The Feng Shui Secret

The Feng Shui secret is "it is impossible to just Feng Shui it and Forget It" because life changes and moves on - so must the application of Feng Shui principles to your surroundings and thinking. 

There are a few Feng Shui basic principles that you should apply annually to help you maintain balance in your personal environment which leads to you being in control, anxiety-free and self-confident.
• Maintain a clutter-free lifestyle. If it doesn't fit, look great on you or make you feel like million dollars, get rid of it. If it is chipped, cracked, broken or thread bare, get rid of it. Be especially wary of clutter collecting areas such as closets, counter tops, end tables and corners. Clear the clutter so positive prosperity energy can freely meander throughout.
• Eliminate the negative thinking that plays as a steady loop in your mind. Get rid of the can't do, won'ts and what ifs. Replace them with a can do and will do attitude that says "not yet" instead of can't; e.g. I haven't found that new job yet or I haven't found that "special someone" yet. And stop the "trying" to achieve something - either do it or don't do it. You cannot try to pick up a pencil, you either pick it up or you do not pick it up.
• Create a "will do" list and always do the most important thing first to help you control the negative thinking loop that keeps replaying in your mind.
• Energize prosperity, health and income in the east area of your living room, bedroom and office with something green, something made out of wood, a picture of trees, a plant or even the number 3.
• Energize good luck, fame and fortune in the south area of your living room with objects depicting fire, something red, something triangular pointing upward such as pyramid, a picture of a mountain or the number 9.
• Energize helpful and supportive people energy in the northwest area of your living room and office with metal objects, silver, gray or the number 6.
• Energize relationships, new ones and improving old ones in the southwest using objects made out of earthenware, terra cotta items, terra cotta colors, earth tone colors, collections of treasured items, happy pictures of you with your family, friends or business associates, or the number 2.
Are you less stressed, calmer and more peace-filled today than you were two months ago, two years ago or two minutes ago? The balanced approach would be to create a personal environment where you are in control, anxiety-free and confident no matter how personal circumstances and world events are changing.
If something major has changed in your world, take another look at applying Feng Shui principles to re-balance your personal environment. Don't just Feng Shui it and forget it. Your home is your personal sanctuary from the world and the place where prosperity always begins.

Does anyone really know what time it is??

  

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/0..._n_851136.html

Warren Haynes, the Allman Brothers Band guitarist, routinely plays with the surviving members of the Grateful Dead, now touring as The Dead. He's just finished a Dead show in Washington, D.C. and gets a pop quiz from the Huffington Post.

Where does 420 come from?

He pauses and thinks, hands on his side. "I don't know the real origin. I know myths and rumors," he says. "I'm really confused about the first time I heard it. It was like a police code for smoking in progress or something. What's the real story?"

Depending on who you ask, or their state of inebriation, there are as many varieties of answers as strains of medical bud in California. It's the number of active chemicals in marijuana. It's teatime in Holland. It has something to do with Hitler's birthday. It's those numbers in that Bob Dylan song multiplied.

The origin of the term 420, celebrated around the world by pot smokers every April 20th, has long been obscured by the clouded memories of the folks who made it a phenomenon.

The Huffington Post chased the term back to its roots and was able to find it in a lost patch of cannabis in a Point Reyes, California forest. Just as interesting as its origin, it turns out, is how it spread.

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It starts with the Dead.

It was Christmas week in Oakland, 1990. Steven Bloom was wandering through The Lot - that timeless gathering of hippies that springs up in the parking lot before every Grateful Dead concert - when a Deadhead handed him a yellow flyer.

"We are going to meet at 4:20 on 4/20 for 420-ing in Marin County at the Bolinas Ridge sunset spot on Mt. Tamalpais," reads the message, which Bloom dug up and forwarded to the Huffington Post. Bloom, then a reporter for High Times magazine and now the publisher of CelebStoner.com and co-author of Pot Culture, had never heard of "420-ing" before.

The flyer came complete with a 420 back story: "420 started somewhere in San Rafael, California in the late '70s. It started as the police code for Marijuana Smoking in Progress. After local heads heard of the police call, they started using the expression 420 when referring to herb - Let's Go 420, dude!"

Bloom reported his find in the May 1991 issue of High Times, which the magazine found in its archives and provided to the Huffington Post. The story, though, was only partially right.

It had nothing to do with a police code -- though the San Rafael part was dead on. Indeed, a group of five San Rafael High School friends known as the Waldos - by virtue of their chosen hang-out spot, a wall outside the school - coined the term in 1971. The Huffington Post spoke with Waldo Steve, Waldo Dave and Dave's older brother, Patrick, and confirmed their full names and identities, which they asked to keep secret for professional reasons. (Pot is still, after all, illegal.)

