tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9959776.post1593795793820344337..comments2024-02-15T04:42:41.606+00:00Comments on James' Empty Blog: The price of everything and the value of nothing.James Annanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04318741813895533700noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9959776.post-18805955492719762722008-02-17T01:35:00.000+00:002008-02-17T01:35:00.000+00:00Thanks for a lovely reflection, Jules.Let me add s...Thanks for a lovely reflection, Jules.<BR/><BR/>Let me add some of my own idiosyncratic observations about America.<BR/><BR/>Yes, everything is incredibly cheap here and yes many people who have access to lots of stuff complain constantly about the prices of things that are essentially so cheap it's a wonder anybody bothers with the transaction costs. These are fair observations.<BR/><BR/>Yet there are a lot of people in financial trouble. This is usually about lost income, debt and/or medicine, not about the stuff that clutters up our lives. The lack of public healthcare and the tying of school quality to property values places a great deal of pressure on the individual and the family to maintain at the highest level of consumption they can manage. These pressures don't exist to the same degree elsewhere. <BR/><BR/>I don't recommend this country to people with a choice who have children lack an MD or a vast inherited fortune. <BR/><BR/>Irene and I have no children so we live very well on not very much money, but I would never be happy sending a child to a school in my district.<BR/><BR/>This immense pressure to consume enough to be allowed into the next level of physical safety, health security and education makes for a very productive, very consumptive society. (On the whole it's not a very happy one either.)<BR/><BR/>To some extent, Americans get the blame for all of this but we are also the world's sacrificial lamb. Under the economic model which dominates the world, somebody has to consume all the stuff everybody is producing. America is not just the world's cop (which is increasingly unwelcome) but the world's customer (which is still welcome).<BR/><BR/>It's amazing how little inflation we have seen in practice with the plummeting dollar. I read this as the rest of the world's addiction to our mad pace of consumption. It's peculiar; our dollar is in decline and everybody else suffers. The world is as addicted to America's peculiarly unhappy "affluence" as we are ourselves.<BR/><BR/>It seems unlikely that Europeans are yet sufficiently alienated to take up the slack if perpetual "growth" in America falters. So even in our decline the world revolves around us.<BR/><BR/>We still have plenty of nothin here in Texas though. Hope you can visit soon.Michael Tobishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08229460438349093944noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9959776.post-40367211546800679862008-02-13T23:38:00.000+00:002008-02-13T23:38:00.000+00:00*Shrug*You asked what looked like a straightforwar...*Shrug*<BR/>You asked what looked like a straightforwards question, I answered it in a straightforwards manner. <BR/><BR/>REad the post- the American lifestyle of Jules friends or whomever is luxurious by comparison with the Japanese lifestyle she is more used to. But I cannot tell which level of society she is talking about, and I guarantee that many, many Americans live in small apartments without fresh tomatoes etc etc. <BR/><BR/>You correctly note that Americans can think of themselves as poor, despite their wealth, however these poor americans are not comparing themselves to starving Africans. The relation to happiness is that that is one of the ways Americans are goaded into consumption etc, by the idea of increased happiness. And Jules comparison of what people have and have not got, is related to happiness insofar as it seems people can be happy with stuff, and without stuff.guthriehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17992984293423290387noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9959776.post-11584131085006037062008-02-12T22:30:00.000+00:002008-02-12T22:30:00.000+00:00guthrie -If "making ends meet" means struggling to...guthrie -<BR/><BR/>If "making ends meet" means struggling to acquire a luxurious lifestyle, that is a distortion of meaning. The point is that Americans can be goaded into thinking that they are poor, when, in fact, they are wealthy compared to just about any other people in the world. To prove this you only have to look at international economic data on purchasing power parity, which is the pertinent economic measure.<BR/><BR/>Whether this wealth makes people happy is a completely different issue.Tom Chttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11169660946573910095noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9959776.post-72058863249515953082008-02-12T20:34:00.000+00:002008-02-12T20:34:00.000+00:00Yes they can. The point is that many americans fi...Yes they can. <BR/>The point is that many americans find it hard to make ends meet when the society they are in demands certain things of them, or rather, they require them to function well, eg a house, car, healthcare, etc.<BR/><BR/>If you want to make up an absolute scale of luxury and "making ends meet", then be my guest. But what counts is the society we live in, and what peoples expectations are.