Nontrivial Pursuits

In my previous blog entry, I suggested at one point that the solution to the problem of unemployment in America is for the government to tax savings and spend that tax revenue on increased production of Public Wealth. One Democrat whom I respect, Jude Nagurney Camwell, had this to say:

At a time in this country when we are a debtor nation and so few are saving, and while credit debt runs the typical American life, I don’t think it’s politically responsible to tell Americans that savings are being treated punitively.

In order to pursue this discussion at all, we need to first understand the relationship that exists between savings, spending, and income. The BEA economists who calculate America’s Personal Savings Rate will tell you that money saved is income that is not spent. That is to say:

SAVINGS = INCOME – CONSUMPTION

That’s how the economists at the BEA arrive at a total savings figure; they calculate it from income and spending numbers. America’s Personal Savings Rate is simply the percentage of total income that is saved:

PSR = SAVINGS / INCOME
or
PSR = (INCOME – CONSUMPTION) / INCOME

If you’re mathematically inclined, you’ll want to note that if expenditures are constant, a higher INCOME number will result in a higher calculated Personal Savings Rate.

The reason why the nation’s calculated Personal Savings Rate does not provide us with useful information on national savings is because BEA economists do not include in their calculation of total personal INCOME the income that households earn from capital gains. They have their reasons for doing this but they are not ultimately good reasons, for capital gains income can be either saved or spent on consumption, just like any other kind of income. If they were to include capital gains income as part of total personal income, the result would be a significantly higher calculated PSR.

From this, we can see why the calculated PSR has declined while the Republicans have been running the Federal government. As they have cut the income tax rates of the wealthy, a greater share of the nation’s total income is comprised of capital gains income. This is because the very wealthy are most likely to use the huge gifts of disposable income that the Republicans have given them to buy assets, like stocks and real estate. When those assets appreciate and are sold, they provide income.

It is not, however, this flaw in the calculation of the Personal Savings Rate that tells me that America is currently saving too much. It is unemployment. Far too many Democrat economists have ignored the ultimate economic truth that ALL JOBS IN THE ECONOMY ARE DEPENDENT ON THE SPENDING OF OTHERS (consumers, firms, government). That’s where the money comes from that pays everyone’s salary: the expenditures of people or organizations. Savings have never created a single job, ever.

When there is any level of unemployment in an economy, it is because too much money is being saved. Think about this for a second. What is a recession? Officially, it is a decline in GDP. GDP is a measurement of aggregate SPENDING. Whenever a nation is having any kind of problem with unemployment, there is only one way to solve the problem, and that is by spending more. Where is the additional spending supposed to come from? Well, didn’t we just say a minute ago that any income that isn’t spent is money saved? All else equal, whenever there is a drop in aggregate savings, there will automatically, and necessarily, be an increase in spending. More spending means more jobs created.

In another article I’ve written, I pointed out that increasing the amount of income taxes that are collected from wealthy savers is something that is guaranteed to provide a economic stimulus to the economy. This is because it takes money that would otherwise have been saved (by rich people) and spends it instead. Yes, you heard it right: INCREASING taxes provides a stimulus to the economy if the citizens who are being taxed more are the nation’s biggest savers. Increasing the taxes of citizens who would have spent the money that they would be paying in taxes (the poor and working class) would do no good, because the increase in the government’s spending would be exactly matched by a decline in consumer spending.

Now, to say that there is too much saving occurring in the economy is not to say that everyone is saving too much. If your country’s economy needs a reduction in total savings (an increase in total spending) in order to eliminate unemployment, it makes sense for the federal government to only tax the savings of those who need ‘extra savings’ the least. The ultra rich should be asked to give up much more of their ‘extra savings’ than middle-class savers are asked to give up. Indeed, in order for more people in the lower-middle-class to be able to save more without their additional savings hurting the economy, it is necessary to ask the ultra rich to save substantially less. For a number of reasons, the best way to achieve this goal is to simply make the income tax much more steeply progressive.

There is only one “rate” we can refer to that will tell us if the participants in an economy are—-collectively—-saving enough and that is the employment rate (there are flaws in the unemployment rate). Unfortunately, far too many Democrat economists have embraced without question the ‘more is better’ assumption when it comes to savings. It’s a simplistic assumption that is flawed on many levels. Let’s hope that they can begin to acknowledge that there are certain times when a net increase in total savings will have a positive effect on the economy (when the economy is experiencing hyperinflation) and other times when additional savings will have a negative effect on the economy (when there is any level of unemployment).

