Why do you think the bailout is giving "free money" to anyone?

Don't you realize that great many American's already do the following?

"-- Reject fear and pessimism.
-- Know what your vision is and act upon it.
-- Don't blame others and seek payback when things go wrong.
-- Prosper inwardly through love, generosity, giving, and altruism.
-- Stop identifying with your salary and possessions.
-- Work for the common good whenever you can."

??

And another thing: Many people live morally every single day, not just in times of uncertainty. The people who live that way hold the fabric of society together.

In unknowing timely support of my comments disputing your seeming vision that "we all" are flawed in how we've recently handled the concepts of money, wealth and morality in our lives, here's a great opinion piece by Judith Warner, writing in today's NY Times, which underscores my real-life experience that it's a few rotten apples who've triggered a cascade of events and expectations that are the real cause of the economic problems in the US, and worldwide:

http://warner.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/02/waiting-for-schadenfreude/

"Waiting for Schadenfreude (by Judith Warner, Oct 2 2008, in NYTimes.com)

"A couple of years ago, at the height of the boom, a friend in New York publishing described to me the indignities of being a five-figure employee commuting daily from suburban New Jersey on trains packed with traders, stock brokers and hedge-fund types.

"“These were the guys who, in college, I used to step over on Sunday mornings when they were lying in a pool of their own vomit,” he said. “And now they’re earning millions and millions – in bonuses alone.”

"The image, as you might imagine, stuck in my mind. For it summed up so well a certain kind of resentment and sense of injustice that a particular class of non-monied professionals in the New York area came to feel sometime in the late 1990s.

"The feeling of injustice wasn’t just about money, though it was partly about being more than solidly middle class and still struggling to pay the bills, as New York writer Vince Passaro captured so well in his “Reflections on the Art of Going Broke” (“Who’ll Stop the Drain?”) in Harper’s in 1998.

"It was, rather, about a sense that the wrong people had inherited the earth.

"They had taken over everything. Their salaries (and bonuses in particular) had pushed real estate costs and living expenses sky-high. Their values had permeated every aspect of life. And their choices seemed to have become the only acceptable — even viable — ones possible.

"In the 1970s, even in New York, it had been financially possible for a middle class family to survive if parents — even one parent — built a professional life around something other than purely making money. In the 1980s — even in the “greed is good” (which was of course meant to be a damning phrase) 1980s — it seemed respectable, honorable and, dare I say, valuable to do things other than make a lot of money. But by the late 1990s, in New York, if you weren’t in the financial industry, it was hard to survive.

"And so it went, in a more general way, throughout the country, in the whole winner-take-all-era ushered in by the boom years of the late 1990s. The model for success narrowed. The goal posts marking success grew more out of reach. For all the people who did something with their lives other than doggedly, single-mindedly — and successfully — pursuing wealth (“You mean, some people’s jobs are just about making money?” Julia once asked me in the course of one of our “What the World is About” conversations), life got harder and scarier and more confusing.

"Many of us who’d proudly decided, in our twenties, to pursue edifying or creative, or “helping” professions, woke up to realize, once we had families, that we’d perhaps been irresponsible. We couldn’t save for college. We could barely save for retirement. If we set up a “family-friendly” lifestyle, we threw our financial futures down the drain.

"So, like just about everyone, we worked hard and treaded water, but felt we were entitled to do better than that. And if we lived in the New York area, or another similarly wealthy area where the spoils of the new Gilded Age were constantly thrust in our faces, we felt, like my friend on the train, a little something more: we knew that we were losers.

"(“The Big L,” a friend, an art school grad turned design consultant, declared last week, calling me in tears after her stockbroker told her how little she cared about her modest portfolio. “Why not just brand it right on my forehead and be done with it?”)

"This financial crisis is supposed to be a big moment of reckoning. “666-Mark of the Beast” and “Root of all Evil” the End-of-World Web sites are shouting, quoting prominent economists on the demise of the American banking system. “Wall Street, R.I.P.”, a headline in The Times proclaimed last weekend. “The Master of the Universe Era is over,” New York magazine chimed in.

"For those of us who have hated this period — the wealth worship, the wealth gap, the elevation of everything suspiciously shiny and irrationally bubbly and stupidly ebullient, there should be some feeling of vindication. But it just isn’t coming. A great emptiness — and a gnawing kind of fear — has taken its place.

"After 9/11, psychologists said that the tragedy and trauma would magnify whatever emotional state people were already experiencing. Depressed people would become much more depressed. Anxious people would become much more anxious.

