671 Let’s Talk: Conversations that make a difference

 

First Edition

6 Super Secrets

7 Things Everyone Should
Know About Their Loved Ones
 

9 Excuses, Excuses…
It’s Not About Being Perfect;
It’s About Getting Started
 

17 Family Baggage
Check It At The Door
 

20 Hindsight. Insight.
 

What Families Wish They
Had Done Differently
 

It’s a win-win conversation

 
Most of us wait for a tragedy to talk to the people we love about big issues, like aging, money, and health. We wait because these conversations are awkward and because, quite honestly, we don’t want to think about such things. But waiting is risky. You can suddenly find yourself in the midst of a crisis, trying to have these conversations when it’s hard to think straight, emotions are blinding, time is short and options are limited. Having honest conversations now lets you know what your parents or other loved ones want, gives you the chance to get important documents and policies in place and helps ensure they live life on their terms and as fully as possible. Such talks can also bring unexpected insights and intimacy. They can bring understanding and even resolution.

 
When you know what matters most to those you care about, you can engage accordingly — making changes if necessary now, and making the right choices when decisions need to be made later. Let’s Talk was written to encourage you to have these talks and to guide you through the process — offering suggestions on how to start the conversation and a list of issues to cover — so that it all goes more smoothly.

You will find helpful tips and advice from the experts and from people who have been down this path already. Whatever your relationship with your parent — good, bad, indifferent or complicated — we hope you’ll find a way to talk. It won’t be perfect.
 

You may not cover everything. But any conversation, any preparation, is far better than none at all. Don’t forget this applies to you as well.
 

Our contributor: Virginia Morris
 

An award-winning journalist, Virginia Morris has devoted her career to researching and writing about health care, medical research and related social and political issues. Her book, How to Care For Aging Parents, has been featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show, the Today Show, and Good Morning America, and won the Books For a Better Life Award. Notably, it has also been hailed as an “excellent resource” by the Family Care Alliance and as “Indispensable” by AARP. In this A-to-Z guide, Ms. Morris offers practical help and tender reassurance. She lives with her husband and two children in New York.
 

Don’t wait. Take the time to talk.

 

Be brave.  Be patient. Be open. Be present.

People are waiting for someone else to start the conversation.
–Genworth Caregiver Services Study, Summer 2008
 

It’s natural to dodge the topic of aging, to feel that it’s not your place to bring it
up and to worry that you might offend or upset your parent or loved one. But when you say, “Let’s talk,” the underlying message is, “I want to know what you think. I am here for you.
 

You are not alone.” When you say, “Let’s talk,” what you are really saying is, “I care.” It’s the ultimate gift. Do it gradually if possible, and be respectful, but make a commitment to do it.

Now. It is never too soon to talk, but it can become too
late quite suddenly. A loved one’s health status can change overnight, and it almost always happens long before anyone expects it. So it’s vital to know a person’s wishes and to have necessary plans, documents and insurance in place.

 
If you delay, good care may be prohibitive and insurance may no longer be an option. Also, you will most likely find yourself making decisions without any idea of what this other person truly wanted. Talking now allows you to be proactive rather than reactive. It is so much easier to talk early, when there is no crisis, when the discussions are about some distant possibility — some theoretical “what if” scenario. The simple truth is that this conversation will only get harder as those involved get older and their health and circumstances change. Also, it’s important to  do this now, today, because these conversations always take time — usually more time than anyone expects. It can take months just to open the door, and even more time to take any sort of action.

 
But, you say, your parents are still young and healthy. Maybe they are only in their 50s or 60s and living it up. That’s OK. In fact, that’s great! You don’t need to get their opinion of local nursing homes just yet. Instead, ask them what they look forward to, what they hope for and how their goals in life have changed over the years. Find out if they feel prepared for the future, if they have necessary legal documents and if there’s anything they worry about. This is the perfect time to talk with them about aging and the care they may need in maintaining their quality of life. Start the conversation now!

 
If, on the other hand, your parent already needs extensive care, then talk about what might come next. You should still plan ahead. And now, more than ever, you don’t want to miss the opportunity to learn more about them while you still have a chance.
 

When?
 

Who should talk? Everyone.
 

No one regrets the times they talked, the times they asked questions, listened and made plans. It’s vital that people over 40 discuss certain subjects with their parents, yet quite often it’s the parents who put the tough topics on the table. The important thing is that you don’t wait for someone else to do it. This is your job. Talk with your parents. Talk with your spouse. Delve into this with a sibling, a friend or perhaps a beloved aunt or uncle. The more we communicate, the more we learn. The only regrets are the conversations we didn’t have, the opportunities we missed.

Who? What? When?

1. How things are now 

 

Is this person already facing challenges that you are not aware of? Do you have a clear and realistic view of his or her current daily life? Are there things that can be done now to make life easier for them?
 

2. Option A and Option B
 

We all need a plan, no matter what our age. If there is a crisis, how will this person get help? Who will let you know there’s a problem? Who will you call in an emergency? Do you have contact information for relatives, neighbors, friends, doctors, lawyers and local service providers?
 

3. Legal issues

 
Pretty much every adult should have an up-to-date will, a durable power of attorney (giving someone the authority to make financial and legal decisions on their behalf), a living will (outlining wishes for end-of-life care) and a power of attorney for health care (like a regular power of attorney, but geared specifically toward medical decisions). Be sure your loved ones have these documents, and you should know where they are kept.
 

4. No place like home

 
Most people want to stay in their own homes, but it’s not always an option. If necessary, could the house be made more accessible (first-floor bedroom, ramps, etc.)? Where would your mother want to live if she couldn’t stay at home? What if your father couldn’t live with other family members? What if one of them becomes widowed? What options are available? What matters most to them? The answers may surprise you.
 

5. The cost of care

 
Long term care (care at home or in an assisted-living facility or nursing home) can easily run from $50,000 to more than $100,000 a year, depleting hard-earned savings. Some options to consider are long term care insurance, family and retirement income planning
and protection.
 

6. The medical maze
 

Make sure one doctor oversees and coordinates
all care, especially as your loved one ages. As care becomes more complex, multiple doctors could inadvertently prescribe conflicting treatments. At this point, you should get to know your parent’s physician and stay in touch. Know what health insurance policies are in place and how to access them.
 

7. Life’s closing scene
 

It’s a hard fact of life that many people end up, confused and afraid, largely because family members weren’t prepared to make tough choices. The best way to avoid this is to talk, in some depth, about your loved one’s fears, preferences and hopes, and how they want decisions handled. Then brace yourself to follow those wishes.
 

What?

Listen
 

Learn

 

My father talks to me or my wife, Tracy, on the phone at least once a week, and he has dinner at our house most weekends. It never occurred to me that we needed to talk about anything because we talk so often already. But one night my uncle was talking about their grandfather, who lived with them for many years, and he was saying what a pill he was. My father said something offhanded about how he would never live with his kids. Tracy and I were baffled. We always assumed he would live with us if it came to that.
 

