In the News (from the Freelance Bureau of International Investigation): “The future of any country is not only the accumulated national wealth, the level of industrial development or mineral reserves. First of all, the prospects of the state are defined by the level of support that the state gives to its young citizens. In this sense, the U.S. prospects look disappointing.

“Why are young people in America so frustrated these days, The Economic Collapse asks. You are about to find out. Most young adults started out having faith in the system. They worked hard, they got good grades, they stayed out of trouble and many of them went on to college. But when their educations where over, they discovered that the good jobs that they had been promised were not waiting for them at the end of the rainbow. Even in the midst of this so-called ‘economic recovery,’ the full-time employment rate for Americans under the age of 30 continues to fall. And incomes for that age group continue to fall as well. At the same time, young adults are dealing with record levels of student loan debt. As a result, more young Americans than ever are putting off getting married and having families, and more of them than ever are moving back in with their parents.”

My Comment: The US was built and developed under private enterprise; the country grew as an opportunity for everyone to compete and rise above everyone else.

Not being united by any ties, as the nations in Europe or in any other country, as soon as there was the crisis of further enrichment of the American Dream at all, the country became “torn” on many levels, parts, plunged into pessimism. Not only was a toy taken away from children, but also their future.

If Americans do not see the light, do not realize where their natural development leads them, which they cannot stop because the laws of nature are inflexible, then we will soon witness their tragic collapse.
[121265]

Related Material:
Young Americans Are Returning To Their Parents
The Collapse Of The American Dream
The New Generation Chooses Nothing

Filed under: Crisis, Economy - 1 Comment →

In the News (from Slate): “The call to stop economic growth sounded still in 1972 in the Club of Rome report. The mythology of economic growth implies that the increase in GDP leads to a reduction in unemployment.

“It is proposed to move away from the equation economic growth = employment = wealth, to leave the ‘religion of economic growth’ with its emphasis on production development.

“The decline in economic activity should be aimed at protecting the environment from the looting, at the desire to lay the foundations of a friendly society.

“It is proposed to introduce a full lifetime supply for all the members of the public with everything needed for a simple but decent living (housing, food, clothing, water, energy, medical care…), that is, to give everyone free metered access to vital resources, accompanied by an insignificant amount for ‘special expenses.’”

My Comment: Such provisions will lead to work ceasing to be our main goal, the only basis for public relations, and the only way to ensure a decent life; the production of useless things will be annihilated; people will be freed for integral development; this will put an end to unemployment, will form an exit from capitalism and the market dogma to a free sector of re-organizing society, a system of consumption, production methods, and the determination of our real needs.

The methods for the free distribution of resources should be discussed in classes of integral education, as well as a mandatory part of public works. During workshops, there will be discussions about the tasks and methods of their realization.

The weakness of the program is in the absence of figures and the non-acceptance of integral economy that allows skeptics to dismiss all proposals. Distribution is possible with the approval of an acceptable income and solution to housing problems. Only to the extent of people learning integral education, can there be a gradual transition to a new system of all parts of society, from the lowest according to the level of income to the highest.

In any case, we are faced with a choice between a conscious recession to a rational level and the inevitable unmanageable recession.
[120894]

Related Material:
Without An Inner Fire There Is No Success
All In Good Time
Just Start

Filed under: Crisis, Economy - No Comments →

In the News (from ITAR-TASS): “In the near future, millions of people around the world may be in extreme poverty, providing only their physical survival. The middle class is being eroded by the fact that there is an increasing stratification between the rich and the poor. This year, the unemployment rate will reach a record high of 200 million people. …

“Scientists point out that chronic poverty is characterized by the point of no return, after which the hopes for changes for the better are lost. Usually, it takes three years, spent in extremely difficult circumstances. Over the past ten years, the number of poor people who display extreme passivity with respect to life has increased dramatically. They accept their plight and do not believe that they can change things for the better; they do not even want to look for some kind of work.

“The situation seems hopeless to the poor segments of society, and they are not ready to rise internally.”

My Comment: That is why integral education, which can give relief to the masses through unity, is especially desirable for them. As Marx wrote and Baal HaSulam emphasized, that he addressed not the bourgeoisie, but the oppressed masses, calling them to change themselves, to change society (See Baal HaSulam “The Last Generation”).

