Budgets, wars and some clues on how things work...

    There you are visiting a quaker church in Pennsylvania and, after the usual coffee and cookies, this red and white sheet of paper catches your eye. It says 21% is for past military spending, 31% for present military spending, 33% for human resources, 12% for general government and a mere 5% for physical resources.

     Well, if you add 21 and 31 you get 52, that is, more than half of the budget goes for some form of military spending!

     For a minute we might wonder about the precision of the data presented, but the general idea is clear enough. What is lacking are the millions spent on the "preventive" wars against Iraq and Afghanistan, the millions spent in paying off loans--many from foreign governments or banking institutions--in part to pay off the loans to cover the expense involved in reducing taxes...especially those paid by industrial giants... 

     And then you read about the threat of recession, how the sale of homes in the United States fell by 40.7% over the past year, how untold numbers of home buyers are pulling their hair out trying to figure out how to pay their mortgage payments, and you hear Republican presidential candidates advocate even more tax reductions for big business, about the $600 dollar checks the government is going to send tax payers so they "buy more" and beef up the economy...

    That leads you to ponder what people are really talking about when they glibly chat about "globalization." Then you learn that an unending string of corporations are leaving the country to exploit cheap wages and natural resources abroad, and in the midst of those meditations you stop by a store in Princeton, New Jersey, selling clothes and other objects to university students.

    You're looking a some key chains. A group of Chinese tourists approach. One of them picks up a key chain, turns it over, reads "made in China," smiles and nudges his companion in the ribs. They both smile. "Made in China."