At first, I didn’t think he meant it. But I brought it up a few days later and he said flat out, no, he would never live with any of his kids. We’ve talked about it since, and it’s been eye-opening. We discussed where he might live — he doesn’t like the idea of being alone with an aide so we’ve considered other options, assisted living or a full-life center. I’m still hoping he’ll change his mind and decide he could live with us, but I don’t sense that’s going to happen. But it’s been an interesting process. I’ve learned a lot about him.
 

- Ben, age 49
genworth.com/lets-talk

Listen. Ironically, the most important thing about talking is listening. When you have these conversations, start by asking questions. And then listen. Really listen. This will help get the conversation going and, even more important, it will let you know what your parent (or other loved one) is thinking, which may be very different from what you are thinking. You might be focused on legal documents, while your parent is wondering who will care for her dogs in a crisis. Listening is valuable because you now know what matters to her, and once you’ve listened and addressed her concerns, she will be more willing to listen to you.
 

Open your heart and your mind. Most likely, you will learn something new.
 

1. Ask questions. Then pause. Give them time to respond. Make sure they have finished before you begin talking. True understanding comes from being still long enough to absorb the meaning and intent behind what people tell you.
 

What are their fondest memories? Biggest regrets? What do they want/dread
as they grow older? What are their hopes and fears and goals? What matters most to them now? If you have a specific issue to address, learn what they think before you begin expressing your thoughts.
 

2. Wait. That might mean counting silently to five, but it also might mean letting them think on it and then continuing the conversation several days later. These are big issues; give it time.

 
3. Be open. You might not know this person or this situation as well as you think you do. We don’t know what it is to be our parents’ ages.

We don’t know how they feel or what life looks like at that stage. Also, we all slip into prescribed roles within our families. Occasionally, our notions of who a loved one is clouds our vision of who they actually are, what they think and more importantly, how they feel. Plus, with time, their needs and wishes have probably changed.

 
Things you can do today to become a better listener.
3
genworth.com/lets-talk

It’s a Journey

Connect · Believe · Discover · Learn · Reminisce · Prepare · Grow · Explore · Share
As with most things in life, the first step is the hardest. How you enter this terrain will depend on you, the person you are talking with, the nature of your relationship and your situation. Find what works for you. If one thing doesn’t work, try something else. Here are a few ways to break the ice:
Warm ways to break the ice
Be Opepen

If you have an open and direct relationship, then don’t beat around the bush. Just come out and say that you’d like to talk about these issues and ask if they would mind talking to you about them. Everyone thinks about these things. Everyone worries at 2 a.m. about what the future holds. Go ahead and talk.

Discscussss sosomeoeone
elseelseelseelse
’
s
situation

Chances are, you or your parents know someone who is already dealing with some aspect of aging. Talking about their experience and choices, and what is good or bad about their situation, can be a useful launching point.

Be Reflecleclective

Some time when you’re together, ask them about their past, their childhood, their parents. Learn about them. And then, as part of that conversation, move on to the future. What do they want most? How do they perceive the future? What worries them? Are they prepared?
MeMe
n
tion an articleclecle
oror webeb site you saw

Give them a clipping, or a link to a Web site with information about planning ahead, family conversations and long term care costs, and then move forward from there. Hand them this resource guide.

genworth.com/lets-talk

670 Suicide is NEVER the answer, getting help is the answer.

Suicide.org Suicide is NEVER the answer, getting help is the answer. If you are suicidal, have attempted suicide, or are a suicide survivor, you will find help, hope, comfort, understanding, support, love, and extensive resources here. I Love You. And I will never stop fighting for you, Kevin Caruso Suicide.org Founder, Executive Director, Editor-in-Chief Senior Writer, Forum Administrator If you or someone you know is in immediate danger because of thoughts of suicide Please call 911 now If you are not in the U.S., please call your local emergency number. There is help for you. Stay on the phone with the operator and wait for help to arrive. Do not hesitate to call. Your life is extremely valuable, and people care about you. Please reach out for help. Never act on your thoughts of suicide. Never. If you are not in immediate danger because of thoughts of suicide, but need someone to talk with about your suicidal feelings, please do not hesitate to call one of the following national suicide prevention lines: 1-800-SUICIDE (1-800-784-2433) 1-800-273-TALK (1-800-273-8255) Suicide Prevention Lines You may call these suicide prevention numbers from anywhere in the United States, 24 hours a day. People are waiting to help you. Call a suicide prevention number right now if you need to. And always remember that it is never okay to act on your thoughts of suicide. Never. Again, call a suicide prevention number now if you need to. Never act on your thoughts of suicide. Extensive suicide prevention hotline numbers, categorized by country or state, can be found on the Suicide Prevention Hotlines pages of this web site. Go to the Suicide Prevention Hotlines index page now if you need to. Suicide is never the answer. Getting help is the answer. If you do not need to call any of the suicide prevention numbers above, then please read on. . . Welcome, my friend, you are not alone. I am very pleased that you are here. And let me remind you that there is nothing more important than your life. Nothing. My name is Kevin Caruso. I am the Executive Director of Suicide.org and I would like to share some important information with you. The first thing that I want you to know is that virtually every person that I have talked with who attempted suicide, and survived, was glad that they lived. So the emotions that were causing the suicidal feelings did pass. Things got better; the sun did come out. So, let me extend that hope to you. If you are in intense emotional and/or physical pain, remember that your judgment is being clouded by that pain. If you are considering suicide, you are trying to end that pain. Please do not confuse ending your pain with ending your life. The two are very different. Let me also tell you that if you are suicidal, you probably are suffering from clinical depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, postpartum depression, PTSD, or something similar. And if you have something along these lines, you actually have a chemical imbalance in your brain -- and you cannot possibly think straight because of it. That is beyond your control. You are not weak. You just need some treatment. This imbalance can occur for several reasons, from genetics to a traumatic life experience, and it is extremely common for people to have this imbalance, so do not feel like you are alone. You are not. This imbalance may be rectified in several ways, but first you need to be assessed so that the cause may be understood. I would request that you please go to a medical doctor. The doctor can determine if there is a secondary problem (such as a thyroid problem) that is causing the imbalance. If so, an appropriate medication may be prescribed to you. Next, you should visit a therapist. This will allow another assessment to occur and will also allow you to begin talking about your feelings. If the therapist determines that you need a prescription, he or she may refer you to someone who may assist you in that area. Please leave the option open for taking medication. Some people erroneously believe that they can simply use will power to control their suicidal feelings. The problem with this thinking is that, again, there is probably a chemical imbalance in the brain. And that needs to be treated with medicine. So let me ask you this, my friend. If you had a broken leg, would you get treatment or would you just keep walking on it, writhing in pain, and trying to convince yourself that you just needed will power to overcome the pain? You would get treatment, and you would do so immediately. You would not even think twice about it. And I would most respectfully submit to you that your situation is similar. If you are diagnosed with clinical depression, or something similar, then there is a physical cause for your condition. And you need to seek treatment immediately. It is not just emotion. Please understand this, my friend. The brain, after all, is an organ. And sometimes needs treatment. If you cannot afford to see a doctor or therapist, please seek out some clinics that have reduced rates. There are many affordable places to go. You can call 1-800-SUICIDE (1-800-784-2433) or 1-800-273-TALK (1-800-273-8255) to get listings for clinics in your area. Do not hesitate to call. You can also check in your phone book. After your initial assessment, you will need to see a therapist long enough to work through all of the issues that are bothering you. Do not be in a hurry -- things will get better. You may feel like you are on an emotional roller coaster ride, but those ups and downs will level out. My friend, thank you so very much for being here. It means a lot to me because the mere fact you are here indicates that you are reaching out, and that you really do want to live. So, I want you to do something else that is very important. Please make a commitment to stay alive. To not die by suicide, no matter what. Make this commitment for all of the people who care for you, and for yourself. Remember that if you try to end your pain by ending your life, you will start a world of pain for the loved ones that you leave behind. And you will deprive yourself of many wonderful things that you have yet to experience. Thank you for making that commitment. Now, my friend, I have told you the things that you should do. So, please get started. Please make an appointment right now to see a doctor and a therapist. If you can't do it now, do it as soon as possible. I care about you very much, and I love you very much, so I want you to get better as soon as possible. One final thing. Relax. That's right. Relax. Take some deep breaths and do something that you enjoy that relaxes you. Take a bath. Go for a walk. Listen to some nice music. Just take it easy. And engage in these activities that relax you on a regular basis. And let me tell you, my friend, you are on your way. On your way to a better life. Always remember that there are phone numbers that you can call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, from any location in the United States: 1-800-SUICIDE (1-800-784-2433) 1-800-273-TALK (1-800-273-8255) Take care of yourself, and take action now. Your life is extremely important. And do not forget the commitment that we made together, that you will not end your life -- that you will never, ever, under any circumstances end your life. You are awesome! You are a great person! And I love you! Take care, Kevin Caruso Suicide.org Founder, Executive Director, Editor-in-Chief Senior Writer, Forum Administrator Kevin Caruso