The Waldos never envisioned that pot smokers the world over would celebrate each April 20th as a result of their foray into the Point Reyes forest. The day has managed to become something of a national holiday in the face of official condemnation. This year's celebration will be no different. Officials at the University of Colorado at Boulder and University of California, Santa Cruz, which boast two of the biggest smoke outs, are pushing back. "As another April 20 approaches, we are faced with concerns from students, parents, alumni, Regents, and community members about a repeat of last year's 4/20 'event,'" wrote Boulder's chancellor in a letter to students. "On April 20, 2009, we hope that you will choose not to participate in unlawful activity that debases the reputation of your University and degree, and will encourage your fellow Buffs to act with pride and remember who they really are."

But the Cheshire cat is out of the bag. Students and locals will show up at round four, light up at 4:20 and be gone shortly thereafter. No bands, no speakers, no chants. Just a bunch of people getting together and getting stoned.

The code often creeps into popular culture and mainstream settings. All of the clocks in Pulp Fiction, for instance, are set to 4:20. In 2003, when the California legislature codified the medical marijuana law voters had approved, the bill was named SB420.

"We think it was a staffer working for [lead Assembly sponsor Mark] Leno, but no one has ever fessed up," says Steph Sherer, head of Americans for Safe Access, which lobbied on behalf of the bill. California legislative staffers spoken to for this story say that the 420 designation remains a mystery, but that both Leno and the lead Senate sponsor, John Vasconcellos, are hip enough that they must have known what it meant. (If you were involved with SB420 and know the story, email me.)

The code pops up in Craig's List postings when fellow smokers search for "420 friendly" roommates. "It's just a vaguer way of saying it and it kind of makes it kind of cool," says Bloom. "Like, you know you're in the know, but that does show you how it's in the mainstream."

The Waldos do have proof, however, that they used the term in the early '70s in the form of an old 420 flag and numerous letters with 420 references and early '70s post marks. They also have a story.

It goes like this: One day in the Fall of 1971 - harvest time - the Waldos got word of a Coast Guard service member who could no longer tend his plot of marijuana plants near the Point Reyes Peninsula Coast Guard station. A treasure map in hand, the Waldos decided to pluck some of this free bud.

The Waldos were all athletes and agreed to meet at the statue of Loius Pasteur outside the school at 4:20, after practice, to begin the hunt.

"We would remind each other in the hallways we were supposed to meet up at 4:20. It originally started out 4:20-Louis and we eventually dropped the Louis," Waldo Steve tells the Huffington Post.

The first forays out were unsuccessful, but the group kept looking for the hidden crop. "We'd meet at 4:20 and get in my old '66 Chevy Impala and, of course, we'd smoke instantly and smoke all the way out to Pt. Reyes and smoke the entire time we were out there. We did it week after week," says Steve. "We never actually found the patch."

But they did find a useful codeword. "I could say to one of my friends, I'd go, 420, and it was telepathic. He would know if I was saying, 'Hey, do you wanna go smoke some?' Or, 'Do you have any?' Or, 'Are you stoned right now?' It was kind of telepathic just from the way you said it," Steve says. "Our teachers didn't know what we were talking about. Our parents didn't know what we were talking about."

It's one thing to identify the origin of the term. Indeed, Wikipedia and Urban Dictionary already include references to the Waldos. The bigger question: How did 420 spread from a circle of California stoners across the globe?



As fortune would have it, the collapse of San Francisco's hippie utopia in the late '60s set the stage. As speed freaks, thugs and con artists took over The Haight, the Grateful Dead picked up and moved to the Marin County hills - just blocks from San Rafael High School.

"Marin Country was kind of ground zero for the counter culture," says Steve.

The Waldos had more than just a geographic connection to the Dead. Mark Waldo's father took care of real estate for the Dead. And Waldo Dave's older brother, Patrick, managed a Dead sideband and was good friends with bassist Phil Lesh. Patrick tells the Huffington Post that he smoked with Lesh on numerous occasions. He couldn't recall if he used the term 420 around him, but guessed that he must have.

The Dead, recalls Waldo Steve, "had this rehearsal hall on Front Street, San Rafael, California, and they used to practice there. So we used to go hang out and listen to them play music and get high while they're practicing for gigs. But I think it's possible my brother Patrick might have spread it through Phil Lesh. And me, too, because I was hanging out with Lesh and his band when they were doing a summer tour my brother was managing."

The band that Patrick managed was called Too Loose To Truck and featured not only Lesh but rock legend David Crosby and acclaimed guitarist Terry Haggerty.

