ABOVE THE ATLANTIC

by Madeleine Kando

I am comfortably sitting in my airplane seat on my way back home to the United States. I spent two weeks in Holland and now I have all these thoughts racing through my head, speeded up by the glass of red wine which I just consumed together with the memorable airplane food.Europe... what can I say? With all her shortcomings she still holds my heart, like an old long lost lover. Even in her old age she has managed to rise to the peak of her career. The level of success she now enjoys is astounding. Do I, as an immigrant to the United States,feel a touch of resentment? A feeling that I have it rough and Europe has it easy? And why on earth am I comparing myself to an entire continent?

At 65 years of age, after having raised a family in the US, I am still trying to give my relationship to Europe a proper place, a place of rest and acceptance. I don't know how other immigrants feel, but in my case, I have never lost the feeling that I am trying to bridge the gap between two continents, like a giant standing on two floating icebergs in the middle of the Atlantic. If you ever tried to balance on two wobbling structures, that is how I feel about me living here in the US, but part of me also being in Europe.

I sometimes look at my relationship to Europe as a daughter's relationship to her mother and as we all know, a mother/daughter relationship is very complex. It boils down to the fact that Europe (the people back home) and me, the immigrant, we are both under the illusion that we are the center of the world.

But there is a difference between me and the people I left behind. I realize very clearly that ultimately, I am not all that important, because I am only one link in a long chain. My American children will continue (delete "on") bearing American children of their own (unless they emigrate of course). I was just the seedbearer of a new immigrant plant. Whereas my European friends, Well, would it be presumptuous to compare them to the inhabitants of the two-dimensional beings in the story of Flatland? That, since they have never experienced being immigrants, leaving their homeland, they are totally unaware of a third dimension? An immigrant dimension? They are not aware of what it is like to live anywhere BUT Europe? The world is a small place for those who do not travel. It is a safe place, nothing frighteningly big to compare yourself to. Hence you are more important.

So where does this feeling of resentment stem from? Partly because America is no longer the country I came to a long long time ago. My new found lover has not kept his word, he is no longer taking care of me. America has given me many things, the need to be strong so I could survive, to be creative and inventive so I could fulfill myself. It has always given me the freedom that Europe never did and probably still does not offer. But it gets harder and harder to stay in love with such a dysfunctional lover.

Now I am flying back to my life, my children, my husband, my job. My continent. Being an immigrant makes you resilient. On the one hand it makes you aware of how small and unimportant you are, on the other hand it makes you proud of the fact that you started out in the new world with just one suitcase and a hundred dollars in your pocket. And I had the most valuable asset one can have as an immigrant: I was young. And after all, we all turn to dust, become food for the worms, immigrant or a flatlander alike.

Bye Europe. I do love you though. I guess I will have to accept being part of two worlds until the day I die.
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Djimon

by Tom Kando

In October, my wife Anita and I took a taxi from our Paris hotel on the Boulevard Saint Jacques to the Gare de Lyon, to take the train to the South of France.