Free Suicide.org Newsletter! Enter Your Email: Suicidal? Need Help Now? Call 911 or 1-800-SUICIDE (1-800-784-2433) or 1-800-273-TALK (1-800-273-8255) or Text Telephone: 1-800-799-4TTY (1-800-799-4889) Military Veterans Suicide Hotline: 1-800-273-TALK (Press 1) Suicide Hotline in Spanish: 1-800-273-TALK (Press 2) LGBT Youth Suicide Hotline: 1-866-4-U-TREVOR Suicide Hotlines No Suicide Contracts How to Help a Suicidal Person If Your Loved One Needs Hospitalization Suicide Survivors Support Groups Help & Comfort for Suicide Survivors Wall of Angels Suicide Memorials  Link to Suicide.org

Suicide.org

659 Jennifer Dunn Memorial

Jennifer Dunn Memorial Jennifer Dunn and Gage Jennifer Dunn, Woody, and Gage Remembering an Angel: Jennifer Dunn by Kevin Caruso Jennifer Dunn was a beautiful, intelligent, outgoing, friendly, and caring young woman. Jennifer loved to read and had a rather large library; her favorite literary genre was crime novels, and she voraciously read one crime novel after the other. But the most important thing in Jennifer's life was her family. She married Lance "Woody" Dunn, the man of her dreams, on October 18, 1998. She was deeply in love with Woody. "I have never seen someone love another person as much as she loved Woody," said Jennifer's step-sister, Sunday Leyk. Jennifer wanted to have a child very badly, and thus was overjoyed when she became pregnant. But there were complications and her precious son, Gage, was born premature on December, 10, 2002. Jennifer virtually lived at the hospital while Gage was there. She spent every second that she could with him and cared for him in every way possible. When the doctors finally allowed Jennifer to take Gage home, Jennifer was thrilled and she gave Gage the love, care, and attention that he needed. Jennifer loved being a mom, and she was a great mother to Gage. But Jennifer did have some problems. She had bipolar disorder and needed to take medication regularly to stabilize her moods. And in December of 2003, she began taking cocaine. Woody found out about her drug use in February of 2004 and persuaded her to enter a rehab program. Jennifer did go to rehab but found it very difficult to break her addiction. Woody told her that if she continued to use the drug that she would have to leave. On June 15, 2004, Woody found out that Jennifer was taking cocaine again, and he told her that she had to leave for the sake of the baby. Jennifer said that she needed a few hours to pack her items, so Woody took Gage, drove to town, and waited for Jennifer to depart. Shortly after Woody left, Jennifer called her mom, told her that Woody kicked her out, and said that she was going to kill herself by taking an overdose of drugs. Jennifer then hung up, called Woody, and told him that she was going to kill herself. Jennifer's mom and Woody both called 911, and Woody rushed home to try to stop her. But when Woody arrived, he saw police cars and a helicopter. A police officer ran up to Woody and said, "I thought you said this was an overdose; this is a gunshot wound to the head." Sadly, Jennifer did shoot herself in the head. She was medevacked and survived on life support for six days. She passed away on June 21, 2004. She was 30. Jennifer was born in Clarksville, Tennessee, and was living in Babson Park, Florida when she passed away. Jennifer is survived by Gage William Dunn, son; Lance "Woody" Dunn, husband; Vicki Dugger, mother; James Dugger, step-father; Scottie Harper, brother; and Sunday Leyk, step-sister. We miss you Jennifer. You are an angel now.

Free Suicide.org Newsletter! Enter Your Email: Suicidal? Need Help Now? Call 911 or 1-800-SUICIDE (1-800-784-2433) or 1-800-273-TALK (1-800-273-8255) or Text Telephone: 1-800-799-4TTY (1-800-799-4889) Military Veterans Suicide Hotline: 1-800-273-TALK (Press 1) Suicide Hotline in Spanish: 1-800-273-TALK (Press 2) LGBT Youth Suicide Hotline: 1-866-4-U-TREVOR Click Below For More Suicide Hotlines Suicide Hotlines Free Suicide Prevention Program No Suicide Contracts How to Help a Suicidal Person If Your Loved One Needs Hospitalization Suicide Survivors Support Groups Help & Comfort for Suicide Survivors Wall of Angels Suicide Memorials  Make Suicide.org Your Home Page  Bookmark Suicide.org  Link to Suicide.org

Suicide.org

Suicide.org is a 501c3 NON-PROFIT Organization and Website

658 The Wall of Angels Suicide Memorials

The Wall of Angels
Suicide Memorials

---

We will always remember and honor those who died by suicide.

They are very special people.

They are angels.

We miss them.

We love them.

---------------------------------------------------------------

And by honoring the suicide angels,
we also honor all suicide survivors.

Suicide survivors are heroes and angels on earth.

We love them.

657 On the Death of Gil Scott-Heron Ain't No New Thing By RANDY SHIELDS

The commanding voice that named the names, that directed a musical letter of rage (air mail special) to whitey on the moon, and lived to see a revolt (if not a revolution) televised in Egypt, has died. Gil Scott-Heron died Friday afternoon at age 62 in NYC's St. Luke's Hospital.

