Second hand stores hold a strange attraction for me. The merchandise is always changing, so every visit is like a treasure hunt.
I was outside my usual stomping grounds today and noticed a Goodwill on my left. There were the usual racks of clothes, then shelves with housewares, then some electronics. "I was going to look for something in this section. ?" A minute later - "ah yes, Grandpa wants a corded phone to replace his scratchy made in china cordless POS". They wanted $4 for a no-frills handset, and half-off day is only a week away, so I decided to wait.
Elsewhere in the electronics section was an antique modem, an external U.S. Robotics Courier v.Everything - the creme de la creme of analog modems, circa 1994.
Inside: How the modem is related to the found copy of David Hapgood's 1973 book, The Screwing of the Average Man: Who's doing it to us. How they do it. Why we let it happen.
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I usually look to see where things are/were made. The modem had a jumble of information on the bottom - explanations of the dip switch settings, modem commands (ATH0, ATDT, etc), and so forth. There was so much text that I thought the information I was searching for wasn't there... But after a bit I found it in the upper-left corner: "made in USA". How quaint - the relic was assembled in the country that mostly invented the product genre. In the dozen intervening years, U.S. Robotics has outsourced their production to companies in China.
On one of the clothes racks I noticed a 6-port SMC ethernet hub. When I pulled away the hard double-sided tape, "Assembled in USA" was revealed.
My last stop was at the bookcases. Thrift shops are my favorite place to find books because they're mostly dirt-cheap, and because they have many titles that are long out of print. Goodwill's books are kind of expensive - $2 for hardbacks, $1 for paperbacks, whereas Salvation Army is usually half that - but I take what I find where I find it.
From the rear cover of Mr. Hapgood's Screwing of the Average Man:
"The Screwing of the Average Man is the best account I have seen of how the system is rigged from maternity ward to beyond the grave to keep most of us broke so the rich can go on getting richer. Only a person with more than $200,000 a year can read it without weeping." -Russell Baker
$200k in '73 is between $450k and $900k or more today, when adjusted for teh inflation (using this calculator, for example). It's hard to say how $200k in '73 compares to today because the government statisticians keep changing the yardsticks [full, pdf] [partial, html], but even the lower number gives a good indication of the U.S. Feral Government's mismanagement of the U.S. "Dollar".
From the inside flaps:
If you earn your living by drawing a salary, you're probably being screwed. If you aren't rich and powerful, you're almost certainly being screwed.
The Screwing of the Average Man
This book tells you how it's being done with a literate wit that once you stop laughing will make your blood boil.
It's the first book to expose all the major screwings the average man is heir to -- including those inflicted by lawyers, doctors, bankers, and many other "experts", as well as those by the government. It also explains why the average man, unlike the poor, doesn't know he's being screwed.
The average man is given just enough crumbs from the table of the mighty to keep him hoping for more instead of complaining about the little he's getting. For example, his $50 tax deduction silences protest he should be making about the millions saved by the rich. Today's average man is like the ante-bellum "house nigger", so grateful to be inside with the rich folks that he forgets he's still a slave. After reading this book, he'll never again forget.
(See back flap for the Vocabulary of SCREWING)
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YOUTOOISM: 1. The belief that whatever applies to the rich applies to the average man, too. 2. The strategy for seducing people into accepting their own screwing. It consists of giving the average man just enough of a break to convince him he's benefiting from the system.
CATCH-85: The fallacy in youtooism. Under Catch-85, the number of people who benefit from a special privilege is limited to no more than (usually the wealthiest) 15 percent of the population.
NET SCREWING: The situation 85 percent of the population is in. Because we're allowed to win a little every now and then (*1), we don't realize how much we're being rooked in all our other transactions.
CAROM SCREWING: One screwing that leads by chain reaction to another. For example, when cars are made flimsy in order to sell more parts, the customer is exposed to greater loss from two other screwings: auto insurance and the repairs industry.
WORDNOISE: Verbal fakery designed to mask reality. One example is your insurance contract, and another is what the agent says when you ask him what the contract means.
If Hapgood had written his book in the last 10 years, he certainly would've added a couple chapters on how "globalization" screws the Average American.
12 years ago, U.S. Robotics paid Average Americans to assemble their modems. Courier v.Everything modems were expensive, but because many people had jobs that paid well, if an individual really wanted or needed the Cadillac (er, Lexus? Mercedes? Porsche?) of modems, they'd budget accordingly and save their pennies.
The transition to the present economic status quo started around 1995 when the Feral Reserve bank started to inflate the money supply. That time period correlates roughly with George H.W. Bush and William Jefferson Clinton's betrayal of Average Americans by opening the borders to unrestricted trade. Traitor Bush negotiated the North American "Free" Trade Agreement, and Traitor Clinton forced NA'F'TA implementation bills through congress. The World Trade Organization was also founded in 1995.
Before long, U.S. Robotics' executives had no choice but to fire all of their well-paid Average American assemblers and relocate production to China/Asia, to keep their company competitive with the flood of imported goods.
Most Average Americans don't realize how we're being screwed by Globalization because the economy had been remarkably resilient. Business Week proclaimed a "new economy" in service/information jobs when manufacturing started fleeing the United States. My father's new neighbor used to manage a machine shop that stamped out parts for computer cases. Now he's a realtor - my impression is that the career transition was not voluntary. Record U.S. trade and U.S. Feral Government budget deficits should indicate that this resiliency is only temporary.
Many of us "doom-and-gloomers" believe that a recession is inevitable, or (according to the shadow stats guy) is already underway. While recessions create temporary hardships for Average Americans (and people living in other geographic locales too), this coming economic restructuring is of critical importance to re-allocate stolen wealth back into the pockets of Average Americans.
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Goodwill had their book priced for two Feral Reserve Notes. If I'd realized the cashier was only going to charge me for one, I would've gotten the book on Hillary Clinton too ("amoral power-hungry bitch", if my skimming was accurate). Perhaps I will return for it tomorrow. Clinton's certainly running for President; I wonder what a recall campaign would do for her political ambitions...
(*1) Democrat candidates' victories last week might qualify. See speculations on why the democrats were 'allowed' to take control of the congress: Cheney's Revenge and The Republicans Took a Dive.
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