Good Morning Middle American, your King of Simple News is on the air.

As fuel prices continue to rise, everyone is talking about ways to cut back on consumption of the now well deserved name, black gold.

The state of Utah is going to a four day work week to save their employee’s one day of transportation costs. What do you think; is this a good idea? Let’s mine below the surface.

The purpose is to save money, energy and resources. I’ll buy that and I’ll buy a four day work week. I believe that work is overrated in the U.S. to begin with. Believing that working longer hours and producing more and more until there is nothing left to produce with, has brought us to our current collision with $4.00 fuel. But will savings be the outcome for Utah?

An article by the associated press had this to say. “They will put in 10-hour days, Monday through Thursday, and have Fridays off, freeing them to golf, shop, spend time with the kids or do anything else that strikes their fancies. They will get paid the same as before.”

“One of the jokes is that one of the biggest benefits will be for golf courses,” said Ryan Walker, 49, an information technology director. He said he is looking forward to tackling items on his long-neglected “honey-do” list, camping, and traveling more around the state.

Help me out here. Unless these folks intend to walk to the golf course, camp and travel on foot and shop without consuming, the plan is a bust. The reality is, most of these people will use more fuel and consume more while shutting down access to the state offices on Friday.

Why do we work a standard eight hour day? Because it has been proven over and over that productivity drops after eight hours. Suggesting that productivity will remain the same working four ten hour days, flies in the face of reality.

The reality of this situation is that the energy crisis created a smoke screen for government to provide yet one more benefit for government workers while the private sector continues our march to the bottom.

The U.S. has lost jobs for the past six months, month in and month out. So what about government? One would assume that government jobs are also on the decline. But, you know how to spell assume? Government has added jobs every month during the same period. But how can that be? With unemployment rising and tax collection dwindling, where would government get the money to hire extra help? And why would they need extra help? The answer is two fold.

One, government for the most part is not held accountable for any measure of necessity or productivity. Not getting the job done? Add more help. Two, adding employees to government roles keeps the unemployment numbers from revealing the true state of our economy.

Nero played the fiddle while Rome burned.

Good Morning Middle America, your King of Simple News is on the air.

Remember some time ago when that bonehead “The King of Simple” predicted that Starbucks would get in big trouble? Starbucks was based on the model of selling $1.00 coffee for $4.00 to the mathematically challenged. Starbucks is now closing 600 stores and laying off 12,000 employee’s. How could such a well thought out business plan go astray?

There are thousands of businesses in the U.S. that have a similar business plan to Starbucks. Similar in that they can only exist in a particular economic climate, a time when there is loads of discretionary income available to the mathematically challenged. Which pretty much means everyone in the U.S. if world math scores are an indication.

Fancy bottled water, high end antique shops, and exclusive boutiques will fall in line with Starbucks decline. Tap water, consumer goods auction houses and thrift shops will take their place, just as go-cups from home are taking Starbucks place.

How do I know? I had a front row seat for that movie the last time it was showing and even stayed for the credits. I have had three people call in a week asking about retail space to put in a shop to sell used merchandise.

My wife was talking to our friend who owns a real estate title company and she told Cathy about a great second hand clothing store that recently opened and who handles quality clean pressed clothing at a fraction of new. She and my wife plan to visit the store next week.

I was a fast talker who dealt in other peoples merchandise for years…an auctioneer. We watched our crowds for general merchandise dwindle away to the point that we could no longer accept clothing, dated furniture, or canning jars. New was available on credit, rent to own came into vogue, style trumped common sense and, why can, they sell that stuff at the grocery. It made me sick.

Today, don’t stand in front of the canning jars when they come up for bid, you might get trampled. Ain’t we something?

An old businessman told me years ago that, “More businesses go broke during good times than ever do during bad times.” He went on to explain that they don’t really go broke during good times, they set themselves up to go broke and then when the economy takes a tick down, down is the direction that they go.