The taxi driver picked us up around nine in the morning. He was a big, talkative young man from the Cote d’Ivoire. Looked a lot like Djimon Hounsou, the handsome actor in the movie Gladiator. These days, the probability that you’ll be driven by a (native) French taxi driver in Paris is nil. The city has become so “diverse,” there are very few Frenchmen left who live there, plus the taxi business in all cities always attracts a lot of immigrants from poorer countries. The last half dozen times we took a cab in Paris, the drivers were from Algeria, Ukraine, Senegal, Cap Verde, Morocco (a woman) and now the Ivory Coast.These drivers were all friendly and colorful, and today’s man - we’ll call him Djimon - is no exception. He hits the boulevard like the 24-hour Le Mans race track. Anita is petrified, but I am enjoying it. Back home in California, Anita always accuses me of driving too wildly. Yet compared to Djimon, I drive like an octogenarian woman on Valium.
However, to Anita’s delight, the morning Paris traffic lives up to its reputation, i.e. we are soon stuck in jams so monumental as to make those on L.A. freeways pale in comparison. Luckily, our train isn’t scheduled to leave until noon, and the railroad station is only four miles away. At times, we stand still long enough for Anita and me to get out of the cab and buy ourselves a café au lait at a nearby sidewalk café.
So Djimon’s driving isn’t hair-raising after all. Still, his maneuvers and his communications with other drivers keep the situation interesting. I have long noticed that the primary rule for successful Paris driving is to always take advantage of any available open space whatsoever, even if it’s only a couple of centimeters. Thus, if you can squeeze between two other cars with zero space left, you must do it, and do it tout de suite, or else someone else will, and you’ll never move forward. If you occasionally miscalculate and you don’t quite fit in, no big deal, just one more scratch or dent on your Peugeot or Citroen. I don’t recall the last time I saw an unscratched or undented car in Paris.

Just as Djimon begins to back up his honking at another taxi with some four-letter verbal argumentation, his phone rings. Good, I tell myself. That’ll distract him from the incipient traffic altercation.
Judging from Djimon’s reaction, the caller is a woman, and it’s about an alleged unpaid bill. Djimon explodes: “Hey Madame, I paid that bill a long time ago, and I can prove it! foutez-moi la paix!( f..... you!)”
However, the lady persists, and she threatens with collection, legal action, and even jail and expulsion back to Africa.

Then, just what I had been afraid of, happens: Djimon turns around from behind the wheel and addresses us, trying to involve us in his problem. “They threaten to me!” he announces in a booming voice. “They want me to pay bill which already paid!” He starts telling us some incomprehensible story, interlaced with outcries like, “It’s outrageous! Merde to all Frenchmen, Merde to all Europeans! You all a bunch of racists!”

“How terrible,” I say, doing my very best to sound sympathetic,
“...actually, we are not from here...”
Djimon goes back to shouting at the woman on the phone. He tells her that he is driving over to their office right now to teach them a lesson, and he hangs up.

Shit! Is he taking us with him on the warpath, instead of the railroad station? I begin to plan our escape. I tell Anita to get ready to jump out of the car at the next stoplight or the next traffic jam, whichever comes first. But what about our baggage in the trunk?

The phone rings again. Same woman. She has switched to the appeasement mode, saying, “Monsieur Djimon, I am just a secretary doing my job. We’ll research the matter. Don’t worry, we wont take any action. You don’t have to come over to the office now.”

Suddenly Djimon’s face shows the biggest smile I ever saw. The storm blows over as quickly as it blew in. He turns to us again and says, beaming, “Ha! You see, all you have to do is be brave! Little people cannot allow Frenchmen to step everywhere on us!” and then he asks, “you not Frenchman? You come from where ?”

“California,” I confess with apprehension, knowing how hostile much of the world is to Americans. If Djimon hates the French, he must hate Americans even more, I surmise. On the other hand, it has long been a principle of mine to never apologize for or hide the fact that I am an American. I find Americans who travel in Europe and say that they are Canadians despicable cowards.

But I am pleasantly surprised. As soon as Djimon finds out where we are from, he exudes admiration: “Oh bravo! La Californie, c’est magnifique! San Francisco! Golden Gate Bridge!
One day I go to America. It is promised land!”

And then, a brilliant idea hits him: “I come and visit you, okay? My wife and children stay in your house, and in return, you come and stay in my family house in the Cote d’Ivoire, yes? My father has big house in Abidjan. We go back every year. You know Cote d’Ivoire? Is very beautiful. You come and be our guest. We eat very good food, you stay as long as you want, yes?”

“Hmm...” Anita and I aren’t quite sure about this exchange program. Sounds exciting, but maybe we should think about it. That’s what we tell Djimon.

