In the News (from CNBC): “A group of 100 German academics, trade unionists and politicians is calling for a 30-hour working week with full pay, German daily Tageszeitung reported on Monday, with the petitioners arguing that a shorter working week is the best way to address rising unemployment.

“Germany’s unemployment rate, which increased to 7.4 percent in January, remains well below the 26 percent reached in Spain. But in an open letter published on Monday and cited by the newspaper, the group said a reduction in working hours could help German workers.

“Under the plan, devised by politicians from left wing parties, philosophers and academics, a 30-hour working week would be introduced gradually over the course of several years. It would markedly improve productivity, the group argued, which in turn would help employers pay out full wages.”

My Comment: We see how the world gradually realizes the proposals of the Integral Upbringing method, but by the path of suffering rather than by a reasonable approach and balanced planned reduction of “unnecessary” production. At this rate and form, reduction of the economy will take many years, accompanied by suffering of the masses in the whole world and thus, naturally by protests, re-elections, and other undesired problems.

It is necessary to explain to the elite and the masses where we, all the humans, are heading by the natural force of development—toward society (economy) of rational (necessary) consumption and integral universal unification. To make a transition to this state, we must understand what is happening and adjust ourselves to it, and this is achieved by the method of Integral Upbringing.
[106087]

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Opinion (Andrew Walker, BBC World Service economics correspondent): “More than five years after the onset of the financial crisis, you might have thought economic policy makers would know what to do next.

“Well they don’t. Or at the very least, there is nothing like the kind of consensus that prevailed before the financial crisis. …

“There were plenty of ideas for sure. But this is how the IMF’s chief economist Olivier Blanchard put it at the end of the conference: “‘We don’t have a sense of our final destination… Where we end I really don’t have much of a clue.’”

My Comment: This is the beginning of insight. It is now possible to search for the true cause of the crisis and then for its solution. More and more people realize that the problem is not in economic policy, but in the human being himself—or rather in our relationships, and even more precisely in the fact that we, society, exist in a completely interconnected, integral world. However, we do not correspond to the structure of the world because we remain egoists, protectionists, who compete with each other.

The single system of the world that manifests today requires us to be in complete cooperation. Of course, through its development, the crisis will lead us to the realization of the need to unite all the nations and countries, but it will be a long and dramatic path. We must learn from nature its interconnection and emulate it. The method of Integral Upbringing exists for this purpose. It will help us create the right relationship between us quickly and easily and thus eliminate the crisis.
[106045]

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In the News (from ScienceNow): “The main ingredient of wood, cellulose, is one of the most abundant organic compounds on Earth and a dream source of renewable fuel. Now, bioengineers suggest that it could feed the hungry as well. In a new study, researchers have found a way to turn cellulose into starch, the most common carbohydrate in the human diet.

“Now, for the first time, it appears there may be a practical way that cellulose could also feed people, says bioprocess engineer Y.-H. Percival Zhang of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg. …

“Zhang and his colleagues focused on starch, which makes up as much as 40% of people’s diets. The idea of turning cellulose into starch is one rooted in the similarities between the compounds: Cellulose is composed of hundreds to thousands of molecules of the sugar glucose, and starch compounds are made of glucose as well, although the sugar is bonded together in different ways.

“Though the process works, it’s expensive. Zhang estimates that, given the current price tag of the enzymes that his team used, it would cost about $1 million to turn 200 kilograms of crude cellulose into 20 kilograms of starch, about enough to feed one person’s carbohydrate needs for 80 days. Still, after 5 to 10 years of further research, Zhang says companies could do the same thing for just $0.50 per person per day. ‘We do not see big obstacles to the commercialization of this process.’

“Optimistically assuming 100 billion tons of cellulose is available per year, ‘we will have a potential of approximately 4.5 billion tons of starch, which is nearly twofold the annual production of cereal—that is, 2.3 billion tons per year now,’ Zhang says. That would provide up to 30% of the food that prior studies estimate is needed to feed the world in 2050.”

My Comment: If it weren’t for a predatory attitude to nature, humanity would have easily fed itself and been able to devote itself to a spiritual ascent that provides us with the perfect eternal existence.
[105450]

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In the News (from Deutsche Welle): “With unemployment at unprecedented levels in the EU, the risk of social unrest is rising, says the UN’s International Labour Organization. The ILO is warning politicians to abandon austerity and embrace job creation.

“’When unemployment is as high as it is right now – as poverty and welfare protection become worse – then the danger of social unrest grows along with it,’ says Miguel Angel Malo.

“Malo is a professor of economics in Salamanca, Spain – a country where youth unemployment is at 56 percent. …

“If one looks at who the losers are, it becomes clearer exactly why the ILO is warning of unrest. The losers are made of three groups which have scarcely any access to the labor market.

