A Dire Need for Regeneration

Forget those stock market statistics that tell tall tales of record highs. That hasn't really happened yet, considering hard-core inflation since 2008. When the markets had reached new heights in that year, I paid $3.59 for my favorite high-protein bread. When I go to a store now the same loaf retails for $4.79, or sometimes more. A friend tells me that he used to spend $80 every other week at Winco and walk out with four bags of groceries. Now he spends the same amount and leaves with three bags. Add these same increases in prices, between twenty-five and thirty-three percent, (25-33%) to the stock index and find that the market would have to reach a minimum of 17,600 to match inflation, and more likely that number would be 19,000 before a new record is set.

And so what if the market does soar?

What matters more, far more, are people at the base line. In earlier posts I wrote of setting a new paradigm to measure economic health of any society. Essentially, if anyone is involuntarily homeless within fifty miles of a city center or village hub, that community is not economically successful. If anyone, especially children, go hungry during the day or go to bed hungry, that community is not economically successful. If anyone within fifty miles of the city or village center suffers an illness that is not treated because of lack of money, that community is not economically successful. And it matters not how many millionaires or billionaires hang around to artificially and deceptively boost average net worth or income statistics.

Ten billionaires in a zip code with one homeless student negate the status of that community under this more compassionate paradigm.

So ... I'm a radical. I care about people.

Don't call me a Progressive, or progressive. Instead, I'm intentionally regressive, or a Regressive.

Because I care about people.

This is an example, from a news source I like to read:

Participation in labor force hits 35 year low 

This means that our active or involved workforce has regressed to a level last known thirty-five years ago, before large numbers of women opted to drop "housewife" as their occupation and seek work outside the home.

One reason that fewer adults are remaining in the work force, in general numbers, is reflected in a comparable and noteworthy article: 357000 fewer women held jobs October - Female participation rate hits new low

People smarter than me have figured out that it doesn't pay to go to work in jobs that cost a bunch of money to keep, in transportation to and fro, and wardrobes, and meals away from home. The net gain for many low-paying jobs is hardly worth the time and stress factors. Especially when those jobs are limited to part-time hours, and employers demand seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day schedule availability of every worker. Call those "associates" 24/7 Comrades.

It's those Twenty-four Seven Comrades who are expected to report to work this coming Thanksgiving Day, or lose the privilege of working for a company run by executives who will be taking four or five days off for the holiday weekend, and paid seventy-five (and more) times what the Comrades receive.

There is, within these statistics and factors, a dire need for a new paradigm in which no child in school has to be homeless or hungry.

There is a dire need for regeneration of ideas completely separate from government and corporate intrusion.

There is a dire need for human ingenuity to be unleashed on this body of circumstances so that economic society can be regenerated, and made healthy.

The power to bring about this essential regeneration lies within those who are in the forty-two percent (42%) of adults not currently included in the active/interested workforce. Even those who are retired and elderly have something to contribute. While it is true that a percentage of those 42% are incapable of making positive contributions, many more are. Add to these a good many of the fifty-two percent of workers limited to part-time hours (only 47% of all working adults are working full-time) and we find an abundant resource of solution-bearing human ingenuity.

And here's the kicker: to unleash this power is regressive, but it's exactly what we all need. We need to regress to an earlier age wherein people were allowed the freedom to create solutions to challenging circumstances without asking permission of government or corporate manipulators.

Call me radically regressive.