We arrive at the Gare de Lyon. Djimon is not just nice, he is effusive. We give him a generous tip, and we even hug each other. Next year in Abidjan maybe?
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Theories

by Tom Kando

It’s amazing, the theories one hears these days, based on reasonable starting points. People know something that is true or at least plausible, and then they get carried away to incredible conclusions. I am talking about points of facts, not opinions. A lot of this is on the Internet, which is rapidly replacing talk radio as the wacko forum. Examples:

1. Today, America’s rate of imprisonment is by far the highest in the world. Also, America passed the 19th amendment in 1919, giving women the right to vote. This led to more emotional voting and more permissive policies in child rearing and in the control of anti-social behavior. Ergo, the fact that women acquired the right to vote is the cause of today’s high crime rate, and imprisonment rate. Jumping from point A (the 19th amendment) to point Z (our high lock-up rate) is quite a leap, don’t you think?2. Because it is the Christmas season, there is a lot of “Christianity” around. At the same time, there is also a lot of political correctness around, e.g. we should say “happy holidays” instead of “merry Christmas,”etc. Half the western world is now not only indifferent to Christianity, but hostile to it. You know, Christianity was the abominable centuries-long totalitarianism responsible for the Inquisition, for auto da fes, witch burnings, obstructing scientific progress, still opposing birth control today, etc., etc.
Personally, I am not hostile to Christianity. I am indifferent to it, and I don’t believe in it. That’s all.
But some anti-Christians, again, get carried away: There is now a voguish opinion circulating that Jesus never existed! It’s the same pattern as my first example, above: Starting with the reasonable premise that Jesus was NOT the son of God, some people now have to assert that he never existed at all.
Can’t one laugh at those childish stories about walking on water and the immaculate conception, and yet understand that Jesus was a real historical figure, about 2,000 years ago? There are such things as facts. Jesus was a minor Jewish political figure who never even made it to Rome. His following somehow managed to outlive the innumerable other sects of that period, and so we got Christianity, with all its warts and all its glory. The point is, even if you feel that Christianity sucks, why argue the absurd?

3. “Barack Obama is not a true American, he is an agent for subversive foreign forces, maybe for Muslim interests, etc.” There was a lot of this on the Internet during the campaign, and there still is. Again, you start out with some true facts: Although Obama is officially totally American and American-born, it is true that his background is very international - Kenyan father, raised in Indonesia and in Hawaii, etc. And yes, his middle name is Hussein.
But how does this lead some people to conclude that he will therefore not be good for America, not protect the interests of the American people, etc.? Again, a huge stretch, don’t you think?

Don’t get me wrong: I enjoy wacky theories. I have thought of many myself. But in general I recognize the difference between them and those which are more likely to be true.
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You Are What You Speak

By Madeleine Kando

I have a confession to make. I suffer from multiple personality disorder. It is the fate of many people like me who grow up bilingual or multilingual. But you know what? I LIKE it. I like being French one day, Dutch the next and American the rest of the time. I find myself being able to put on many different attires.I grew up in Paris and, to tell you the truth, I have mixed feelings about it.
Don’t misunderstand me: I admire the French culture: French movies, French cuisine. And French literature is absolutely mindblowingly beautiful. But I have the advantage of looking at things from a ‘cosmopolitan’ perspective and my personal experience in France as a Hungarian refugee after the Second World War was not exactly what you would call a positive one. I don’t suppose the French would agree with me, but at the time, the French didn’t fit my definition of a welcoming society. And because all one’s memories are so intertwined with the language one speaks, when I put on my French attire I definitely don’t feel like it fits me all that well. I put it on for special occasions, when I meet the parents of my French students for instance (why not teach French when you speak it fluently?). But I don’t feel all that comfortable in it. I am glad when it’s time to take it off, and slip into something more comfortable.

Now let’s see.. what else is in my wardrobe? Oh yes. My Dutch attire. I like that one probably even less, only because I was being fitted for it at a very critical age in my life: my puberty. In fact, I would’nt even call it an attire. I would call it more of a prison uniform.

