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| My New Motto is Make Something New Every Day. Hear that Mitt? I'm a maker. |
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| A favorite Substance for Making Things. |
I haven't created any jobs yet, except, that is, to create my own. As an artist, I put myself to work every day. I generally work between eight and twelve hours daily at this.
My day always includes drawing, painting, writing, and sometimes printing. My rule of thumb is that, no matter what, I will finish at least one project every day.
The drawing and painting is sometimes traditional, sometimes digital, sometimes crosses over between the two.
Todays work, which is not pictured here, although I may add it later, depending on whether I make enough progress, is to complete the illustration on two pages of my illuminated manuscript, a project I've been at for about 2.5 years, and which I hope to have completed by early 2013, in the event that the world doesn't end on December 21, 2012.
Its a very strange, very personal project, which I hope to be able to put in front of an audience in a merchandise form. Once I do that, I may actually have the need to create a studio, an office, a gallery and to hire some people on to work for me. I'd like that. I've paid people for services before, so I've actually, as has every human being who's ever made a business transaction.
So I was woolgathering about jobs and job creation.
Here are some of those thoughts on Job Creation.
When I buy something at a store, for the short duration of the business transaction, the person selling to me is, in effect, my employee. When I visit a doctor for care, when I pay someone to change the oil in my car, when I buy books at nearby Hastings, when I order an espresso machine from Amazon, regardless of how small a contribution I make in the process, my action has given somebody else work. I may pay them indirectly if they are under hire by someone else. Mitt Romney says that jobs come from the top - from the big investors, who come in and build massive fortunes, and build cubicles full of computer savvy folk trading futures and stocks and money and baseball scores, and that is it. But what about my father, when he hires a local contractor to build a wall? He was a job creator then too. How about my brother when he buys a new bicycle from the shop near his house in Phoenix? He created a job for that saleswoman.
And what would all of Mr. Romney's friends do if suddenly, we all decided to stop buying their Etch a Sketches? Would that not have a serious impact on the many, many jobs in the Chinese Etch a Sketch Factory?
Of the many people that Mr. Romney cites as being freeloaders or moochers, how many of them work at companies, perhaps even ones owned by him, earning a few dollars an hour, and so working 12 hours a day, or working more than one job to make ends meet, who struggle to keep up, but still file their tax returns on time every year without fail, who still donate money to their favorite Presidential Candidate, who continue, though cash poor, to give their business to the local greengrocer as well as to the multinational corporate bank, which continues to assess higher and higher charges for less and less service? I think its very, very funny that Mr. Romney thinks its important that rich folks should pay only a very, very small percentage of their wage in taxes. These are people who exploit the tax-driven government subsidies that allow their companies and corporations to hire people for ten dollars an hour. In most towns in the US today, that is not enough, given our taxes and our forty hour workweek, to pay rent, utilities, food costs, etc.
Commerce requires both a buyer and a seller.
Its no good manufacturing cars, if there are no roads to drive them on.
Consider this: the widespread and largely excellent system of roads that our government built with tax dollars is the reason so many millions of people are employed by the automotive industry. I wonder what would happen if the federal and state Governments suddenly voted to cut all funding for roads.
That would be interesting. The roads would then deteriorate, except in the areas where wealthy communities could pool their resources to hire a private contractor to maintain their roads for them.
In the long run, how would that effect those giant corporations making cars? If the roads aren't there to let us drive fast, why own a car? Perhaps it would create a new and better business climate where horses and other draft animals drive the market. Ranchers then would be the new tycoons.
It would be a bit quieter, for certain. It would put a quick stop to Global Warming.
Not having the luxury of fast long distance travel, people would start spending more time at home. The hometown would get back on the map! People content to go to a neighboring big city for their entertainment, or their provisions, would have no choice but to shop more locally.
That might be a good thing.
I kind of like the idea of returning our currency to a Gold Standard.
Especially if the government then turned around and reimbursed all citizens with precious metals to replace the rather shabbily designed and printed paper we get now for our work.
Better still, how about going back to bartering, plain and simple?
Allow no money into the process, and only use Gold as a backup.
Most purchases then will be made between people - good for good, service for service.
That might be a good thing.
If I don't earn any money, if I don't need any money for my sustenance, think of how much money the government could save.
What if we outlawed Insurance altogether, or made it so that Insurance can be used only in cases where catastrophic expense is accrued for serious illness, or for surgery.
What if we all had to pay for everything out of pocket? Would that cause the cost of health care to drop? I don't know. It might, it might not.
But if a doctor or druggist knows that there is not an insurance company guaranteeing the high charges for service, wouldn't they then need to lower their prices, in order to remain in the market?
What's wrong with an economy which doesn't measure the worth of an individual by how much money he or she has earned, but instead by how good they are at the services they perform? And what would it be like if, when we have paid off the costs of our homes, we no longer had to pay property taxes on them? There would, of course, be more incentive to buy a home then, wouldn't there? And what if we eliminated the possibility of a company or government agency from exercising eminent domain on any property so that, when you pay for something its really, completely, untouchably yours? What if we simplified our property laws to the point where we no longer had to pay lawyers and legislators to mitigate for us?
How many elderly people have been forced out of homes they paid off forty years ago, because they could no longer afford the property taxes?
When the cost of property taxes costs a person more than the cost of renting an apartment on a monthly basis would it should tell us that there is something wrong.
ools, forms that can only exist because of digital tools. We have already seen a profound revolution as a result of desktop publishing. It's rare to find a publishing house that still uses hand set metal type. Many forms of printmaking, once considered fine art, have been retired to niches, or folk art status. 