Acceptance, complacency, and lack of innovation are all prevalent during a lucrative business cycle. Acceptance, that not only can you sell a dollar cup of coffee for four dollars, but acceptance that it will go on forever. Complacency in that high costs can be absorbed by raising prices, after all, they went for the four bucks didn’t they? Lack of innovation to constantly monitor and change the business model to fit the economic circumstances, polishes off the perfect setup for business failure.

Fortunately we don’t practice these dumb tactics at home. Of course we don’t. The mega home with the mega mortgage; after all homes always go up in value as do wages. The new twin SUVs parked in the three car garage next to the new boat; hey, you only go around once.

You get the picture, we set ourselves up during the good times to a point that we can’t weather any bad times. And, why should we weather any bad times? Our newest political candidates assure us that not only is it not our fault, he or she will fix our ills just as soon as we elect them.

It’s up to each of us to run our own lives as we see fit. Having the freedom to do so is a choice that is guaranteed by our Constitution. There is no place in that Constitution that guarantee’s to save us from our own poor choices. And that includes poor choices at the voting booth.

Good Morning Middle America, your King of Simple News is on the air.

I’m looking for opinions today. The oil prices are creating greater hardships for remote areas than for those in the metropolitan cities. I’ll focus on one of those areas in particular and that is rural Alaska.

In the middle-Yukon village of Ruby, a village with some of the most expensive power in Alaska, “Some families pay $900 a month for electricity,” said tribal administrator Pat Sweetsir.

“They’re the low-income villagers who live in federal HUD houses, with heat tapes on the pipes and electric stoves,” he said. “And that was the price of electricity when they were burning last winter’s diesel. Now that the season’s first fuel barge has unloaded, the price of diesel just jumped $3 to $7.50 a gallon,” Sweetsir said. “They’re just up against the wall,” he said. “People are talking about moving to town.”

Power in some regions where the electricity is produced by large diesel generators and the fuel is either barged or flown in, the kilowatt hour rate is expected to hit $1.00. To put that in perspective, most areas of the country pay around 12 cent per KwH.

So what is the answer to this problem? Fuel doesn’t seem to be getting any cheaper, nor does transportation. Many are calling for the state of Alaska to step in with even greater subsidies than are already being provided.

In fact Meera Kohler, president of Alaska Village Electric Cooperative, has a great idea; subsidize the cost of diesel used to produce power to reflect no more than $1.40 per gallon. And also subsidize the gas at the village pumps to result in a consumer cost of $1.80 per gallon.

“Such a plan would share the windfall of Alaska’s high oil-tax income to both urban and rural residents and be simpler to manage than the governor’s proposed debit-card system,” Kohler said.

So what do you think? How would you suggest that Alaska deal with this problem? Consider your answer carefully and try and try to look well into the future when calculating what would be best long term.

The call for change has certainly been the central focus in this presidential election campaign. And all of those folks that are calling for change don’t have a thing to worry about…change they will get. However, just not exactly the kind of change they were hoping for.

Good Morning Middle America, your King of Simple News is rousting out another truth.

I was talking to my old friend Cliff Ulman a couple of days ago. Cliff is a long time auto and RV dealer who got his start in finance. His financial abilities together with being an entrepreneur make him quick on the uptake when it comes to economics. It’s amazing how keen ones senses become, when the money being lost or made is your own.

Cliff and his wife Dee have been planning retirement and chose June of 08 as the month that they would pull the pin on their dealership and shift to a more leisure pace. I had called Cliff to ask how his retirement plans were coming as we have shared our future plans for years.

He told me that he was going to get there, but a little more time than originally thought would be required to sell his remaining inventory. This is mainly due to the fact that the RV business is off by about 50%. Whoa!

We hashed the current situation for a while and the conversation came around to the impact that a 50% reduction would have on the overall RV business. Cliff mentioned the people who deliver the RVs and those who manufacture and provide the material to the manufacturer. If business remains at the 50% level, what will clearly half of those people involved in the business do?