Again, I have to apologize to all you Dutch nationals out there who are reading this. You DO fit the definition of a welcoming society, you have a time honored tradition of welcoming the oppressed and persecuted, including me, poor Hungarian refugee. But my personal experience growing up in Holland has revealed a lack of ‘broad mindedness’ on a personal level which resulted in my extreme dislike for wearing this particular attire.

You already have guessed what I am getting at with this metaphoric allusion to ‘attires’. I am talking about a country’s culture. The act of speaking goes way beyond expressing words. Speaking a certain language not only gives voice to your thoughts, it also expresses the nuances of those thoughts through the filter of the society that that language belongs to. And there is something uniquely extraordinary about people who grow up with different languages, they can step out of the mold of a particular culture and see it in a much more objective light. That gives someone a very special perspective.

Language is a verbal representation of a whole society’s history, culture, social norms... We, as individuals, are in fact an amalgamation of everything that a society is made up of. And of course, a society is the sum of the individuals that it encompasses. It’s not just a matter of language: the entire culture associated with that language is really what we are talking about. Parents who wish to teach their children their own native language, see it as a way to pass on their ‘cutlure’, a piece of themselves. In my case, I was so busy trying on my own new found American attire that I didn’t really focus much on passing on the other hand-me downs to my children. They are monolingual individuals. I have not managed to pass on my own 'cosmopolitan culture'.

But let me continue with my wardrobe metaphor and present to you my PIECE DE RESISTANCE, my American attire. If there is a favorite in my wardrobe it is definitely this one. It fits me like a glove, but at the same time it does not constrict me in any way. It is a designer piece, designed by ME in fact.

I learnt English as an adult, and I am sure I must speak it with a foreign accent which I blissfully cannot hear myself. To me this attire represents American know-how, American pragmatism, American friendliness and openness, not to mention the fact that I have a suspicion about the English language itself. I suspect it has become the dominant (second) language on earth because it is innately suited to do so.

As a non-native English speaker, I sometimes look at the English language from the outside in. Like a Neanderthaler would look at a car. Let me give you an example: At times, to cope with the feeling of depression that inevitably sets when one listens to the news, I find myself counting how many 'action' words are being used by the newscaster. It's a fun game to play. Action expressions can not really be translated accurately in other languages. How do you translate ‘jumping to conclusions’ in Dutch? Or ‘all the figures lined up correctly', 'He beat all odds', ‘ out of reach’,’taking steps’, ‘take charge’… How do you say those things in French? I could go on forever. I am not sure why American English is so action oriented, but it is. And that makes it a dynamic and easy to learn language.

Now, I won't start on the written part of a language because that would take another few pages to cover, but let me just allude to it here: when I read a Dutch newspaper I feel like I am walking through molasses. Slow and cumbersome. And even though French is a beautiful, poetic language when it comes to matters of the heart, it is archaic and convoluted in a practical sense. The plasticity of the English language is missing. No wonder English has become the dominant language of the world. The French feel threatened by English to the point of forbidding certain words in the French language. You cannot say ‘computer’ in French, you have to say ‘ordinateur’ or else they’ll get you. This is just as absurd as our attempt at boycotting the words ‘french fries’ during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Did YOU ever order ‘freedom fries’ at McDonalds?
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Diet And Fasting

By Madeleine Kando

Most people are disappointed when they give up a diet. They feel that they have failed somehow. But they don’t realize that every day of their diet, their body has had one extra day of r and r. They have given their stomach a well needed rest.

Could it be that our modern-day obsession with dieting serves as a replacement for the regular fasting and other restrictions of food intake that many religions practiced in the past, and some still do. A Mormon fasts on a regular basis and does not feel like a failure when the period of fasting is over. He goes back to regular eating with a sense of accomplishment. A new beginning, if you will. It has been a period of cleansing and purification.So, why not consider dieting, even if it is for a short period of time, a success? Why do we feel like a failure when we stop our diet? I say: diet as much or as little as you want, and take each dieting day at a time. Consider each day a success story.

