One day I didn’t feel like going to work Some people call them weekdays
This one goes out to all of you who feel, chronically and/or acutely, that going to work is, well…work. I wouldn’t mind being the guy who was known for proposing the 3-hour work week. My suggestion of a 3-hour work week is based on the concept, and with some experience, that working on average more than 45 minutes per day for four days per week is detrimental to human well-being. Now, I define work as doing something you don’t want to do. As the economic beings that we are often reduced to, this largely means those activities where we simply exchange your life energy for money — most people call them jobs, where you sell yourself to someone else — and shortchange your quality of life . Of course, it could mean squashing spiders occupying your living space — which generally fits well into one’s 45-minute allotment. No doubt, one of the handier practices in achieving a 3-hour work week, is learning to like what you do. A version of this would be called Karma Yoga in Hinduism. However, those of us living in Western civilization may be better able to relate to following our passions, structuring our life in such a way that our passions flow more freely. Unfortunately, Westerners are socialized from birth to achieve security through money, and that money will give us freedom. Perhaps the best illustration of why this doesn’t work can be had by simply observing Western culture over my lifetime (50-odd years — some would say very odd!). For instance, the U.S. has over three times the material wealth that it had when I was born. Also, a dream from those days, and perhaps these days still, is for increasing leisure, often brought about by technological advancement minimizing boring or routine tasks. Well, this hasn’t happened. In fact, Americans work longer work weeks than they did in recent generations — with the added “benefit” of having more household members selling themselves outside their home. We are no happier. I suspect that a more workable solution to living consistent with our passions would be to downgrade the whole money gives us freedom thing and start with the question, “What would I do if money were not an issue?”
You may have noted that clustering the work over four days implies that at least three or more days a week should be free of work. I see the practice of sabbath as essential to create and re-create our lives. My own personal take on this progressive spiritual practice would be to take off every seventh year, every seventh month, every seventh day, every seventh minute, and every seventh second. This represents the re-centering our lives around something other than “work” — read “money,” and practicing mindfulness at all times, in all that we do (or don’t do). Plus, as an addendum to this progressive journey of sabbaths, I am partial to the Jewish concept of the year of jubilee practiced. The year of jubilee is a sabbath year of sabbath years (every 49th or 50th year), where property returns to its original owners, recognizing that God owns that land (and all), and serves to prevent accumulation and concentration of wealth due to the vagaries and greed of human life. Making such a grand project a reality definitely provides a lot of work that I can be passionate about!
I am finally uploaded a new batch of Occupy Wall Street designs. This batch of 125 political designs is mostly Occupy Wall Street designs, but there are also a large series of “stop socialism” designs, a large series of Fox news parodies, and a new line of designs: vegetarian. I still have hundreds of other designs made that I still need to upload, so stay tuned.
The designs below are linked to button products, but each of these designs is available in all of Top Pun’s products such as T-shirts, bumper stickers, mugs, magnets, key chains, sticker sheets, posters, and caps.
If you like what you see, you can check out all of my political designs, which also include more Occupy Wall Street related designs.
Gandhi Quote: First Ignore, Then Laugh, Fight, Win – POLITICAL BUTTON
The Occupy Wall Street movement has been successful in framing much of the political debate in this country around the concept of who is the 1%, and who are the 99%. Obviously, for those in the United States, it is usually quite easy to ascertain whether you are in the top 99% or not. The confusion probably only arises among Americans whose income is at least a few hundred thousand dollars per year. The actual break off for the top 1% income in the United States is about $380,000.