Nontrivial Pursuits links of interest:
Republican Nemesis
Economic Justice

Well, we can be sure that one of the most celebrated benefits of saving money—-the opportunity to earn interest income—-would disappear.  It turns out that savers need borrowers.  So how can we say that saving is a virtuous act if it is necessary for some people to dis-save in order for the savers to benefit?

There is a certain ideal that all savers pursue as a sort of ultimate goal: to save a very large amount of money and then retire and live off their accumulated dollar wealth.  Isn’t that what all the financial experts out there are advising us to do?  But just ask yourself what the world would be like if everyone were to somehow become extremely rich in dollars one day and then we all decided to retire and live off our accumulated money wealth.

We’d all be able to enjoy lives of luxury, right?  Well, no.  What we would soon discover is that we actually possessed no real wealth at all because no one would be producing anything of value that we could buy. In order for savers to benefit optimally from the saving of money, they need to have a lot of other people out there who are not able to save like them, but who are forced to work for a living, instead.  

The Real Wealth of the economy is its productive output: the real goods and services that are produced by our combined work efforts.  The more we collectively produce, the richer we collectively are, in real terms.  It ultimately doesn’t make any sense for us to all seek to become millionaires, because we cannot all live off of the productive efforts of “others.” But that’s actually the Republican Party’s ‘solution’ to the problem of poverty, isn’t it?  

What we should all seek is to maximize the production of real wealth in our economy so that we can maximize our consumption of real wealth. Enhanced economic security is something we can provide ourselves with, but it’s not going to come from everybody finding a way to save more money. The good news is that we can collectively provide ourselves with something (financial security) that we cannot all individually hope to provide ourselves with.

There is yet another very important reason why the practice of saving of money is not always a good idea.  If everyone were to “perfectly embrace” the ideals of thrift that are endlessly promoted by voices within the financial community, the result would be an economic disaster.  That is to say, if all Americans stopped borrowing money and they committed themselves, instead, to the practice of putting off all purchases until they had saved enough money to pay cash for them, America’s economy would immediately collapse into an economic depression, perhaps one that would even exceed the Great Depression of the 1930’s.

Why do we know that this is an absolute fact?  Because we know that ALL JOBS IN THE ECONOMY ARE DEPENDENT ON THE SPENDING OF OTHERS.  Just ask yourself where the money comes from that pays for nearly every job holder’s income?  It comes from the SPENDING of other people.  An economic recession is defined as a period of time when there is a decline in aggregate spending (GDP).  When spending drops; jobs disappear.  That’s what happened during the Great Depression; too much SAVING was going on.  People who had `extra’ money that they could have spent, chose to save it instead.  Those who would have spent the money if it had been placed in their hands, did not have it in their possession.

There is no denying that—-all else equal—-an individual will benefit from saving money so long as not everyone else is also saving money.  But we need to understand that the practice of saving money is not a pure virtue because bad things can happen if too many people are saving too much.  Yes, go ahead and try to save as much money as you can, but understand that when there is any level of unemployment in the economy, the government is going to have to reduce total savings if it wants to improve the welfare of all.  The only issue then is which savers should be asked to give up some of their savings in order to help the national interest?  I say tax the savings of those who are in the best position to make a sacrifice: the extremely wealthy.

It may be prudent for an individual to save (or save more) in certain circumstances that are strictly defined, but it is ridiculous to refer to the act of saving money as a virtue.  So can we please stop referring to Saving as some kind of Absolute Good, one that a society can never get too much of?  If anything, economic history has taught us that exactly the opposite is true.

The Misunderstood Relationship Between Savings & Investment

James Kroeger

Nontrivial Pursuits links of interest:
Republican Nemesis
Economic Justice

Senator John Edwards has decided to join Supply-Sider Republican Jack Kemp in an effort to turn America into a nation of savers.  Sounds like a great idea, doesn’t it?  The only problem is that, if such a goal was actually achieved in any big way, the economy would be thrown into a deep recession, possibly even a Depression.  

When public officials start to talk about the nation’s savings habits, they need to keep a few key economic facts in mind:

Number 1:  ALL JOBS IN THE ECONOMY ARE DEPENDENT ON THE SPENDING OF OTHERS (households, firms, governments).  That’s where the money comes from that pays everyone’s salaries.  An increase in GDP (spending) generally reduces unemployment.

Number 2: MONEY SAVED IS MONEY NOT SPENT.  A decision to save is a willful decision to not spend.  