But as they distorted religion, replacing the commandment “Love thy neighbor” with only carrying out the requirements mechanically (See Baal HaSulam, “The Essence of Religion and Its Purpose“), so they ignored Marx’s message about changing society by changing the human being, thinking that it was possible to compel people to be altruistic by the force of KGB pressure. We must bring the method of integral education to the masses, and proceeding from changes in themselves, they will rebuild public relationships.
[120366]

Related Material:
The Collapse Of The American Dream
Middle Class Greeks Queue For Charity Soup
Europe: The New Economic Reality

Filed under: Crisis, Economy, News - No Comments →

In the News (from Pravda): “The indicator of the level of GDP is increasingly criticized. According to experts, this is not a good indicator of social welfare. GDP cannot estimate the international flow of income, production of services by households, destruction of the environment, quality of social relations, economic and personal security, health and life expectancy.

“GDP increases when growing crime, pollution, disasters and public health threats entail costs for protective or remedial actions. Economists suggest using the ‘happiness index’ instead of GPD. The UN has adopted a resolution that happiness should be included among development indicators.

“Despite the broad public interest in the happiness index, this indicator is purely subjective. From the point of view of each individual, the state of happiness is considered the highest achievement, which include all the other desired acquisitions: intellect, wealth, health, fame, love, peace, children, joy, and so on.”

“Otto von Bismarck said about happiness: ‘For happiness one needs to be healthy, to be rich and to be a fool. Without the latter, the first two qualities do not matter!’”

My Comment: The method of integral development of man creates a feeling of happiness outside ourselves, collective, and the quality of being a fool is no longer necessary for happiness!
[120190]

Related Material:
Connection As A Means Of Salvation
Health, Not Wealth, Makes Us Happy
Do You Want To Be Happy? Be Happy!

Filed under: Crisis, Economy, News - No Comments →

In the News (from Russian Bazaar): “Once the United States had the largest and most prosperous middle class in the history of the world. Almost everyone had a house, a couple of good cars and the ability to provide a comfortable life for his family. However, the bulk of this was done on credit – but at least then people had the ability to pay their loans on time.

“Unfortunately, those days are over. In today’s America, prices, unlike revenue, grow at an astounding pace; jobs are scarce, and most of the created jobs are low paying.

“In a desperate attempt to make ends meet, millions of American families plunge deeper into debt, and millions of others are forced to seek help from the authorities.

“Unfortunately, today’s politicians do nothing while jobs go overseas, inflation destroys purchasing power, and the middle class continues to shrink.”

My Comment: This is the natural tendency of the evolution of egoistic society. No attempts by the government to prevent a further decline in the standard of living and in the feeling of wellbeing will bring any result. Ahead, is the prolonged agony of the thousand-year period of the human egoistic development and an enforced (by suffering) or voluntarily (by awareness) change to the altruistic development and the achievement of universal unity toward the similarity with the Creator.
[120033]

Related Material:
“How To Cut the Poverty Rate In Half”
America Is No Longer The Land Of Opportunity
The Empty American Dream

Filed under: Crisis, Economy - No Comments →

Opinion (Dr. Erich Fromm, German social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, humanistic philosopher):

WALLACE: Recently, Dr. Fromm said: “There has never been a better society than in the United States in 1958, but …’He added, ‘if the United States goes on in the direction it is now taking, it is in serious danger of destroying itself.” We’ll find out why in a moment.

FROMM: I would say, if I would put it generally, because in our enthusiasm to dominate nature and to produce more material good – goods – we have transformed means into ends. We’ve wanted to produce more in the 19^th century and the 20^th century in order to give man the possibility for more dignified human life; but actually what has happened is that production and consumption have become means – have ceased to be means and have become ends, and we are production crazy and consumption crazy. …

I think his work is to a large extent, meaningless, because he is not related to it. He is increasingly part of a big machinery, social machinery, governed by a big bureaucracy……and I think American man unconsciously hates his work very often, because he feels trapped by it…imprisoned by it… because he feels that he is spending most of his energy for something which has no meaning in itself.

WALLACE: In writing about men in America, you’ve said frequently – you’ve talked frequently – about what you call “the marketing orientation.” What do you mean by “the marketing orientation,” Dr. Fromm?