However, as Morgan Housel, the Motley Fool blogger, has written in his article, Attention, Protestors: You’re Probably Part of the 1%, the profile of who is the 1% and who are the 99% changes drastically when looked in the context of occupying the entire planet. When considering all humans on this planet, earning about $34,000 per year or more will place you in the top 1% of incomes. Further, an income of about $70,000 per year would place you in the top .1% of incomes worldwide. Now, in dollar-denominated economies, you can probably discount such income about 10% or 20% when comparing incomes worldwide. Thus, to be among the top 1 percent of incomes worldwide, would be about $40,000 per year or so in the United States. Likewise, to be among the top .1% of incomes worldwide, you would need to have an income of about $80,000 per year or so in the United States. This is a humbling reality for many Americans, most of whom consider themselves at least cash poor and middle-class. Somewhat ironically, most of the 99% in the United States are actually the 1% in a worldwide context. Even the poorest 5% of Americans are better off economically than more than two-thirds of the world’s population. Thus, in American discourse, the discussion of rich and poor, wealth and poverty, would be greatly enriched my understanding and appreciating the massive income inequality both between and within different countries. A common thread in the American discourse of rich and poor is about “earnings”, and about who are deserving poor. To shed some light on this discussion, we need to realize that our country of birth determines more than 60% of the variability in incomes worldwide. Apparently, picking parents who resides in the right country account for most of our economic success!
There many things that we take for granted living in the United States. One example would be having access to clean water and adequate sanitation. This is nearly universal the United States. However, according to the blue planet network, over one billion people in the world do not have access to safe drinking water, roughly one-sixth of the world’s population. Over two million people in developing countries, most of them children, die every year from diseases associated with lack of access to safe drinking water, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene. Half of the world’s hospital beds are filled with people suffering from water related illnesses. In the past 10 years, diarrhea has killed more children than all the people lost to armed conflict since World War II. Half of people on earth lack adequate sanitation. Another way to look at it: Nearly half of the world’s population fails to receive the level of water services available 2,000 years ago to the citizens of ancient Rome. 80 percent of diseases in the developing world are caused by contaminated water. The average distance that women in Africa and Asia walk to collect water is six kilometers. The average person in the developing world uses 2.64 gallons of water a day. The average person in the United Kingdom uses 35.66 gallons of water per day. The average person in the United States uses between 100 and 175 gallons every day at home. It takes 5 liters of water to make 1 liter of bottled water. It takes 2,900 gallons of water to produce one quarter pound hamburger (just the meat). The UN estimates it would cost an additional $30 billion to provide access to safe water to the entire planet. That’s a third of what the world spends in a year on bottled water.
If we are going to have an evolution or a revolution that changes the world, we certainly can’t settle for fixing the perceived problems in the economically developed world. The vast income inequalities across the planet must be addressed with eyes wide open and hearts wide open if we are to have any hope of bringing justice to this planet and its inhabitants.
Theirs an outside chance Say 1% Facing such a ghostly figure That passes over What sum Say billions Who could passably planet that way! Ether way The Almighty Logos Taken it To the Greek Drug through history and currency Only to Rustle a new Brand® This is not where democracy comes from! Where livestock and dead stock are just the same Like making a buck that is deer to no one They get it all Backwards As they are Dyslexics Every won of them Amiss take Immorality for immortality And in morality plays Where the real masses Cry out Author! Author! Only to fine themselves Taxed For a library of legal fictions Worthless signatures On countless dotted lyins Part of the lessen plan Buying and selling naming rights With naught even a real bastard for the lineup Only edifice complexes From mother corporations And fatherless spawn Unendingly descendent Fostering your loco shop lifter As a parent Such up-rearing is Unconscionable Never reaching scion The promised Land A job Putting on heirs Like PR Not even Real state Only wanting Cold blooded lizards with personalities To assure us Real people need not apply When animation pawns itself off As real