Bit of History

Thorstein Bunde Veblen (1857-1929)

The son of immigrants, Thorstein Veblen was born on July 30, 1857 and reared in rural Wisconsin and Minnesota. A Carleton College graduate, Veblen received his Ph.D. in moral philosophy from Yale University. Unable to obtain a teaching position, Veblen returned to his father's farm, married his college sweetheart, and spent seven years reading and thinking.

In 1892, Veblen secured a post-doctoral fellowship at Cornell University and a second fellowship to the University of Chicago, where he became an economics instructor and editor of the Journal of Political Economy. After Chicago, Veblen taught at Stanford University, the University of Missouri, and the New School for Social Research in New York. He never attained a full professorship.

Veblen's unrelenting criticism of orthodox economic theory and US society may account for his failure to achieve professional recognition for his work. His criticisms are contained throughout his nine books, numerous essays, book reviews and articles. In his most famous work, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), Veblen coined the phrase "conspicuous consumption" to describe purchasing patterns of an affluent society with its "kept classes" and "underlying population."

Striking at the heart of neoclassical theory, Veblen held that its basic assumptions were unscientific. It failed to reconcile economic theory with facts, such as cultural variation that the new science of anthropology showed to be the rule, rather than the exception. Chief among its unscientific assumptions was Adam Smith's "invisible hand," a concept that assumed businessmen in pursuit of profit produce at the lowest possible cost goods consumers want. Competitive markets make the businessman's self-interest correspond to that of the society. Businessmen following their self-interest promote the social good. Veblen maintained that producing goods and making profits were two different things; the business community's quest for profits often had deleterious effects on the economy and society. The only possible outcome of each businessman following his self-interest is promotion of his self-interest.

In Theory of Business Enterprise, Veblen called profit-making "a conscientious withdrawal of efficiency." The chief service of businessmen was to practice sabotage. Thorough in his analysis, Veblen, an atheist, saw the church as "an accredited vent for the exudation of effete matter from the cultural organism."

For Veblen, a society prospers when the enterprise of wealth creators is encouraged while containing the cunning enterprise of those who fasten themselves on the backs of productive people through force and fraud for the sole purpose of getting something for nothing. Veblen's scientific and ethical dissent from orthodox theory greatly influenced the development of heterodox thinking in the US, although he never subscribed to Marxist ideology, as he believed the lower class was far too busy striving to climb up to the upper class to overthrow it. Veblen died on August 3, 1929. (Sources: www.fordham.edu, http://villa.lakes.com/eltechno/TV%20WHO.html and www.blupete.com)

Comments from the Bat Cave

The Dark Knight-Batman/White Ninja/Zorro has attained that magical age of twelve. Joyously, the family celebrated this momentous occasion and prayed attaining this great age will bring growth in other areas. Unfortunately, he remains a victim of "conspicuous consumption" and is cursed with the need to showcase possessions. Not allowed to carry money he received as birthday gifts to school, he showed it to friends from his bedroom window. When chided for boasting, he wondered aloud, "How else can I prove I got it?"

Intuit’s Vibe

My People

By The Last Poets

My people are Black, beige, yellow, Brown and beautiful
A garden of life with a love as sweet as scuppernong wine
growing in muddy waters making brown babies with
pink feet and quick minds.
My people warm sometimes hot always cool always together.
My people, let's be together!
Understand that we've lived and died together!

Understand my brother that I've smelled your piss in my hallway and it smells just like mine.
Understand that I love your woman,
my sister and her rare beauty is reason enough for a revolution.
Yes sister, my honest sister
I have had ugly moments with you,
but you are the only beauty I've ever known.
Yes sister, my honest sister
You are the joy in my smile
You are the reality of my dreams
You are the only sister I have and I need you
I need you to feed the children of our race
I need you to feed the lovers of our race
I need you to be the summer of my winters
I need you because you are the natural life in the living
At night there is a moon to make the Blackness be felt
I am that Blackness filling up the world with My soul
and the world knows me.
You are that moon
my moon Goddess shining down light on my Black face
that fills the universe
My moon I am your sun and I shall take this piece
of light and build a world for you my sister.
Sometimes, the waters are rough
and the hungry tide swallows the shore washing away all memories
of children's footsteps playing in the sand.
Where is the world I promised my son?
Must he push back the tide and build the world
that I have rapped about?
Am I so godly until I forget what a man is?
Am I so right until there is no room for patience?
My brother, father of a son, father of a warrior
my brother the sun, my brother the warrior
Be the beginning and the end for my sister
Be the revolution for our world!
Turn yourself into yourself and then onto this disordered world
and arrange the laughter for joy, the tears for sorrow.
Turn purple pants, alligator shoes, leather jackets, brown boots, polka dot ties, silk suits,
Turn miniskirts, false eyelashes, red wigs, afro wigs, Easter bonnets, bellbottoms.