The Waldos also had open access to Dead parties and rehearsals. "We'd go with [Mark's] dad, who was a hip dad from the '60s," says Steve. "There was a place called Winterland and we'd always be backstage running around or onstage and, of course, we're using those phrases. When somebody passes a joint or something, 'Hey, 420.' So it started spreading through that community."

Lesh, walking off the stage after a recent Dead concert, confirmed that Patrick is a friend and said he "wouldn't be surprised" if the Waldos had coined 420. He wasn't sure, he said, when the first time he heard it was. "I do not remember. I'm very sorry. I wish I could help," he said.

Wavy-Gravy is a hippie icon with his own ice cream flavor and has been hanging out with the Dead for decades. HuffPost spotted him outside the concert. Asked about the origin of 420, he suggested it began "somewhere in the foggy mists of time. What time is it now? I say to you: eternity now."

As the Grateful Dead toured the globe through the '70s and '80s, playing hundreds of shows a year - the term spread though the Dead underground. Once High Times got hip to it, the magazine helped take it global.

"I started incorporating it into everything we were doing," High Times editor Steve Hager told the Huffington Post. "I started doing all these big events - the World Hemp Expo Extravaganza and the Cannabis Cup - and we built everything around 420. The publicity that High Times gave it is what made it an international thing. Until then, it was relatively confined to the Grateful Dead subculture. But we blew it out into an international phenomenon."

Sometime in the early '90s, High Times wisely purchased the web domain 420.com.

Bloom, the reporter who first stumbled on it, gives High Times less credit. "We posted that flyer and then we started to see little references to it. It wasn't really much of High Times doing," he says. "We weren't really pushing it that hard, just kind of referencing the phrase."

The Waldos say that within a few years the term had spread throughout San Rafael and was cropping up elsewhere in the state. By the early '90s, it had penetrated deep enough that Dave and Steve started hearing people use it in unexpected places - Ohio, Florida, Canada - and spotted it painted on signs and etched into park benches.

In 1997, the Waldos decided to set the record straight and got in touch with High Times.

"They said, 'The fact is, there is no 420 [police] code in California. You guys ever look it up?'" Blooms recalls. He had to admit that no, he had never looked it up. Hager flew out to San Rafael, met the Waldos, examined their evidence, spoke with others in town, and concluded they were telling the truth.

Hager still believes them. "No one's ever been able to come up with any use of 420 that predates the 1971 usage, which they had established. So unless somebody can come up with something that predates them, then I don't think anybody's going to get credit for it other than them," he says.

"We never made a dime on the thing," says Dave, half boasting, half lamenting.

He does take pride in his role, though. "I still have a lot of friends who tell their friends that they know one of the guys that started the 420 thing. So it's kind of like a cult celebrity thing. Two years ago I went to the Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam. High Times magazine flew me out," says Dave.

Dave is now a credit analyst and works for Steve, who owns a specialty lending institution and lost money to the con artist Bernie Madoff. He spends more time today, he says, composing angry letters to the SEC than he does getting high.

The other three Waldos have also been successful, Steve says. One is head of marketing for a Napa Valley winery. Another is in printing and graphics. A third works for a roofing and gutter company. "He's like, head of their gutter division," says Steve, who keeps in close touch with them all.

"I've got to run a business. I've got to stay sharp," says Steve, explaining why he rarely smokes pot anymore. "Seems like everybody I know who smokes daily, or many times in a week, it seems like there's always something going wrong with their life, professionally, or in their relationships, or financially or something. It's a lot of fun, but it seems like if someone does it too much, there's some karmic cost to it."

"I never endorsed the use of marijuana. But hey, it worked for me," says Waldo Dave. "I'm sure on my headstone it'll say: 'One of the 420 guys.'"

Man of Wealth and Taste Strikes again

Drug laws in the country are retarded and ineffective. Society would be much better off treating drug abuse as a medical condition than as a hideous criminal offense, but let's be realistic, much of it has to do with generating revenue streams and feeding for-profit prisons a steady supply of bodies.

The US has the highest incarceration rate in the world, by far. American citizens comprise only 5% of global population, but an astounding 25% of all prisoners on the planet, and huge numbers of those are for non-violent drug-related offenses. The issue doesn't get the attention it deserves, but is disgraceful for a nation that lauds itself as a beacon of freedom and democracy to the rest of the world.

It blows my mind that power-hungry jackasses can decree that others be jailed and even sent to prison for ingesting substances that they deem unacceptable, particularly plants like marijuana, psilocybin, peyote, etc, that have been used for thousands of years and have been revered by many cultures. It says a lot about our own society that the substances authorities fear the most, and for which they often mete out the worst punishment, are those with the power to expand consciousness and potentially lead to questioning the assumptions of the socio-economic power structure that they're determined to maintain at any cost.