I have gotten into the habit of fasting every 3 months or so. Just not eating for a while. I mean, we take a break from work, from exercise, from almost everything that we do on a daily basis. So why not take a break from eating? Eating is a very energy consuming activity. If you are serious about eating you have to think about what to buy so you can plan your meal, cook your meal, eat your meal, do the dishes, usually put the leftovers away.. my, what a chore. Wouldn’t it be a relief to take a break from all that?
And, not to be too blunt about it, but not eating is really giving your stomach a well-needed rest. I know, some of your organs are meant to work non-stop from the day you were born to the day you die: you cannot expect your heart to go on a vacation, or your liver to stop doing it’s job. But your stomach.. well, your stomach does need periods of rest. At night for instance. The problem is that stomachs are so overworked these days with our hectic life style and all, they don’t get a chance to fully rest. So that’s why they need to be sent to rehab once in a while.

If we could have a heart to heart with our stomach, the conversation would go something like this:
You: ‘Hey stomach, how you doin today?’
Stomach: ‘Oh, I don’t know, I’m really stressed out you know. Had a double shift yesterday. Your midnight snack really did me in. Couldn’t punch out till 1 am!’
You: ‘Oh, wow. That’s bad. You must really be exhausted.’
Stomach: ‘Yeah. I hear that I am in for a real whammer tomorrow too. Aren’t we going to a conference where there is a free buffet?!’.
You: ‘Yes, sorry about that. I feel bad for you. Anything I can do to help?’
Stomach: ‘Now that you mention it.. could you hold off on the hot sauce tomorrow? And maybe cut back on the french fries a little? I don’t think I’ll be able to handle it without a serious doze of antacid.’

Gosh, you wouldn’t do that kind of thing to your worst enemy. Let alone your OWN stomach. But stomachs don’t complain until the damage is fairly serious. Heartburn, colitis, ibs..

So, not only do we need to give our stomachs a little break but another benefit of fasting is the time you free up by not worrying about food. Religious fasting frees up time for praying. I happen to be agnostic, so praying is not in the cards for me, but I am free to smell the roses, go for a walk, read more. . .

But the best part about fasting or dieting is knowing that soon you will be eating again. Trust me, eating after a fast or a diet ranks way up there with winning the lottery, having great sex or seeing President Bush enjoy a long-overdue and well-deserved retirement.

Why don’t you give it a try?
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Pronouns

By Tom Kando

Do you realize that some pronouns are nicer than others? Think of their usage in informal conversations, in speeches, in newspaper articles, or in any other context.

You are having dinner with friends and you chit-chat. About the weather, the presidential election, your hometown basketball team, a guest’s new job, the children’s college graduation, a recent trip someone took, whatever. For example, you ask, “hey John, are you planning any trips this holiday season?” I
John starts his answer with, “I....” - as in “well, Tom, I’m flying to Hawaii for ten days next month. I own property on several of the outer islands...”
Someone else butts in and says, “I can’t stand Hawaii. I think it’s a phony tourist trap.” So here we have bragging (which can cause gagging), self-importance, and opinionated negativity.

Another example: you and a buddy may be discussing politics or sports, for example the economic crisis, or the likely Superbowl finalists. He’ll say, “I find the federal bail-out plan a crock,” or “I’m sure that New England can only get to the Superbowl by cheating...” Again, use of the word “I” is associated with asinine behavior.
More often than not, the pronoun “I” is annoying!

YOU
What about “you”? At a stoplight, someone may say, “Hey you! Whatchya doing driving that big gas guzzler?” or a colleague may say “you always talk too fast. Why are you so uptight?” People who talk to someone and begin with “you” are often meddling, criticizing, opinionating, bloviating.
“You” can also often be a drag.

