Today is Lammas – a day that marks the halfway point between the Summer Solstice and Autumnal Equinox. In ancient times, it marked the time of the first harvest of fruits and grain. Back in the day, a festival was held to celebrate Lammas, complete with food and sports. It’s also a day I personally celebrate because it marks Jerry Garcia’s birth – and I am an eternal fan of his music – from banjo to pedal steel to wood to psychedelic electric.

The surf has been pretty dismal this summer. A few souths have scraped by, but as I think back, the most memorable waves were associated with a northwest wind swell. That’s not to say I haven’t been surfing. I have marked up several knee to waist high evenings, mostly at elevated tides. Over the last couple of days, the LB glide has been my favorite. I still fancy the Steps and Tiburones. While it has been an exceedingly crowded summer, I have managed to stay out of trouble – and the evenings have set up like a locals bar. One evening, the surf session was lit up by the exploding effervescent energy of the kids. I don’t know about other activities where seniors mix it up with youth, but to be in the wake of the boyz when they are having fun is golden. On this particular evening, as we sat in the water waiting for the long-traveled south swell to standup on the reef, the boyz noticed hot-rod flames of white clouds and a half moon backed by evening blue – I mean they noticed it. Next thing, one of boyz hopped off his board and went under – and after a moment - popped up and encouraged the others: “get about six inches under the water and look up at the clouds, it’s sick!” Of course! And so it goes.

Observations:

“True, as at other times in the life of our nation, we live in an Age of Extremes that prizes intensity over sanity; rhetoric over reality; and destruction over creation. But this too shall pass, thanks to the infinite, inspired wisdom of the sovereign people who, with God’s continued blessings, will again affirm for the generations American Exceptionalism. Truly, it is a challenging and fortunate time to live in our blessed sanctuary of liberty.” Rep. Thaddeus “Thad” McCotter (R-Mich.)

“Failure is not something to be avoided but something to be cultivated. … It is a sign of weakness and often a stigma that prohibits second chances. … Yet the rise in the West is in many respects due to the rise in tolerating failure. Indeed, many immigrants trained in a failure-tolerant culture may blossom out of stagnancy once moved into a failure-tolerant culture. Failure liberates success.”

Andrea Pirlo, who was named man-of-the-match in the Euro 2012 semifinal, also sounded a note of caution for Sunday’s final. “We haven’t done anything yet,” he said. “There’s no use going to Rome and not seeing the Pope. We want to go home with this cup.”

It is astounding how significantly one idea can shape a society and its policies. Consider this one. If taxes on the rich go up, job creation will go down. This idea is an article of faith for republicans and seldom challenged by democrats and has shaped much of today’s economic landscape. But sometimes the ideas that we know to be true are dead wrong. For thousands of years people were sure that earth was at the center of the universe. It’s not, and an astronomer who still believed that it was, would do some lousy astronomy. In the same way, a policy maker who believed that the rich and businesses are “job creators” and therefore should not be taxed, would make equally bad policy. I have started or helped start, dozens of businesses and initially hired lots of people. But if no one could have afforded to buy what we had to sell, my businesses would all have failed and all those jobs would have evaporated.

That’s why I can say with confidence that rich people don’t create jobs, nor do businesses, large or small. What does lead to more employment is a “circle of life” like feedback loop between customers and businesses. And only consumers can set in motion this virtuous cycle of increasing demand and hiring. In this sense, an ordinary middle-class consumer is far more of a job creator than a capitalist like me. So when businesspeople take credit for creating jobs, it’s a little like squirrels taking credit for creating evolution. In fact, it’s the other way around.Anyone who’s ever run a business knows that hiring more people is a capitalists course of last resort, something we do only when increasing customer demand requires it. In this sense, calling ourselves job creators isn’t just inaccurate, it’s disingenuous. That’s why our current policies are so upside down. When you have a tax system in which most of the exemptions and the lowest rates benefit the richest, all in the name of job creation, all that happens is that the rich get richer. Since 1980 the share of income for the richest Americans has more than tripled while effective tax rates have declined by close to 50%. If it were true that lower tax rates and more wealth for the wealthy  would lead to more job creation, then today we would be drowning in jobs.  And yet unemployment and under-employment is at record highs.Another reason this idea is so wrong-headed is that there can never be enough superrich Americans to power a great economy. The annual earnings of people like me are hundreds, if not thousands, of times greater than those of the median American, but we don’t buy hundreds or thousands of times more stuff. My family owns three cars, not 3,000. I buy a few pairs of pants and a few shirts a year, just like most American men. Like everyone else, we go out to eat with friends and family only occasionally.