"The current financial crisis has, I think, proven to be a similar sort of emotional Rorschach test. People who felt impotent feel even more powerless. Those who felt lied to see new levels of conspiracy. Demagogues are engaging in even more demagoguery.

"And those of us who felt, well, like losers, are feeling like even bigger losers, as we shove our unopened 401K or (if we’re double-loser freelancers) SEP-IRA statements into bottom desk drawers and wait for a cathartic burst of schadenfreude that simply refuses to come.

"Schadenfreude is impossible because the fat cats — the ones who bent the rules, the ones who pushed the envelopes, the ones who paid lower taxes because capital gains were most of their income, the ones who opposed regulations on the banking and mortgage industries — are taking us down with them.

"The very wealthiest are, as always, likely to do just fine. Real, hard-core Wall Street, as Tom Wolfe reminded us last weekend, long ago decamped for the hedge funds of Greenwich. The political leaders who allowed this mess to develop have turned into the great defenders of “Main Street.” (If I have to hear the juxtaposition of “Main Street” and “Wall Street” one more time, I will be the one drowning in a pool of vomit.). It’s a whole host of other people — vulnerable middle class homeowners and small business owners and, now, universities unable to make payroll — who are hurting.

"I called my friend in publishing yesterday to ask him how things were going on the train.

"“There’s a lot of rueful chuckling. There’s a lot of talk about riding this out, about maintaining,” is all he had to say.

"It was 23 years ago that Tom Wolfe introduced us to the Masters of the Universe. They were curiosities then — remote, very rich, and decidedly not like you and me. But now, the world of Wall Street has become our world; there is no outside to it, there is no other option than to pay and play. Our fortunes rise and fall together to a degree like never before, and our values are enmeshed like never before. The language of Wall Street — of cost-cutting and efficiency, self-interest, using each situation to maximize profit, is the language of everyday life and social interaction.

"We’re all losers now. There’s no pleasure to it."

A clever thief steals from you right in front of you, if they are real “good” thieves they will have you believing it is for your own good, if they are the best they have millions of well-armed thugs ready to kill you so it doesn’t matter what you think.

We just got robbed, the biggest heist in history, aye, wrapped in patriotism even,

and there is not a thing we can do about it . . .

Aloha

It is to practice Ho"ho ponopono: I love you. I am sorry. Please forgive me. Thank You.

Love is the currency, It is to change the container to one that is inclusive of wealth and scarcity. It is to see the currency in front of you and strive to recreate it within.

Solari Real Channel has some suggestion:

Take Action: Bank Intimate

Coming Clean

Beyond Tapeworm Economics

The Popsicle Index

The Missing Money

http://solari.com/ love patty

Several years ago, when I was living in Vt., there was in the paper a bit of an uproar about defoliating Killington Mountain in order to build second homes for ski-ers.

One lady who was buying the second home was quoted as saying " that her husband worked his ass off to get where he was." Well to a Vermonter that was sheer idiocy, as if the chambermaid at the local motel did not work her ass off as well.

It is a matter of how the rich view those less rich, as if they were losers. Instead of viewing themselves as blessed or fortunate.

All good points.

This is from The Holistic Economic System and Principles on CoinAge.me (Click Below) and I am sure I have written it in the comments here a few times.

The HOLISTIC CONCEPT of BEING RICH is all about the value of the benefit that one provides (B) and the number of people it is provided to (P).

So B x P = W

W is Wealth created as a result of service to humanity providing genuine value with efficiency.

Such that a single individual providing $1.00 worth of benefit to 1 million people has created a million dollars of value.

If a group of ten people working in unity do the same then they have each created $100,000 worth of wealth.

What is at issue is the artificial economomy, fabricated needs, and the cost burdens of fear, disease, and conflict.

Thank you Deepak, as this is a great post with good advice and extremely beneficial to me at this time personally. I especially liked the closing ...

"Knowing the difference between wealth and money provides the wisdom to seize these creative opportunities." ~ Deepak

Love, Char

I have no job and I am losing almost everything I own and I will be homeless in November. The hardest part is holding my head high and knowing that I am still loved by God and perfect as I am, because it is my best. And what is within cannot be priced, as it is precious. I will find my true self again ... as much as I can bear. It's the treasure that no one can take from you - that beautiful diamond of a soul :-) that we all possess.