The answer came much quicker than I thought. My brother Steve called me on Sunday and during our conversation he mentioned that my nephew, Doug, had lost his job. Doug works…I mean worked, for Fleetwood in their large diesel motor-coach plant in northern Indiana.

I phoned Doug to get the details. He told me that he had seen the handwriting on the wall when Fleetwood had laid off some 300 workers last winter and not called any of them back. He went on to tell me that on a recent Friday, when the workers arrived at the plant they were told that it was their last day. Nice.

The second and third shift people didn’t get that courtesy, they were phoned and told not to come to work; their jobs were terminated on the spot. This last layoff affected another 300 people, some of them man and wife. Some with 25+ years of service.

No severance, no notice, no nothin’, including no job. In Doug’s words, “It’s a dying industry.” So what do 600 people in the same area do for work, after all, they have their homes and families to consider. Perhaps they could go to work for another manufacturer, but then Doug told me that at least two other RV manufacturers in the area had closed down completely, displacing hundreds more workers.

With this many people unemployed, it may necessary to move to another locale where the job market is better. But, how do you sell your home in an area where most jobs revolved around the manufacture of both RV and full sized mobile homes, both of which are failing? And, where is there a better job market when you don’t speak Chinese?

As we watch the unwinding of our economy, I see no end to the current trend of rising unemployment. The path to this point in our history is littered with broken promises and poor planning by our leaders. But it is also littered with unread history books and a total lack of even basic common sense.

We must begin a radical change to sustainability. The first item on that list should be, “Throw the bums out.”

Good Morning Middle America, your King of Simple News has another dose of reality this morning.

In my little neck of the woods here in rural Western Colorado, we are fortunate to be removed from the painful issues of our businesses picking up and moving to China; we wish.

In the serene village of Paonia, lying in an idyllic mountain valley along the banks of the North Fork of the Gunnison River, and surrounded by peach, apple and cherry orchards, Chaco Sandals rose to fame. The company was an American success story, the one that really did start in a garage with a good idea and eventually gained world distribution for an exceptional product.

As business grew, new facilities were constructed and good quality jobs were created for the local citizens. The new found commerce became so brisk, that a former super market was purchased in the nearby town of Delta to serve as a distribution hub which employed even more of the local citizens. Life was good for employer and employees.

This is the way that America should be. The opportunity to live and work in a beautiful unspoiled environment, away from the crime, pollution, corruption and congestion of the city, after all, isn’t this what America is all about; the freedom to start a business and prosper?

And then came NAFTA and the WTO.

At first, the owners and managers of Chaco confirmed that they were here to stay; after all, the company wasn’t built in Paonia by accident.

But then, once an American company’s American made competition goes to China…how do you compete? “We can,” was once more the attitude.

The end of next month, July, 2008, will mark the closure of Chaco Sandals production; in the U.S.

When I wrote “The Biggest Lie Ever Believed,” I pointed out that a U.S. company cannot under any circumstances compete with labor that is being paid at 50 times less. You didn’t read that wrong, fifty times less.

There is a great difference between free trade and fair trade. What William Jefferson Clinton signed on both NAFTA and the WTO were free trade agreements, there was never anything fair about it. Ask the more than 8.5 million people who are now unemployed in the U.S. whether it was fair.

Our current government is totally unfit to govern. They are complete and total failures and have led us to a place that we may never recover from. When I say our “current government,” I’m not talking about George Bush. While George Bush has been a total failure at his leadership, it isn’t his signature on the bottom of NAFTA and the WTO.

Leadership has known that our system of exponential growth would fail from the time this growth oriented society began. But those who were vocal and pointed out the obvious cracks in the foundation were marginalized as “Chicken Little’s.”

In 1971, the U.S. was forced to go off the gold standard permanently. From that time forward, our system of growth beyond natural limits has been supported by “The Biggest Lie Ever Believed.”

