Pendulum

In the Social Security Act of 1934 an impressive amount of people got a new contract with life, in the sense that meant that government sometimes represents or have at heart people's needs.

It started 60 years before with Otto Von Bismark in Germany where for some unusual reason started blossoming the wild idea that people deserve a compensation (covering pensions and unemployment) for a life of work after they are too old to work or at least their bodies slow down or if their jobs are gone.


Getting a new contract with life in the very sense that ideals of something better for people got inside the realm of the possible.
Yes, we are still too close to the dark middle ages where royalty derived from God himself the mandate to rule humans and appointed a whole group of people that just became the owners of the land and by that in no small measure of the population's destiny.

Similarly a kind of aristocracy of money got the leashes of the country here. But they blinked in 1929 when they were at the zenith of their power and miraculously they retrenched and a bloodless revolution occurred in the hands of one of their own, president FDR who sided with the little people.So what speaks not too bad about the robber barons (still controlling vast parts of the economy) is that mayybe out of a sense of embarrasment or even shame allowed the new president to create mechanisms and laws to prevent in the future similar situations

Something that we kissed goodbye several decades later in the Clinton presidency by the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act (not separating wall street and main street money anymore so wall street could help itself more liberally so to speak) among other things.

That moment is a clear example of not letting a crisis go wasted.From Roosevelt point of view.
The untold suffering for years by huge amounts of the population rendered ineffective any kind of counteraction with a chance of success by the moneyed elite.

Just to set the record straight moneyed elite means a very small group of the wealthy to me, just the robber barons, if you get my meaning.
Those that don't have any conscience's objection at all to opress, enslave and discard fellow humans from the production stage in their companies in the name of progress and letting government to deal with that.And cry foul if they have to pay taxes in a mesure that allow the nation to take care of the infirm, something that is coming very soon by the way.

A Sam Waltonish approach where the encouragement is to have employees go to the hospital as a way to make more profit.

Of course had the workers owned a sizable amount of shares in the company would have been a "neutral" so to speak decision; increasing profits to shareholders and himself.

There lays the crux of the matter and the central question: What is fair? where is the line in the sand? because on the other hand we got organized labor when... ahem "get" for the people more than the fair share and companies go bust like the GM case of course their power is or was a lot less.

So in 1934 it was determined that a fair share was to provide some kind of net to people who without participating in the benefits got the short end of the stick.And things doesn't look too different today, do they?.

But the S.S. Act of 1934 planted the seeds of what is known as the great compression, roughly it was a wealth transfer (high taxes one of the most evident results) to the masses from the rich.Where the country succeeded in establishing broad new standards about what was a fair and decent deal revamping the American Dream. The sense of what is just.

And honestly I think that this is the course that we are going to embark again. Some catalyzer should be in place but I can not fathom it yet.
But the situation after a decade of stagnant income (the need to sometimes compensate with debt the lack of income in the form of flashy plastic cards) and unresponsive governments for the little people needs; looks like is going to snap up.

Having in the other plate of the scale lavish profits for a very few who gradually became more owners of everything than in the last 80 years, makes me wonder if this time will be different or same like before a pervasive sense of shame is going to make the robber barons retreat allowing to reset what is fair in the "social contract" again, because they are still very much alive, aren't they?.

Dan


Yeah, when the market is boring I become philosophical but this weekend I'm going to start checking in detail and see if something new arises. Still in ACAS, EK, MBI.

Good luck everybody.