many can’t afford the higher fees.  Many are turned away.

Golf Course # 3.

Private

Fees: $50, per round.

Demand limited to 500 members.

Not exclusive, not for the rich, not restricted.  Simply Private.

Demand is limited, the fees are always $50, and everyone gets to play.

It should be obvious to all that price increases are more sever among those who can least afford it.  As this applies to food, in many industrialised nations there is a fixed or limited demand and a stable supply, and a marketplace that can blunt the negative impact on the less fortunate.

In the US and other industrialised nations there is certainly poverty and hunger. 

In Emerging Nations:

·       A Flood

·       A Drought

·       A Crop Failure

·       A Migration of Starving Refugees

·       Widespread Famine

·       Global Food Aid (Marginally helpful)

·       Population Displacement

·       Starvation and Death

People lying on stretchers, skin and bones, unable to stand or even sit up because their bones are too fragile to support their weight, mothers clutching to the bodies of their dead babies, do not care if we've had 5 servings of vegetables, the unfairness of golf, and never want to hear, “Childhood obesity in America is caused by poverty.”

As the world moves into Economic Power Zones, survival will come from “limiting demand”.  This is to insure that economic stability will prevail.

Regards,

Slim

slimfairview@yahoo.com

Copyright © 2014 Robert Asken Slim Fairview

All rights reserved.

Childhood Obesity in America: A Moral Issue

What do people around the world see?  Believe?

Poor people in third world nations and in emerging nations do not analyze graphs and data.  They know what they see around them and what they hear from their leaders; and from the opposition.

If leaders say the US feeds poor starving children around the world, will they believe it if they are surrounded by poor starving children?  Will they believe the opposition leaders who tell them that the US does not feed poor starving children?

On to emerging nations: those nations with Internet access.  What do they hear, what do they see?  America suffers [suffers?] from an epidemic of childhood obesity.

To the rest of the world, childhood obesity in America is a moral issue.

What makes this a moral issue is that they also hear that 40% of American children go to be hungry.  Why?  Because they have no food.   

Elsewhere, being fat is a sign of prosperity.  They hear that in America, obesity is a sign of poverty.

It is about time that we rethink the way we see ourselves.

O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion:
What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us,
An' ev'n devotion! -- Robert Burns

Translation:

And would some Power the small gift give us
To see ourselves as others see us!
It would from many a blunder free us,
And foolish notion:
What airs in dress and gait would leave us,
And even devotion! 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_a_Louse

Regards, 

Slim

slimfairview@yahoo.com

Copyright (c) 2012 Slim Fairview