Number 3: EXCESSIVE SAVING CAUSES UNEMPLOYMENT.  It’s what caused the Great Depression of the 1930’s.  People who had money—-that they could have either spent or saved—-were choosing not to spend it.  People who would have been happy to spend that money did not have it in their possession.  Generally, when people start to save more and spend less, jobs disappear.  When that happens, we call the result a Recession.

If John Edwards wants to join in an effort to turn America into a ‘nation of savers’, he’s going to have to explain at some point why he wants something to happen that we know is going to worsen unemployment (if the goal is achieved in a big way) while at the same time saying that he wants to reduce poverty.  The way out of this dilemma is for the Senator to start being more specific in his stated goals.

Having more savings available at your disposal is a wonderful goal.  The only problem is that it is possible for too much saving to occur in an economy.  As long as there is zero unemployment, we don’t have to worry about excessive savings levels in the economy, but whenever there is a shortage of jobs, the very last thing we need is an increase in total savings.  We’d need more spending of saved money, instead.

This constraint should not deter John Edwards in his efforts to encourage and enable more savings for lower class households, but he needs to start making distinctions.  He needs to point out that when there is too much saving going on in the economy, it does not mean that everyone is saving too much money.  The problem is that some people are saving too much money; even while others are not saving enough.  In effect, these Super Savers (generally, the Rich) are ‘hogging all of the available savings’ that the economy can safely tolerate (without creating or worsening an unemployment problem).

Senator Edwards would be able to help his cause (aiding the victims of poverty)——as well as distinguish himself from other political contenders—-by pointing out that the real problem the nation is facing when it comes to the topic of savings is not that there is an inadequate level of total savings in the economy, but that there is an inequitable distribution of the total savings that the economy can safely tolerate.  The upper-bound constraint that we face when it comes to total savings forces the realization that we can safely increase the savings of the poor and working class only by reducing the savings levels of the very rich.  (Yes, it really is a zero-sum solution.)

When there is any level of unemployment in the economy, the federal government is morally obligated to tax the `excess savings’ of those who need extra savings the least—-the Rich—-and spend that money on improvements in the nation’s infrastructure.  Their excessive savings are thereby re-distributed through job creation to the poor, who are then in a better position to save money for themselves.  That’s really the only way we can increase the savings opportunities of the poor without damaging the overall economy.

Of course Senator Edwards is right that we need to do something to help the poor to save money.  But let’s not let the Republicans take that sympathy and translate it into a general call for all Americans to save more.  We need to be very specific about who needs more savings and who needs less.  It is, of course, the poor who need more savings but at the same time rich people need to spend more of their savings on improving the nation’s infrastructure through their government.

Let’s not let ourselves get tangled up in yet another of the clever obfuscation schemes that the Republicans use so well.

Throughout this summer’s Israel-Hezbollah war, certain opinion-makers in Israel argued that it was absolutely crucial that Hezbollah be crushed or the consequences would be very dire. Some claimed that Israel’s very existence was threatened. Today, there is little doubt that the Israelis themselves see their army’s failure to destroy Hezbollah as a major setback.

For decades, Israel has sought to provide its citizens with Security by ruthlessly crushing any efforts the Palestinians might make to resist Israel’s absolute power. It’s an approach that is supposed to work in theory by eventually convincing the Palestinians (and their Muslim supporters) that RESISTANCE IS FUTILE. The perception of futility is supposed to be followed by resignation and then sullen acceptance of Israel’s demands. With an Israeli gun pointed at their heads, the Palestinians will supposedly—-eventually—-accept the demands that Israel has been making of them and then peace will finally be achieved.

For a number of years, it actually seemed as though Israel might be able to succeed with this approach. At the end of the last decade, many people were hoping that Yasser Arafat might settle for Peace With Dishonor at Bill Clinton’s urging, but then he ultimately backed off of the idea. Now, in the aftermath of Hezbollah’s impressive “victory” against the mighty Israeli army, everything has changed. Palestinian militants have been given a booster shot of hope and inspiration. But that’s not all; Hezbollah’s victory has also boosted the confidence of Iran’s passionate leaders, who can now be expected to respond to any threats George Bush might make with a smirky, “Bring it on…”

So what now, Israel? What kind of future do you have to look forward to? The Wall is not going to protect you from long-range missile attacks. Some day, the enemies you have made will obtain nuclear weapons. What happens to your security then? Do you want peace with your neighbors, Israel, or do you not? Maybe, just maybe, this little wake-up call will prompt Israel’s opinion-makers to begin reflecting at length on the virtues of a fresh, new approach to peace negotiations with the Palestinians. After all, they’ve spent fifty-eight years relying on their Tough Guy approach and it hasn’t worked.