THEY and THEM
What about “they” and “them”? Like in: “Guess what they do, in Saudi Arabia? They cut off thieves’ hands.”
Or “those damn immigrants, we should send them all back to where they came from. They bring nothing but trouble.”
When we talk about “them,” we often generalize about an out-group, and it is frequently to make prejudiced, stereotypical and negative pronouncements about “the other,” those who are not like “us” and who don’t belong with us. We don’t usually say nice things about them.
“They” and “them” are often not so nice, either.

HE and SHE
“He” and “she”? Maybe talking about an individual third person is less harmful than generalizing to entire out-groups, although negative gossip is also bad.
“He” and “she” might be okay, depending.

US and OURS
How about “Us”and “ours”? As in “leave us alone,” or “our music is the best.”
“Us” and “ours” can be awfully exclusionary, which is annoying.

WE
Last but not least, “we”: Your friend says, “we should get together for dinner and go out to see a movie.” Or a leader says “we, the American people, should help each other through this crisis.”
Or my wife and I remind each other that “we” love each other.
Yes, “we” can often be good. It is a lot better than “I,” and it can also be better than “us.” It’s probably the best pronoun.
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It is Better to have Fewer Prisoners

This responds to a letter by Michael Rushford, President of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation. Michael Rushford predicts that releasing prisoners will cause crime to increase. True, some of the released prisoners may recidivate.

However, the fundamental issue regarding crime and punishment in America - particularly in California - is that we lock up far too many people: Our rate of incarceration is about 800 people per 100,000. This is by far the highest rate in the world. Other post-industrial countries - Canada, Japan, Europe - lock up between 35 and 120 people per 100,000. One tenth our rate!The relationship between crime and imprisonment is murky. It isn’t clear what is cause and what is effect. The primary cause of the sharp increase in crime during the 60s and 70s was demographic, not (just) permissiveness. Southern states (Texas, etc.) punish the most, yet they have the most crime. True, they may have to punish more because they have more crime, but this is only a small part of the reason for their exorbitant rates of incarceration.
One thing is certain: prisons make as much a contribution to crime as to its reduction. This is especially so in places like California, where a large majority of inmates consists of (1) non-violent (drug) offenders and (2) parole violators whose recidivism is often perfunctory (e.g. it consists of offenses like failing to notify their P.O. before traveling).

Reducing our prison population should have happened long ago, based on moral grounds and on plain common-sense. Now, the state’s disastrous deficit ($40 billion over the next 18 months) adds an even more compelling reason to do it. Every single service in the state is under the gun, from health and education to unemployment compensation and public safety. Yet, the Dept. of Corrections’ budget remains sacrosanct.
Not only that, but there is also the court-ordered additional $8 billion expenditure which prison czar Clark Kelso is demanding to improve the inmates’ medical treatment facilities. Most of this money would be for “medical space” for about 10,000 inmates. That’s $600,000 per inmate! Insanity is the only word I have, for a proposal to spend more than twice as much on one inmate as the cost of the average California house, while the state is already descending into bankruptcy without this additional extravagance!

Assuming that the authorities release the most low-risk inmates, California will be better off with fewer prisoners, whether this is done in order to reduce the deficit, or for humanitarian reasons.
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The Arts in a Child's Life

By Madeleine Kando

Children start life with the potential to absorb information and learn skills of many different kinds: they can learn how to dance, talk, think, build things, play music, act (pretend) and much more.

In school, however, the emphasis is on ‘academics’, the three ‘R’s”. But we forget that children are multi-faceted in their ability and desire to learn. Even though schools will not admit this, learning does not even have to involve language. A child might tell you an endless story about what happened to them that day, but others would rather move and show you with gestures. Yet another child will draw a picture and still others will build something with a lego set to express their experience.Unfortunately, after a child enters school a lot of that rich caleidoscope is parked in the basement. Only language (writing and reading) and counting matters. I wonder how many children are left behind because they just happen to be weak in ‘verbal intelligence’?