"Cultural and biological diversity are far more than the foundation of stability; they are an article of faith, a fundamental truth that indicates the way things are supposed to be.... There is a fire burning over the Earth, taking with it plants and animals, cultures, languages, ancient skills, and visionary wisdom. Quelling this flame and reinventing the poetry of diversity is the most important challenge of our times."
~ Wade Davis

Sustainability, Education, and our childrens' childrens' children

Sustainable construction. Green Building.  Limited Footprint. Sustainable design. Green energy. Green building.  Greener cities. LEED. Sustainability. Reduce. Recycle. Reuse.

All of these words refer to the method of construction, operation, or continued efforts toward a planet that we can develop, manage, live and enjoy.  Within the industries and living habitats we need to develop means and methods that will provide our environment a lower impact than what is being used today. Education will bring our world towards a more respecting and knowledge approach when building and living on this planet.  Education is a very critical element of sustainability; it may be the most critical. Whatever the case for the most critical element of sustainability, the fact that our approach to the planet’s environment and our living habitats will determine the outcome for our children and our children’s children’s children. 

Notable elements of air content, material usage, energy and atmosphere, emerging innovations, sound quality, outdoor air and environmental quality, and many more build on education.  When we educate our children, teachers, leaders, teenagers, and foreign affairs with a focus on sustainability then developments and progress can be a result.  Every day we affect our communication with our environment.  As people become better educated in better methods and practices in sustainability, the world will simply become cleaner, safer, and will be a more enjoyable place to live.

The first question to ask ourselves is: “What responsibilities does our generation have to future generations?” The second question to ask is “How can we educate ourselves in regards to question one to make a better world for ourselves?”.  When our responsibilities are questioned, there comes an elaborate and needed reply.

It is a very dynamic type of question. The responsibilities are almost endless.

The population of the world is growing at a substantial rate. About every 12-15 years the population of the world goes up by roughly one billion. At this rate our planet could have more people than it can hold by the year 2050. That would be nearly 9-10 billion people in the entire world. With the population in such an out-of-control rise, consumption is going to become out of hand, or people with start to go hungry. This is where the question starts to get drawn. How does the planet prepare for such events that the world has overcrowding and not enough supplies to feed everyone? Right now the world should be considering two main planes of thought, consumption and population. What is going to happen when the system breaks? Do the populations of people have to rely on something more different than what they already have, or will our people have backup plans set in place for such a break down event in resources.

First off, let’s consider that "the system breaks" and the world runs out of essential resources, say, Oil. Without this resource our world starts to become a sort of junk yard with no way of using most of the devices that are in it. All of today's cars, trucks, boats, airplanes, heavy machinery, trains, and power plants...just to name a few, all run on some byproduct of Oil. Oil is a resource that is being consumed faster than it is used, well it is burned but I will get to that later. This resource is mostly in the eastern hemisphere and it does run out. As a geology major, Ill tell you it seems to this student that the people cannot find enough oil resources on the planet fast enough to keep our barrels per day numbers where they need to be to sustain descent efficiency. The problem is not widespread, in the Middle East oil is everywhere and in the oceans oil is abundant, but the oil is not made at the rate at which it is consumed. Got that? I hope so. How about some new ways to run the machines that the oil runs on. The technology for rechargeable batteries is getting better and every day people are riding bikes, something to consider..... Whose oil is all the oil, anyway? Can the people really think for very much longer that all this oil is theirs for the taking? People should know that carpools and taking the bus is consumption. Walking to work and riding your bike are great ways to not even use any type of fossil foil at all, get this...your body runs on air! Our second most abundant resource on the planet. What is the most abundant resource on the planet you ask? I think its water, or there is a tossup between the two, and both water and air complement the work your body does. What if 15 people on a bus-bike could really work? Everyone could actually ride bikes, wouldn’t that be a rip-roaring better time than a thousand people lined up on the interstate cause some idiot was going 102mph and slammed his car into a wall? All I’m saying is I think today's people do really have an obligation to the future generations to do what it takes to slow the consumption of oil. Consumption of oil and the fossil fuels is not just the only concern; another is the water tables.