Perhaps it would help if they began by re-examining the most fundamental aspects of their situation. Forget about the immediate threats that you perceive at the moment, Israel, and ask yourselves what kind of peace would you ideally like to experience in the future? Do you want to arrive at a point where you are actually able to live without fear? Do you want to some day see smiles on the faces of your Palestinian neighbors? Do you want to feel a warmth of Good Will radiating from their hearts? If that’s what you want, then you are going to have to try a much different approach from the one you’ve been embracing.

EXTREME GENEROSITY

In order for the Palestinian people to ‘let go’ of all the bitterness and resentment they feel now and start having positive feelings of friendliness for the Israelis, it is absolutely essential that they be able to walk away from the negotiations table feeling as though they had won a tremendous victory. They need to end up with a settlement that is so incredibly generous, and so filled with face-saving Israeli [and American] concessions, they won’t be able to contain their joy at their good fortune. They need to feel as though they have won a great victory and their Muslim sympathizers around the world need to see that the Palestinians are delighted with their good fortune.

What the Israeli people need to understand is that this is the kind of Peace Settlement they are going to want the Palestinians to end up with because it is the only kind of settlement that is going to give them the Lasting Peace—-the freedom from fear—-that they truly want. They need to change the hearts of the Palestinians with something dramatic. The Israelis will know that they have finally achieved true peace when they start seeing smiles on the faces of the Palestinian people, smiles that reflect authentic feelings of gratitude and friendliness toward them.

It’s your choice, Israel. Endless war, with the likelihood of nuclear devastation in the future, or a true and lasting peace with your neighbors. What will the Israeli people get for the high price they might ultimately have to pay? Only their “Right to Exist” from the only people who can legitimately grant them that right, the people who used to own the land before Israel’s founding fathers took it from them at gunpoint. Yes, the Palestinians will be willing to grant the Israelis the right to inhabit and rule the land they once owned, but only if they feel as though they have been handsomely compensated for it.

All of the hatred that half the world currently feels toward Israel would come to an end. The Israeli people may feel as though their founding fathers achieved a great thing when they resurrected the state of Israel from the dustbin of history, but they really haven’t achieved a thing, yet. How about impressing the world with a dramatic and historically unprecedented move to change the deeply resentful feelings that your current enemies have toward you? How about giving the children of Israel a future that is cleansed of their fear of annihilation?

Do you want all of these things, Israel? If you do, then you’re going to have to do something like this:

Agree to a compensation package that overwhelms the Palestinians with its generosity. Give them [virtually] everything they’ve been demanding for the past forty years plus a little bit more. Pre-1967 borders. Jerusalem becomes either an international city, or a multi-capital city. If it becomes supremely important to Israeli negotiators to turn some of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank into Israeli land, then the Palestinians must be given twice as much pre-1967 Israeli land in compensation. The way to win the good will of the Palestinian people is by shocking them with your ‘new leaf’ commitment to astounding generosity.

The Israelis need to get over the urge to get best deal they can, by bargaining “tough” with the Palestinians and threatening them with more pain if they don’t give the Israelis the things that they want. Instead, they need to stun the world with an amazing display of good will and a generous spirit. On top of all the territorial concessions, throw in a huge amount of cash at the Palestinians. Make them feel as though they had all just “won the lottery.” Would $30,000 per family be enough? $50,000? Pour an equally generous amount of money into the construction of new businesses, industries, and modern infrastructure in the new Palestine.

Where would all the money for this come from? Well, if we were to take all the money that Israel and the United States are now spending on their Wars on Terror and then solicit big contributions from Europe, Japan, China, and the rich Arab states, it should not be difficult to put together a pot of around $500 billion, which should be more than enough to overwhelm the Palestinian people and instill within them a feeling of great pride and satisfaction. They would finally have Peace With Honor.

AN APOLOGY

There is one more thing we could give them that would guarantee the success of the Extreme Generosity approach. It is actually something that Israel cannot give them, but the United States can. It is also something that would not cost the American taxpayers a cent. What might this magical ‘something’ be? A formal admission by the United States government that we had been wrong all along in getting ourselves involved in the dispute between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Why would we do such a thing? Because it is the simple truth.