life syndication When incorporeal “persons” Claim the hood More like a ski mask! Robber barrens Steal magnates Attracting lowlifes And burgle kings Rifling through any goods Is its dealing Like some pharmaceutical pillage Hearing only its own Plunderous applause The racket here The William E. club (that’s Bully to you!) Breaking a-head Forging new bonds Sharing penitentiaries only for prophet see Conjuring con jobs Open to all takers Never no-ing an inside job Sincere sinecures for counterfeiters Who mint to say Money speaks So those without Must shut the buck up And weather a safe cracker in a penthouse Or a black mailer selling us some interest Re-morsel-ess tie-coons Doing Whatever It takes Getting busy-ness Producing nothing Yet reproducing! Grafting itself To any stock to be had With no judgment It Chases any merger Acquiring any firm it may manage With holding company Only hoping its too big too fail And to not get caught in the pokey After a wile Breaking up Because its not hard to do And its back up plan Is too slinky down the back stairs Making that booty Quiet an undertaking No witnesses No hi Jack Know Union Jack Heisting the flag as cover Left with just a big stick up Jolly Roger that Scoring more than a little snatch Going where no man has gone before The S.S. Enterprise If it’s good for US, they banned it Wee the people Of the corporations Buy the corporations Fore the corporations Their constitution Is paper thin Yet thick as thieves They no no flesh In bored rooms Where they can’t be too rich or too thin! Their currency (mostly DC) is rarefied In corporation papers Well suited For what They do do Leaving US the tissue Yet raising the stakes on these fly-by-knighted vampires Is never enough Thou dust never see them! Merrily In an Antoinettesque turn of a phrase They take the cake As we end up eating it For seeing The preoccupation of Wall Street Money Verses CITIZENS UNITED
I wrote this poem yesterday. The first notions struck me before dawn. I turned on the light and I sat up in my bed to jot down some ideas. By the end of the day, the poem was finished. YES, I may have too much time on my hands. But, like they say, I may be underemployed but I have an OCCUPATION! Long live Occupy Wall Street!
This poem is dedicated to all of the Wall Street occupiers and all of those dedicated to abolishing corporate personhood and money as free (sic) speech.
I usually comment on my shorter poems. However, this poem is 145 lines, just exceeding that which is gross (144, or corporate personhood, or money that speaks, if you are into metaphors). To comment on this poem would take me most of another day, and like money, I will let this poem speak for itself!
It is hard to imagine anything much more ironic than engraving on our money, “In God we trust.” In a so-called Judeo-Christian nation, the irony is even much deeper. Jesus tells us that “No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.” (Luke 16:13, NIV) Perhaps, the intent of engraving, “In God we trust”, on our money is to remind us that we are supposed to trust God rather than money. However, this also just seems to play into the irony. Of course, this irony has reached the point of the surreal in recent times in the United States, with the US Supreme Court declaring that money is free speech and corporations are persons entitled to rights formerly reserved for human beings. God has created human beings, and human beings have apparently created some other form of persons. In Wall Street speak it would be some form of human derivative. Wall Street is a modern-day Golden calf, creating idolatrous graven images. The reason such activities are considered idolatrous is because it violates the natural order of things. Humans are to serve God and one another. Corporations are legal fictions created to serve humans, a man-made technology or tool to be subservient to human needs. Corporate personhood is a derivative of the modern-day Golden calf, the worship of Wall Street, its so-called best and brightest, and, in the end, the worship of money. Money is a tool. People who worship money become tools, dehumanizing themselves and others. Wall Street brings us to a very sad state: we put a precise price on everything, yet lose our ability to value anything other than the almighty buck — deer me! We must not get caught staring into the bright headlights of unrestrained capitalism and its well funded propaganda trying to convince us that we are helpless against the idolatrous idea that serving money is inevitable and that we cannot do better. It strikes me that living in this surreal and cynical situation requires that real people speak out freely against this dangerous fiction of corporate personhood and money as free speech. Otherwise, corporations will rule us rather than the other way around, and money, concentrated in the hands of a few, will drown out the true speech of the people and we will be robbed of our democracy. This is all just a fancy legalistic way of the richer telling the poorer to shut up. What say you?