FROMM: I mean by that, that our main way of relating ourselves to others is like things relate themselves to things on the market. We want to exchange our own personality – or as one says sometimes, our “personality package” – for something. …

WALLACE: So, his sense of his own value must, therefore, depend upon what the market, in this sense, is willing to pay for it…

FROMM: Exactly, just as a handbag which cannot be sold because there is not enough demand is, economically speaking, useless. And if the handbag could think, it would have a terrific inferiority feeling, because, not having been bought, it would feel useless. So does a man who considers himself as a thing, and if he is not successful to sell himself, he feels he is a failure. …

WALLACE: Let’s talk about man in relation to his love, his marriage.

FROMM: Well, I would say love is something everybody talks about, and the need for love is one of the most basic needs of man, namely the experience of union with another being -of becoming one with another being. And yet, I would say that love today is a relatively rare phenomenon, that we have a great deal of sentimentality; we have a great deal of illusion about love, namely as a…as something one falls in. But the question is that one cannot fall in love, really; one has to be in love. And that means that loving becomes, and the ability to love, becomes one of the most important things in life.

WALLACE: Why is it so difficult for us to be in love, as human beings? What is wrong with us, as you see it?

FROMM: Because we are concerned with things. We are concerned with success. We are concerned with money. We are concerned with instrumentalities. And the most important things we talk about on Sundays are things to which we pay very little attention. …

I would say our social relationships are relatively shallow. We are actually afraid to be intimate, with people – many people even with their wives and husbands. And we substitute, or we rather hide, this fear of real intimacy by a superficial kind of friendliness, which is quite nice, but nevertheless, very shallow. …

I think if you would ask people what their concept of Heaven is, and if they were honest, they would say it’s a kind of big department store with new things every week, and enough money to buy everything new. … Happiness should be something which results from the creative, genuine, intense relatedness – awareness, responsiveness, to everything in life – to man, to nature.

My Comment: It is written beautifully, in the form of an appeal, but the solution is not given. The only solution is to change human nature. But since it is not in our hands—although many understand that this is the only solution—no one speaks about it. The absence of the possibility to change the human being is accepted in silence. But when the suffering increases, and not only the suffering of egoistic slavery, but the plagues of Egypt begin, then people will agree to check the solution proposed by Kabbalah: integral education.
[119989]

Related Material:
Start Corresponding To Nature Instead Of Trying To Make Nature Correspond To You
An Educational Channel Instead Of Commercials
Methods Of Mass Education Against Mass Media

Filed under: Crisis, Economy - No Comments →

Filed under: Economy, Laitman Unplugged, Society - No Comments →

In the News (from The Atlantic): “By sending every adult and child $3,000 a year, the government could achieve historic poverty reductions. Think of it as Social Security for all, not just the elderly….

“The upside of giving everybody about $3,000 is that it’s a very easy policy to run and a surefire way to cut poverty in half. But it’s a large program: it would require about $907 billion in 2012, or 5.6 percent of the nation’s GDP. …

“Could we afford it? Sure. For starters, we could raises taxes, first on the rich, who would pay more in new taxes than they would receive in basic income, and then on lower-middle class and poor families, who would come out ahead. There is also plenty of room to cut tax expenditures on homeowners, personal retirement accounts, capital gains exclusions at death, and exclusions on annuity investment returns. This submerged welfare state for the affluent costs hundreds of billions of dollars each year. There is also the matter of the $700 billion military budget, which could take some trimming. …

“The appeal of such a program is immense. You get a check from the government every month no matter how much you make or how much you work. Maybe that will convince a few Americans work isn’t worth it anymore—but the vast majority who will probably continue to work won’t have to worry about losing their check as they move up the income ladder. That security might not just keep people out of poverty. It might let workers demand better wages and working conditions, because they know they always have something to fall back on. In other words, it could level the playing field for the bottom 99 percent.”

