What does one TRILLION dollars look like?

[mtmynd]

If I said ONE TRILLION dollars was 1,000 BILLION dollars, the figure is so large that it becomes meaningless... to a degree. But given the fact that the National Debt is $15+ TRILLION DOLLARS, click this interesting little site and multiply that ONE TRILLION by 15 and see what a load that truly is.

http://www.pagetutor.com/trillion/index.html

Now, someone, anyone, please explain to me how this country can EVER repay a debt as large as FIFTEEN TRILLION DOLLARS ??? And keep in mind, that is ONLY the debt incurred by our National Government. It is estimated that the entire NATION's DEBT is $56.6 TRILLION !!! The whole load that every person, every local government, every state government and toss in the federal government and we have an impossible debt that, in all seriousness, will NEVER be paid off, even by 25% without completely devastating the entire economy.

Can it be a FACT that a debt load as enormous as it really is, ever going to be paid off? Include the debt load other than the National Debt and clearly and logically answer the looming question: HOW is this debt going to be paid and WHO do we owe the largest amount to?

It seems to me, we have reached a point where the Monopoly Game is over... the largest Corporations have won the game and have all the money. The rest of us can make an effort to continue playing but in reality we'd be playing only to placate the Corporate Powers that be... give them a wee bit more to console them. How else can we continue deceiving ourselves that an amount this large is payable IF ONLY we cut back on discretionary spending and eliminate the earned benefits, i.e. Social Security and the retirements of millions of Americans... add to that eliminating our military budget, our obligations to not only our citizens but to other countries that have become somewhat dependent upon our funding to their causes because they are our allies. We'd still not come close to putting a comfortable dent in a debt of that magnitude without an austerity program that would be ruinous to our civilization as we know it.

Why our politicians on both sides of the aisle keep harping about cutting back, cutting back, cutting back sounds like foolishness to me. Since the debt of the entire country is so large that the majority of people have no idea HOW large it is and HOW unpayable it is, what is the alternative?

Can the 21st Century readjust the MEANING of money to a more sustainable and practical ideal? Is not money as we have been so used to dealing with, become so OVER VALUED and OVER PRICED that the reality of using money as an exchange for labor has made labor so UNATTAINABLE that there is the resultant problem of far TOO MANY people unemployed or underemployed... the money has become a party favor for the Corporate Powers to measure their own worth, the other 99% be damned.

Despite the fact that there are large numbers of not only blue collar workers but add to that well educated college graduates who are sharing the unemployed ranks points to the FACT that our money system can no longer afford to keep up this OVER VALUED attitude towards money itself. There has got to be a monumental shift in our value system. Remember, money is used as a value for labor, period. There is no thing on Earth that has value other than our HU'MAN LABOR used to mine it, grow it, create it, teach it, preach it or any other hu'man service that is dependent upon money to exist and flourish.

Currently there is not enough currency to sustain not only our debt load, but our people's need for food, shelter and security... all labor intensive needs that EVERY HU'MAN should be entitled to.

Our economic system was/is devised to use currency to pay for labor. Overvalue that currency and the majority are left out of the loop because that product, money, is too expensive to pay for the labor needed to sustain a civilization and it's requirements of food, shelter, health and security.

It's a ridiculous system which the world is quickly realizing is no longer affordable as it is to continue using as a fair system that encompasses the people. We need to devalue the money so more of it is reaching the people who are doing without or with far too little. If far fewer people were needed, and our modern ways of accomplishing this has been thru robotics, (which is labor intensive and does not have the same requirements as hu'manity requires), then the value of the dollar would need to sustain the average family, not unlike 100 years ago, when one worker was normally able to pay for a family's upkeep.

I'm not suggesting a return to 100 years ago but only to put the present course we're on in perspective. Our economy and that of the majority of the world is based upon labor and plenty of it to keep purchasing power running at full steam. That was good for a national economy, but was a lousy trade off for those families and workers who had little to no savings... far too busy buying which in turn turned shopping areas into Cathedrals of Consumerism, where nearly everybody had access to money to do the labor required to sustain growth.

The growth seems to have matured. People are sick and tired of debt, sick and tired of dead-end jobs that they HAVE to take to pay their debts, and have seen that this endless cycle of buying, buying and more buying has prevented savings at all. It's been a dis-ease that has gotten to the point where so many people's debt has become a crushing slow-death that many are unable to crawl out from.

