Comments by "coolmodelguy" (@coolmodelguy6304) on "Thom Hartmann Program"
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I'd like to share the chilling thing I heard yesterday was about the reasons behind the rush for Kavanaugh confirmation. Lots of shiny things have been dangled to distract us . . . . but there is one case the Supreme Court agreed to hear which may disrupt
the dual sovereignty of State and Federal Courts and the republicans want Kavanaugh seated before this case is heard. The Gamble vs United States case is about a felon with a robbery conviction, who upon being pulled over by the police, was found to have a firearm in his possession. Terance Martez Gamble was then charged by both State and Federal prosecutors with being a felon in possession of a firearm based on the single incident. Apparently he was convicted by both prosecutors and received an extended sentence. Upon appealing his conviction, Gamble
claims double jeopardy and the case has made it to the Supreme Court. (The double jeopardy I am familiar with is that once acquitted of a crime by jury of peers, that crime cannot be charged in court a second time. Being charged by both the State and Feds is perfectly legal.)
Long and short of this, if the Supreme Court decides that this is double jeopardy . . . then a state could not charge a person for something the Federal Government has charged a case on. This mucks up the system and could keep someone like Paul Manafort from being charged in State Court . . . where the president's pardon power cannot reach.
The republicans have long held that "states rights" are sacrosanct, regarded as too important or valuable to be interfered with. Trump and the republicans want Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court in time to hear this case, and Kavanaugh will most certainly throw "states rights" and the 10th Amendment right out the window. It is not just about the presidential pardon powers, deciding double jeopardy in this case will muddy the waters so much that the Federal Government will feel free with this as precedent to interfere whenever they want to block State's affairs and decisions.
This is a very dangerous case for a so-called conservative majority Supreme Court to be deciding. The so-called conservatives are really corporate shills, and corporations are slobbering all over themselves at the potential inroads they can make by usurping state law in favor of corporate law. The 10th Amendment is written so that powers not specifically granted to the Federal Government by the Constitution are reserved to the States and to the people. Corporations have been using
the courts to strip away rights from the people for decades and grant rights to the corporations over people. A double jeopardy finding in Gamble vs the US would be a gift, a genuinely corrupt boon to corporations. Kiss democracy good-bye with a single Supreme Court decision.
Notice how we have heard nothing about this at all from the networks,
corporate media is too busy presenting us with other shinier objects.https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/09/trump-pardon-orrin-hatch-supreme-court/571285/
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@faanlouw6109 - Your essay is flat out wrong. You have been indoctrinated, what you have written comes straight out of the Oligarch's Propaganda Handbook. Socialism is dynamic, not static. What you refer to as socialism is capitalism's propagandist version, not the evolving socialism of the current era. Even Professor Wolff is not entirely current on the evolution of socialism. Capitalism is finished as an economic model. Infinite growth is not possible for any system, natural or artificial. Capitalism surpassed the capabilities of a production based economy at least two decades ago and has long before that time been looting entire countries, draining treasuries and impoverishing the citizenry. Your last two sentences are what the wealthy rely on to protect themselves from the masses they have oppressed, while they are busy stealing the wealth of nations. Oh, and by the way, there were always private property and markets, even in the primitive beginnings of socialism. It figures you would think such garbage, you are reliant on dogma instead of the hard work of researching through these ideas for yourself.
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What I have seen so far, suggests that the George Floyd murder and the subsequent property damage during the Minneapolis protest over the following days, was a coordinated effort by white suprematism movements embedded in the Minneapolis police department and the White House.
Trump needs a diversion from his abject failure of a presidency, and a way to kill more black, brown and poor people by state sponsored violence, and through more infections with the Covid-19 virus. The provocative killing of George Floyd was done on purpose, in order to provoke a response from minorities and the poor people who are suffering economic devastation because of the federal governments failure to help the population, and to divert our attention from the aggressive Wall Street and corporate looting of the federal treasury that just took place, using the CARES Act as cover.
The final goal is to upset the 2020 election so that Trump can maintain his freedom, because when he loses the election, he, his family and his entire Cabinet will be going to prison.