Mistakes made by American leaders in decades past are ultimately to blame for the fear that Americans currently have of one day suffering a nuclear terrorist attack. It was good old Harry S. Truman who first got us involved in the Arab-Israeli dispute and it was his decision in 1948 that put us on the side of the Israelis. At the time, the American people were feeling a lot of sympathy for the Jewish people after the horrors of the Holocaust were revealed, so it was easy for them to consent to a plan to ‘give them a homeland’ where they would be free of persecution.

Unfortunately, everyone in the press conveniently ignored the fact that the land the U.N. decided to give to the Jews happened to belong to someone else. To understand how the Palestinians (and some Jews ) see the creation of the state of Israel, imagine a similar thing happening here, in America. What if the Indians who lived in New Jersey 300 years ago fled by boat to Europe instead of becoming assimilated into the developing American culture?

What if, over the years, those Indians educated themselves and kept their sense of ‘nationhood’ alive and maintained a dream of some day returning to their homeland? What if they started emigrating back to New Jersey in big numbers maybe 60 years ago and made it clear that they intended to get their land back? What if the majority of European nations supported their cause and sent them military hardware and financial support? How do you think the modern inhabitants of New Jersey would feel about the claim that the land really belonged to the Indians because they had once lived there 300 years ago?

I’m pretty sure I know how most property owners in New Jersey would respond. Outraged? You bet. Militant? You can count on it, especially if the seizure took place at gunpoint, as it did in Israel in 1948. The truth is that it is impossible for the United States to justify its support for Israel while declaring loudly to the world that it is outrageous and immoral for one country to invade and annex another. It’s theft at gunpoint, any way you look at it. This is why the Palestinians and their Muslim sympathizers are so crazy angry at the United States, because they see the incredible hypocrisy of our political leaders and are outraged that we do not see the injustice and sympathize with their plight.

Yes, it’s true. Our sympathy for the Jews—-a good thing—-is what ultimately led us to make an incredibly stupid decision to approve an illegal and immoral act. Maybe we weren’t guilty of malevolence, but we are nevertheless paying the price now for the moral/intellectual lapse we had back then. Since Nine Eleven, we have been spending hundreds of billions of dollars on Homeland Security and on the Iraq & Afghanistan wars and we will be spending trillions more in the future if we cannot get ourselves on the right side of history. Does this mean that we are supposed to start hating the Israeli Jews now? Of course not. But no longer can we play favorites.

WISE PARENTS

Americans have become accustomed to seeing the Israelis as their friends. I’m not recommending that we just toss that aside. When a parent sees his child being chased by some angry adults who live at the far end of the neighborhood, he will naturally assume that his child is being victimized and will threaten the pursuers if they do not cease chasing his child. But if he listens to the adults and finds out that his child stole something from them and damaged their property, he will not abandon the child, but will reprimand him and insist that he do the right thing to make amends.

If he is a Wise Parent, he will feel a little embarrassed, but he will not hesitate to scold his child. He will recognize that an opportunity exists for his child to learn some important lessons about life through acts of atonement. But if he is a Foolish Parent, he will ignore all evidence that is presented to him of his child’s guilt and will accuse the angry adults of ‘just hating’ his child for no good reason. He will focus, instead, on being loyal to his family members and trying to defend them from all outsiders, no matter what they might have done to earn the antipathy of strangers.

For 60 years, America has been a Foolish Parent re: the Arab-Israeli dispute. Because our ‘child’ has always been in the wrong, we now have a lot of people around the world hating us for our moral hypocrisy, who see us as an arrogant enemy of Justice. We can bring an end to the Arab-Israeli Feud if we would stop being foolish and start being Wise Parents, instead. We have a moral responsibility to try to talk the Israelis into doing the one thing that is going to bring true peace to their land.

For Israel, it is actually quite simple. They are not going to get True Peace without Happy Palestinians and they are not going to get Happy Palestinians unless the Palestinians are able to achieve a negotiations settlement that is ‘unbelievable’ in its magnitude. Israel can give them that and still keep at least 90% of what they had in 1966. They will have to give up a little, but they will have won the biggest prize of them all, the one that has eluded them for sixty plus years: the acceptance of their “right to exist” by the Palestinians.

When the Palestinians grant them this right, then the rest of the Muslim world will grant it also if face is saved with the gifts of extreme generosity and the United States apologizes to the Muslims of the world for mis-reading their grievance. If/when the United States does this, there won’t be a dry eye in all of Islam. The ‘Clash of Civilizations’ will be over. Peace will have finally arrived.