The water tables in the planet are not in danger of being consumed faster than replenished; the water is in danger of becoming polluted and undrinkable. The water tables in the earth are where most of the drinking water in the US comes from. Even in California water is pumped in from other states for their outrageous populations. When people start putting in landfills, the seepage from the landfills do actually reach water sources. Memphis, TN is an example of such a place. The Shelby farms landfill  has been there for years, covered by soil, and made into a park. Below the surface is where the trouble is, where near the bottom of the landfill seepage is taking place. Right below the Shelby farms landfill is the Tennessee and Arkansas aquifers. The water in these aquifers is replaced every year, considering normal wet season, near Nashville and dips under the Mississippi river. The Shelby farms landfill's seepage is moving thousands of meters a year toward the aquifers, creating a big problem for our future generations. This example shows one reason for planning for the future generations. Polluting the soils and water ways can damage these precious water supplies and render them useless in the future. Can people recycle, the answer is yes. Research has been done in that people are physically able to recycle their goods (i.e. aluminum cans, glassware, band aids, Styrofoam) so that people of tomorrow dont have to worry about their nasty soils and ruined water tables and focus on treating each other with respect and destroying war between "the people". Even our toddlers and middle schoolers are showing this recycle attitude, instead of just throwing their gum on the useful soil or in the water, they put it under the desk at their schools; preventing the pollution of our soils and water tables. If the system does break and the aquifers of the US, or even the world, start to become polluted, what then? Our generations should be on top of this matter in that they are planning on backup plans of changing salt-water to drinking water by the thousands of gallons or finding new waters to reproduce water or recycle water to drinking standards. Without ways to go without the aquifers, millions and millions of people could be relying on unfit drinking water or shortages and droughts on water.

People of today are already finding new ways to recycle their water. We are typically willing to hold people responsible for actions that could cause harm at later times. With landfills and nuclear power plants around, there is a wonder if any of these localities will one day go bad and destroy the surrounding area. Both localities being dangerous either it being the nuclear power plant to pollute the surrounding areas with fallout, or the landfill to bust or something and pollute the surrounding soils and water tables. What about your obligation to your future self? I see this as in yourself or your future family (kids, brother's kids, your kid's kids), whom must live in the world in the future. You future self must maintain healthy living conditions to stay alive for many years. You might even have that obligation to produce savings in bank accounts or property where your family down the line will have something to rely on such that they won’t have to scratch for resources, or just die off. Giant water treatment plants work around the clock to reproduce water that run through your toilets and sinks. Is this enough? I say it’s not. If everybody did something to help recycle, reduce, and reuse products, then I believe the consumption of products would slow down and the pollution in direct connection would also drop.

A utilitarian belief is in maximum happiness, or trying to keep from unhappy results. A look at history and it has not been perfectly constant.....

Some guys over there want my beautiful piece of land, on the beach, temp is always 77 degrees and partly cloudy. So what do they do, they are forced to try to conquer my land for their better welfare and future out comings. All my people fight against their people; I just think it’s stupid. That’s some of history; the rest seems to be in the meantime of such events of war.

Maximum happiness is a difficult objective to accomplish for 50 percent of the world, making it in my book as a goal for the world, establishing average happiness and trying to force widespread happiness. Widespread happiness, what is that? Could the world obtain such a maximum that it isn’t the best it has ever been, but moreover a happiness that can produce an outcome at the world-wide level. In the words of Biggie Smalls "If everybody could just get along", there would be a better place for everyone. Everybody getting along could mean everyone pitching in to recycle and no war causing distress over resources. Even at average happiness a question of whether someone should be born could be raised. Should the world's poor reproduce? Economically, that would be just more poor folk that are hungry and looking for food or taking up space.


These trends and practices that the people of the world go through every day may be heading toward some type of future unforeseen harm. It is in my opnion that the people seem responsible for the harm, but can one really put responsibility on today's people for a preparation for a future people that do not exist yet? It’s interesting how people can care so much for themselves and yet have no idea that a future people will care the same for themselves. Would this cause a default condition for today's people to be made to consider the future? Simple ways of thinking like recycling and reusing plays big roles in these areas. Literature is an example of such an event of conserving or reusing. Literature is a resource that must be maintained as our sources for knowledge and understanding. Taking care of newspaper articles, books, and magazines is the way to reduce timber consumption and to just keep the text knowledge for the future generations. The education that is in our society's schools, colleges, and libraries is vital in technological growth, safety and economics, and even general welfare. If little care is taken in the preserve of such resources, the future will be without alot of information that we take for granted. What can people do to preserve knowledge? Continue educating each other while preserving libraries and school in the public. Not just is the health of the future people at sake, so it the ability to learn and worship. The ability for a people to stay healthy through clean drinking water, better food from clean soils, and clean air yields the ability of the people to be exercised and alert for better health, education, and day to day living; maybe even promoting longer lifestyles and lifetimes.

Think about it...The less oil you use, the less carbon monoxide is produced in our breathing air. The more a person can recycle the less trash is created. The less a person uses per week or month, the more of that resource we can spend over time at a steady amount rather very quickly in mass units.