I don't know what age I was when I first heard Scott-Heron wittily and boldly lambaste Nixon and Spearhead Agnew and Ronnie Raygun and Attilla the Haig and Marlin Perkins and Papa Doc Bush -- they and their America didn't mean shit to him (and me and millions of other Americans) and it felt damned good to hear it. One of his favorite targets was Americans' greatest religious experience: getting something for nothing -- specifically, the ripping off of black art, music and culture by (mostly) white capitalists while its creators often died paupers.

He declined the title of "Godfather of Rap" and it was easy to see why. I was blown away by NWA's "Straight Outta Compton" the first couple weeks I listened to it -- the anger, the violence, fighting back against racist cops, the clarity about who your enemies are, the cheapness of life worn like a badge. But I found that I couldn't keep listening to it indefinitely -- the music, especially, was both depressing and boring. And that's what Gil Scott-Heron and his brilliant longtime collaborator Brian Jackson figured out: they created a poetic, free-flowing, typically flute and percussion-driven platform for Scott-Heron's AK-47 mouth to artistically and scathingly say that America was a racist war-loving hypocritical slag heap, deluded by fake movies, fake history, fake images and fake media. Scott-Heron and the multi-instrumentalist Jackson maxed out beat poetry and music to what they always should have been, with fabulous hypnotic grooves and the occasional tasty solo. Scott-Heron ra-ta-tatted against injustice, but you kept on listening, for decades, because the hooks and creativity are always present whether moving through funk, soul, R & B, free jazz, African or Caribbean beats. Drugs, violence, poverty, inequality, opportunistic "leaders" and sellouts, addiction, defeat and lives that never got off the ground were frequent subjects. But the really unforgivable sin was musical boredom.

I saw Scott-Heron perform two years ago at the Tin Angel in Philadelphia. To see the creator of "Storm Music" and "The Bottle" perform in an intimate club was a thrill. He had a voice and presence that you paid attention to -- his baritone was born to deliver Shakespeare, as bassist Ron Carter once said. He and his rockin' pianist, blistering lefty lead player and the smoking rhythm section were so relentlessly good that I didn't even miss my favorite song, "Storm Music," or "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised." The new songs, from "I'm New Here," were instantly embraced. And "The Bottle" swung mightily that night. And he was hilarious, both that night and on his recorded offhand pot shots against the ruling class, something that isn't often noted when he's written about.

That Philly show fell in a time period, the fall of 2009, where I also saw James McMurtry and Iris DeMent. Interestingly (maybe) is that Scott-Heron did not perform "The Revolution Will Not be Televised," DeMent did not perform "Wasteland of the Free," and McMurtry did not play "We Can't Make It Here," all absolutely classic songs pointedly critical of America. I'm sure these artists had different reasons for not playing these tunes but I took it as a bad omen. The impression it made on me was that now that the Big Bad Bush was gone it was time to STFU about America. It was time to start feeling good about America because an uncouth goon from Texas was replaced by a smooth-talking intelligent Wall Street stooge. Protest and anger were uncool. Nothing as pseudo-glorious as Reagan's Morning (Thunder) in America but, rather, some weak-ass liberal Sleepytime tea time in America. Scott-Heron had also spoken favorably about Obama.

So, after two years of Obama, I muse: the working class of America, especially blacks, can get as much action on their concerns from sending a letter to whitey on the moon as they can from having America's first black president in the White House.

In the jumbled world of confusing musicians with leaders, I thought about how Scott-Heron canceled a planned show in Israel in 2010 (why did he ever schedule it?) -- persuaded by activists that it would be similar to playing in apartheid South Africa -- and how two weeks ago I saw my first keyboard hero, Ray Manzarek (of the Doors), at the Sellersville Theater, pleased with his acid-tested spirituality, telling the crowd that Christians and Muslims and Jews should put away their religious books and just love each other and, by the way, he and Robby Krieger are looking forward to playing as the Doors in Tel Aviv this summer because "the Israelis are so cool." I'm so damned glad we agnostics don't have to put away any of our books.

(Hey, Ray, how about you and Robby do something that truly breaks on through: be on the next Free Gaza flotilla and play a Gaza concert if and when you "break on through" the illegal Israeli blockade -- maybe you can see how "cool" the IDF is. Maybe you can grab Jim Morrison from out of the ether, where you said he resides, and bring your interstellular spirituality down to earth where it might mean something. It says in the Uncool Book that faith without works is dead.) Oh well, as a sometime Zionist, sometime Christian troubadour once admonished us, "Don't follow leaders and watch the parking meters." He never explained the parking meter thing though I assumed he was warning us not to take up the drunken dares of friends to vault over the meters after the bars close.

Anyway... Gil Scott-Heron, don't rest in peace as everyone is advising you to, rage on wherever you are, be witty and scathing, be the fighter you are, be bold when no one else will, whether you're in heaven or hell, I'm sure that things can be better in both places. And I give you the next to the last word: "It ain't no new thing -- America is always the same old shit."

Now, are those words from many years ago too negative and cynical, too unhopey and unchangey? Well, decades after Gil Scott-Heron urged people to send their unaffordable, unpaid "doctor bills to whitey on the moon," he lived to see 45 million Americans without any health insurance and 47 million on food stamps. He railed against ghetto poverty in 1970 and 41 years later lived to see the greatest inequalities in wealth since the Great Depression. And he lived to see the first black POTUS, a Nobel Peace Prize-winner who's currently slaughtering innocent dark-skinned people in five different countries. America can't make clothes, shoes, toys, electronics, peace or justice but we make a hell of a lot of irony. 

Randy Shields can be reached at music2hi4thehumanear@gmail.com.

656 You Can Hear It, If You Want To 100 Years of Robert Johnson By DAVE MARSH

Somebody asked if Robert Johnson ever got to Chicago. I looked for the fact in a few places and then realized that what I was going to get was somebody's version but that it was more complicated than anybody's version. I'm not sure I have a version, certainly not one I'm married to, but if I did, this is what it would be.

There is no truth about hardly anything about Robert Johnson's travels. There are lots of stories. One is that he got as far north as Detroit and maybe even did a radio broadcast there.

If we could get our friend Greg Aldering to use his telescope for a beneficial human purpose in addition to the mere discovery of how new universes are formed, that broadcast is still out there, some minuscule distance--less than a thousandth of a parsec--out there, and you could hear it. If it exists.

In a certain sense, the Robert Johnson of our post-rock folklore never existed, and will always exist. The guy those mythologists found didn't smell unwashed or have bad breath and his back didn't ache and his fingers never scabbed and his shoes had soles and he was unhappy existentially but if he had another nickel he could get his ashes hauled so it was pretty close to happiness. And you can hear that. If you want to. If you want, you can hear something else, too.

One of those Robert Johnsons was in Chicago. Another one of them didn't get there 'til Johnny Shines did. And another not until Steven Lavere or whoever it is bought the copyrights. And another one, maybe further back, maybe more recent, never left the Delta--he left Mississippi, because you only have to cross the river to do that. But did he leave it riding in a Terraplane or did he swim it alongside Stagolee during the '27 flood or a weekend before he died? That's worth knowing too and you have just as much chance of being certain of the answer.