James J. Kroeger is a ‘Philosopher Economist’ who has presented a number of analytical examinations of various moral/political/economic issues on his website, Nontrivial Pursuits. He has a Master’s degree in Economics from the University of Texas at Arlington but confesses that his ultimate goal is to publish an in-depth examination of the emotional side of Human Nature.

Working title: Smart Rich vs. Stupid Rich.

An advice book for The Wealthy.

Yes, many advice books have been written for those who would like to be wealthy some day, but how many advice books have been written for those who are currently wealthy? My book will explain how this privileged group of individuals can act to OPTIMIZE the amount of real wealth they are able to enjoy in their lifetimes.

I think there just might be a market for such a book.

Much of what I will be putting in Smart Rich vs. Stupid Rich can be found on various pages of my website. If you want to get a good general feel for its content, read Make The American People Richer. Also, The Progressive Income Tax: Theoretical Foundations.

Throughout the book, I will be emphasizing the difference between real wealth vs. financial wealth. To understand the difference, just try to imagine what it would be like if everyone were to somehow become extremely rich in dollars one day and then we all decided to retire and live off of our accumulated ‘wealth.’ We’d all be able to enjoy lives of luxury, right? Well, no.

We’d all soon discover that we didn’t actually possess any real wealth at all, because no one would be producing anything of value that we could buy. The only reason why money has any value to us is because it gives us a claim on the productive efforts of others. How wealthy you actually are depends more on what others are doing than it does on your personal accumulations of paper notes.

The Real Economy is the productive behavior of people; it is the actual goods & services that people are producing and trading and consuming. If we want to optimize the welfare of the citizenry, rich and poor alike, then we must optimize the productive output of the populace.

Ultimately, discussions about money flows should only matter to us if it can be shown that they affect the status of the Real Economy in some way.

So if you are already rich and you want to become richer still, then you are going to want to make sure that all able-bodied and able-minded people out there are producing something of value. Why? Because those who are not working do not stop consuming; they just aren’t producing any of the stuff they consume. Somebody else is.

As a society, we all become richer in real terms when all those who are idle become productive. Look at it like this: if a portion of your productive output is no longer needed to help provide for the basic consumption needs of the unemployed (because they are now producing for themselves), then that means more of your output becomes available for your own consumption.

If I am successful in my composition efforts, rich people will come to see that their personal enjoyment of wealth and their financial [& even physical] security are dependent on their ability to get all those idle poor people out there working. That’s when it really becomes fun to be rich. Not only do you get to be rich, but you also get to know what it feels like when all the people who are poorer than you actually feel gratitude toward you for what you have made possible for them.

The best thing about the economic agenda I propose? The wealthy are not asked to make any kind of real, material sacrifice. Contrary to what their friends over at the Republican Party have been suggesting to them, it is not possible to deprive the wealthy of any of their purchasing power when they are asked to pay taxes in a way that preserves their ‘rankings’ within the hierarchy of all disposable incomes earned.

This may be the single most important insight that my book will provide to the rich people who run our country. Market economies guarantee that the wealthy cannot be hurt by progressive income taxation. To understand why, read the book when it comes out or simply read through the articles I’ve provided links to. Your eyes will be opened to a new world of possibilities.

Unfortunately, I don’t really know how to go about getting this book published. The first problem is that I don’t have any time to spend on composition. My financial circumstances are such that I must spend all of my time either working as a wage earner or on trying to figure out how to earn more income in order to meet my obligations to my family. They have great needs right now (medical costs, a Christmas without presents, etc.) and are depending on me. Maybe I could fulfill my obligations to them and still write the book if I could somehow get a decent-sized advance, but I have no contacts with people who are in publishing and I don’t know who might be receptive to my ideas.

Prior to composing this blog entry, it occurred to me that I really should be using all of the resources at my disposal in my search for needed income, and that would include my website. I may not get a lot of traffic coming to my site [since there has been no time/money to promote it] but I do seem to be getting an increasing number of visitors to my site who were referred by search engines like Yahoo, Google, and MSN.

So I’ve decided to make this appeal to those who aren’t afraid to invest in a possible happy future. Maybe some wealthy soul out there who sympathizes with my goals will read this and feel inspired to help me turn this book into a reality. Or maybe some regular visitor who happens to know some people in the publishing business will mention my work to them.

So there you have it, folks. All I can really do at this time is present myself and my idealistic goals to the world through my website and then see if anybody cares. If you have any advice for me on how to get my articles turned into a book, send me an email at:

james@nontrivialpursuits.org

My family and I would be most grateful…

James J. Kroeger<—1864b3ba0911299ae74b6b42e5be45df—>