But what is the value of a factual thought without this rich caleidoscope? Just an interesting oddity if you ask me. Yes, I am smart: I know that 2 green apples and 2 red apples make 4 apples. But what makes it interesting is whether red apples taste better than green apples. Or trying to stack 2 red and 2 green apples. Maybe drawing 2 green apples and 2 red apples.? Or carving a green apple..

Once you start applying imagination and creativity, your factual thinking about apples becomes transformational. Thinking about how to juggle apples, how they taste, how they look.. that is what the Arts are all about. And the Arts are not truly concerned about the mind. They tap into our emotions and our senses. Our taste, smell, vision and hearing.

Education that thinks that the ‘senses and emotions’ are not important in the learning process is doomed to fail. Not only are the Arts an extension of our senses, but they are like flashlights that illuminate other academic subjects. The Arts gives meaning to knowledge.

Aside from the fact that many children have intelligences that do not get addressed in a society that does not value the Arts in their educational system, the children who DO excel in those types of intelligences, i.e. verbal/mathematical, miss out on developing their other types of intelligences: kinesthetic, visual, musical and spatial.

A trapeze artist at the Cirque du Soleil who dazzles us with their triple somersaults on a tight rope. The gymnast balancing on one hand on 20 stacked chairs: are they not ‘intelligent’? Does their ability to use their ‘kinesthetic intelligence’ not border on genius? Martha Graham once said: ‘If I could say it I wouldn’t have to dance it.’

The problem might lie in the use of the word ‘Art’. It usually means an art ‘product’: a painting, a sculpture, a sonata. Yet ‘the arts’ are more than anything else a product of creative thinking. It involves problem solving and critical judgment. The process of creating a work of art is where the true value lies. Without The Arts in a child’s life knowledge is bland, like a dish without salt. Soon that child will loose interest and turn into one more ‘drop out’. Let’s listen to our children and tap into their ‘multiple’ intelligences. That is where the true success of education is to be found.

Some of the information contained in this article is based on reading the following :Boston Public Schools As Arts-Integrated Learning Organizations by Eric Oddleifson, Chairman CABC
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further ruminations about the economic crisis

Today, two random thoughts about the economic crisis:

1) My first thought isn’t very original. I’ve heard many people talk this way for a long time. I just want to articulate it:

The current crisis, epicentered in the US but affecting the whole world, is universally defined - at least by economists - as a lack of consumption. The credit markets are frozen, there is no lending going on, people aren’t spending (enough) any more, hence people are losing their jobs and everything is grinding to a halt.This view is practically consensual, almost common-sensical. It is shared by “liberal” economists such as Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman and Pulitzer Prize winning author Thomas Friedman. (I keep confusing these two guys, as both are regular New York Times columnists).
Both the lame-duck Republican administration (Paulsen, Bush) and the incoming Obama administration also agree - at least about the ends, if not the means: stimulate, stimulate, stimulate. While the fat cats want to “stimulate” banks, Obama wants to stimulate the people, through public works, etc. Both agree that there needs to be more money in circulation, more money spent.
In sum, Capitalism reigns supreme - at least the Keynesian variety, which says that you revive the economy by pumping money into the consumer sector (or something like that, if I remember Robert Heilbroner correctly) So, whether you go “demand” side, as the Keynesians want, or supply side, as the discredited Reaganites prefer, they both agree that the economy must resume growing. I suppose most economists would agree that for mature economies such as America and Europe, it would be healthy to return to a growth rate of, say, 3% or 4% (For countries such as China and India, it’s a different matter. Economists expect such countries to continue to grow at rates around 10%).

* * * * *

But there is another view: Why must economies keep growing? In time, shouldn’t they flatten out, as they indeed have begun to do in places like Switzerland and Denmark, i.e. in a few very rich, advanced, small, clean and environmentally sound countries? There, annual population growth is zero, and annual GDP growth is barely more. Isn’t that just fine?