It's the same as figuring out a simple construct like "Homer was blind." He was? To what?

Dave Marsh (along with Lee Ballinger) edits Rock & Rap Confidential, one of CounterPunch's favorite newsletters, now available for free by emailing: rockrap@aol.com. Dave blogs at http://davemarsh.us/

655 The Arab World Views the American President With Contempt Who Cares What Obama Says? By ROBERT FISK

This month, in the Middle East, has seen the unmaking of the President of the United States. More than that, it has witnessed the lowest prestige of America in the region since Roosevelt met King Abdul Aziz on the USS Quincy in the Great Bitter Lake in 1945.

While Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu played out their farce in Washington – Obama grovelling as usual – the Arabs got on with the serious business of changing their world, demonstrating and fighting and dying for freedoms they have never possessed. Obama waffled on about change in the Middle East – and about America's new role in the region. It was pathetic. "What is this 'role' thing?" an Egyptian friend asked me at the weekend. "Do they still believe we care about what they think?"

And it is true. Obama's failure to support the Arab revolutions until they were all but over lost the US most of its surviving credit in the region. Obama was silent on the overthrow of Ben Ali, only joined in the chorus of contempt for Mubarak two days before his flight, condemned the Syrian regime – which has killed more of its people than any other dynasty in this Arab "spring", save for the frightful Gaddafi – but makes it clear that he would be happy to see Assad survive, waves his puny fist at puny Bahrain's cruelty and remains absolutely, stunningly silent over Saudi Arabia. And he goes on his knees before Israel. Is it any wonder, then, that Arabs are turning their backs on America, not out of fury or anger, nor with threats or violence, but with contempt? It is the Arabs and their fellow Muslims of the Middle East who are themselves now making the decisions.

Turkey is furious with Assad because he twice promised to speak of reform and democratic elections – and then failed to honour his word. The Turkish government has twice flown delegations to Damascus and, according to the Turks, Assad lied to the foreign minister on the second visit, baldly insisting that he would recall his brother Maher's legions from the streets of Syrian cities. He failed to do so. The torturers continue their work.

Watching the hundreds of refugees pouring from Syria across the northern border of Lebanon, the Turkish government is now so fearful of a repeat of the great mass Iraqi Kurdish refugee tide that overwhelmed their border in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf war that it has drawn up its own secret plans to prevent the Kurds of Syria moving in their thousands into the Kurdish areas of south-eastern Turkey. Turkish generals have thus prepared an operation that would send several battalions of Turkish troops into Syria itself to carve out a "safe area" for Syrian refugees inside Assad's caliphate. The Turks are prepared to advance well beyond the Syrian border town of Al Qamishli – perhaps half way to Deir el-Zour (the old desert killing fields of the 1915 Armenian Holocaust, though speak it not) – to provide a "safe haven" for those fleeing the slaughter in Syria's cities.

The Qataris are meanwhile trying to prevent Algeria from resupplying Gaddafi with tanks and armoured vehicles – this was one of the reasons why the Emir of Qatar, the wisest bird in the Arabian Gulf, visited the Algerian president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, last week. Qatar is committed to the Libyan rebels in Benghazi; its planes are flying over Libya from Crete and – undisclosed until now – it has Qatari officers advising the rebels inside the city of Misrata in western Libya; but if Algerian armour is indeed being handed over to Gaddafi to replace the material that has been destroyed in air strikes, it would account for the ridiculously slow progress which the Nato campaign is making against Gaddafi.

Of course, it all depends on whether Bouteflika really controls his army – or whether the Algerian "pouvoir", which includes plenty of secretive and corrupt generals, are doing the deals. Algerian equipment is superior to Gaddafi's and thus for every tank he loses, Ghaddafi might be getting an improved model to replace it. Below Tunisia, Algeria and Libya share a 750-mile desert frontier, an easy access route for weapons to pass across the border.

But the Qataris are also attracting Assad's venom. Al Jazeera's concentration on the Syrian uprising – its graphic images of the dead and wounded far more devastating than anything our soft western television news shows would dare broadcast – has Syrian state television nightly spitting at the Emir and at the state of Qatar. The Syrian government has now suspended up to £4 billion of Qatari investment projects, including one belonging to the Qatar Electricity and Water Company.

Amid all these vast and epic events – Yemen itself may yet prove to be the biggest bloodbath of all, while the number of Syria's "martyrs" have now exceeded the victims of Mubarak's death squads five months ago – is it any surprise that the frolics of Messrs Netanyahu and Obama appear so irrelevant? Indeed, Obama's policy towards the Middle East – whatever it is – sometimes appears so muddled that it is scarcely worthy of study. He supports, of course, democracy – then admits that this may conflict with America's interests. In that wonderful democracy called Saudi Arabia, the US is now pushing ahead with a £40 billion arms deal and helping the Saudis to develop a new "elite" force to protect the kingdom's oil and future nuclear sites. Hence Obama's fear of upsetting Saudi Arabia, two of whose three leading brothers are now so incapacitated that they can no longer make sane decisions – unfortunately, one of these two happens to be King Abdullah – and his willingness to allow the Assad family's atrocity-prone regime to survive. Of course, the Israelis would far prefer the "stability" of the Syrian dictatorship to continue; better the dark caliphate you know than the hateful Islamists who might emerge from the ruins. But is this argument really good enough for Obama to support when the people of Syria are dying in the streets for the kind of democracy that the US president says he wants to see in the region?

One of the vainest elements of American foreign policy towards the Middle East is the foundational idea that the Arabs are somehow more stupid than the rest of us, certainly than the Israelis, more out of touch with reality than the West, that they don't understand their own history. Thus they have to be preached at, lectured, and cajoled by La Clinton and her ilk – much as their dictators did and do, father figures guiding their children through life. But Arabs are far more literate than they were a generation ago; millions speak perfect English and can understand all too well the political weakness and irrelevance in the president's words. Listening to Obama's 45-minute speech this month – the "kick off' to four whole days of weasel words and puffery by the man who tried to reach out to the Muslim world in Cairo two years ago, and then did nothing – one might have thought that the American President had initiated the Arab revolts, rather than sat on the sidelines in fear.

There was an interesting linguistic collapse in the president's language over those critical four days. On Thursday 19 May, he referred to the continuation of Israeli "settlements". A day later, Netanyahu was lecturing him on "certain demographic changes that have taken place on the ground". Then when Obama addressed the American Aipac lobby group (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) on the Sunday, he had cravenly adopted Netanyahu's own preposterous expression. Now he, too, spoke of "new demographic realities on the ground." Who would believe that he was talking about internationally illegal Jewish colonies built on land stolen from Arabs in one of the biggest property heists in the history of "Palestine"? Delay in peace-making will undermine Israeli security, Obama announced – apparently unaware that Netanyahu's project is to go on delaying and delaying and delaying until there is no land left for the "viable" Palestinian state which the United States and the European Union supposedly wish to see.

