34. NASRUDDIN AND THE FISH
Nasruddin and his friends were sitting in the coffeehouse, getting into arguments as usual.
“Fish are truly remarkable animals,” Nasruddin opined. “Nobody really respects fish, but they deserve our respect. Talented, intelligent, well-behaved. In fact, there’s nothing a person can do that a fish can’t do better!”
“That’s ridiculous!” protested one of Nasruddin’s friends. “Fish can’t talk better than people do. Fish can’t even talk at all. I’ve seen hundreds of fish, thousands of fish, but not a single talking fish, and that’s because fish can’t talk.”
“And when you are under the water,” Nasruddin replied, “you can’t talk either!”
This Tale is from “Tiny Tales of Nasruddin” by Laura Gibbs. The book is licensed under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. © 2019-2022 Laura Gibbs.
So today, we are going to continue our closer look at more than four decades of neoliberal policy and how they’ve changed our economy by focusing on the triangle of debt, real estate, and financial instability. In short, we are going to talk about how in these decades while incomes have stagnated, debt has expanded such that households, governments, and businesses have all become indebted to the gills. Today, one of the reports shows that debt servicing itself has gone up by 50% and today accounts for almost a sixth of total government spending in the United States. How both residential and commercial real estate have become bound up in the vortex of financialization is another thing we want to talk about because it is not producers but rentiers who benefit from this type of economy, and even rent is being converted by the alchemy of financialization into interest. So at the end of the day, even land ownership and homeownership no longer matter. What matters is how much money you’ve got and how you can make your money, make more money. — Debt Makes The World Go Around by Michael Hudson
On Wednesday I was hoping to go to Benson to pick up my Henry and shop at Safeway. But I had not received an email from Sarge’s that the rifle had arrived so went to Willcox instead. First stop there was at Country Pride where I had breakfast that cost a lot more than what I remember it costing the last time I was there (November-December 2020). From there it was only a short drive to 340 Truck Wash where I got Desperado a much needed bath. The last stop in town was at Safeway for some groceries.
The route to Willcox was north on US191 and then east on I-10. But the return had to be through Kansas Settlement because the west bound exit from I-10 to US191 (exit 331) is blocked. There was an accident over a year ago which damaged the exit overpass onto US191 and it is being rebuilt; probably will take the rest of this year.
For the first time in a long time Erik and I did walks totaling five mile or more on Monday then Tuesday we were only a couple of hundredths under that mark for the day. Wednesday morning we did a short one mile walk before going shopping and took a rest from the second walk of the day. Thursday morning I felt good but the pace was lagging during the mid day walk. Much better this morning; I think I may have pushed it a little too much early in the week.