Now 1st Amendment issues about Church and State aside that is not what the word "Messiah" means. Messiah is a Hebrew word that is defined as "the awaited redeemer of the Jews, to be sent by God to free them". By this definition one could say that General Patton was a Messiah to the Jews in the concentration camps he freed but you really can't say the Jesus freed the Jews from anything.
Apple has announced a new iPhone to be released in September. Last September Apple was trading at 702 dollars per share on 9/21/12 when the iPhone 5 was released. It opened today at 456 per share down 35 percent since the release of the iPhone 5. Over the course of the past year the Apple has also seen it's smart phone market share drop form 16.6 percent in the 2nd Quarter of 2012 to 13.2 percent in the 2nd Quarter of 2013. Over the same time period the Android market share has grown from 69.1 percent to 79.3 percent.
While I am sure that a fair share of "Apple Fanboys" will run out and buy the new iPhone I would bet that the overall sales will be down as once again it will be phone that is just catching up to the Galaxy S4. In other words do not buy stock in Apple.
One recurring theme in the articles, essays and memes involving in which well meaning people talk about the horrors of "class warfare" is that they seem to believe that there is a certain nobility in the impoverished and that their predicament exists only due to the selfishness of the wealthy. I am not here to argue that the wealthy are not selfish, they are. The thing is that everyone is selfish. The poor and downtrodden would, if given the opportunity, take all they could regardless of the effects it would have on their fellow man. It is in humanity's nature to want to be on top. People are not good. They are not bad either they just are people.
And the fact is that people are doing rather well as a species right now. In the past 60 years the human population has grown by over 200 percent. Any time a species population grows at that rate there will be a strain on the resources that species needs to survive. Except humanity has found a way to keep feeding and sheltering itself despite the obscene population growth rate.
Poverty is a result of overpopulation. Now someone is going to say there was poverty 60 years ago. This is true but the fact is that if humanity has been able to see it's population grow by over 200 percent and at the same time develop technology which makes human workers irrelevant imagine how well the majority of the world would be living if the human population had only grown by 50 percent between 1953 and 2013. The same resources that are being used by 7 billion people would only be used by 4.5 billion people.
Yes the lives of the wealthy would remain the same. There will always be people who have more than others, a lot more than some people in many instances. However the basket of goods that is allocated to the poorest of humanity would be spread out amongst fewer people. If you want to talk about selfishness the most selfish thing a person can do is bringing new life into the world. I have no problem with selfish acts I just want people to admit that reproduction is selfish. It should be noted that birth rates are much smaller amongst those who can most afford their offspring. Now one could ask can they afford offspring because they don't have them. But is that a relevant question? The real question is why do people continue to claim that not having children is selfish when the opposite is true?
Now I am going to place a lot of the blame on population growth in the world at the feet of one organization in particular. That organization being the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church's, or any religion for that matter, stance on contraception and abortion has been a major contributing factor to the worlds overpopulation. Do these organizations really believe in the sanctity of human life or do they just want to boost their own numbers and therefore increase their power.
The moral of the story is that humans are inherently selfish, yes there are superficial exceptions however I would bet that if one digs deep enough into the reasons behind most apparently altruistic acts there is a selfish reason behind them. Whether it is to alleviate guilt for having a good life while others suffer or to give oneself a sense of superiority over the rest of humanity. The charitable acts performed by members of the Catholic Church could be seen as altruistic or is it more likely that they are done to increase the organizations influence?
There is no intrinsic value in any individual human life. Those among us who are well meaning seem to believe that there is in all life. The fact is that for all the poverty in the world the human species is still growing at record numbers even when there is no practical reason for the growth.
The point of this essay is that people need to just enjoy the lives they have and not worry about the plight of others. If you were hurting they wouldn't worry about you. You shouldn't feel bad because someone with four kids is working a job that pays them 8 dollars an hour, they should feel bad for bringing four lives into the world when the only means to support them is a job that pays 8 dollars an hour. You shouldn't feel bad because someone who has a low income job and is now losing the home they bought that was well out of their price range because mortgage rates were so low. It was the purchasers own selfishness that lead them to want something they couldn't afford.
Life is pretty damn good for most of us in the United States, if you don't believe that just take a look at what life was like for people 60 years ago. Long hours in manufacturing jobs, segregation, no consequence free sex, small black and white televisions, only three networks and no internet. What a horrible time to be alive. So look kick back put on a football game, open a beer (think of all the options you have compared to 1953) and say damn I have it pretty fucking good. Suck it rest of the world America Rocks!
During the Cleveland Browns and St Louis Rams game this week Browns color analyst Bernie Kosar made some interesting observations.
While I wont get into whether or not he was correct in his observations it is his choice of words in one particular instance that I found shall we say amusing
'Kosar went on to call rookie Tavon Austin and the Rams receivers "horrible," while suggesting their parents "would be embarrassed" if they were watching the game." I can only imagine Mr. Kosar as a proud father watching his daughter work
This past week Mary Kay Henry the International President of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) went on the Colbert Report to discuss the "Strike for 15". It occurred to me while watching her interview that the main issue in this strike is the hatred of large corporations such as McDonald's and Yum Brands not the concern for the workers themselves.