My Comment: Thus, we see that the idea of the equal rational provision for the population is being born. There will be less and less work. But it is necessary to occupy people, and with what if not with the method of integral education and upbringing, which will completely heal society.
[119924]

Related Material:
Poverty Will Not Be Eliminated In The 21st Century
“Poverty Is Returning To Europe”
A Portrait Of America In Decline

Filed under: Crisis, Economy, News - No Comments →

Opinion: (K. Sivkov, Doctor of Military Sciences, Academy of Geopolitical Problems):

1. Conflicts that caused global crisis (in fact, a conflict of civilizations):

• Between the growth of supply-demand and available resources, and Earth ecosystem problems;
• Between the “poor” developing countries and the “rich” industrial ones;
• Between nations and transnational elites;
• Between the size of the global “financial bubble” and the scale of the real sector of global economy – the solution is in elimination of the “bubble”, which threatens the loss of power of transnational financial elite, or its “conversion” to real economy sector – leading toward establishing unchallenged economic dominance of transnational financial elite over the world;
• Between lack of spirituality in the “free market” that generates the power of money and spiritual foundations of different civilizations – the Orthodox, Muslim, Buddhist, and others. The solution lies solely in establishing a common spiritual foundation of the world order.

2. The new world order can be built only by one of two models:

• The concept of the “gold billion” – a few “chosen” ones, who define themselves as the “intellectual core of humanity,” preserve and enhance the current level of consumption at the cost of ruthless exploitation of the rest of humanity, accompanied by its artificial reduction, bringing it to critically minimal material consumption and spiritual degradation;
•  “Civilizational mutual support (civilizational harmony)” – the goal of globalization, is not in “unification” but in the development of all the existing civilizations, preserving and extending to every nation and civilization a “field of development,” which is the basis of development of each and all of them together. This is the path to the future.

3. The war will be fought for what spiritual foundation should underlie the new world order. Either it will be based on individualism, egoism, the inhibiting of one entity by another, the principle of survival at the expense of others – or the community, the dominance of the common interests of collective survival and development over the individual ones, the principle of joint survival through mutual support.

4. The first stage – “an attempt to peaceful resolution of the crisis” – is already coming to an end. Its battlefield – Summits G20 – do not work. The beginning of the second stage is “the threat preceding a World War”: the West is preparing local wars and armed conflicts over the resources, as well as limited wars.

5. History shows that the elite of “selfish” civilization won’t stop at human losses if there is a guarantee to preserve themselves in the “bunkers.” A new world war will affect most of the world’s population, leading to loss of hundreds of millions of people.

To prevent this, we have to restrict (by law) the greed of transnational and national magnates of economy and the financial sphere. This can be done only by international consolidation of efforts.

Comment: Clever people, experienced analysts; but there is no motivation to consolidate together and to address people, downward, through Internet social networks, and to governments, upward, because all you can do is call for change!
[49964]

Related Material:
The Nation Possessing Nothing But An Idea
The Future of Israel
It Is Our Job

Filed under: Crisis, Economy - 1 Comment →

In the News (from Project Syndicate): “Every year, we waste or lose 1.3 billion metric tons of food – one-third of the world’s annual food production. The sheer scale of the number makes it almost impossible to grasp, no matter how one approaches it. Try to imagine 143,000 Eiffel Towers stacked one on top of another, or a pile of 10 trillion bananas.

“The figure is all the more unfathomable, given that, alongside this massive wastage and loss, 840 million people experience chronic hunger on a daily basis. Many millions more suffer from ‘silent hunger’ – malnutrition and micronutrient deficiencies.

“For the more economically minded, here is another number: food wastage and loss, expressed in producer prices, costs roughly $750 billion per year. If we were to consider retail prices and the wider impacts on the environment, including climate change, the figure would be much higher. …

“Food loss – on farms, during processing, transport, and at markets – undermines food security in most developing countries, where post-harvest losses can reach as high as 40% of production. Investment in infrastructure for transport, storage, and marketing of food is badly needed, as are programs to train farmers in best practices.

“In developed countries, food-retailing practices require a rethink.”

My Comment: There is a religious principle in Judaism “Baal Tashchit“: Do not destroy the useful, anything that can be useful to others. It is forbidden to throw out leftovers, suitable for human and animal food, any industrial waste that could be still consumed, etc. because everything is given by the Creator for the correction of the world; thus we must use it, precisely to correct the world. It is possible to use it correctly only to the extent of the correction of the human being, when he naturally, instinctively thinks of the common good.
[118885]

Related Material:
Half Of The World’s Food Is Wasted
“Americans Toss Out As Much As 40% Of Their Food”
There Is Food, But No Desire To Share It

Filed under: Crisis, Economy, News - No Comments →