Then we had the endless waffle about the 1967 borders. Netanyahu called them "defenceless" (though they seemed to have been pretty defendable for the 18 years prior to the Six Day War) and Obama – oblivious to the fact that Israel must be the only country in the world to have an eastern land frontier but doesn't know where it is – then says he was misunderstood when he talked about 1967. It doesn't matter what he says. George W Bush caved in years ago when he gave Ariel Sharon a letter which stated America's acceptance of "already existing major Israeli population centres" beyond the 1967 lines. To those Arabs prepared to listen to Obama's spineless oration, this was a grovel too far. They simply could not understand the reaction of Netanyahu's address to Congress. How could American politicians rise and applaud Netanyahu 55 times – 55 times – with more enthusiasm than one of the rubber parliaments of Assad, Saleh and the rest?

And what on earth did the Great Speechifier mean when he said that "every country has the right to self-defence" but that Palestine would be "demilitarised"? What he meant was that Israel could go on attacking the Palestinians (as in 2009, for example, when Obama was treacherously silent) while the Palestinians would have to take what was coming to them if they did not behave according to the rules – because they would have no weapons to defend themselves. As for Netanyahu, the Palestinians must choose between unity with Hamas or peace with Israel. All of which was very odd. When there was no unity, Netanyahu told us all that he had no Palestinian interlocutor because the Palestinians were disunited. Yet when they unite, they are disqualified from peace talks.

Of course, cynicism grows the longer you live in the Middle East. I recall, for example, travelling to Gaza in the early 1980s when Yasser Arafat was running his PLO statelet in Beirut. Anxious to destroy Arafat's prestige in the occupied territories, the Israeli government decided to give its support to an Islamist group in Gaza called Hamas. In fact, I actually saw with my own eyes the head of the Israeli army's Southern Command negotiating with bearded Hamas officials, giving them permission to build more mosques. It's only fair to say, of course, that we were also busy at the time, encouraging a certain Osama bin Laden to fight the Soviet army in Afghanistan. But the Israelis did not give up on Hamas. They later held another meeting with the organisation in the West Bank; the story was on the front page of the Jerusalem Post the next day. But there wasn't a whimper from the Americans.

Then another moment that I can recall over the long years. Hamas and Islamic Jihad members – all Palestinians – were, in the early 1990s, thrown across the Israeli border into southern Lebanon where they spent more than a year camping on a freezing mountainside. I would visit them from time to time and on one occasion mentioned that I would be travelling to Israel next day. Immediately, one of the Hamas men ran to his tent and returned with a notebook. He then proceeded to give me the home telephone numbers of three senior Israeli politicians – two of whom are still prominent today – and, when I reached Jerusalem and called the numbers, they all turned out to be correct. In other words, the Israeli government had been in personal and direct contact with Hamas.

But now the narrative has been twisted out of all recognition. Hamas are the super-terrorists, the "al-Qa'ida" representatives in the unified Palestinian leadership, the men of evil who will ensure that no peace ever takes place between Palestinians and Israeli. If only this were true, the real al-Qa'ida would be more than happy to take responsibility. But it is not true. In the same context, Obama stated that the Palestinians would have to answer questions about Hamas. But why should they? What Obama and Netanyahu think about Hamas is now irrelevant to them. Obama warns the Palestinians not to ask for statehood at the United Nations in September. But why on earth not? If the people of Egypt and Tunisia and Yemen and Libya and Syria – we are all waiting for the next revolution (Jordan? Bahrain again? Morocco?) – can fight for freedom and dignity, why shouldn't the Palestinians? Lectured for decades on the need for non-violent protest, the Palestinians elect to go to the UN with their cry for legitimacy – only to be slapped down by Obama.

Having read all of the "Palestine Papers" which Al-Jazeera revealed, there is no doubt that "Palestine's" official negotiators will go to any lengths to produce some kind of statelet. Mahmoud Abbas, who managed to write a 600-page book on the "peace process" without once mentioning the word "occupation", could even cave in over the UN project, fearful of Obama's warning that it would be an attempt to "isolate" Israel and thus de-legitimise the Israeli state – or "the Jewish state" as the US president now calls it. But Netanyahu is doing more than anyone to delegitimise his own state; indeed, he is looking more and more like the Arab buffoons who have hitherto littered the Middle East. Mubarak saw a "foreign hand" in the Egyptian revolution (Iran, of course). So did the Crown Prince of Bahrain (Iran again). So did Gaddafi (al-Qa'ida, western imperialism, you name it), So did Saleh of Yemen (al-Qa'ida, Mossad and America). So did Assad of Syria (Islamism, probably Mossad, etc). And so does Netanyahu (Iran, naturally enough, Syria, Lebanon, just about anyone you can think of except for Israel itself).

But as this nonsense continues, so the tectonic plates shudder. I doubt very much if the Palestinians will remain silent. If there's an "intifada" in Syria, why not a Third Intifada in "Palestine"? Not a struggle of suicide bombers but of mass, million-strong protests. If the Israelis have to shoot down a mere few hundred demonstrators who tried – and in some cases succeeded – in crossing the Israeli border almost two weeks ago, what will they do if confronted by thousands or a million. Obama says no Palestinian state must be declared at the UN. But why not? Who cares in the Middle East what Obama says? Not even, it seems, the Israelis. The Arab spring will soon become a hot summer and there will be an Arab autumn, too. By then, the Middle East may have changed forever. What America says will matter nothing.

Robert Fisk writes for the Independent, where this column originally appeared.

654 The Big Contraction Look Out Below! By MIKE WHITNEY

The slowdown has begun. The economy has started to sputter and unemployment claims have tipped 400,000 for the last seven weeks. That means new investment is too weak to lower the jobless rate which is presently stuck at 9 percent. Manufacturing--which had been the one bright-spot in the recovery-- has also started to retreat with some areas in the country now contracting. Housing, of course, continues its downward trek putting more pressure on bank balance sheets and plunging more homeowners into negative equity.

The likelihood of another credit expansion in this environment is next-to-none. Total private sector debt is still at a historic high at 270% of GDP which augurs years of digging out and painful deleveraging. Analysts have already started slicing their estimates for 2nd Quarter GDP which will be considerably lower than their original predictions. With the economy dead-in-the-water, the IPOs, the Mergers & Acquisitions, and the stock buybacks and all the other ways of amplifying leverage will slow putting a dent in quarterly earnings and pushing down stock prices. Here's a clip from the Wall Street Journal:

"After a disappointing first quarter, economists largely predicted the U.S. recovery would ramp back up as short-term disruptions such as higher gas prices, bad weather and supply problems in Japan subsided.

But there's little indication that's happening. Manufacturing is cooling, the housing market is struggling and consumers are keeping a close eye on spending, meaning the U.S. economy might be on a slower path to full health than expected.