Then again, what if there is really is no need to worry about anything because our geologist have no idea what they are talking about, the scientist of the air dont know what they are doing, and the environmentalists are just crazy? Imagine an entire earth filled with everything that we need to live for another 400,000 years but just don’t have the technology to drill or consume those resources yet. Today's people have no idea that the future people will be like. The future people could discover all new types of combustion for cars and trains and new resources for food and breathing. Today's generations could be just not smart enough yet to realize the speed rate of technology and the types of technologies that have not been invented yet. The new technologies could be the new revolutionizing of resources, from atom splitting to planetary research, even center of the earth discoveries. These ideas must sounds crazy but it is just thought on the reality of the terms exploited in this paper.
Does the planet consume too much? Frederick Kaufman's book Environmental Ethics tends to teach this way. The author displays the idea that the west is consuming much faster its resources than to be reserved and the rest of the world could be starving or 5 times our maximum consumption levels, as in the east. The margins expressed from Kaufman are enormous, not gradual either mister! No, the world is actually doubling its consumption and trash every year. Again, population and consumption. The world doesn’t care though. Most of the people of today do not know where to start with this idea, or what is needed.

Whatever the outcome is after 20 years from now, 100 years, 400 years......will be the times when people start to wake up to realizing that their kids could be in danger. Our kids could fall short of maximum happiness and that is the problem. Our kids, their kids, their kids, their kids and further and further will reap what we sow now. With continue effort and integrity in research, education and recycling, the world could move towards a brighter future. Does the world today have an obligation to the future peoples? I think so.....just don’t let the recycling or looking out for the future hinder YOUR maximum happiness.

The world is falling apart and no one seems to care.

Everything we do from our generation forward should be education driven.  The more we educate and provide our future generations the knowledge and direction they need to create a more sustainable world, the more the world will better itself into societal preservation.  

The hype of today’s world is endless.  Endless TV, movies, entertainment, advertising, social gratification, wealth, and fear of poverty is driving our world. A real player in this endless society is ignorance and apathy. I don’t know and I don’t care. These two attitudes have become a endless stream of useless consciousness. But I digress…this can only bring us back towards education.

Education is a critical element of sustainability. As we build green buildings, green homes, drive green cars and fly green planes; these actions all require a continued focus that will only be supported by education.  The users of these green and sustainable areas of life require the skills and resources necessary to properly execute daily sustainability.  If we try to regulate the need for sustainability the creativity, growth, and motivation may become watered down with instant gratification seeking business leaders. We can educate the population with sustainability and the population will develop into more green conscious individuals.

If we are going to build homes that are green in design and sustainable in operation, then it is imperative that the home owners understand how to manage their home. Without the proper education, the home owner looses the ability to properly green their environment and sustainability looses it’s gradual progression.

If we are going to build businesses that are green in nature and sustainable in operation, then it is imperative that the business managers understand how to maintain green practices within their business. Without the proper education, the business owner purchases ideas and products but will not maintain a progression towards sustainable design and innovation in the business.

If we are to ask our children’s children to live in a world we created, then it is imperative that our educational goals teach sustainability, respect towards the environment, and healthier living.  These subjects are simple ideas that can be formulated to provide opportunities in careers, growth in mass movements, daily reflection and family development concentration, and a better environment to reside. The idea of sustainability will not be a favorite subject at the dinner tables of the future, but it can be learned as a way of living. Without an education for the world in sustainability, our world will continue to crumble and fall into a wasteland of burnt out cities, farms, communities, and living conditions.

Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1&

I was turned on to the article recently....a very interesting read.

Americans have been watching protests against oppressive regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few. Yet in our own democracy, 1 percent of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation’s income—an inequality even the wealthy will come to regret.

By Joseph E. Stiglitz•

Illustration by Stephen Doyle

May 2011

THE FAT AND THE FURIOUS The top 1 percent may have the best houses, educations, and lifestyles, says the author, but “their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live.”