The first group is young people: one in four youths – a group that includes those who have finished higher education but have not found work – is currently unemployed. In Spain and Greece it’s more than half. …

“The second group is the long-term unemployed, whose numbers have nearly doubled, from 5.8 million in 2008 to 11 million today.

“And the third group is those with few qualifications: ‘unskilled labor’ has been hit particularly hard by negative economic developments, much more so than skilled workers or university graduates.”

My Comment: There will be no work. One solution is to implement a shorter workday. I have written about this and it is encouraging to see that the 90-year-old Israeli President Shimon Peres says about it as well:

Translation: “It is necessary to reduce working hours and to increase the time of study. Who says that you need to work 8 hours a day? It is possible to work 4 hours a day and study 4 hours a day, and the studies will be considered work. It is necessary to employ young people. We must provide Grade 11 and 12 students with 2 hours of work a day. They will be trained in the community not less than at the university. Their workplaces will benefit from their youthful energy, and the young will have some income. I also propose that we start teaching English from 3 years of age; it is the right time for this.”
[104967]

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In the News (from Stratfor): “The global financial crisis of 2008 has slowly yielded to a global unemployment crisis. This unemployment crisis will, fairly quickly, give way to a political crisis. The crisis involves all three of the major pillars of the global system – Europe, China and the United States. The level of intensity differs, the political response differs and the relationship to the financial crisis differs. But there is a common element, which is that unemployment is increasingly replacing finance as the central problem of the financial system. …

“Consider the geography of unemployment. Only four countries in Europe are at or below 6 percent unemployment: the geographically contiguous countries of Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. The immediate periphery has much higher unemployment: Denmark at 7.4 percent, the United Kingdom at 7.7 percent, France at 10.6 percent and Poland at 10.6 percent. In the far periphery, Italy is at 11.7 percent, Lithuania is at 13.3 percent, Ireland is at 14.7 percent, Portugal is at 17.6 percent, Spain is at 26.2 percent and Greece is at 27 percent. …

“A rule I use is that for each person unemployed, three others are affected, whether spouses, children or whomever. That means that when you hit 25 percent unemployment virtually everyone is affected. At 11 percent unemployment about 44 percent are affected.

“It is important to understand the consequences of this kind of unemployment. There is the long-term unemployment of the underclass. This wave of unemployment has hit middle and upper-middle class workers. … Poverty is hard enough to manage, but when it is also linked to loss of status, the pain is compounded and a politically potent power arises. …

“Fascism had its roots in Europe in massive economic failures in which the financial elites failed to recognize the political consequences of unemployment. They laughed at parties led by men who had been vagabonds selling postcards on the street and promising economic miracles if only those responsible for the misery of the country were purged. Men and women, plunged from the comfortable life of the petite bourgeoisie, did not laugh, but responded eagerly to that hope. The result was governments who enclosed their economies from the world and managed their performance through directive and manipulation.

“This is what happened after World War I. It did not happen after World War II because Europe was occupied. But when we look at the unemployment rates today, the differentials between regions, the fact that there is no promise of improvement and that the middle class is being hurled into the ranks of the dispossessed, we can see the patterns forming.”

My Comment: As the technical and technological progress continues, unemployment will rise. In addition, human desires grow not only in size, but also in quality: a person does not want to work and buy, to be a slave of those who grow wealthy because of this. Desires change. The era of the consumer society is ending for several reasons.

A new era is ahead—a transition of the mass of unemployed to work on themselves, to build a new integral society. This phase is preceded by the phase of integral education, training, upbringing, and changing of the human being, and then his conscious transformation of the world. Working from offices and in factories will be transformed to going to the schools of integral education, the courses for retraining people who will then create new public relations—rational consumption in a unified integral community.
[104343]

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Question: How will the force of unity in Europe help us reach our next level at the upcoming convention in America?

Answer: Europe and America have a strong influence on each other. But the fact is that the crisis in America is felt much less; there’s a possibility to gloss over it there. In America, there is one government, one power; there is no need to negotiate anything with anyone. They can do whatever they want and that’s it. They decided to print a hundred billion dollars more and printed them. The printing press is operating.

In Europe, it is much more difficult because it requires coordination between all the countries. That is why the crisis is felt much more there. If Europe had united, it could have dealt with the crisis easily. First, the crisis would have subsided quickly because the EU citizens had united above their egoism. In general, Europe is today’s Babylon.

But in addition, they would have begun to adopt a single solution and could do the same as the Americans. The whole crisis has spread only because Europe is divided. One part of Europe from Brussels dictates to the other part of Europe: And the other part doesn’t want this; in Nicosia, Cypress, the parliament refused to accept their decisions.

What kind of union is this? They will have to either truly unite or disintegrate.