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Inflation is fundamentally misunderstood as a supply and demand issue, because we are still using an ancient textbook. Inflation is no longer tied to markets, it is tied to asset prices. As the market cap for any company grows, so will inflation associated with that company. If the company fails to inflate prices, it's market cap with drop. Since asset prices continue to expand, inflation is baked in to likewise allow for market cap expansion. Take gasoline for example, the market cap for oil companies has expanded by over 50% in two years, which in turn necessitated an increase in gasoline prices to further grow the market cap. We are being sold the idea that the Ukraine war caused gas prices to increase, because the war is excellent cover, but the war has little to do with the actual price of gasoline. Same pattern plays out for everything we buy, while diverting us with tales of supply train issues or some other story to cover for the need to raise prices to support the growing market capitalization (stock price) of the company.
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This racism and other-blaming was all brought to the surface and promoted by the very wealthy and industrial capitalists over 40 years ago, who needed a convenient narrative to obscure the neo-liberal agenda to create the modern Kings and Serfs society. . . which they knew would strip most Americans of their assets and wages over the past 40 years and accelerate the stripping over the next 40 years. This racism narrative is how they are hiding their action from all of us.
Here is what we really need to be concerned with: The Macro Economic Scales. Right now 17 international wealth funds have $50 Trillion in their portfolio's seeking a rate of return. Even at a paltry 5% rate of return, it will only take 14.4 years to double. That is $50 trillion in "free" money gained in 15 years. Where is that going to come from? Certainly not from the legitimate "productive" economy, no . . . it will be "extracted" from all of us and from "regime change" countries.
It is time for us to back public policy that puts a hard limit on wealth accumulation, because the appetite of "rate of return" investments cannot possibly be met. When you extrapolate out to 45 years, the $50 trillion of today will becomes $400 trillion. That means $350 trillion dollars gets sucked out of the planet just to pay interest. This is beyond unsustainable, it is destruction, disaster, rape, murder and plunder rolled into one ugly ball.
You ever see what happens to a rooftop when too much snow accumulates on it? Collapse. The modern narrative of racism and other-baiting is meant to obscure the nature of the coming collapse. The sheer mass of that much accumulated wealth is going to collapse everything world wide . . . and we have to stop this. Time for an income and wealth cap, it is the only way we can manage this outrage.
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@Halfdan Ingolfsson - Pay no attention to those who would mock you. Though I don't consider my interest in the disintegration to be "morbid", I also have been keenly studying what is happening here. I also had a difficult time following Professor Powell, because he is following historical threads which have limited meaning to most, in order to find his solutions. I come at this problem of racism from the question of; how did racism arise? Going back much farther than the establishment of the United States, the core cause of racism seems to always arise from the exploitation of one group for the sole benefit of another groups wealth and/or status. I posted a stand alone comment on this video, which I have copied and pasted below for your consideration.
"Racism has its roots and continuing strength in wealth accumulation. The Africans where brought here to build wealth for white plantation owners. The Asians were brought here to build wealth for white railroad owners. The Mexicans were brought here to build wealth for white agricultural land owners. In each case, the people brought here had one purpose, to build wealth for white people, and then these people were deemed disposable. Racism is all about white people disposing of the people they exploited to build wealth. Therefor racism will continue until the wealth these innocent colored ancestors built is restored to their descendants.
As a white man, I want to see justice for these people, which can only happen when we tear down the citadel of white wealth accumulation and have a hard cap on individual wealth accumulation."
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Julia Lewis - I voted for Hillary in the 2016 primary and the general election, because I was naively optimistic that when we had our first woman president, we could finally move on to the important work needed to insure that we actually have a future. I wanted this because I was concerned about my two daughters and the world they are inheriting.
This primary vote horrified my eldest daughter. She was for Bernie, but I didn't even know who Bernie was at the time. She told me about how horrible Hillary was, and I told her she was being idealistic. I was 55 years old at that time and thought I knew more that she did. After the election, I started a research project into the economy and two years later, my eyes are wide open. My daughter was correct and I was wrong.