The corporate tax dodger FirstEnergy paid no income taxes on its over $1.2 billion of profits in 2010. FirstEnergy provides electricity to Toledo and the surrounding area. At noon today, about two dozen protesters gathered outside the corporate headquarters of FirstEnergy in downtown Toledo. The protesters gathered to demand that FirstEnergy pay its fair share of taxes, which would definitely be more than zero! The protest was organized by Fight for a Fair Economy which organize similar protests around Ohio to protest Ohio energy companies making billions of dollars in profits and paying no income taxes. The Fight for a Fair Economy (Ohio) is a collaboration of efforts between the SEIU union, labor allies, community partners and grassroots supporters to fight back against attacks on working people and their families all across Ohio. Other local groups which participated were Occupy Toledo and Jobs with Justice Toledo. Pictured below is Top Pun holding up a bright yellow sign that says “FirstEnergy is a tax dodger, pay your fair share.” The sign to the far left says, “Why is it easier to believe that 150 million Americans are lazy rather than 400 Americans are greedy.” The sign indicating Interfaith Worker Justice is a reference to one of the partner coalitions of Jobs with Justice Toledo.
Please visit Ohio Citizens Action to see a list of 37 Ohio corporations who paid no income taxes. These 37 Ohio corporations made over $50 billion in profits and actually made another $7.8 billion in tax credits, for an effective tax rate of -15.6%. Each of these companies are profitable without taxpayer support. Each of these companies benefits from taxpayer supported infrastructure and services. We should end this corporate welfare and demand that these companies make a fair contribution to their communities and no longer be a drain on our tax dollars, especially during a very difficult time for our economy and when essential government services are being strained or cut.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney had an income of $21.7 million last year. This puts Mr. Romney in the category of the ultra rich, the super rich, the mega rich, the 1% of the 1%. In fact, Mr. Romney is in the top 0.0025% of Americans in income. He makes the 1% look like the 99%. His earnings are over 800 times that of the median American wage earner. Scientists and political philosophers alike speculate that it may be existentially impossible for Mr. Romney to be anything other than a Republican. Poor Mitt, so much for the freedom to choose.
This cool design is linked to a button, but other great Top Pun products like T-shirts, bumper stickers, mugs, caps, key chains, magnets, posters, and sticker sheets can be accessed by scrolling down the product page.
I created this design long before the occupy movement. Nonetheless, this timeless commentary on the rich and the poor is a tip of the hat to the Occupy Wall Street movement. One of the main quests of the rich, the 1%, is to convince the masses, the 99%, that they can’t make a difference. A saying that fits into this genre, that the poor will always be with us. I guess that this is meant to reflect some underlying reality about human society, but I think that it distracts from a more important question. Somehow this saying is an effort to discourage those who try to ameliorate the conditions of the poor by emphasizing how difficult that work may be. This may be true. However, have you ever tried to get rid of the rich?! They are at least as difficult to get rid of as the poor! By reversing or extending the meaning of the saying, we can better reflect on the whole picture, and make a better judgment about to which ends we wish to exert our efforts, even considerable efforts. Some people will immediately get distracted by the question of whether we should try to get rid of the poor or try to get rid of the rich, or if and how these two tasks may relate. However, pondering this is only a secondary concern of mine. I am more interested in neutralizing the depressing and hope-sapping implications of focusing on the difficulty of changing the lot of the poor. I believe that much power is mediated by the ability to define the questions in our public life together. Having the power or the privilege to ask questions is probably at least as important as having the power or the privilege to answer the questions. Unfortunately, the powerful elite and a complicit media are very adept at asking less important questions that distract us from more important questions. Then, we spend an inordinate amount of time answering the less important questions and typically never get around to asking the more important questions. Mission accomplished! That is, for the powers that be who benefit from the status quo, advantaged by the present injustice.
Back to that much debated relationship between the rich and the poor, I would offer another saying or proverb, “where there is no wealth there is no poverty.” Well, hopefully, this design neutralizes the negative message of working to change the lives of those who are poor, and ends with a beginning, that is, a question about trying to get rid of the rich. While this may not be the ultimate question, it is certainly closer than the original question that this design addresses, and moving in the right direction is a very good start. So, what would you propose is the best question to be asked relative to the relationship between the rich and poor?