In America, the condition is better from the point of view that they have simply decided, “We have no crisis.” They have determined this and live as if nothing has happened. But later of course, everything will “collapse.”
[104435]
From the European Convention in Germany 3/24/13, Lesson 6

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In the News (from Spiegel International): “Needy families and individuals in the European Union are becoming increasingly reliant on charity organizations like the Red Cross for basic needs like food, water and shelter. While Germany is relatively unaffected, unemployment and austerity in countries like Spain are making the problem even more severe.

“Two-thirds of national Red Cross societies within the European Union have begun distributing food aid, according to the head of the aid groups’ international organization – a sign that the economic crisis in Europe is having an alarming effect on poverty.

“Yves Daccord, Director-General of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said on a visit to New Delhi on Monday that the scope of food distribution had not been at its current level since the end of World War II.

“Germany’s relative economic strength has made it mostly immune to the rise in food need. In contrast, the Spanish Red Cross is supporting 3 million Spaniards with food aid. … Last year alone, the Spanish Red Cross provided 33 million kilograms (73 million pounds) of groceries to the needy.

“The organization’s counterpart in Romania has been operating a donation-based food distribution program since 2009. Three million people live in absolute poverty, according to the aid group, a figure that constitutes 14 percent of the country’s total population. The relative poverty rate in Romania is also shockingly high, at 40 percent. Last year, the Romanian Red Cross distributed more than 500,000 kilograms (1.1 million pounds) of food to more than 81,000 needy families.

“The IFRC also noted a rise in poverty in previously middle-class families and individuals. In Italy, the group noted a rise in the homeless population to include single parents.”

My Comment: Meanwhile, according to the same Red Cross, more food than is needed is thrown away, i.e. it is not a lack of food, but a lack of attention to people in need, and that can be corrected only by correcting people …
[103688]

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Opinion (Chris Martenson): “Chris Martenson is a world-renowned expert on identifying dangerous, yet hidden, exponential growth patterns in global economies, energy demand, and food consumption…

“And he is predicting a 60% stock market collapse will strike in the next three months.

“Martenson’s opinion isn’t to be taken lightly, as his research is highly regarded by the United Nations, UK Parliament, and Fortune 500 companies. …

“Unfortunately, Martenson is not the only economist predicting a massive, historic meltdown.

“In fact, his figures are conservative compared to other experts in his field.

“In a recent interview, Robert Wiedemer — an economist best known for correctly predicting the collapse of the U.S. housing market of 2006 and the stock market collapse of 2008 — provides disturbing evidence for 50 percent unemployment, a 90 percent stock market crash, and 100 percent annual inflation . . . starting this year.”

My Comment: The fact is this trend can be stopped only by moving immediately to integral education for the public, and in line with this, gradually reducing production to the necessary dimensions.

Integral education will allow the transition to equal rational allocation of required products, goods, and services, and will provide all the other resources for education and training, i.e., for the correction of people as an integral part of nature. Only in this way will we be able to prevent blows that will nonetheless bring us to make the same conclusions. for the correction of people as an integral part of nature.
[104001]

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Opinion (Michael Schuman, correspondent for TIME, author of The Miracle: The Epic Story of Asia’s Quest for Wealth): “With the global economy in a protracted crisis, and workers around the world burdened by joblessness, debt and stagnant incomes, Marx’s biting critique of capitalism — that the system is inherently unjust and self-destructive — cannot be so easily dismissed. Marx theorized that the capitalist system would inevitably impoverish the masses as the world’s wealth became concentrated in the hands of a greedy few, causing economic crises and heightened conflict between the rich and working classes. …

“Workers may have common problems, but they aren’t banding together to resolve them. … Protesters, says Jacques Rancière, an expert in Marxism at the University of Paris, aren’t aiming to replace capitalism, as Marx had forecast, but merely to reform it.

“That leaves open a scary possibility: that Marx not only diagnosed capitalism’s flaws but also the outcome of those flaws. If policymakers don’t discover new methods of ensuring fair economic opportunity, the workers of the world may just unite. Marx may yet have his revenge.”

My Comment: And there will be the Spanish, Greek, and then the EU and then the U.S. “spring” … if the method of correction of people and society is not accepted.
[103889]

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In the News (from Reuters): “Standard and Poor’s sees a high risk that Spain, Italy, Portugal and France will not be able to carry through necessary reforms as the unemployed become less willing to put up with austerity, S&P’s Germany head Torsten Hinrichs told a newspaper.

“The high unemployment in Spain, Italy and France is socially explosive,” Hinrichs was quoted as saying in Monday’s Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung.

“’There has to be a social consensus for saving measures. High unemployment … does not help.’

“Hinrichs said the people of Spain and Portugal had already proven they were willing to bear with austerity measures, but ‘this cannot continue forever.’”

My Comment: It is necessary to immediately announce the introduction of integral education among the recipients of unemployment benefits and to test its effectiveness in a month, then social explosion would not be a threat, and on the contrary, “out of nowhere” a general sense of security and wellbeing will rise. It is elementary psychology …
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