Good Morning Middle America, Your King of Simple News is on the air.

There seem to be vast differences between Republicans and Democrats, the Right and the Left, and the Conservatives and the Liberals. And I suppose that there are. However, the one thing that they both share equally…is disastrous. That shared belief is that growth is good. More is better and “we ain’t had enough of nothin’ yet.”

Both sides wage an endless verbal war against the other, promising more growth if elected. Once elected, the party temporarily in charge leads America steadily down a dead end road. When things get really bad under one party, we elect the other party until things get really bad under that party and then we change out the blind horse for the three legged one. It’s nice of us to allow them to take turns being wrong.

Let’s take fuel as a current and prime example of stupidity and blind leadership. The production of fossil based fuels is limited by the finite existence of the reserves on earth. Since we don’t have truck traffic to Mars at this point, what we have here on earth seems to simple minded fellow like myself as being pretty much what we have to go around.

Now say that you graduated with honors from like the third grade and held a firm understanding that fuel was limited. How would you approach economic growth when armed with the concrete knowledge that greater economic growth requires a greater use of fuel?

I’m quite sure that no third grader would suggest expanding the population and economic output as a fix for curbing the use of diminishing natural resources. Only Congress people are that dumb…with the possible exception of the majority of Americans who believe the Congress people.

Population growth has another great disadvantage, in that it distances us from our leaders. Most of us have never met our leaders and really don’t know a thing about them. They remain remote from us hidden away in the masses in some foreign place known only as D.C. or Denver or Indianapolis. They pass through on election year giving a speech from the back of a pickup dressed in their new jeans and western shirts trying to convince the public that they are just like us. Okay, there is the exception that they have limo service, health insurance, a pension, and no accountability for their actions, but otherwise, pretty much the same.

When they stand on the back of that pickup, Democrat or Republican, they promise growth. They talk about cutting back on oil consumption, they talk about being addicted to oil, they talk about our dependency on foreign nations, they talk about water and air quality issues, and then they promise the one thing that not only got us to this point, but the one thing that will absolutely, positively without question, make it worse; they promise more growth.

We live in a flawed economic situation that is playing out due to excessive growth and yet, we elect the person who promises to accelerate the journey to the end for Middle America. Go figure.

Good Morning Middle America, your King of Simple News is on the air…again.

Every so often I feel compelled to go back to the roots of “The Biggest Lie Ever Believed.” Our economy is based on impossible math which suggests that exponential growth is possible in a finite world. It isn’t.

But those who continually promise to defeat the “exact science” continue to win over the truth tellers. And that is because we want to believe there is an easy path to prosperity. There is a path alright, but it leads to a little wooden house out back, the more glorified of which are called “two holers.”

I just read an Energy Department report predicting that our fossil fuels consumption will grow by more than 50% over the next 20 years. The report suggested that China would have something to do with that increase as they are expected to experience continual economic growth.

When I see the words “economic growth” and “continual” in the same sentence, I go into what can be best described as a “wall-eyed fit.” After I recover from my fit, I start writing bad things about our leaders and government agencies.

The Energy Department is one of the agencies that I write bad things about. Under the steady hand of the Energy Department, which was created to help the U.S. become independent of foreign energy, the U.S. has steadily gone down the tubes in the area of foreign energy dependence. Since 1977, we have gone from being 46.5% dependent to approximately 75% dependent on kindly foreign nations that hate our guts.

Ordinary people may ask why we would become so dependent on others. But not the King of Simple News reading people; we know why. We know that the U.S. doesn’t have enough oil to run this outfit and if we really want to drive to work today, we’ll have to do it with someone else’s oil or get a bike.

The report went on to predict that the world’s demand for liquid fuels — mostly oil — will continue to grow to 113 million barrels a day by 2030, nearly a third more than is consumed today.