Turn this confusion into Unity

Unity so that the sun will follow our foot steps in the day so that the moon will glow
in our living rooms at night
so that food, clothing, and shelter will be free
because we are born free to have the world as our playground
My people.

Atlanta Vibe

The Last Poets and Amiri Baraka

Forerunners of today's spoken word and hip-hop artists, The Last Poets combined music and a message to give voice to the civil rights movement. Their lyrics chided the United States for its institutionalized racism, while encouraging blacks to improve their condition by striving for freedom, justice and equality.

With the goal of inspiring young artists to continue writing and thinking freely, WaterColors & Friends and Greater Good Entertainment have partnered to bring The Last Poets and Amiri Baraka to metro Atlanta, Georgia for three (3) days in April, which is National Poetry Month. On April 28, The Last Poets and Amiri Baraka will join a host of local artists for a live performance at Earthlink. This venue is located at 1374 W. Peachtree Street. Doors open at 7 PM with an 8 PM show time. Friday, April 29, a Question & Answer session will be held at Georgia Perimeter College-Decatur Campus from10:00 AM - 1:00 PM. This event is free and open to the public. The third and final event on April 30, a tribute to the Last Poets, will be held at Apache Café on Third Street in downtown Atlanta. Visual artists Blesd, Tuki, Miya and Lorraine Brennan will create original artwork that will go on sale following the tribute, which begins at 8 PM.

Local artists participating in these events include, but is not limited to, Cola Rum, Yohannes Sharriff, Aqyil Thomas, WeOne, Q Swan, Jon Goode, Indigo and Jessica Care Moore. Call 678-698-8393 or 404-725-6466 for additional information. (For a brief bio on The Last Poets and to read an excerpt from their magnum opus E Pluribus Unum, log on to www.thedish.org/TheDISHv6no13.htm#history)

Hood Notes

Falling Consumer Confidence and Rising Prices

The Consumer Confidence Index, which declined in February, lost more ground in March, according to the Conference Board. Based on a representative sample of 5,000 US households, the Index now stands at 102.4 (1985 = 100), down from 104.4 in February. Other indices, the Present Situation and Expectations also declined in March.

According to Lynn Franco, Director of The Conference Board, "Consumers are still quite confident despite recent increases in unemployment claims and rising prices at the gas pump. Their overall assessment of current economic conditions remains favorable and their short-term outlook suggests little change in the months ahead. In fact, while expectations have lost ground, consumers anticipate the job market will continue to improve, and easing employment concerns should help keep spending on track."

This rosy scenario is based on survey statistics, which present a mixed picture at best of consumer sentiment. Consumers that believe business conditions are "good" rose 1.2% to 25.8%; those that see conditions as "bad" increased 0.3% to 16.0%. While consumers that claim jobs are "plentiful" increased to 0.2% to 21.3 %. The percentage of consumers that believe jobs are "hard to get" rose to 23.8% from 22.4%.

In looking forward, consumers that expect business conditions to improve rose 1.3% to 19.2%. Those anticipating worsening conditions also increased to 8.2 percent from 7.8 percent. Although consumers expect business to improve, they do not expect a corresponding increase in available jobs, a statistic that remained virtually unchanged at 15.1%. In general, consumers expect fewer jobs and falling incomes.

As consumer confidence fell, wholesale prices rose. Propelled by a surge in the price of gasoline and other energy products, which increased 3.3%, wholesale prices shot up 0.7% in March for an annual inflation rate of 8.4%. Accompanying the March rise in prices, new housing starts fell 17.6%, the biggest drop in 14 years.

Despite these less than positive stats, the government is painting a rosy economic forecast, which includes relatively low interest and unemployment rates, and an expected economic growth rate of more than four percent with inflation under control. This spin on recent economic data did little to calm financial markets. Stocks fell more than four hundred points in the week ending April 15. Nor do they bode well for the consumer sector, which makes up more than 50% of the US economy. With fewer jobs, falling incomes and rising prices, including gasoline priced at more than two dollars per gallon, consumers are forced to make a choice with limited disposable income between gassing their SUVs and putting food on the table and buying other consumer goods. Wal-Mart and other retailers are feeling the pinch of this choice as consumer buying habits change to reflect higher food and fuel prices.

Disgruntled says: John Bolton, George W. Bush's nominee for UN Ambassador, has come under harsh criticism for his publicly expressed views of the United Nations, his handling of intelligence and treatment of subordinates. According to a Washington Post report, Bolton often blocked former Secretary of State Colin Powell from receiving vital intelligence. He was one of the operatives that pressed Bush to include the lie that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger in his State of the Union address. Bolton's critics claim his record on arms control is an unqualified mess. Moreover, in Senate confirmation testimony, former Assistant Secretary for Intelligence and Research Carl W. Ford characterized Bolton's modus operandi as "serial abuser." Ford called Bolton a "kiss-up, kick-down sort of guy" that "abuses his authority with little people." Based on his critics' comments, Bolton sounds like a perfect fit for an administration that kisses up to big business and the rich, while kicking the middle class and poor to the curb.

