Focusing yesterday on "Dead Flowers" by the Stones (covered by several other groups, over the years), because while recently reading and typing here, & considering Sam Polk's article about wealth as an "addiction" on Wall Street, it kept bringing to mind that line,
"I'll be in my basement room, with a needle and a spoon" ... the first time I heard that song, was somewhat shocked, and thought, "Ooh -- are they singing about drugs??" But I can see, now, that the metaphor is used to describe the most depressed and despairing that a person could be -- an analogy. Not about drugs; about despair.
That song is done in the style of American country music -- (Keith loves country, as well as blues) --
(Keith Richards; Gram Parsons)
...and "Dead Flowers" has the same effect as blues music: it's sad and dark, but you feel good after you hear it. It has the opposite effect, from what one might expect, in a pleasantly "undercover" sort of way.
(I always thought it was "when you're sitting back, in your long pink Cadillac" -- but it's "...in your rose pink Cadillac" ...)
Rose pink.
Sam Polk raises some interesting questions -- if greedy Wall Street people, one of whom is quoted, "I don't have the brain capacity to think about the system as a whole, I only want whatever gets the most $$ for this company" -- something like that -- can crash the American Economy and affect Economies all over the world, (i.e., 2008), Polk asserts this is dangerous to the public, just like a drunk driver is dangerous to the public. (Only on a much bigger scale, one might add...)
I want to re-study that -- Polk's points -- another day; meanwhile I had thoughts about another aspect to globalization, the race to the bottom, and the current Unemployment Thing-a-ma-jig in the U.S.
Lots of people talk, these days, about their concerns that America is --
becoming like a Third World country, or --
not "becoming like," but --
actually becoming a Third World country,
because of income disparity:
a few rich people at the "top," with thrillions of dollars,
and 99% of the people "at the bottom," struggling paycheck-to-paycheck.
That didn't used to be us.
That used to be Mexico.
Now, that's us.
Although -- we'd have to admit, while we've moved in that direction, it isn't that bad here. We are not The Congo. We don't step over the sick and the dying in our streets. We're not the Third World. Not really. Yet.
A recent article about the disappearance (pulverization?) of the American Middle Class attracted Reader Comments including these two:
(John M., Brooklyn) COMMENT: The truth is that the traditional middle class life style is disappearing. Unemployment and underemployment are becoming the norm. We can all "plan" until the cows come home but many of us are one health catastrophe away from destitution, even if we have done everything right....
The social contract has been broken by the financial elite. The idea that the vast middle levels can work, save and have a decent life and legacy to pass on to our kids is finished. This model wasn't profitable enough, so we're the ones to pay.
--(Erik, Santa Barbara, CA) COMMENT: The new economy......Employees get the shaft, Investors get bailed out, and Management gets the golden parachute.
All the above is tragic.
We are in a race to the bottom, WHY????
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Those two Reader Comments in particular highlight, I believe, some concerns which we all think about sometimes -- but this idea came to me a few weeks ago -- that maybe the reason for globalization is so that we can have world peace and no terrorism.
The idea is probably to --
bring up
the economies in parts of the world where they're more poor,
so that they can be less poor
and they won't attack us,
because they will be less desperate.
That would be one explanation for why many jobs were "shipped overseas" as people say. Bringing other countries "up" is causing temporary "down"-ness in the U.S. economy -- ("take me down, little Susie...") because it's like, Where are the Careers? Oh -- in India.
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Is that it?
-30-
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