<BR/>This is why peopls happiness has not realy increased, despite the "incredible luxury" that they have.guthriehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17992984293423290387noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9959776.post-24851619681591943582008-02-12T19:24:00.000+00:002008-02-12T19:24:00.000+00:00guthrie -Read the first two sentences of her post....guthrie -<BR/><BR/>Read the first two sentences of her post. These comments and your comments cannot both be true.Tom Chttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11169660946573910095noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9959776.post-19139579775077862042008-02-12T18:26:00.000+00:002008-02-12T18:26:00.000+00:00Tom C- I am not american, but I have friends over ...Tom C- I am not american, but I have friends over there. What I know is that healthcare costs keep going up, housing is expensive etc. Also, the income etc indicators show that the middle classes have been badly squeezed in the past decade or two. So yes, it is correct.guthriehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17992984293423290387noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9959776.post-54717577453828956882008-02-11T22:21:00.000+00:002008-02-11T22:21:00.000+00:00OK, fair enough observations. I'm curious what yo...OK, fair enough observations. I'm curious what you think when you hear US politicians (most often from the leftward party, if you catch my drift) say something like "folks in the the middle class are struggling to make ends meet". Do you think that is true in any meaningful sense, or is it an attempt to arouse self-pity and win votes?Tom Chttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11169660946573910095noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9959776.post-10779413709310145642008-02-11T14:59:00.000+00:002008-02-11T14:59:00.000+00:00Come visit, you can reach the walls but not the ce...Come visit, you can reach the walls but not the ceiling. We live in a small old townhouse and only really use about half the space. <BR/><BR/>OTOH, my grandmother used to carefully and neatly package the garbage until a nephew took the nice box home to mom (grandma's sister) thinking it was a present. <BR/><BR/>As to Zen, or not Zen, it is really a question about what beans you count. Having a big house to many people is a sign they have done better than their parents, etc. Other times, other values.EliRabetthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07957002964638398767noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9959776.post-12443760148374994062008-02-11T03:05:00.000+00:002008-02-11T03:05:00.000+00:00Seems kind of pointless to judge Americans when ot...Seems kind of pointless to judge Americans when others having less is not a result of their choice. What do you think about what Al Gore has James? I suppose if you actually achieved the Buddhist or Tao realization you simply wouldn't care about having things. But my guess is that only one in 100,000 have that realization (that's about as accurate as climate sensitivity). For the rest of us, the pretention of spurning materialism is just another way to feed our egos.Tilo Reberhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12340317421180002978noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9959776.post-56486137714600380632008-02-08T17:23:00.000+00:002008-02-08T17:23:00.000+00:00Thank you for the observations. At the cost of sou...Thank you for the observations. At the cost of sounding unpatriotic, and probably aiding the terrorists, my general notion is that many of my fellow citizens are arrogant and ignorant, and have been taught by our media to desire many, many material things. My house is considered small by local standards, but would surely be a mansion by Japanese standards. And please don't forget our bloated sense of entitlement: we complain about $3/gallon gasoline, but gladly pay maybe twice that much for a plastic bottle of water, which is immediately discarded. <BR/><BR/>I am certainly part of the problem; my house is full of "stuff", although I am proud to say that most of the clutter is books, but I am occasionally reminded that just a few decades back in my life, we were perfectly happy with a single car, a black and white television, and we tended to cook things from scratch. <BR/><BR/>And, I am only one generation removed from those who weathered the Great Depression. My grandparents picked cotton in California's Central Valley for pennies a day, and often went hungry. I wonder how our present-day society would cope?<BR/><BR/>I have always appreciated the open spaces of the desert of our southwest. I always smiled a bit when a busload of Japanese tourists would emerge from their tourbus, cameras snapping, and looking amazed. I am a little more cognizant of where they are coming from now. Thanks for the post!Garry Hayeshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00531226195147986457noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9959776.post-40813877306266691062008-02-08T17:07:00.000+00:002008-02-08T17:07:00.000+00:00Jules -I have no precise idea of where that photo ...Jules -<BR/><BR/>I have no precise idea of where that photo was taken, but I've lived there off and on my whole life. The desert is not exactly "nothing," but it is usefully close. It is few enough things that it is feasible to start to understand how they might all fit together. That, for me, is the essence of the desert aesthetic.John Fleckhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01945772782727225745noreply@blogger.com