It’s no use pretending that what has obviously happened has not in fact happened. The upper 1 percent of Americans are now taking in nearly a quarter of the nation’s income every year. In terms of wealth rather than income, the top 1 percent control 40 percent. Their lot in life has improved considerably. Twenty-five years ago, the corresponding figures were 12 percent and 33 percent. One response might be to celebrate the ingenuity and drive that brought good fortune to these people, and to contend that a rising tide lifts all boats. That response would be misguided. While the top 1 percent have seen their incomes rise 18 percent over the past decade, those in the middle have actually seen their incomes fall. For men with only high-school degrees, the decline has been precipitous—12 percent in the last quarter-century alone. All the growth in recent decades—and more—has gone to those at the top. In terms of income equality, America lags behind any country in the old, ossified Europe that President George W. Bush used to deride. Among our closest counterparts are Russia with its oligarchs and Iran. While many of the old centers of inequality in Latin America, such as Brazil, have been striving in recent years, rather successfully, to improve the plight of the poor and reduce gaps in income, America has allowed inequality to grow.
Economists long ago tried to justify the vast inequalities that seemed so troubling in the mid-19th century—inequalities that are but a pale shadow of what we are seeing in America today. The justification they came up with was called “marginal-productivity theory.” In a nutshell, this theory associated higher incomes with higher productivity and a greater contribution to society. It is a theory that has always been cherished by the rich. Evidence for its validity, however, remains thin. The corporate executives who helped bring on the recession of the past three years—whose contribution to our society, and to their own companies, has been massively negative—went on to receive large bonuses. In some cases, companies were so embarrassed about calling such rewards “performance bonuses” that they felt compelled to change the name to “retention bonuses” (even if the only thing being retained was bad performance). Those who have contributed great positive innovations to our society, from the pioneers of genetic understanding to the pioneers of the Information Age, have received a pittance compared with those responsible for the financial innovations that brought our global economy to the brink of ruin.
Some people look at income inequality and shrug their shoulders. So what if this person gains and that person loses? What matters, they argue, is not how the pie is divided but the size of the pie. That argument is fundamentally wrong. An economy in which most citizens are doing worse year after year—an economy like America’s—is not likely to do well over the long haul. There are several reasons for this.
First, growing inequality is the flip side of something else: shrinking opportunity. Whenever we diminish equality of opportunity, it means that we are not using some of our most valuable assets—our people—in the most productive way possible. Second, many of the distortions that lead to inequality—such as those associated with monopoly power and preferential tax treatment for special interests—undermine the efficiency of the economy. This new inequality goes on to create new distortions, undermining efficiency even further. To give just one example, far too many of our most talented young people, seeing the astronomical rewards, have gone into finance rather than into fields that would lead to a more productive and healthy economy.
Third, and perhaps most important, a modern economy requires “collective action”—it needs government to invest in infrastructure, education, and technology. The United States and the world have benefited greatly from government-sponsored research that led to the Internet, to advances in public health, and so on. But America has long suffered from an under-investment in infrastructure (look at the condition of our highways and bridges, our railroads and airports), in basic research, and in education at all levels. Further cutbacks in these areas lie ahead.
None of this should come as a surprise—it is simply what happens when a society’s wealth distribution becomes lopsided. The more divided a society becomes in terms of wealth, the more reluctant the wealthy become to spend money on common needs. The rich don’t need to rely on government for parks or education or medical care or personal security—they can buy all these things for themselves. In the process, they become more distant from ordinary people, losing whatever empathy they may once have had. They also worry about strong government—one that could use its powers to adjust the balance, take some of their wealth, and invest it for the common good. The top 1 percent may complain about the kind of government we have in America, but in truth they like it just fine: too gridlocked to re-distribute, too divided to do anything but lower taxes.
Economists are not sure how to fully explain the growing inequality in America. The ordinary dynamics of supply and demand have certainly played a role: laborsaving technologies have reduced the demand for many “good” middle-class, blue-collar jobs. Globalization has created a worldwide marketplace, pitting expensive unskilled workers in America against cheap unskilled workers overseas. Social changes have also played a role—for instance, the decline of unions, which once represented a third of American workers and now represent about 12 percent.
But one big part of the reason we have so much inequality is that the top 1 percent want it that way. The most obvious example involves tax policy. Lowering tax rates on capital gains, which is how the rich receive a large portion of their income, has given the wealthiest Americans close to a free ride. Monopolies and near monopolies have always been a source of economic power—from John D. Rockefeller at the beginning of the last century to Bill Gates at the end. Lax enforcement of anti-trust laws, especially during Republican administrations, has been a godsend to the top 1 percent. Much of today’s inequality is due to manipulation of the financial system, enabled by changes in the rules that have been bought and paid for by the financial industry itself—one of its best investments ever. The government lent money to financial institutions at close to 0 percent interest and provided generous bailouts on favorable terms when all else failed. Regulators turned a blind eye to a lack of transparency and to conflicts of interest.
When you look at the sheer volume of wealth controlled by the top 1 percent in this country, it’s tempting to see our growing inequality as a quintessentially American achievement—we started way behind the pack, but now we’re doing inequality on a world-class level. And it looks as if we’ll be building on this achievement for years to come, because what made it possible is self-reinforcing. Wealth begets power, which begets more wealth. During the savings-and-loan scandal of the 1980s—a scandal whose dimensions, by today’s standards, seem almost quaint—the banker Charles Keating was asked by a congressional committee whether the $1.5 million he had spread among a few key elected officials could actually buy influence. “I certainly hope so,” he replied. The Supreme Court, in its recent Citizens United case, has enshrined the right of corporations to buy government, by removing limitations on campaign spending. The personal and the political are today in perfect alignment. Virtually all U.S. senators, and most of the representatives in the House, are members of the top 1 percent when they arrive, are kept in office by money from the top 1 percent, and know that if they serve the top 1 percent well they will be rewarded by the top 1 percent when they leave office. By and large, the key executive-branch policymakers on trade and economic policy also come from the top 1 percent. When pharmaceutical companies receive a trillion-dollar gift—through legislation prohibiting the government, the largest buyer of drugs, from bargaining over price—it should not come as cause for wonder. It should not make jaws drop that a tax bill cannot emerge from Congress unless big tax cuts are put in place for the wealthy. Given the power of the top 1 percent, this is the way you would expect the system to work.
America’s inequality distorts our society in every conceivable way. There is, for one thing, a well-documented lifestyle effect—people outside the top 1 percent increasingly live beyond their means. Trickle-down economics may be a chimera, but trickle-down behaviorism is very real. Inequality massively distorts our foreign policy. The top 1 percent rarely serve in the military—the reality is that the “all-volunteer” army does not pay enough to attract their sons and daughters, and patriotism goes only so far. Plus, the wealthiest class feels no pinch from higher taxes when the nation goes to war: borrowed money will pay for all that. Foreign policy, by definition, is about the balancing of national interests and national resources. With the top 1 percent in charge, and paying no price, the notion of balance and restraint goes out the window. There is no limit to the adventures we can undertake; corporations and contractors stand only to gain. The rules of economic globalization are likewise designed to benefit the rich: they encourage competition among countries for business, which drives down taxes on corporations, weakens health and environmental protections, and undermines what used to be viewed as the “core” labor rights, which include the right to collective bargaining. Imagine what the world might look like if the rules were designed instead to encourage competition among countries for workers. Governments would compete in providing economic security, low taxes on ordinary wage earners, good education, and a clean environment—things workers care about. But the top 1 percent don’t need to care.
Or, more accurately, they think they don’t. Of all the costs imposed on our society by the top 1 percent, perhaps the greatest is this: the erosion of our sense of identity, in which fair play, equality of opportunity, and a sense of community are so important. America has long prided itself on being a fair society, where everyone has an equal chance of getting ahead, but the statistics suggest otherwise: the chances of a poor citizen, or even a middle-class citizen, making it to the top in America are smaller than in many countries of Europe. The cards are stacked against them. It is this sense of an unjust system without opportunity that has given rise to the conflagrations in the Middle East: rising food prices and growing and persistent youth unemployment simply served as kindling. With youth unemployment in America at around 20 percent (and in some locations, and among some socio-demographic groups, at twice that); with one out of six Americans desiring a full-time job not able to get one; with one out of seven Americans on food stamps (and about the same number suffering from “food insecurity”)—given all this, there is ample evidence that something has blocked the vaunted “trickling down” from the top 1 percent to everyone else. All of this is having the predictable effect of creating alienation—voter turnout among those in their 20s in the last election stood at 21 percent, comparable to the unemployment rate.

