God We Trust, The Seed-Faith Scheme of Trickle-Down Economics

After months of dryness, it finally pours. I just sold God We Trust through Frank at the AJ Dillon Gallery. This summer’s drought dried up a lot the lawns that we cut. So now working for Irv’s landscaping business barely pays rent anymore. Now that the season is almost over, I sell a painting and we get not just rain, but a hurricane warning. Thankfully it’s not going to hit us. The last thing I need is another flood.

Featured at The Stars and Stripes show at the AJ Dillon Gallery in June, It didn’t sell right away, but I knew it would in the long run. The blue/green aqua glaze over the milky way made it a very watery Ace of Disks. The term liquidity comes to mind.

I had a friend who saw the hexagram as the Star of David, and possibly offensive in some way. I maintain that the hexagram holds multicultural religious significance, and no single culture has a monopoly on it. Rather I saw the dollar bill folded into a hexagram as a pure symbol: a mental construct representing a real-life manifestation of power.

In American capitalism, economic policy is exactly like a religious doctrine. Like seed-faith televangelists, economists of the Alan Greenspan persuasion have shamelessly pushed this absurd doctrine of “trickle down” economics. A businessman is a profit creator, not a job creator. Jobs are a byproduct of commerce, not a goal. This should be common sense, but ideology is so strong it’s taking years for American voters to look around and do the math. It’s sad to watch uneducated folk systematically manipulated into voting against their own interests, while many fairly educated people don’t even bother to vote. I think Bernie Sander’s popularity in the polls says a lot about America’s political future. Maybe the herd won’t be docile much longer, there is hope.

On a grander scale, faith is at the very heart of economics. Faith in the national currency and bonds, and the stock market. It’s all build on belief. I am constantly aware of how much our very “real” world is built on ideas, some good (sustainable), and some bad (unsustainable). The world system of capitalism as it functions today, requires the kind of growth our planet can’t sustain. There are too many wasteful inefficiencies caused by perverse incentives to externalize cost upon taxpayers and the environment. As any economist will tell you, there is no free lunch. In religion as in economics, policies bourne of extreme ideology create an unsustainable long-term environment. “Trust the rich, they’ll take care of you” can only work for so long while wages stagnate far below profit margins and tax-sheltered bank accounts grow fat.



This link, which I can't seem to embed, is a video of Bernie Sanders grilling Alan Greenspan for being out of touch with real Americans.



https://www.facebook.com/facebook/videos/10153231379946729/

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