The Democratic Party is broken. We cannot fix it by voting for establishment candidates like Hillary, she is the same as a republican. If we must endure republicans due to vote splitting, then that is what we must do in order to reshape the democrats and push them to the left. Otherwise we will never, and I mean never, have a progressive president and Congress.
We have doomed our species and every other life on this planet over the past forty years. The only thing that we as a people can do is vote, if we vote for corporate centrist democrats . . . . then we might as well have just voted republican. You will not help anyone by voting for a centrist, you will only make things worse. So clench up and vote third party if the democrats put up a centrist for president. It might land us with Trump again, but a message must be sent to the democrats that the days of corporations and Wall Street running the Democratic Party are over.
Bernie 2020.
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The free market economy is taking over and eliminating our democracy. The free market takes away the voice of the citizens wherever it controls a part of the commons. No part of the commons should be run or administered by a for profit company, this includes power utilities, roads, water, medicine and pharmaceutical, military, police, schools, public transportation, prisons, and the list goes on and on. We have enough proof that the free market economy does a horrible job managing public sector resources, plus the supporters of free market economics are in reality practicing wealth extraction economics.
I think 40 plus years of Reaganomics and neoliberalism has proven that the free market economy cannot be trusted in a great many sectors, especially in the public sector as relating to the commons.
Additionally, if the free market economy supporters think their system works so great, then why do they want so much money for corporate welfare? Seems to me they can do just as well without tax breaks or subsidies from local, state, or the federal government.
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In one of two leading industrial powers of the 1960's, the Captains of Industry looked about at the world opening up before them. They said unto themselves, why be Captains of Industry in the United States of America . . . when we can be Kings of Capitalism over the entire world! That is when the national economy of the USA was abandoned in favor of a global economy that forever crippled the American worker. We should recognize this simple fact and devise a plan to extract ourselves from under the claw of predatory capitalism run amok.
Professor Wolff is presenting us with some options, and there are others with valid ideas. One way or the other, we are living with the consequences of OUR industries abandoning OUR country and its workers. The same old shhict being sold us by Washington D.C. will not work out for us, and we know it. Do we consign ourselves to enslavement . . . to forever being in debt just to live? Or . . . just a thought here . . . do we make some bold new plans?
I for one do not believe that any sane person needs more than a set amount of money to live fabulously. Work hard and earn a lot more than others . . that is ok. Yet when you reach a certain point, society will be better served by your excess earnings going directly back into the society from whence it came. The mankind will be able to do the BIG things, the stuff a healthy, robust and profitable private industry would just never tackle.
Personal, business, corporate . . . tax it all so no one is holding excess profits "offshore" anymore. No one needs THAT much money unless POWER is what they really crave. For that reason alone, excess wealth should go back into the society from whence it came. That would stop individuals from adversely affecting all of mankind with stupid and deadly decisions. We can see first hand how dangerous it is for mankind to have so much wealth and power concentrated into the hands and limited minds of so few.
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SuperThumpasaurus - Must be doing ok here because aside from Michael Moore, I have only name recognition for three out of four of the others you mentioned.
As to the original post, this is what struck a chord with me: "Most conservatives are sociopaths that have no empathy for their fellow human beings."
Truth be told, back in my days of innocence before the election I would happily spend my spare time building models and listening to documentaries on my favorite subjects. Got most of my news form the corporate media, thought I knew from that enough about what was going on.
Bit by bit though, some news was getting to me from other sources especially about the economy. There came a point at which I decided to dig in and do active research, but I kept putting it off because other priorities were more important. When I really started to dig in, I found it was not as simple as being "all about the economy".
It was the behavior of Mitch McConnell in the Senate that finally kicked off my personal economic investigation. He was blocking legislation of all kinds, but the lack of hearing for Obama's Supreme Court pick was beyond reason I thought. It was reported that he told then President Obama that if Obama released the news about Russia meddling in the election, then he Mitch McConnell would attack the president on the grounds of Democratic partisan meddling in election affairs prior to November 8th.
This was too rich in smelly stuff for me, because I had been tracking some of the republican legislative obstruction in the Senate and I thought that McConnell's actions were very hypocritical because he does the partisan politics to the extreme.