Shouldn’t we consume less rather than more, at least those of us who are already living in opulence, who eat too much, drive around too much, live in houses that are too large?
Granted, there are major economic needs left to fill, and not just in the Third World. America’s infrastructure is abominable, as is its health care system, and growing segments of its educational system. Switching to wind power, battery-powered cars, mass public transit, completing the shift to electronic communication, there are trillions of dollars to be spent on all these things, and dozens of millions of jobs to be created.
Everyone who so desires should be able to buy and live in a nice (little) house. Great. People should also eat a lot healthier than they do, and this, too, might be more expensive.
So I am not suggesting that we should crawl back into caves. But one thing we should reduce is the production and purchase of garbage, i.e. plastic and metal things which are often useless, needless and environmentally destructive.
You don’t have to be a hippie to believe this way. For years there has been a simplicity movement which advocates precisely this. True, some of what these people say may be extreme. They claim that a couple could get by on less than $10,000 a year, buying food through coops, being frugal in all sorts of ways. I’d like to split the difference. Personally, I might find it a bit hard to live on $5000 a year. After all, I am used to a fairly comfortable middle-class lifestyle which requires considerably more money than that. However, the simplicity movement’s main point remains valid.
The point, then, is obvious: granted that there are crying inequities and economic needs, that these are being aggravated by the current economic crisis, and granted that America and the world must overcome this crisis, there is nevertheless a silver lining: Hopefully, we will learn to live within our means, maybe save a little again instead of spending ourselves gaga, and above all, learn to consume less rather than always wanting more.

* * * * *

2) My second thought for the day is about value: As a non-economist, I am also struck by another consensus among economists: Namely that value is determined only by supply and demand, and by nothing else. Adam Smith, right?
Let me first admit right away that this idea makes a lot of sense. Of course. Only a fool would deny it. For example, gold is precious, right? But if the entire Rocky Mountains were made of gold, then only very young children and idiots would invest in gold, which would have less value than manure.
However: Take the housing market. Four years ago, my house was worth, say, $800,000. Now, it’s down to half that, and we all know why. Adam Smith would explain it properly.
Now take this one step further: had the housing market been even crazier a few years ago, my house could have gone up to, say, $5,000,000. And by the same token, were the housing market to deteriorate even more, by next year my house’s value could decline to $1000. In fact, there is plenty of real property which cannot be sold at any price, i.e. whose value is negative.

But does this make sense? I remember vaguely learning in some of my grad school courses in economics about other theories of value. For example, there is Marx’s Labor Theory of Value. I suppose Marx felt that the value of something is (at least in part) determined by the cost of the labor which goes into producing it. I am sure this theory is now discredited, and I certainly do not propose to defend it.
However: I just throw this out as an example to show that there may be alternatives to the theory which currently reigns supreme, namely the supply-and-demand theory.
Think again of the value of a house - mine, or any other. Now granted that some real estate may have negative value. There may be houses or apartments so dilapidated, so badly located in, say, a crime-infested area, that no one would want to touch them with a ten-foot pole. But what about a fine house in a fine area, fit for a family to live in comfortably? What if market forces were to reduce its “value” to $1000? Surely this would not be rational, would it?

In sum, here is the counter-intuitive thought I am suggesting: the cliché is that, in human society, everything is “in the eyes of the beholder.” In other words, no object’s meaning or value is “inherent,” “absolute,” “God-given” if you will. The value of a house, or of a Van Gogh painting, or of a piece of jewelry, or of a piece of bread, is determined by its scarcity and its (perceived) use to us.
But maybe this is not the be-all and end-all of all sociological and economic wisdom. Maybe the idea of “intrinsic,” or “inherent” value is worth exploring. I am sure economists and philosophers have done so.
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