But I did spend $1000 on my camping and gym clothes today! And everything is completely black, even my towels and I can go from one place to another without changing, until the clothes need to be washed. So I will be an upscale homeless person for a month or two with my new black laptop at the daily library gathering of folks like me.

I hear you Char4. I'll be somewhere out there too. Just be careful.

peace

Hey, thanks. It's like I have no control over what is happening to me now - at the ego level, however, the soul (Atman/God) is running everything. I don't know what will happen, but I do know that I was dead before, so even a physical death would not kill my spirit. There is nothing that I can do any more, but observe what happens..... I hope that my death will not be painful, but swift, as we will all die a physcial death one day. I can only just do now and see what is in store for me. I am now alive! :-) My true self will never die. The only thing left is to serve, if there is a place for me at this time in history. Who knows.... Love, Char

Hey, Empyrius, I hope you weren't referring to homelessness when you said somewhere out there too? I chose my path 4 years ago due to the coldness of my work, so I have desired this freedom for a long time. However, uncertainty is always harder than expected and I had become to complacent in my life for so long. I want this, but it scares me, as my future is uncertain, but very exciting. I'm a survivor and have a back up plan to go to my mom's if I cannot handle it all and rise above it, as it is really a mind set and how I perceive it all. I must do this .... everything will be okay :-) and I just have to keep reminding myself of this....everything will be okay. I am alive! Love, Char

Hey, Empyrius, I hope you weren't referring to homelessness when you said somewhere out there too? I chose my path 4 years ago due to the coldness of my work, so I have desired this freedom for a long time. However, uncertainty is always harder than expected and I had become to complacent in my life for so long. I want this, but it scares me, as my future is uncertain, but very exciting. I'm a survivor and have a back up plan to go to my mom's if I cannot handle it all and rise above it, as it is really a mind set and how I perceive it all. I must do this .... everything will be okay :-) and I just have to keep reminding myself of this....everything will be okay. I am alive! Love, Char

Hey, Empyrius, I hope you weren't referring to homelessness when you said somewhere out there too? I chose my path 4 years ago due to the coldness of my work, so I have desired this freedom for a long time. However, uncertainty is always harder than expected and I had become to complacent in my life for so long. I want this, but it scares me, as my future is uncertain, but very exciting. I'm a survivor and have a back up plan to go to my mom's if I cannot handle it all and rise above it, as it is really a mind set and how I perceive it all. I must do this .... everything will be okay :-) and I just have to keep reminding myself of this....everything will be okay. I am alive! Love, Char

sorry, as I had a computer gliche ... all the postings

PS: Plus, I will probably spend the winter holidays - end December and January - at my mom's house and come back to my work area where the money is beginning of Febrary to start looking for work, if nothing else comes my way between all this. It's like part of me already knows all this, but not completely sure how it all with work out, as I must first move and second I must have a month vacation from everyone and by myself and third, I must see my family and fourth, I must get back in the work force. So some how this will all happen, as I am not one to sit around and give up, even tho the thought of it frienghts me as I see the homeless everyday and wonder why and if that is what they wanted or was it because the gave up hope? Or do they need a helping hand? I don't know....

And you know what, God (or whatever name one calls the higher Self) gave me the money to do all this ... tho not in luxury, but nonetheless, I was able to break free of a job I hated as well as being free of a place that I hated living in, so that I could start over again with less strings I hope next time. However, I will not have to file bankruptcy either, even tho I wonder how far we are suppose to push that envelop and not be working, so I will pray, as I desire to pay all my debts as is fair and right. So I ask God for justice if my creditors steal from me and others, as well as the wisdom to know what to do and when to do it, even if that is filing for bankruptcy, as I have surely paid my debts, but they keep charging me 30% interest for one bad month two years ago and I was only one week late - that is stealing!

In short, I pay the government 33% taxes on my salary and then the creditors take another 30%, which leaves me with less than 40% income on my hard earned pay and it never ends and there is no break for the middle class American such as myself. Bankruptcy is a hard failure to face, but really, look at it .... who is stealing from whom?

And yes, I over spent, but the creditors had no problem loaning me money, until all my income went to pay my bills. And the government taxed me another 10% for earlier retirement on the money I got when my company laid me off, so that only leaves 30% for me! And I worked for it!!! ... they did not! That sounds like stealing and surely loan sharks and is un American and must be changed! Now I am the one without a home and do they care? No, they do not, so something has to be done to stop this corruption in America!

-- Don't blame others and seek payback when things go wrong.

JUSTICE!

And we are saving this system? Then I have every right to bail out to! Crooks!