In recent weeks we have watched people taking to the streets by the millions to protest political, economic, and social conditions in the oppressive societies they inhabit. Governments have been toppled in Egypt and Tunisia. Protests have erupted in Libya, Yemen, and Bahrain. The ruling families elsewhere in the region look on nervously from their air-conditioned penthouses—will they be next? They are right to worry. These are societies where a minuscule fraction of the population—less than 1 percent—controls the lion’s share of the wealth; where wealth is a main determinant of power; where entrenched corruption of one sort or another is a way of life; and where the wealthiest often stand actively in the way of policies that would improve life for people in general.
As we gaze out at the popular fervor in the streets, one question to ask ourselves is this: When will it come to America? In important ways, our own country has become like one of these distant, troubled places.
Alexis de Tocqueville once described what he saw as a chief part of the peculiar genius of American society—something he called “self-interest properly understood.” The last two words were the key. Everyone possesses self-interest in a narrow sense: I want what’s good for me right now! Self-interest “properly understood” is different. It means appreciating that paying attention to everyone else’s self-interest—in other words, the common welfare—is in fact a precondition for one’s own ultimate well-being. Tocqueville was not suggesting that there was anything noble or idealistic about this outlook—in fact, he was suggesting the opposite. It was a mark of American pragmatism. Those canny Americans understood a basic fact: looking out for the other guy isn’t just good for the soul—it’s good for business.
The top 1 percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn’t seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn. Too late.