That should be quite a trick, since most sane geophysicists believe that maximum global production is in the range of 78,000,000 barrels per day. That leaves 35,000,000 barrels per day being produced under item 3 of plan “B” which reads, “and then there will be a miracle.”

Let’s look a little closer to home regarding the predictions of this report. The growth in fossil fuel consumption is expected to occur primarily in other areas of the world. That means that a large portion of the 75% of the energy that the U.S. currently purchases from the aforementioned kindly foreign nations could well be needed by someone else. This brings us back to item 3 of plan “B.”

Can the U.S. become energy independent? Of course we can. All we have to do is stop driving, stop paving, stop making plastic, stop flying, stop trains and trucking, and live in mud huts.

We could also start drilling every National Park in the U.S. We could also drill in the Artic National Wildlife Reserve and in every ocean surrounding this country. And in the end, we would still have the same problem; exponential growth is impossible.

Of course, doing all of the above will make very little difference except to put off the inevitable for four more years while the politicians make up new campaign promises. But, in keeping with tradition, putting off reality is in fact what we have been doing since the design for our economy began. Like those little wind up toys that take off across the room, run into the wall, beat their head on the wall for a little while and then turn around and head full steam for another wall.

It’s not a question of whether we will run out of resources, and especially oil. It’s a matter of when we run short and how bad it will be. My belief is that it will be soon and extremely bad.

After a week on the road, it’s good to be back in my office and reporting the King of Simple News. Guess I’m going to have to invest in a laptop and wi-fi card before my next absence.

This is the prime season for tourism and it was noticeably down everywhere we went. From the Oregon coast through the Redwoods National Park and continuing through the Mother Lode country of California, to Lake Tahoe, Carson City and back across Utah to Colorado, you could see and feel the stress of tourist oriented businesses.

We could get a room anywhere even late in the evening without reservations. The room rates were reasonable due to the competition for the few tourists. The restaurants were never crowded nor were the parks. The gift shops were nearly vacant and had sale signs hanging in most windows.

Gas in California averaged $4.75 per gallon. California is in big trouble. In some of my past writing I have talked about the economics of living in a high cost area when things turn down. It gets real ugly real quick.

California has massive state debt that I don’t believe will ever be in the black again. The growth necessary to bring tax revenues up to a point of balancing the budget is most probably mathematically impossible.

We came over a pass in Northern California along the Trinity River (which is knock dead gorgeous) and saw some 20 forest fires that had just started from lightening. We leaned on the news that there are some 400 wildfires burning in the state!

We stayed in Carson City and were told that the Casino business was very slow. If the highway traffic was any indication, it will probably remain that way.

Fuel at $4.75 per gallon is a show stopper and we saw few license plates that were from outside the different regions. In other words we saw Oregon plates in Northern California, California plates in Western Nevada, but no Ohio or Michigan plates in the far West. Travel is being limited.

My wife Cathy and I try to stay in reasonable clean motels that provide a breakfast (such as Super 8, Days Inn etc.). We carry a cooler and stop at lunch for a picnic and we carry snacks and drinks to avoid the temptation of buying them in the convenience stores. We frequent local fare cafes in the evenings that tend to be both good and reasonable.

Practicing the above routine is great for us and helps to offset the cost of fuel, but is terrible for tourism dependent businesses.

The gift and antique shops were real tell-tale signs of the recession. We walked through several large shops on major routes where we were the only people in the shop the entire time we were there.

I believe that what we saw is the tip of the iceberg and like the airlines, tourism and gift related businesses will continue to suffer. These areas of nonessential commerce represent things we want but don’t need.

Good Morning Middle America, the King and Queen of Simple are in Oregon.

Had great drive so far but can’t help but notice that humans never change. Went to view the Shoshone Falls in Twin Falls Idaho and they were beautiful, but continue to shrink in size.