"It's very hard to generate a rapid recovery when rapid recoveries are historically driven by housing and the consumer," said Nigel Gault, an economist at IHS Global Insight. He expects an annualized, inflation-adjusted growth rate of less than 3% in coming quarters—better than the first-quarter's 1.8% rate, but too slow to make a meaningful dent in unemployment." ("Economists Downgrade Prospects for Growth", Wall Street Journal)

The Fed has tried to revive the economy by buying government bonds (QE2) which helped to boost equities prices. Unfortunately, the program sent gas and food prices higher too, which has only deepened the distress for consumers forcing them to cut their discretionary spending even more. While retail sales improved significantly in the latter months of the program, a closer look at the data shows that most of the money went for food and fuel. So, basically, QE2 was a "wash". Now businesses are left with bulging inventories and fewer customers because demand is weakening. This is from the New York Times:

"An economy that is growing this slowly will not add jobs quickly. For the next couple of months, employment growth could slow from about 230,000 recently to something like 150,000 jobs a month, only slightly faster than normal population growth. That is certainly not fast enough to make a big dent in the still huge number of unemployed people.

Are any policy makers paying attention?...

The most sensible response for Washington would be to begin thinking more seriously about taking out an insurance policy on the recovery. The Fed could stop worrying so much about inflation, which remains historically low, and look at how else it might encourage spending. As Mr. Bernanke has said before, the Fed "retains considerable power" to lift growth.

The White House and Congress, meanwhile, could begin talking about extending last year's temporary extension of business tax credits, household tax cuts and jobless benefits beyond Dec. 31. It would be easy enough to pair such an extension with longer-term deficit reduction." ("The Economy Is Wavering. Does Washington Notice?", New York Times)

This is more than just a "rough patch". The economy is stalling and needs help, but consumers and households are not in a position to take on more debt, and every recovery since the end of WW2 has seen an increase in debt-fueled consumption. So, where will the spending come from this time? That's the mystery. The early signs of "green shoots" were produced by fiscal stimulus from increased government spending. But now that the deficit hawks are in control of congress, the budget will be pared and the economy will remain sluggish. If government spending is cut, unemployment will rise, the output gap will widen, and GDP will fizzle. Contractionary policies do not lead to growth or prosperity. Just look at England.

Most of the Inflationistas have returned to their bunkers sensing that deflationary pressures are building and the signs of Depression have reemerged. Stocks appear to be on the brink of a major correction. Here's what economist Nouriel Roubini told Bloomberg News on Friday:

"The world economy is losing strength halfway through the year as high oil prices and fallout from Japan's natural disaster and Europe's debt woes take their toll.... Until two weeks ago I'd say markets were shrugging off all these concerns, saying they don't matter because they were believing the global economic recovery was on track. But I think right now we're on the tipping point of a market correction....

With slow global economic growth, they're going to surprise on the downside. We're going to see the beginning of a correction that's going to increase volatility and that's going to increase risk aversion." ("Roubini Sees Stock-Correction 'Tipping Point'", Bloomberg)

With short-term interest rates stuck at zero and QE2 winding down by the end of June, the Fed appears to be out of bullets. At the same time, government (at all levels) is trimming spending and laying off workers.

When spending slows, the economy contracts. It's that simple. Without emergency stimulus, commodities will fall hard and stocks will follow. Look out below. 

Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com

653 Nobel Laureate: Globalism Has Been Ruinous for Americans How Offshoring Has Destroyed the Economy By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

These are discouraging times, but once in a blue moon a bit of hope appears. I am pleased to report on the bit of hope delivered in March of 2011 by Michael Spence, a Nobel prize-winning  economist, assisted by Sandile Hlatshwayo, a researcher at New York University. The two economists have taken a careful empirical look at jobs offshoring and concluded that it has ruined the income and employment prospects for most Americans.

To add to the amazement, their research report, “The Evolving Structure of the American Economy and the Employment Challenge,” was published by the very establishment Council on Foreign Relations.

For a decade I have warned that US corporations, pressed by Wall Street and large retailers such as Wal-Mart, to move offshore their production for US consumer markets, were simultaneously moving offshore US GDP, US tax base, US consumer income, and irreplaceable career opportunities for American citizens. 

Among the serious consequences of offshoring are the dismantling of the ladders of upward mobility that made the US an “opportunity society,”  an extraordinary worsening of the income distribution, and large trade and federal budget deficits that cannot be closed by normal means. These deficits now threaten the US dollar’s role as world reserve currency.

I was not alone in making these warnings. Dr. Herman Daly, a former World Bank economist and professor at the University of Maryland, Dr. Charles McMillion, a Washington, DC, economic consultant, and Dr. Ralph Gomory, a distinguished mathematician and the world’s best trade theorist, understand that it is strictly impossible for an economy to be moved offshore and for the country with the offshored economy to remain prosperous.

Even before this handful of economists capable of independent thought saw the ruinous implications of offshoring, two billionaires first recognized the danger and issued warnings, to no avail.  One of the billionaires was Roger Milliken, the late South Carolina textile magnate,  who spent his time on Capital Hill, not on yachts with Playboy centerfolds, trying to make our representatives aware that we were losing our economy.  The other billionaire was the late Sir James Goldsmith, who made his fortune by correcting the mistakes of America’s incompetent corporate CEOs by taking over their companies and putting them to better use. Sir James spent his last years warning of the perils both of globalism and of merging the sovereignties of European countries and the UK into the EU.

Sir James' book, The Trap, was published as long ago as 1993. His book, The Response, in which he replied to the “free trade” ideologues in the financial press and academia who denigrated his warning, was published in 1995. [
Sir James called it correct, as did Roger Milliken.  They predicted that the working and middle classes in the US and Europe would be ruined by the greed of Wall Street and corporations, who would boost corporate earnings by replacing their domestic work forces with foreign labor, which could be paid a fraction of labor’s productivity as a result of the foreign country’s low living standard and large excess supply of labor. Anytime there is an excess supply of labor, or the ability of corporations to pay labor less than its productivity, the corporations bank the difference, Share prices rise, and Wall Street and shareholders are happy.

All of this was over the heads of “free trade” ideologues, who threw accusations such as “protectionist” at Goldsmith, Milliken, Daly, Gomory, McMillion, and myself. These “free trade” ideologues are economically incompetent.  They do not know that the justification for free trade is based on the principle of comparative advantage, which means that a country specializes in those economic activities in which it performs best and trades for those goods that other countries do best. Instead, the ideologues think that free trade means the freedom of capital to seek absolute advantage abroad in lowest factor cost.  In other words, the free trade incompetents have never read David Ricardo, who formalized the case for free trade.

Other economists, especially those high profile ones in high profile academic institutions, were bought and paid for. In exchange for grants from offshoring corporations these hirelings invented “the New Economy,” in which everyone would prosper as a result of getting rid of “dirty fingernail jobs.”  The New Economy wouldn’t make anything, but it would lead the world in innovation and in financing what others did make.  The “new economists” were not sufficiently bright to realize that if a country didn’t make anything, it couldn’t innovate.

Let’s go now to Michael Spence and Sandile Hlatshwayo, who have provided an honest report for which we should give thanks. Professor Spence could have made many millions using the prestige of his Nobel Prize to lie for the Establishment, but he chose to tell the truth.  

