Found this early this morning and it certainly gives one food for thought. Whether a "prelude to war in Korea" or a "deficit neutral way to maintain Air Force staffing" or some other consideration, it smells thoroughly rotten. Don't you love how #45 fails to specify the so-called emergency. What "continuing and immediate threats" of what "attacks on the United States?" As the Rude Pundit noted in his post yesterday, America's wars since the end of WWII have been "bullshit." And perhaps David Kaiser's post today should make us a bit more cautious about what our government is doing.

The Telegraph had this article on the food shortage for the North Korean military on August 31 of this year. That story echoes this one from mid August. And then there is this article from yesterday. The North Korean government has long had its policy of "military first" and has basically shifted all resources to the military but has run into the problem of diminishing returns on their investment and running out of "investment." However I am not much comforted by the thought because the first article I linked to leads me to think we might be in the early stages of that "catabolic" cycle. They maintained their troop levels by making sure the troops were fed. We want to maintain troop levels by reactivating retired members of the military. During the crises of the third century CE the Roman government began collecting taxes in kind because coined money disappeared from the economy at the lower levels, passed laws making most occupations hereditary and branding or tattooing workers to ensure they didn't try to get around the law by moving to another part of the Empire. I wonder how far along the downward slide we are?

As someone who has worked entry level retail far more often than I wanted to over my life I can tell the perplexed "experts" why someone might not want those jobs. I can't begin to count the number of meetings I had to attend unpaid. Or how often we were told to clock out and then straighten up, clean up, stock and vacuum. Or how often my schedule was changed without much notice disregarding what ever I might have planned. Or how goddamned little I was paid. The anemic efforts to raise the minimum wage to $15/hr ignores the fact that, in most areas, the amount is too low, even for someone who might work the old definition of full time (40 hours/week), to provide the funds needed for a single person to live on their own. The chief economist at some job site says there aren't enough people looking for work?? Well, I say there aren't enough people willing to work themselves to death to not quite make a living.