Over 2,3 million prisoners are behind bars in the United States of America

Huizen, july 16th 1993 America, no..!, no..!, no..! To those concerned, In the compressed database going with the translation program BABYLON you will find a unique correspondence about the monetary and social structure in the Netherlands. The Netherlands - also called Holland - is a small country on the west coast of Europe. In this rather small country, where the average well-being of the population is significantly better than in the United States of America, was discovered in 1981 "WHY" the economic recession emerged, the technical cause of that recession and the method to deal with it. Today however, right-wing forces in politics are pushing that small, prosperous society into a direction resembling more and more the American way of governing the masses. I, as the writer of many critics on the ruthless, mostly Christian manipulation of information (which is propagating pure selfishness and egoism), have tried to put up a force against the blurring violence of misinformation by privileged groups through government channels and a manipulated press. I called this force LITTLE SISTER, because she as a member of the family of bits & bytes descendants can form a shield against the on-going and growing influence of the computer on our lives. For BIG BROTHER is watching you more closely every day !! Lately, when I was on a holiday, I spoke to an Englishman about many social and financial structures in our two countries. We agreed that living in Holland was better than in the United Kingdom, where Lady Thatcher had fought inflation by raising interest rates sky high at the expense of employment and of the general well-being of the masses. She thought, that Milton Friedman's theory of letting the market do its work, would solve all problems in the western economies. She, Lady Thatcher, was inclined to believe what a Nobel Price winner told her. But anyone who looks at the results of the conservative approach of the market will become aware that there's something rotten in the State of Denmark. And really, the Danish said "NO" to the United States of Europe. Denmark is a small country too, with a lot of well educated people who just do not believe everything that is told. This conversation about living conditions in several parts of the world made me say that I was proud, really very proud "NOT" to be an American, and I told him why I was too glad to be a (western !) European. I had learned from an American research called: WHEN THE BOUGH BREAKS, THE COST OF NEGLECTING OUR CHILDREN, of Sylvia Hewlett, that 12 million children in the US are just not insured against illness, that 20% of the children live in absolute poverty (cities 40%), that 330.000 children have no home to live and 10 children are killed on the streets every day; and about 10 million children are so called "key kids", because their parent(s) have to work and therefore get no attention at all. Therefore they do not learn fundamental social values during their childhood. I learned that most of those parents were only interested in their own career and in making money. Next to this, 12 million children have scarcely access to medical care, and the national health care covers only 40 percent of the needs of the really poor in the United States of America. The rest is fully deprived and left alone to the market forces. Ten percent of the boys under eighteen, and eighteen percent of the girls have attempted suicide, and the nursing of psychiatric patients under eighteen years of age has five folded since 1971. I read that 27 percent of the teenagers do not finish school, regardless of the (financial) background of the parents. Not even half of the students of 17 years of age, can tell weather 87% of 10 is more, less or equal to 10 !! Less than half of the kids know what Apartheid is, and 70% doesn't know what Tjernobyl is. Only 50% of the children in the US can calculate how much money one gets back when paying for a hamburger. It appears that only one out of four parents pays a visit to school on an information day. In the average American home television sets are on for some six to seven hours each day. Most children are watching TV four hours a day. During those watching hours they see mostly violence, sex, drugs and criminal movies. And when a kid "graduates" from high school, it has watched over 1500 hours of TV commercials. One other figure enlightens my view on the US. In the United States of America 6 per mille of the US-population is kept behind bars. No nation on Earth has so many prisoners as THE WORLD'S LEADING NATION. Of every 100.000 inhabitants 600 are in jail ! In the Netherlands, that is just over 80 (eighty) of every 100.000 inhabitants or 0,8 per mille of the population, and I would like to keep it that low. (Actualized with figures of 1998) By God!! We don't have all that misery in The Netherlands, and that is why I am so very proud "NOT" to be an American. Just like John F. Kennedy, who also said that he wanted to be a Berliner. But that doesn't mean that I am satisfied with the situation or political development in my country. On the contrary. The fact that almost no people live in cardboard boxes - like in the US - and the almost complete absence of slums in the Netherlands, doesn't mean that the danger of introducing these phenomena is absent! The policy of the Christian Democrats is ruthless towards the unemployed by creating 'just-keep-them-busy-jobs' for a substantial percentage of the unemployed. The reason for this is simple. If you force people on the benefit in a lot of low paid jobs, with heavy subsidies for employers, than you can solve a nasty statistical problem. Besides this one can postpone the emerging awareness, that in this decade a "point of no return" has been reached concerning the environmental consequences because of labor. In a free market economy, environmental costs are not calculated. Besides this, that cost would bring down profitability of capital for the investors, and influence competitiveness negatively as well. So no one should ever talk about those very nasty things, isn't it? In the Netherlands, things are organized in a different way for the time being. We do have a significantly higher level of taxation, and therefore a lower rate of poverty. However, this might be coming to an end when Christian politics get a chance to develop further. It's just simply what you prefer. Low taxes and a high criminality or higher taxes with less poverty and much lesser criminality. Including unemployment, high taxation and the transfer of income through social benefits the cost per unit of product is the lowest of the world. Yes, not even Japan equals the productivity per capita. Next to that the Dutch are - also per capita - the largest foreign investors in the world, because of high taxation. But who wants to know why? Meanwhile the Dutch possess substantial parts of the US, without the Americans knowing this. America seems going to be crushed under the very destructive forces it cherished so long. Namely: the free market with unlimited competition. Above all, by taking income out of undeserved interest rates. Consider the the external debt of the USA of 2.4 trillion dollars (Mai 2005, est.) whilst The Netherlands has no external debt at all.  and the change in currency value of the Euro to US$ at 0.8597 in January 1999, and now US$ 1.2300 to the Euro in Mai 2005. Things changed to a new situation on September 27th in 2007. The external debt of the US rose to est. 6 trillion dollars; and the exchange rate for the euro to the dollar topped € 1 to $ 1,41, or 0,71 eurocents to 1 dollar. The US is getting rid now of her external debt by devaluation of the dollar. Foreign investors like China, Japan, Taiwan and the rest of the world are not happy with this loss of purchasing power and shrinking of their savings in dollars, next to the drag on exports to the US at lower prices. Aristotle said about (384-322) years before Christ, that interest rates were the most insane invention of man kind. He was right, but who wants to hear, having a few millions in the bank ??? Just a small calculation exercise. Put just one dollar cent at 5% integrated interest on a savings account in a bank, and do this on occasion of the birth of Christ. Question: How much will the value of that cent be today, and express this in a metric counter value of pure gold. When you have found the answer, you can give your own judgment upon capitalism in the present form and what it should look like in the very near future. Do remember this: In a communist society people are exploited by other people, whilst in a capitalist run society it's exactly the other way around. Anyhow, you should try to run the translation program and make the effort to read some of the interesting correspondences between governmental institutions, the central bank, unions, ministries, the prime-minister and Queen Beatrice and myself. Maybe you can find some solutions for your own country. I am very aware of the fact, that there are a number of things and achievements that you can be proud of too. As far as the "social structure" is concerned, I keep my point of view that I am so very, very glad "NOT" to be an American, unless you can prove me otherwise. In that case I owe you an apology. Robert M. Brockhus Westkade 227 1273 RJ Huizen The Netherlands Phone: Holland 00-31-35-5244141