The same with cities and our states... labor is still in demand but there is no money because the VALUE is not equal to the pay necessary to sustain the necessary realities in our modern society. The 21st Century is upon us and we're still working for and relying upon an outdated economic system that was great for the time it was in use. But today, with the upheavals the world is going thru, and the majority may be attributable to the labor being unaffordable at the expense of paying off banks and other money lenders at rates set in the 20th Century.

If we don't expand our probabilities beyond that of yesterday, we will never be able to confront tomorrow. There is on the horizon a massive shakeup of the value systems of the last century that will ripple throughout the world markets on a scale never before seen in our lifetimes. The sooner and more agreeable that we forge ahead with new ideas and a re-polished value system based upon the real needs of our new social concerns, the less likely millions will be hurt by the transformation of the economic systems of the world.

CBL

[stilltrucking]

Not to worry compadre, I'll pay off the debt if I can just find someone to break a 100 trillion dollar bill for me.

I read an interesting magazine article the other day about The End of Money. Things run together in my mind sometimes TV, Books, I forget where I came across it. Maybe two different sources. I remember one of the things he mentioned was the end of growth, and running out of phosphate fertilizer. Maybe it was not a magazine article, it might have been something I saw on Bill Moyer's Journal.

[mtmynd]

I'm not fully convinced that using plastic for currency without currency backing it up would not solve our problems... and it just may be doing just that. Our SS and other monies are taken out and put in our accounts and who knows if there is any 'gold' to back up any of it? We may be running on plastic and not even realize it or even give a dang. We just might be a numbers world based on nothing else.

[stilltrucking]

You got a better grip on it than I do Cecil. I do not mean that to blow smoke at you. Not sure what that expression means "blow smoke" to flatter someone or bullsh*t them maybe.
I read somewhere that gold is not money.
Not sure if that is what you are saying?
I am not smart about money, way too emotional about it I am.


Please pardon the tangential remark but:
That 100 trillion dollar bill fascinates me, what heck are those three things piled on top of each other? Looks like three rocks or boulders to me.

[mtmynd]

I sometimes think too much, I think. I have a need to share some of my thinkings while others I keep zipped up like a 100 trillion dollar Zimbabwe bill in a calf-skin wallet from Peru.

Those stones stacked on that bill looks similar to this, doncha think? (speaking of thinking... )

[stilltrucking]

Why is your picture titled "road to columbus.jpg"? Columbus NM?

I try to keep my fear zipped up like chopped smoked oysters in a tin.
"Whatever will be will be" singsr doris day
while judy garland says "lions and tigers and bears oh my."


Watched Charlie Rose today. he had the Simpson/Bowles guys on talking about the debt. The name Grover Norquist came up a lot. 95 percent of congress has signed Norquist's no new taxes pledge. It is pretty twisted. Or so it seems to me. The republs talk about eliminating expenditures but they do not t see the tax loop holes of the super rich as expenditures.

[mtmynd]

Yes. Columbus, NM... the old 'back road' which has since been paved. Can't recall the hiway number at this time and too lazy to look it up. It's Sat morn and I've fed the dogs and the birds and now it's time to feed Soo & myself. How about an egg omelet with cheese and sauteed onions and 'shrooms... a side of potatoes and a couple of strip of turkey bacon..? that might sell.

enjoy, amigo... and hell yes about Grover... amazing control over our congressional Repubs. The Repubs really do speak with forked tongue. Honestly.

[stilltrucking]

Thanks Cecil. I had fried matzos this morning. I will send you some in exchange.

Forked tongue indeed.

There is no truth anymore there are no more facts. We Live in a reality based community

, The New York Times Magazine article by writer Ron Suskind, quoting an unnamed aide to George W. Bush (later attributed to Karl Rove[1]):


The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."[2]

I don't know if you read Doonesbury but this is a pretty good strip I thought. He created a site called My Facts Dot Com.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/101618725

[mtmynd]

i'm not equipped to assimilate this "reality-based community"... it sounds like a corruption to take over anything that doesn't resemble nature, nature being something to be fearful of. Birds that might attack you when least expected, dogs that charge out of the shadows and pierce the necks of the unsuspecting, fish that revolt over being caught jumping into boats and ships by the millions adding enough weight to sink such floating death camps. That's why we are destroying the rain forests to make air so rare that it will be more valuable than gold and eliminate the birds and beasts of the world.

but please, J.T., fear not nature but embrace it for it's wisdom to survive idiots and the ignorant who believe in fairy tales and mythologies based upon these reality-based revolutionary scum that longs to chain and imprison all that disagree with their heretical nonsense. It's simply not right, dammit!