I can’t buy enough of anything to make up for the fact that millions of unemployed and underemployed Americans can’t buy any new clothes or cars or enjoy any meals out. Or to make up for the decreasing consumption of the vast majority of American families that are barely squeaking by, buried by spiraling costs and trapped by stagnant or declining wages.Here’s an incredible fact. If the typical American family still got today the same share of income they earned in 1980, they would earn about 25% more and have an astounding $13,000 more a year. Where would the economy be if that were the case?Significant privileges have come to capitalists like me for being perceived as “job creators” at the center of the economic universe, and the language and metaphors we use to defend the fairness of the current social and economic arrangements is telling. For instance, it is a small step from “job creator” to “The Creator”. We did not accidentally choose this language. It is only honest to admit that calling oneself a “job creator” is both an assertion about how economics works and the a claim on status and privileges. The extraordinary differential between a 15% tax rate on capital gains, dividends, and carried interest for capitalists, and the 35% top marginal rate on work for ordinary Americans is a privilege that is hard to justify without just a touch of deification We’ve had it backward for the last 30 years. Rich businesspeople like me don’t create jobs. Rather they are a consequence of an eco-systemic feedback loop animated by middle-class consumers, and when they thrive, businesses grow and hire, and owners profit. That’s why taxing the rich to pay for investments that benefit all is a great deal for both the middle class and the rich. So here’s an idea worth spreading.  In a capitalist economy, the true job creators are consumers, the middle class. And taxing the rich to make investments that grow the middle class, is the single smartest thing we can do for the middle class, the poor and the rich. Thank You. (TED lecture – I forgot the presenter’s name – sorry)

The Arizona Secretary of State claims that unless he “sees” Olame-a’s birth certificate, he may not be able to put the President’s name on Arizona’s presidential ballot. Why? He claimed it was a standard response to pressure from over 1,200 Arizonans who had emailed him with concerns about the president’s eligibility and the authenticity of his birth certificate. Now – 1,200 out of how many Arizonans? You mean to tell me a threshold of 1,200 signatures gets action? Heck – why do I hear about petition drives where the effort is to get 50,000, 250,000 or more? Seems you could get all you need in one day at Walmart.

“But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is long past the sea is flat again.” Keynes.

The capitalist maintains his rights as a purchaser when he tries to make the working-day as long as possible, and to make, whenever possible, two working-days out of one. On the other hand…the laborer maintains his right as seller when he wishes to reduce the working-day to one of definite normal duration. There is here, therefore, an antinomy, right against right, both equally bearing the seal of the law of exchanges. Between equal rights force decides. Hence is it that in the history of capitalist production, the determination of what is a working-day, presents itself as the result of a struggle, a struggle between collective capital, i.e., the class of capitalists, and collective labour, i.e., the working-class. Karl Marx.

But – as with Caterpillar, it was never about labour costs, but opportunity. Public opinion has shifted. The rights to organise, and bargain collectively, have transformed from bedrock civil rights to vestigial luxuries; good salaries and pensions from objects of inspiration to resentment. All of this from the decades-old message drummed into us by politicians and businesses alike, that we are all on our own. Human agency consists of two choices: take it or leave it. To want more say in what you do for a living, for how much and under which conditions, and to want the same for others, is crazy.Caterpillar understands this. Its corporate culture may be more predisposed than most to punishing uppity workers. But for it to do so without even the flimsiest appeal to economic necessity is truly a milestone. And in today’s atomised America, it isn’t just good business. It’s good politics.There is only so much to go around, and the efforts of one group or the other to assert a claim to a larger share can be called class warfare. It can be a war waged through changes in the taxes, in a restructuring of incentives and pay scales, an increase in the benefits given to the poor, or revolt. The first three are legitimate battlegrounds in a democratic society such as ours, and it is really taking a good joke to far to suggest it is damaging to the body politic for members of society to look at the differences in income and take action to redistribute in their direction.

“Only a man who carries a gun needs one” Angel and the Badman – 1947