The Karma of Buying American

I bought a new Lasko room fan yesterday. It was made in the USA. There was a slight $8 premium on the price tag for this domestic bliss, as well as a name that was somewhat familiar; the others were companies never heard of before, such as "Eternal Breezes", and reminded me of lyric poetry by Li Po and numerous plum blossoms running down the river next to the Eternal Peace Pavilion...

I wish I had something else to say about it. I have been carping about it for years. My parents only started to talk about the lack of domestic manufactures four years ago, so I have to assume that coincides with the time frame of Fox News interest and emphasis on the phenomenon.
I just wish I had something else, some other feeling or insight or benefit, but I do not. I do not feel a thing. It was just something I had gotten in the habit of doing in shopping for things, and "Made in the USA" was on my checklist, and it was to be balanced - along with everything else - against the premium in price.

I mean, I am running out of things to say. I wish I had something comforting to say to people who have to confront the news everyday: the news from Washington being, in my opinion, much more troubling than anything the Middle East can drum up.
Osama? As I said yesterday, I shall party when we end just one of our wars, just one. And a good sized one, too. Not something like Reagan's Grenada Invasion: a blip on the radar... one just might pop up in the future in some whatever-istan. A good sized war... ending... party!

The State of the Union? I harped and kvetched about the running of at least two wars - Afghanistan and Iraq - for years without actually including the costs of war in the real budget. No one seemed to care. Politics and Ideology took front seat and relegated Fiscal Responsibility and Concern for the Future to the back of the bus.

I could go on, but I won't. All the talking points are known to you.
However, I will say that early on in 2008, I remember saying to myself, "There goes Health Care!"
I knew suddenly that reasonable and rational approach to health care for people who were not wealthy was no longer going to happen. It surprised me mightily when President Obama pulled it off. But the jackals are nipping at its heels...

Oil and Gas? I do not know. At least Big Oil actually pays taxes.
Years ago I studied the History of the American Economy, and we covered government supports and incentives for businesses, such as land grants for the railroad companies who were spanning the continent with railroad tracks.
This support was never intended to go on forever.
It is hard to take away an incentive apparently. Nobody ever lets go. Certainly the Oil incentives seem odd, in that companies so massive and so profitable need public support... but remember that the "support" is in the "Gazillions", so it is no small deal to the companies themselves. No matter how profitable things are, it hurts to take away a billion here or there.
There are the Agriculture price supports, too. And the supports for Lockheed and Boeing in their guise as part of the Military-Industrial complex; this support in the form of endless expenditures and a labyrinth of complex paperwork that defies rational control.
Then there is the Tax system...

Lastly, things have to be done with surgical skill and fine tools... the Texas Chain Saw Massacre approach is deadly. There is absolutely no guarantee of success of a heavy handed and brutish slashing of expenses: balancing the budget within one year is not a success... it would be a death sentence! So somewhere in between is where we should be: nothing in excess... wisdom of the ages and more proverbial tripe that we have ignored for the years of our empire.

So I bought a fan. I used to say that I was proud of buying American. Now it is a meaningless gesture, for I know that my security and well-being are being compromised and stripped away. I would dearly love to go out with a crowd, get drunk, and cheer... and I guess it doesn't matter if it's for Life or Death (like bin Laden's) anymore.
In the future, this Great Impoverishment will be handled in a few paragraphs in history books. Our casualties will then be fine and orderly, like the cemeteries you see for the fallen of World War I or at Gettysburg. Monuments will dot the landscape and seemingly make iconic the winters of our discontents and the summers of our dismay, but nothing shall make my suffering emblematic: we shall come as karma upon this land!

Let the leaders of today remember this.


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