[stilltrucking]

All I got to fear is myself Cecil. I have met the enemy and he are me.

Karl Rove reminds me of the Pillsbury Dough boy.

Kind of like a vampire dougboy.

I bet he is a hell of a nice guy were u to meet him, a good father, a wonderful husband, a better man than me no doubt.

i'm not equipped to assimilate this "reality-based community"... it sounds like a corruption to take over anything that doesn't resemble nature, nature being something to be fearful of. Birds that might attack you when least expected, dogs that charge out of the shadows and pierce the necks of the unsuspecting, fish that revolt over being caught jumping into boats and ships by the millions adding enough weight to sink such floating death camps. That's why we are destroying the rain forests to make air so rare that it will be more valuable than gold and eliminate the birds and beasts of the world.

but please, J.T., fear not nature but embrace it for it's wisdom to survive idiots and the ignorant who believe in fairy tales and mythologies based upon these reality-based revolutionary scum that longs to chain and imprison all that disagree with their heretical nonsense. It's simply not right, dammit!

Cenacle wrote an amazing poem called Entropy. I have the link to it be back later with it in the meantime

I been listening to Warren Zevon's "Run straight down" also about entropy

Leaves me feeling like the fool on the hill in the beatles song

[stilltrucking]

version two


All I got to fear is me. . I have met the enemy and he are me.

Karl Rove reminds me of the Pillsbury Dough boy.

Kind of like a vampire dougboy.

I bet he is a hell of a nice guy were u to meet him, a good father, a wonderful husband, a better man than me no doubt.

i'm not equipped to assimilate this "reality-based community"... it sounds like a corruption to take over anything that doesn't resemble nature, nature being something to be fearful of. Birds that might attack you when least expected, dogs that charge out of the shadows and pierce the necks of the unsuspecting, fish that revolt over being caught jumping into boats and ships by the millions adding enough weight to sink such floating death camps. That's why we are destroying the rain forests to make air so rare that it will be more valuable than gold and eliminate the birds and beasts of the world.

but please, J.T., fear not nature but embrace it for it's wisdom to survive idiots and the ignorant who believe in fairy tales and mythologies based upon these reality-based revolutionary scum that longs to chain and imprison all that disagree with their heretical nonsense. It's simply not right, dammit!

well said. I forgot to mention that,

Sorry if I am going off on a tangent again but.
Cenacle wrote an amazing poem called Entropy. I have to find a link to it
be back later with it
in the meantime

I been listening to Warren Zevon's "Run straight down" also about entropy

Leaves me feeling like the fool on the hill in the beatles song





check out Cenacles 7 poems that mention Entropy
http://studioeight.tv/phpbb/search.php? ... mit=Search

more on negative entropy

Negative Entropy


However living things behave in oppsite manner. All living things attempt to modify their environment for their own needs, by creating what for them is order. In 1943 Erwin Schrödinger, Nobel Lauriate in Physics, used the concept of “negative entropy” in his popular-science book What is life? A living system imports negentropy and stores it. Life feeds on negative entropy!

http://www.bangalorenotes.com/negative_entropy.htm

]NEGATIVE ENTROPY AND SUSTAINABILITY[url]

[stilltrucking]

not sure if my dots are too far to make a connection for you to what you wrote

Concluding Remarks

Life on Earth was sustainable before the industrial revolution and deforestation because the entropy of the Biosphere was decreasing continuously. This was so due to the fact that human beings were still mainly dependent on biological processes fro their survival and growth. Stable and sustainable civilization like the Chinese and the Indian, were built on such technologies. The present crisis of climate change, which is leading to the extinction of life on Earth, is due to the fact that in the last 200 years non-biological, entropy-increasing technology have become dominant.

ibid

[stilltrucking]

yes dam it
it is going according to the laws of nature not man
I don't know why I take comfort in that fact

I am a sick puppy.