Once again I come back to the OP quote "Most conservatives are sociopaths that have no empathy for their fellow human beings." My investigations of the economy have now spanned 100 years and there is too much information for me to claim "expert". Yet the pattern is very clear to me, policy makers who lack empathy for their fellow human beings, and who may indeed lack a conscience altogether, have been manipulating our laws to alter the economy and indeed the very fabric of American society.
This is the real core issue here. Forces are at work whose ultimate goal is power, unconstitutional power. The kind of power that breaks a people and a country. The kind of power that will render our United States Constitution useless and powerless. It does not matter if you or I am a conservative or liberal, republican or democrat, because all of us together will be under the boot.
The data is out there to prove and to fight this, it just has never been honed into the sharp and keen "edge of the wedge" needed to force it out into the open. Some of the information gets presented in political debate, but it does not yet have the needed punch to get society's full attention. If the "Dark Money Forces" (I need a name for this) can keep the fog machine of misinformation going, they will succeed at their goal of power and domination. That is the sociopathic element, that is the psychotic element as well, and not just as characterized by an impaired relationship with reality, they simply do not care what happens to those under their boot.
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Because from the 1970's onward, all economic productivity gains have gone to those who already accumulated wealth. This problem has a simple origin with wide ranging effects. We keep trying to solve problems created by the effects instead of solving the problem at its source. The 2019 economic year illustrates the origin clearly.
The sum of privately held financial assets for 2019 is greater than $90 trillion.
The 2019 national output by the productive economy as measured by GDP is about $21.5 trillion.
From these two figures we can compare the size of interest earning wealth to the size of the economy, $90 trillion compared to $21.5 trillion.
Financial assets gain 5% to 7% annually on average.
GDP has grown by 2.56% over the past three decades.
From these two figures we can compare the growth rate of wealth to the growth rate of the economy.
If we use the smaller figure of 5% growth for financial assets, 2019 generated $4.5 trillion in asset growth.
According to The Bureau of Economic Analysis of the United States Department of Commerce, Current-dollar GDP increased 4.1 percent, or $848.8 billion, in 2019 to a level of $21.43 trillion.
If only 18.8% of financial asset growth for 2019 was cashed out as capital gains, that would wipe out the entire $848.8 billion GDP growth for the year. This is why we don't have affordable healthcare, education and housing like they did in 1950's, because all economic gains are going to the 1%. The only solution for this mess is to heavily tax capital gains or finally recognize we need to put a hard cap on individual wealth accumulation. Every system has an upper limit. We need to recognize that our economic system breaks down because there is no governor on the upper end performance. Every race car fan knows what happens to high performance engines running at top speed, they burn up. Same thing is happening to our economy.
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This racism and other-blaming was all brought to the surface and promoted by the very wealthy and industrial capitalists over 40 years ago, who needed a convenient narrative to obscure the neo-liberal agenda to create the modern Kings and Serfs society. . . which they knew would strip most Americans of their assets and wages over the past 40 years and accelerate the stripping over the next 40 years. This racism narrative is how they are hiding their action from all of us.
Here is what we really need to be concerned with: The Macro Economic Scales. Right now 17 international wealth funds have $50 Trillion in their portfolio's seeking a rate of return. Even at a paltry 5% rate of return, it will only take 14.4 years to double. That is $50 trillion in "free" money gained in 15 years. Where is that going to come from? Certainly not from the legitimate "productive" economy, no . . . it will be "extracted" from all of us and from "regime change" countries.
It is time for us to back public policy that puts a hard limit on wealth accumulation, because the appetite of "rate of return" investments cannot possibly be met. When you extrapolate out to 45 years, the $50 trillion of today will becomes $400 trillion. That means $350 trillion dollars gets sucked out of the planet just to pay interest. This is beyond unsustainable, it is destruction, disaster, rape, murder and plunder rolled into one ugly ball.
