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June 96, #148 ->
Side Effects
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Technocracy ->
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June 96, #148 ->
Side Effects
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A headline in The Portland Oregonian reads: "OREGON PRISON INDUSTRY BOOMING." As of March 29, 1996, the actual number of prison inmates in Oregon reached 8,182. Here's a look at Oregon's prison inmate forecast:
One Oregon citizen was appalled at the reference to prisons as a growth industry for the state. In a letter to the editor he wrote: "...The goal should not be figuring out how to house 10,000 more inmates. The goal should be how to keep these 10,000 people from going to jail..."
Anthony Lewis, N.Y. Times News Service,writes: "Pete Wilson's three strikes and you're out is making California the world capital of incarceration. California used to spend six times as much on higher education as on prisons. Now the prison budget is larger. Prison guards have a powerful union and now earn more than public school teachers. A guard at San Quentin has the same annual salary as an assistant professor at the University of California: $45,000."
Even if the prison business is booming, it can boom only so far. Who will pay the taxes to support this extra growth? Not the prisoners or the unemployed.
By now almost everyone realizes that machines eliminate jobs. At last, the new slaves are taking over and we should rejoice, but our government in its antiquity makes little allowance in its budget for massive unemployment. Many displaced workers will try to survive any way they can, even if it means breaking the law, and often they wind up in prison. Instead of structuring the prison system to prepare these unfortunates for a kinder, gentler life once they get back on the outside, our prisons turn them into hopeless, classless human beings who quite often must commit more crime to survive once back in the unemployment jungle. Besides, by the time today's newly incarcerated have served their sentences, jobs will be more obsolete than before as our unstoppable technology marches on.
Why, when we aren't threatened by war, do we keep such a gigantic military establishment. Can you imagine the unemployment that would result, the thousands more people roaming around looking for jobs, if we cut back our military forces and its attendant office personnel, including those stashed around the world! The companies responsible for manufacturing military materiel from uniforms to body bags, plus military hardware, would shrink from lack of sales, and more unemployment would ensue; but our dwindling natural resources could stand a break from mindless exploitation.
And if we prepared for peace instead of war, what would we do with all the military hardware we've accumulated? Dump it in the ocean? (We've done that before.) Recycle it? Sell it? After all, arms sales are big business for the Pentagon. The U.S. has been the world's top arms dealer for years. Cutting out our unnecessary military expenditures, from weapons to bloated pensions to housing for military personnel, would be the biggest case of downsizing in history. And the above-listed side effects of military downsizing skim only the surface.
In the civilian sector, the CEOs in charge of the companies that are downsizing are getting fat pay raises. Compared with all those laid off, their body count amounts to nothing more than a small splash, but they have oceans of income. However, they can spend that income on only so much produce; after all, there must be a limit to what they can consume. So who will buy the rest of it? The part that isn't destroyed to keep prices up? Not the downsized workers.
In the past, tobacco companies had such a powerful lobby, they kept the political arena in tow. They exerted so much influence on the people, many started smoking just to be in vogue. Check out old movies. Almost all the stars smoked—at least in the movies. In a February, 1947 issue of Cosmopolitan, a cigarette ad reads: "More doctors smoke Camels than any other brand." And, "Your 'T-Zone' will tell you...T for taste...T for throat...that's your proving ground for any cigarette. See if Camels don't suit your 'T-Zone' to a 'T'" And the accompanying picture shows a handsome doctor on foot, bracing himself against a winter snowstorm, medical bag in hand, making a house call on Christmas Eve. House call? On Christmas Eve? What a sense of humor, although a recent newspaper article claimed that competition is so stiff now, some doctors are making house calls again to stay in business.
We now know the terrible side effects of long-term smoking, but what about the side effects of not smoking! Now that people are cutting down or cutting it out altogether, how can the government survive without those cigarette taxes? And will our politicians have to forgo PAC money from tobacco conglomerates? Sad. And what about those whose jobs depend on the tobacco industry. The cigarette magnates will find a way to survive: push cigarette smoking on third-world countries; raise the price of cigarettes at home; continue with their clever ads, such as "Be Happy, go Lucky." (The writer who thought that slogan up for Lucky Strike cigarettes years ago was paid several thousands of dollars for four words.) But will these kings of all drug pushers go to prison for their folly? Not likely. The poor souls caught with a few grams of cocaine will. What about the tobacco farmers! A recent article in the Associated Press tells how a "test crop" could protect tobacco farmers' livelihood. What kind of a test crop? "A genetically engineered variety designed to produce a malaria vaccine and another drug." Stay tuned in for the next exciting episode.
A shortage of jobs is not new. In the November 12, 1929 issue of the Portland Telegram, a small item appeared on the front page: "There are many war veterans in Portland without employment. An appeal was made today by C.A. Townsend, president of the Veterans' Sabre club, for jobs; any kind of work that presents itself. It is asked that those who can furnish employment call Broadway 3525."
Many World War One veterans came home to find their jobs gone and machines taking over. In fact it was during this time that a group of scientists and engineers noticed how quickly the government could produce machines to do the work in preparation for war. They then conducted a lengthy survey to determine how this advancing technology would affect the future job market and other social trends. This survey eventually developed into the organization known as Technocracy Inc., whose early predictions of a jobless society are being vindicated by the march of events. And still our leaders, over 60 years later, in the face of more machines and a larger population, cry out for jobs for everyone, welfare recipients and single mothers included, this at a time when corporations are laying off thousands and thousands of people permanently, or moving their operations out of the country.
Now here is the latest on what politics refers to as a "sacred cow." (You guessed it. Social Security.) This program has been one of the most successful plans to emanate from the United States Government, if not the most successful. It has been so successful that its financial stronghold is the envy of politics whose members borrow from it frequently, leaving questionable IOUs. "Pay you later." Sure they will. As William Raspberry, columnist for the Washington Post Writers Group, notes: "The huge baby boom cohorts pay more in Social Security taxes than current retirees take out; the system is running a surplus, theoretically. Instead of investing this surplus wisely, it is used along with general revenues for current government expenses. The trust fund will one day get an IOU that eventually must be redeemed by the taxpayers."
Senator F. Hollings says, "In plain language, they can't use the Social Security trust fund to cut the deficit, and yet they keep doing it. It's illegal; government knows it; they shrug their shoulders and call it a 'unified budget', as though that changes something. The truth is they're afraid to repeal the law, and they're afraid to obey it."
If our legislators did succeed in dismantling Social Security, as they bravely hint at when it isn't election time, where would enough general revenue to carry on current government expenses come from? Higher taxes? As more and more people are being permanently laid off? And those senior citizens who couldn't make it without their earned Social Security income—back to the poor farms? Or home with the kids? Those seniors generate a big turnover in the economic sector with their Social Security checks.
For almost every political solution to social problems, a serious side effect cancels its effectiveness. And every political solution becomes a control of people, which doesn't work as is evidenced by the size of our prison population. We need a government that is managed in the scientific method with a control of things, not people. With an intelligent control of things, there would be no need to control people. And we need a government that works around the clock and doesn't spend half its time preparing for the next election. How can any government operate efficiently when its members are working full time for their own benefit: off giving lectures, making wild promises they know are impossible to keep; slandering their opponents; participating in tabloid scandals to hurt the opposition; and always planning ahead, sometimes deviously, to winning the next election. Where is there time for meaningful accomplishment?
But that's the way it's been since the beginning of politics, and until the complete collapse of the money system takes place, politics will reign supreme. As President Woodrow Wilson said: "If you want to make enemies, try to change something."