The falls were originally referred to as  “Niagra of the West,” but so much water is now diverted from the Mighty Snake River, that late in the irrigation season the falls could be described as the garden hose of the West.

It’s called growth until there is nothin’ left to grow with. Early after the falls discovery, a young entrepreneur was able to purchase the land on both sides so that he could charge his fellow man to see one of America’s great wonders. That was in the late 1800’s and Capitalism hasn’t changed a bit.

We then drove on to Oregon where you aren’t allowed to pump your own gas…I’m not making this up. They told us that it was to keep more people working. I think I understand; the guy who pumped our gas definitely wouldn’t have been working otherwise.

They add the cost of the pump guy to the gas, as in $4.31 per gallon. Don’t confuse pumping gas with washing windows or checking oil.

We also checked out the John Day (Oregon) fossil beds and  museum. Did you know that rhino’s and camels lived here at one time along with saber toothed tigers? The earth got tired of them and shook itself like a big dog after coming out of the water.

I think humans are starting to irritate the earth again.

I’ll check in with more news about America as we move along on our way back home.

P.S. The lady at the Oregon welcome center said that the car count was down about 150 per day due to the recession that we aren’t in. That can’t be good.

Good Morning America, your King of Simple News is on the air.

The King and Queen of Simple are going to be out on the road this week, checking out the hiways and byways of our nation (well, part of it). I hope to be able to access my site and post my finding along the way. Please feel free to comment on today’s article and be patient, I promise to come back. Thank all of you sooooo much for your readership and friendship. Mike

U.S. NEWS: Okay, get out your pencil and paper; we’re going to do a little math and economics today. Don’t worry, it’s not regular government math, it’s Mikemathics and Mikeronomics.

Here’s the first problem that I want you to solve. If a country imported 75% of their oil, and the countries that export that oil to them quit doing so, how much oil would the citizens of the import country have left?

Those who answered, “None, because the import country’s government would confiscate the remaining 25% to wage war on the export country that cut them off,” are correct. Those who answered “25%” haven’t read the associated text, “The Biggest Lie Ever Believed.”

Next question: The export country cuts back by 20% of the previous amount of oil sent to the import country, creating a shortage. How long would the line be at the gas station be and how high would the price go?

Those who answered, “Camping equipment should be standard on all trips to the gas station and having a co-signer would become mandatory for a fill-up,” nailed the answer.

Here is problem number 3: If a country is a net importer of food and the countries that export that food quit sending it because they are currently eating all of it themselves, how much food will be left at the grocery 10 minutes after the news breaks that there is a food shortage?

Those who said, “There may be a couple of jars of hairy anchovies and one package of tripe remaining;” got this one right. You guys are good!

Now, this next question is more difficult so put on your thinkin’ caps. Here it is: If the import country (which obviously can’t support their own people without the help of countries that cut their citizens’ heads off for jaywalking) were also in the business of importing more than a million additional people per year, would the food and fuel situation get better or worse?

I know this one is tough, so I’m going to help you a little. The million plus additional people definitely drive cars and eat…and have more kids.

Times up, put your pencils down. Who said, “No country in the world is that dumb?” Those who answered something similar to this get an “A” in economics and common sense, but I’m afraid that I have to fail you in American History; sorry.

One more general question before we take the final exam. If great big ships and giant airplanes that use massive quantities of a finite resource, such as oil, deliver the food and fuel to the import country, and if the resource, such as oil, became very costly, or worse, was not available, what would happen?

Those who answered, “Holy Mother of Jesus!” are right on target.

Pick your pencils back up and get ready for the final exam. Here’s the final question: If there really were a country dumb enough to import the essential elements of life from nations that didn’t even like them to start with, and at the same time, elected to also import millions of immigrants (and let a few million more sneak in when they aren’t looking), how long would the elected officials be allowed to remain in office?

Everyone who answered, “232 years and counting,” graduated from today’s exam with honors.

So what’s my point? Truth is far stranger than fiction.