Ten years ago I had little idea exactly what I would be doing in 10 years. Fortunately, TopPun.com – Maximizing Prophets has turned out to be too small to fail. And while General Motors and pretty much the entire banking system have had to be bailed out, apparently, what is good for TopPun.com is good for America. While I continue to make too little money to pay federal taxes (not unlike many corporations), this could just as well be the most effective way to not support war and imperialism by the US. Reality has played neatly into my hand to live simply and justly. How does one celebrate such an auspicious anniversary? Well, the way that I’m celebrating is by launching a new monthly e-newsletter, affectionately known as the TP paper, because I prefer it over the top. This newsletter will feature monthly web specials and free downloadable posters, among other things. The first Web special, hopefully appropriately and timely, celebrates the Occupy Wall Street movement by offering 100 assorted Occupy Wall Street buttons for a mere $29.95, featuring dozens of new Occupy Wall Street themed designs that are not even available yet elsewhere on the website. Also to honor the Occupy Wall Street movement, the first free downloadable poster, “Class War” parodies the ridiculous attitudes of the 1%, corporate personhood, and money as free speech. To receive the TP paper regularly, just complete the e- newsletter sign-up form. THANKS!
Top Pun's mission is to maximize prophets. Top Pun creates serious, funny, and seriously funny peace and justice designs which are available on your choice of
products such as buttons, T-shirts, and bumper stickers. Top Pun blogs to highlight additional facets of his word artistry such as pun-filled poetry and funny political satire, free posters, as well as political actions of local and global importance -- and don't forget the noncommercial, public health radio show available online, Just for the Health of It . Top Pun's serious playfulness ever reminds us that justice is no yoke, and the pun is mightier than the sword!
Theirs an outside chance
If You Think The Poor are Hard to Get Rid of Try the Rich
If You Think that the Poor are Hard to Get Rid of Try the Rich-POLITICAL BUTTON
If You Think that the Poor are Hard to Get Rid of Try the Rich-POLITICAL BUTTON
This cool design is linked to a button, but other great Top Pun products like T-shirts, bumper stickers, mugs, caps, key chains, magnets, posters, and sticker sheets can be accessed by scrolling down the product page.
View more Political Buttons.
I created this design long before the occupy movement. Nonetheless, this timeless commentary on the rich and the poor is a tip of the hat to the Occupy Wall Street movement. One of the main quests of the rich, the 1%, is to convince the masses, the 99%, that they can’t make a difference. A saying that fits into this genre, that the poor will always be with us. I guess that this is meant to reflect some underlying reality about human society, but I think that it distracts from a more important question. Somehow this saying is an effort to discourage those who try to ameliorate the conditions of the poor by emphasizing how difficult that work may be. This may be true. However, have you ever tried to get rid of the rich?! They are at least as difficult to get rid of as the poor! By reversing or extending the meaning of the saying, we can better reflect on the whole picture, and make a better judgment about to which ends we wish to exert our efforts, even considerable efforts. Some people will immediately get distracted by the question of whether we should try to get rid of the poor or try to get rid of the rich, or if and how these two tasks may relate. However, pondering this is only a secondary concern of mine. I am more interested in neutralizing the depressing and hope-sapping implications of focusing on the difficulty of changing the lot of the poor. I believe that much power is mediated by the ability to define the questions in our public life together. Having the power or the privilege to ask questions is probably at least as important as having the power or the privilege to answer the questions. Unfortunately, the powerful elite and a complicit media are very adept at asking less important questions that distract us from more important questions. Then, we spend an inordinate amount of time answering the less important questions and typically never get around to asking the more important questions. Mission accomplished! That is, for the powers that be who benefit from the status quo, advantaged by the present injustice.
Back to that much debated relationship between the rich and the poor, I would offer another saying or proverb, “where there is no wealth there is no poverty.” Well, hopefully, this design neutralizes the negative message of working to change the lives of those who are poor, and ends with a beginning, that is, a question about trying to get rid of the rich. While this may not be the ultimate question, it is certainly closer than the original question that this design addresses, and moving in the right direction is a very good start. So, what would you propose is the best question to be asked relative to the relationship between the rich and poor?
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