You ever see what happens to a rooftop when too much snow accumulates on it? Collapse. The modern narrative of racism and other-baiting is meant to obscure the nature of the coming collapse. The sheer mass of that much accumulated wealth is going to collapse everything world wide . . . and we have to stop this. Time for an income and wealth cap, it is the only way we can manage this outrage.
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Here is something you might be interested in:
I would like to impart two main items, one simple and the second
requiring some elaboration. First: It was because of the Justice
Democrats and their campaign platform that I switched my voter
registration from Independent to Democrat. JD's are very appealing and
they are in the main on the correct track. However, reform is not
enough. Reforms are always undermined and then removed by the oligarchs
and their minions. That leads to my second item.
I live in California and my eldest daughter (29) lives in Missouri with
her husband. Over this past weekend I called her and we discussed my
wealth cap proposal. She asked me to define a "life of luxury" so we
could have a basis for discussion. Since "luxury" is defined differently
by different folk, I provided this baseline for our discussion:
"If a family lives can afford to live in a 29 room mansion and they are
building an new mansion with 92 rooms, that is too much wealth."
She told me that "mansions" in her area ran from 1.6 to 3 million
dollars, so we started our "thought experiment" using the upper limit of
3 million dollars for housing and another 3 million for property taxes
over a lifetime. I would ask her for the upper limit on what she
considered "luxury" for transportation, food, clothing, entertainment,
furniture, healthcare, travel and other lifestyle luxury amenities.
Together we came to a total of 50 million dollars in accumulated wealth
which would allow her and her family to live in the utmost of luxury and
security. So if we break that down into an annual income over a 30 year
working life, no one should really require more than 1.75 million
dollars per year of total income after taxes.
You see, there are only a small proportion of millionaires and
billionaires who use their wealth to benefit mankind. Elon Musk, Sir
Richard Branson, perhaps the Gates (though I don't actually see what
they are doing, My Lady reminds me of their Foundation work) . . . and
the guy who made his fortune making and selling those 5-Minute Energy
drinks (Billions for Change). On the diabolical power hungry side of the
ledger we have the Trump's, the Mercers, the Koch Brothers, Julian
Sinclair Smith of Sinclair Broadcasting, Rupert Murdoch and family, the
Bush family, the Dupont's, the Johnson family, plus countless others I
cannot name without looking them up. Throw into the mix the lobbying
cartels for every known corporation using their money to buy OUR
government representatives.
Put a wealth cap on all of them and big companies and corporations will
have to break apart, ending monopolies. Co-operatives between many
stakeholders will become the new norm instead of the exception. Large
building projects will require the cooperation of many builders instead
of a few Mega-Corps. Large companies owned by individuals will be forced
into reinvesting into their employees and company infrastructure. Many
of the things the Justice Democrats stand for will happen by default
with one simple and sweeping change.
I could go on, but if you are as intelligent as I believe, you will see
the possibilities in this once you give it some thought. So many of
societies ill's will get attention and even cures with the revenues
generated by a wealth cap tax . . . and no one will suffer the
deprivation of their chance to earn millions. With vastly increased tax
revenue, funding the vast potential of technical and artistic talent
among our population can be unleashed. With a Universal Basic Income
people are no longer bound to the useless hamster wheel of human wastage
the current capitalism economy creates. ALSO: There will no longer be
an oligarchy with the means and tools to undermine these societal
reforms. Just think about it.
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The end game for republicans is to burn down the Constitution and hand
the country to the oligarchs to begin the New American Autocracy. It is
not just the "small Government" cult, it is much larger than that. In
the modern age it stated with the 1971 Powell Memo written by a SCOTUS
Justice, however the tentacles go back in time to the Butler rebellion
attempted coup d'etat against FDR.
The republicans have brainwashed their supporters for over 100 years.
The "personal responsibility" and "rugged individualism" cons are
perfect examples. The roots of the personal responsibility con goes back
to when the old industrialists pulled workers off the farm to work in
factories, it is a scam to transfer guilt from perpetrators to
innocents. These capitalists knew they were ruining a self sustaining
way of life in the name of profits and they needed a way to subdue
workers when layoffs occurred. So they used psychology as diversion.