Here is what Spence and Hlatshwayo report:

“This paper examines the evolving structure of the American economy, specifically, the trends in employment, value added, and value added per employee from 1990 to 2008. These trends are closely connected with complementary trends in the size and structure of the global economy, particularly in the major emerging economies. Employing historical time series data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. industries are separated into internationally tradable and non-tradable components, allowing for employment and value-added trends at both the industry and the aggregate level to be examined. Value added grew across the economy, but almost all of the incremental employment increase of 27.3 million jobs was on the non-tradable side. On the non-tradable side, government and health care are the largest employers and provided the largest increments (an additional 10.4 million jobs) over the past two decades. There are obvious questions about whether those trends can continue; without fast job creation in the non-tradable sector, the United States would already have faced a major employment challenge.

“The trends in value added per employee are consistent with the adverse movements in the distribution of U.S. income over the past twenty years, particularly the subdued income growth in the middle of the income range. The tradable side of the economy is shifting up the value-added chain with lower and middle components of these chains moving abroad, especially to the rapidly growing emerging markets. The latter themselves are moving rapidly up the value-added chains, and higher-paying jobs may therefore leave the United States, following the migration pattern of lower-paying ones. The evolution of the U.S. economy supports the notion of there being a long-term structural challenge with respect to the quantity and quality of employment opportunities in the United States. A related set of challenges concerns the income distribution; almost all incremental employment has occurred in the non-tradable sector, which has experienced much slower growth in value added per employee. Because that number is highly correlated with income, it goes a long way to explain the stagnation of wages across large segments of the workforce.”

What is Spence telling us?  Spence is careful not to say that globalism is the intentional result of enhancing capital’s profits at the expense of labor’s wages, but he does acknowledge that that is its effect and that globalism or jobs offshoring has the costs that Daly, Gomory, McMillion, Milliken, Goldsmith, and I have pointed out. Spence uses the same data that we have provided that proves that during the era of globalism the US economy has created new jobs only in nontradable services that cannot be offshored or be produced in locations distant from their market. For example, the services of barbers, waitresses, bar tenders, and hospital workers, unlike those of software engineers, cannot be exported. They can only be sold locally in the location where they are provided.

Tradeable jobs are jobs that produce goods and services that can be exported and thus can be produced in locations distant from their market. Tradeable jobs result in higher value-added and, thereby, higher pay than most non-tradable jobs.

When a country’s tradeable goods and services are converted by offshoring into its imports, it is thrown back on low productivity domestic service jobs for its employment. These domestic service jobs, except for dentists, lawyers, teachers, and medical doctors, do not require a university education. Yet, America has thousands of universities and colleges, and the government endlessly repeats the mantra that “education is the answer.”  

But with engineering, design, and research jobs offshored, and with many of the jobs that remain within the US filled by foreigners on HB-1 and L-1 visas, we now have the phenomenon  of American university and college graduates, heavily indebted with student loans, jobless, and living with their parents, who support them. 

Spence also acknowledges that the change in the structure of American employment from higher productivity to lower productivity jobs is the reason both for the stagnation in US consumer income and for the rising inequality of income. Sending middle class jobs abroad raised the earnings of capital. Spence understands that the lack of growth in consumer income has resulted in a shortfall in domestic demand, resulting in high unemployment.  He could have added that jobs offshoring also gave us the Federal Reserve’s policy of pumping up consumer debt as a substitute for the missing growth in consumer income. There is an obvious limit to the ability to maintain the growth of consumer demand via the growth of indebtedness. 

The offshored economy is the “New Economy,” which the “free trade” hirelings of Wall Street and the global corporations invented in order to pay, with grants from the offshoring corporations, for their summer homes in the Hamptons.

As a graduate student in economics, I was fortunate to study with a number of professors who had or were subsequently awarded  Nobel Prizes. Among these creative people there are two economists whom I did not study under, but whose work I have read, and whose work is of great importance to our economic prospects. The two most important economists of our time, who, without any doubt, deserve the Nobel Prize are Ralph Gomory and Herman Daly.

Ralph Gomory’s book, “Global Trade and Conflicting National Interests,” coauthored with William J. Baumol, a past president of the American Economics Association, is the most important work in trade theory ever produced. This book, and subsequent papers by Gomory, prove beyond all doubt that the free trade theory set out by David Ricardo at the beginning of the 19th century is merely a special case, not a general theory. 

Economists learn in their graduate courses that free trade is an unchallengeable doctrine and that only ignorant protectionists dispute the theory. This mindset was sufficient for Gomory’s book to be largely ignored, even though Paul Samuelson, the dean of American economics, acknowledged the critical point that there are situations in which free trade is not mutually beneficial.

The other deserving recipient of the Nobel prize is Herman Daly.  On the trade issue, Daly’s point is different from and less revolutionary than Gomory’s.  Daly makes the same point that I make, which is that the classic theory of free trade is based on comparative advantage, not on absolute advantage, and that offshoring is based on absolute advantage. Thus, offshoring is not free trade.

Daly’s revolutionary contribution to economics comes from his realization that the production function that is the basis of economic science is wrong. 

This production function is known as the Solow-Stiglitz production function. This production function assumes that man-made capital is a substitute for nature’s capital. It follows from this assumption that whatever humans do to use up and destroy the natural environment can be overcome by the resourcefulness of science and technology. 

Daly shows that this reasoning is incorrect.  If the Gulf of Mexico is destroyed by fertilizer run-offs from agri-business and by oil spills, only nature can correct the problem after many years measured in decades or centuries.  In the meantime, humans are without the resource. 

Daly’s argument is brilliant in its simplicity.  In former times, nature’s capital was enormous, and man’s reproducible capital was small.  For example, fish in the oceans were plentiful, but fishing boats were not. Today fishing boats are in excess supply, but ocean fishing stocks are depleted. Thus, the limiting factor is not man-made capital, but nature’s capital. Daly stresses that by leaving ecological and social costs out of the computation of GDP, economists do not have a reliable measure of the effect of economic activity on human welfare.

All of economics is predicated on the notion that resources are inexhaustible, and that the only challenge is to use them most efficiently. But if resources are not inexhaustible and cannot be replicated by human capital, the world economy is being ruthlessly exploited to its detriment and to the detriment of life on earth.

Thanks to Bush/Cheney/Obama and the wars for military/security profits, we might not last long enough to test Daly’s hypothesis. As American hegemony confronts both China and Russia, hubris can rid the planet of humans before nature does. 

To find a Nobel prize-winner documenting the high cost of globalism to developed economies is extraordinary. For the Council on Foreign Relations to publish it suggests that the Establishment, or some part of it, suspects that its hubris has run away with its fortunes, and that different thinking is needed to restore the US economy.

We must hope that Spence’s paper will encourage thought.  On the other hand, the bought-and-paid-for-economists will confront Spence with their fantasies that the US would be enjoying full employment if only government did not discourage employment with unemployment compensation, food stamps, income support programs, unions, minimum wages, and regulation. 

Recently, yet another high-level warning came from the International Monetary Fund.  The IMF report said that the US economy has been seriously eroded and that the age of America is over.

Will the US business and economic establishments heed these warnings, or will the US become a third world country as I predicted at the beginning of this century?

Paul Craig Roberts was an editor of the Wall Street Journal and an Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury.  His latest book, HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com