Much like with the anger aimed at GMO's which I sincerely believe to be more about Monsanto making large profits off of the GMO's not the perceived dangers of the GMO's themselves this is about hatred of profitable companies. If GMO's were open source and Monsanto weren't making so much money I don't think people would care about them just like if the only restaurants were family owned dinners you wouldn't hear the outrage at the wages fry cooks receive.
This is the real issue here, if the minimum wage were to be increased to 15 dollars an hour you would see economic collapse. Family owned dinners and cafe's couldn't afford to pay 30,000 dollars a year to their full time employees and stay in business. Increasing the minimum wage to 15 dollars an hour would lead to record inflation and job loss. The cost of the increase in wages would be passed on to the consumers much like what has happened in Australia where the minimum wage is over 20 dollars an hour.
Consumer prices are 50 percent higher in Australia than they are in the United States. This is the outcome of an increased minimum wage. The reason wages are low is about supply and demand. We have larger supply of workers than jobs. This, not greed, is why wages are low. If you force employers who are already employing more workers than they need to function efficiently than you will simply hasten the downsizing of the workforce and the rate at which human workers are replaced by machinery.
It comes back to population size. At one point in time we needed a large workforce to plow land. At another point we needed a large workforce to build goods then we needed a work force to sell those goods. Now the land is plowed by a one worker in a large piece of Caterpillar machinery
and the manufacturing is done by these awesome dudes
As for the selling of products that is now done in this manner. Every time you order a product online you are eliminating retail jobs in the same manner in which the occupation of travel agent is now only seen in movies from the 80s and in the museum of Natural History thanks in part to the Roaming Gnome and Travelocity. This lowers the price to the consumer and gives the consumer more freedom. These innovations improve the quality of life and have created a leisure economy.
As more and more people choose to be childless
the population will eventually decrease and the workforce will level out and wages will go up.
No longer is wealth created through arduous labor. It is now created through providing travel and entertainment. This is a golden time to be alive because the costs of leisure have gone down. What creates the most wealth in the United States today you might ask? The NFL not only do the players receive lots of money but they spend it on luxury items such as Ruby's, Lexus', Porsches and Mercedes. They also spend money things other than strippers. The sole reason why cable companies and the Networks haven't had to cut their workforces drastically is the amount of money generated by NFL television contracts. These jobs will vanish once the NFL goes to a subscription based streaming service that doesn't require Direct TV. Bars make up for the down summer months the minute the NFL kicks off. Included in this the merchandise and vendors in the stadiums. This is the new economy, It is based on leisure activities and as the population decreases everyone will have a better life.
Of course it really does matter who is having children and who is not. For if the only people have children are those that have four of them when their only source of supporting their family is a retail job than the future of this planet is extremely bleak
Warming currents have caused Maine Lobsters to shed their shells earlier in the year than usual as seen here. This along with prices as low as 4 dollars a pound due to a surplus of lobsters has hurt New England's lobster fishermen. On the plus side it costs less to take a nice lady out for a lobster dinner. Although if you invested in lobster futures you are now feeling the pinch.
Outsourcing has Gone too Far:
Recently French music duo Daft Punk skipped out on a scheduled appearance on the Colbert Report. In response to this he replaced them and gave a different song the Colbert bump. The replacement was the son the of Canadian Music Royalty. While at first I was glad to see that the French didn't receive the Colbert Bump I soon shuddered when I realized a very dark tend in popular music. The effects of Canadian music on our culture have been dire. Sure there was a day when Canadian music was awesome, While the crafty Canadians lulled us into a false sense of security in the 1970s by the time the 80s rolled around their evil plan started to take shape. We thought it was just an aberration however they continued their attack into the 90s and carried it on into last summer. Obviously we need a border fence but to north not the south. While television has tried to make Canadian Pop Music seem harmless it is in fact so evil that even Satan denies all involvement. Walt Disney's head however could not be reached for comment.
Rapping Mannings?
Peyton and Eli Manning are now rapping in a direct TV ad.
It's good to see that my characterizations of the Manning brothers are still valid
So it appears not only will we be able to replace the fast food worker but soon we can replace the fast food animal. The British have successfully grown ground beef from cattle stem cells. Which begs the question, does it taste better than the horse burgers the British are known for? While this is an exciting development for stem cells especially since we can now grow replacement teeth from urine stem cells so we will always be able to chew stem cell steaks. Can food replicators be too far away? Of course this will lead to all sorts of protests both from religious fanatics and I am sure that anti-GMO people will have a problem with this as well.
I for one am excited by all this. I mean robots cooking food grown from stem cells. Mobile technology that has already given us tricorder like devices. Come on lets just get this done and I can spend eternity sleeping with green women where no man has gone before
