ON CRAP COFFEE, VERMONT MANURE AND UNEQUAL WEALTH IN USA

The Wealthy Rather Spend Their Money On Crap Coffee Than Pay More In Taxes

"Above all things good policy is to be used so that the treasures and monies in a state be not gathered into a few hands... Money is like fertilizer, not good except it be spread about." Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

That good advice has been ignored for four decades by the USA, the modern, western nation with the highest level of wealth and income inequality. (Turkey, Mexico and Chile, the world leaders in this unsavory category have higher levels of wealth inequality than we do.) American "exceptionalism" is often explained as a result of our freedom, economic opportunity and equality. But today we discover that those commendable national values have been compromised in the last three or four decades by the concentration of wealth into the hands of a very few. The USA has one of the lowest rates of upward mobility, stagnant middle and working class incomes, and we suffer from a situation in which the top 20% of the the population control more than 85% of the nation's wealth and income. That level of wealth disparity is found only in South America (such as in Mexico and Chile) and other tin-pot dictatorships where the "Jefe" and his family and friends control all the wealth.

Back to the USA. Do the math. Our wealth distribution leaves the lower 80% of the population with only 15% of the nation's wealth and income. Like cow manure on a Vermont dairy farm where help is scarce, the smelly stuff is sometimes piled high in the cow enclosure. It remains concentrated where it was dropped and is not being spread onto the fields where it would green the grass, nurture the cows, and bring higher income to the farmer. In Vermont, such circumstances lead to rotting piles of manure, bad smells, flies, contaminated domestic water wells, and pollution seeping into local streams. In the economic realm, it leads inequality, weak demand, long recessions, and a slow decline of national vigor.

In the US economy, where enormous wealth is concentrated in the upper one tenth of one percent, "weak demand" is almost universally blamed as the major cause of our present long and deep recession (the 2007 Great Recession). When 85 % of the nation'a wealth and income is confined to the upper 20%, the vast majority of our citizens in the bottom 80% must struggle to make do with only 15% of the nation's wealth-income pie. They do not have enough money in hand to make purchases which would boost demand. That is bad for the general economy. To make matters worse, the affluent use their wealth to lobby the government for reductions in their taxes and restrictions on government spending, policies which inhibit the government’s ability help alleviate the plight of the struggling middle class by putting money in the hands of those who would spend it and increase demand. Given our political system, the wealthy are often successful in this goal, creating the vicious cycle of lower taxes on the upper level earners, increased wealth disparity, low demand, poor business profits, high unemployment, and shrinking incomes for the lower four fifths of the wealth distribution---resulting in even less demand.

Francis Bacon put his finger on the problem way back in 16th Century. The spending habits and cash-use patterns of the super affluent do not “fertilize” the broader economy. These people do not buy automobiles, washing machines, local dairy products or local homes. Their numbers are few and their ability to spread their wealth by spending is limited, but more importantly they spend their money in ways that do not nurture wealth and job generation for the vast majority of Americans. Their money remains in one place, like a pile of Vermont cow manure, and if it is not spread on the fields it begins to stink.

One example of the disfunction caused by concentration of wealth is the explosion of weird, bizarre and exotic foods, drinks and accoutrements sold in upscale stores and on the world markets for the super affluent. These lucky folks, often the "nouveau riche", are determined to possess and display exotica to establish and proclaim their wealth status. One of the more bizarre examples of this kind of spending is the world's most expensive coffee--Terra Nero coffee, which sells in London’s Harrods for about £6500 ($10,400) and is said to come packed in 24 karat gold-foil bags.

Terra Nero is a form of crap coffee. In Indonesia's coffee-growing regions, local coffee-berry pickers discovered perhaps a decade ago that the the wild Indonesian civet cat, or Asian Palm Civet, made night visits to the coffee plantations where the pickers labored. In the morning, the workers found the evidences of civit depredations in the form of ripe berries stripped from the coffee branches, and on the ground, the tell-tale scat (excrement) of the Palm Civit. The scats or civit stools were studded with the evidence of what the civit ate: the indigestible part of the coffee berry--coffee beans. (The Palm Civet is a relatively rare, small, omnivorous mammal, about the size of a house cat. They are widely distributed in Africa and throughout southeast Asia. In the wild, they inhabit the ecological niche of the raccoon or opossum of North America.)

Perhaps one of the coffee-berry pickers was desperate for some partly-dried coffee beans and collected the scats, separated out the berries and roasted them, then brewed a quick cup of coffee. He found the flavor of the brew "distinctive”. The cause of this flavor may result from the fact that the Palm Civet is known to have a powerful defense mechanism in the form of a perineal (anal) scent gland which exudes a smelly substance during defecation which may flavor the beans. Or perhaps the simple passage of the beans,through the digestive tract of this critter, where the beans come into intimate contact with other civit foods, such as over-ripe fruits, partially-chewed-up insects, and small mammal remains all typically found within the alimentary tract of a nocturnal omnivore. But for whatever reason, the coffee pickers just loved the crappy stuff, calling it "kopi luwak" and avidly collecting it to savor the “distinctive” aroma of the beans and the "wild" taste of the coffee brewed from them. As you might expect, collecting civet poo from under brambles and thick brush on a steep Indonesian hillside might be quite messy and difficult. Also Palm Civits are not that common and thus their cat poo is also quite rare. The old economic adage concerning demand versus supply makes Asian Palm Civet crap and the beans found within the stools very valuable. Since only some 500 kilograms (or about 1000 lbs) are collected each year from selected major coffee plantations, the cost of the beans may reach $400 dollars a kilogram or about $200 dollars per pound.

As with other exotica, like North American black bear gall-bladders, shark fins, rhino horns, and elephant tusks, once the product becomes established as a status symbol, a market will develop for it among the super wealthy. This jacks up the price and tends to draw in entrepreneurs who attempt to streamline production and increase output and profits. At the present time, it is virtually impossible to find “wild” kopi luwak on the market. Chinese and Indonesian businessmen have largely taken over production. They have eliminated the coffee bean pickers, and wasteful time-consuming searching on steep hillsides. Many kopi luwak crap coffee producers generate their beans by force-feeding caged Palm Civets, or other other unrelated critters, collecting the feces from below their confining cages and generating a agro-business version of kopi luwak crap coffee.

Each year the wealthy buy up the last gold-foil wrapped kilogram of crap coffee, however disgusting it sounds or weird it tastes. They much prefer to spend their money on crap coffee than on slightly higher taxes. They don't buy products that generate jobs in the real economy like those from the local corner store, or the local factory. But for the rest of us it is wise to remember Francis Bacon's warning that keeping the fertilizer in the cow corral is not good for our economy. It tends to produce useless, ecologically questionable stuff like “crap coffee” and to increase the wealth gap, and prolong our deep, dreary economic recessions.

Get the picture?

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