Disgruntled wants to know: In a Washington Post op-ed piece former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker chimed in on the state of the US economy. Like other economists, he pointed to the growing imbalance between consumption and production. The US consumes and invests about 6% more than it produces. When Argentina's economy collapsed, it was running a significantly lower trade deficit of 4% GDP. According to Volcker, a massive and growing flow of foreign capital, more than $2 billion daily and growing, is what keeps the nation financially afloat. With unattractively low interest rates and a declining dollar, foreign central banks and private institutions will want to hold fewer dollars. There is no avoiding the day of reckoning. The question is, will the coming economic tsunami plunge the US into a mild recession or a deep depression?

Disgruntled feels: Displaced! Jobs that once supported a growing US middle class, such as manufacturing and Internet-based services, like call centers, are increasingly being outsourced as US-based multinational corporations improve their profit margins. Across the US, illegal immigrants are filling low wage jobs once held by poor workers in construction, agriculture and the service sector, including restaurants, hotels, hospitals, etc. The government pays lipservice to beefing up security along US borders to prevent the inflow of migrant workers. Behind the scenes, it is working with businessmen that profit from paying low wages to insure an ample workforce to fill their needs. For example, Georgia's congressmen work diligently to insure Georgia's onion growers, poultry producers, carpet manufacturers and construction businesses are not harassed when hiring illegal workers. Georgia is not an exception. Conversely, businesses that hire illegal immigrants claim US workers do not want these jobs, yet they unscrupulously screen domestic workers that must run the gauntlet of drug tests, credit and criminal background checks, work history and education requirements that disqualify a growing number of US workers from gainful employment. On top of all this, blacks are subjected to color discrimination. Simply stated, US workers are being displaced from the bottom by illegal immigrants and outsourcing of jobs at the top. No wonder their standard of living is expected to drop.

News You Use

The Visible Hand

Orthodox economic theory holds that competitive markets respond to the forces of supply and demand as though guided by an "invisible hand" to achieve a long-run equilibrium or stability, i.e., supply equals demand. In addition to criticisms of this theory enumerated by Thorstein Veblen and others, markets today are hardly competitive in the sense that Adam Smith meant, i.e., numerous small buyers and sellers.

Today, a single corporation or cartel, as in the case of crude oil, can command a more than fifty percent share of a given market. Even governments intervene to influence output and prices. Governmental interference in the private sector is the complete antithesis of Smith's laissez faire. Yet, governments, especially the US government, often intervene on behalf of certain industries via subsidies, tax credits and other non-competitive measures.

Given aggressive Bush administration efforts to privatize Social Security, which places the retirement income of millions of wage earners at risk in the stock market, evidence that the US government is manipulating all major US financial markets - stocks, treasuries and currencies - should raise alarm bells. Fortunes can be made and lost with a single buy or sell signal from the government or a single large investor. And, since the government is making every effort to cast aside its Social Security obligation, what better way to accomplish this objective than to allow individuals to lose their retirement in an unanticipated downturn in the stock market? The government can certainly not be blamed for individual risk-taking. Or, can it?

Robert Bell, Chairman of the Economics Department at Brooklyn College in New York, provides evidence to show how and who is manipulating US financial markets. Bell points to the existence of Executive Order 12631 and the Plunge Protection Team, which is headed by US Treasury Secretary John Snow. His essay - The Invisible Hand (of the US Government) in Financial Markets - should be required reading for individual stock investors and supporters of Social Security privatization. Read Bell's essay online at www.financialsense.come/editorials/reality/2005/0403.html.

Mailbox: E-Mails, Faxes and Telephone Calls

Email tjware@yahoo.com On Wednesday, George W. Bush signed landmark legislation that makes it difficult for individuals to erase debts by declaring bankruptcy. Critics claim the bi-partisan measure is another effort on the part of Bush and a Republican- controlled Congress to reward big campaign contributors, particularly banks and credit card companies. This measure will prove especially onerous for middle class families hurt by layoffs and catastrophe medical bills. With Chapter 7 no longer an option to wipe out debt, the middle class will join poor families traditionally steered toward Chapter 13 and be forced to repay a portion of their debts. The bankruptcy bill brings back debtor prison without the bars.

Email LEVEYMG@aol.com In explaining why Social Security is in dire straits, Bush has warned more than once that there is no Social Security trust fund, just a file cabinet filled with worthless US government treasury notes. Bush insists the system is pay-as-you-go.

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