The rugged individualism scam was used to convince the worker population
that one day they too might become rich and you don't want some damn
socialist stealing the gains of your hard work. The capitalists knew
full well that with a population to defend them, they could keep on
getting rich off worker toil, pay off the right people and build wealth
with little to no effort on their part. Look at the wealthiest 1% today,
these people do not know the meaning of hard work. Do any of you think
Bezos or Gates actually break a sweat for the 20 million a week they
supposedly EARN?
The fuse on this powder keg was lit decades ago. In 1982 the income from
rents, dividends and interest surpassed ALL of the combined wages being
paid in the USA and it has grown worse with every passing year. Now, in
this decade after the 2008 recession, the income from rents, dividends
and interest has surpassed the earnings of all companies and
corporations . . . world wide. We live in an Extraction Economy, all
economic growth is a measure of wealth they are extracting from all of
us, not from actual economic productivity.
The republicans did this at the bidding of their masters, the Donor
Class or 1% . . . and in the 1980's the democrats jumped into bed with
the republicans by taking campaign donations or bribes from the Bankers
and Wall Street.
The incentive, is that all these politicians are getting rich. You
cannot become a multi-millionaire from $170, 000 annual salary with the
high prices in Washington DC. Yet, most members of Congress are exactly
that, millionaires. Trump's purpose is to weaken and topple the
democracy once and for all, that is why the republican Senators are
sticking with him . . . to get their reward when the democratic USA is
toppled.
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@gmanon1181 - I agree with you that police can be the most useful, and helpful, people in the world. In the city where I've spent most of my life, I've seen the full spectrum. Ordinary people are realizing that for the sake of all of us, it's better to treat each other right and peacefully coexist, this is true. However we have a full on demonstration going on, that the wealthy treat us like resources instead of people, plus the two levels of justice are plainly visible between the wealthy and everyone else. If my life is threatened, the police might take a report. If a wealthy persons life is threatened, the police will be visible in full force to protect the wealthy. Thom is correct, inequality is skewing everything including our justice system.
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bluewater454 - Your guess is incorrect. Within your guessing, you have made too many assumptions. The pattern of your assumptions are skewed by ideology, the imprint of which is obvious.
You are also making assumptions about "dispelling myths before you can get to the truth".
My world is engineering. I see social problems and economies in that context. The facts are pretty obvious to me, the current machinery involved has issues. Those issues can be mapped out, then they can be dealt with and repaired if the people involved act in a rational manner. Since people are highly irrational, engineers can deal with that element in their designs also.
So far, you have contributed one item to my base of knowledge. For that I am grateful. However, you are being frustratingly obtuse when it comes to engineering a social/economic system that works for a majority of people. Relying on the mindless capitalism driven market forces has already provided more than enough evidence that it will not fit the aforementioned criteria.
To say that such a system cannot be accomplished is simply rubbish. If you really step back and look at us humans closely, you can see the signs that some of humanity is trying to cast off technological adolescence and take the next steps in our evolution. The humans entrenched in our existing adolescence are fighting to keep us there. Clearly the more evolved humans will have to carry their backwards looking brethren unwilling into our shared future. That takes planning, and to ignore this imperative is to allow humanity to commit suicide.
So you got it wrong. I'm not looking for a utopia, I'm looking to engineer a future society in which we survive and prosper. I have ideas based on engineering concepts that can work even with a disruptive adolescent segment fighting change . . . but lets not forget that I asked for you to put forward ideas.
Please think outside "Wealth creation is a behavioral discipline" because that was not what I asked you about. You are the one stuck in that static time loop, it seems to be the only solution you have to offer. Break out of those limited confines and contribute something useful.
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bluewater454 - Please explain: "if you are interested in hearing about economic theories that eliminate the need for freedom and personal choices,"
This smacks again of predisposition, the inferred point is that obvious. Humans will always need freedom and personal choice, these are essentials built into any machinery applied to our future.
I continue to belabor the same theme and it is tedious. What is your plan, what is your construct, what is your framework for a human society designed suitable to insure "the general welfare" and "insure domestic tranquility" of the majority of its citizens?
The free market is a myth. Markets are essential within the machinery, yet none exist in a free floating self governing form. Unregulated businesses are harmful to society, every flavor of disrepute and greed is possible and inevitable. Therefor the "free market" does not truly exist nor will it ever exist. Markets are part of the machinery of human society, they need to be interpreted as such and no more. Same for business, private enterprise and commerce in general.
Humanity is on the verge of doing the great things which are now possible, yet it cannot and will not do so with the current economic machinery. Time to evolve the machinery so that we can do those greater things.
So here is another question for you: Is everyone in your family on the same behavioral discipline wavelength as you are? Or do you help out Aunt May and Uncle Ernie for the sake of family, because maybe they are not that disciplined? Is that not the purest form of "socialism"? You do help your family . . . yes? I would go so far as to say we are all very "socialist" at the bottom line.
Seems to me that there is a wide variety of knowledge and disciplines within humanity, and only a few are solidly into wealth creation behavioral discipline. Of those who are, I have noticed a disturbing trend to not question how the wealth creation is actually taking place . . . it takes a great deal of "behavioral discipline" to ignore the negative externality cost issues which arise from "wealth creation" as a way of life.
For most people, the social connections are far more important than wealth creation . . . rightfully so because we are social creatures. The "free market" and "wealth creation" aspects of our lives are actually an artificially constructed way of life, being forced upon society by those few who benefit.
So what is your plan? I get the feeling you really don't really have one.
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Tomato Pa - You are correct in virtually every assertion you make. Except you are also virtually incorrect in every assertion you make.
On face value using your comments, it would seem that we voters just have to pack up our bags and go home, why bother attempting to change anything? It simply cannot be done. Yet we are seeing political evolution happening before our very eyes. The republican party has moved farther to the right over the decades. The democratic party has also red-shifted so far they have become republican. This creates a vacuum and you know nature abhors a vacuum, a vacuum that progressives are filling and will eventually make into a solid political party.
Today's politics and economy in the USA converted to "gas powered aircraft engine parlance" . . . .
The carburetor has been leaned out so much that the engine is stalling while the airplane is attempting to climb. Stalling and falling is the next step, no more flying until recovery.
Political history tells the story of many turning points. We have been in a status-quo for decades and progressives are now putting a lot of pressure on the far right leaning establishment of both parties. The Powell Memo is still holding sway over the establishment duo, and the democrats are too afraid to change. The turning point is accelerating toward us, now unstoppable. Something will give way, I think it will be the democratic party.
Now I'm switching metaphors into the physics realm. Light is both a particle and a wave. Metaphorically, humanity is both a particle and a wave. We have been stuck as a particle for a very long time, now our survival depends on transitioning to a wave. The approaching turning point allows us to make a choice, stay a particle or become a wave. If we stay a particle, the is a solid wall called mass global extinction in our path and we cannot avoid it. If we become a wave, we may still hit the wall and die . . . or we might reflect off the wall. If our chances are slim or nothing . . . I'll take slim every time. No more time for heads in the sand.
I have lots of engineering and physics metaphors to describe our historical path, our economy and life in general. Right now we need a "manifold" change-out simultaneously for the economy and our politics. That means thinking outside the "double slit experiment" box.
Now, are you going to help me with this new "manifold" design or are we going to keep playing ping-pong?
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What I have seen so far, suggests that the George Floyd murder and the subsequent property damage during the Minneapolis protest over the following days, was a coordinated effort by white suprematism movements embedded in the Minneapolis police department and the White House.
Trump needs a diversion from his abject failure of a presidency, and a way to kill more black, brown and poor people by state sponsored violence, and through more infections with the Covid-19 virus. The provocative killing of George Floyd was done on purpose, in order to provoke a response from minorities and the poor people who are suffering economic devastation because of the federal governments failure to help the population, and to divert our attention from the aggressive Wall Street and corporate looting of the federal treasury that just took place, using the CARES Act as cover.
The final goal is to upset the 2020 election so that Trump can maintain his freedom, because when he loses the election, he, his family and his entire Cabinet will be going to prison.
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@Repdem - How? Good question. It will be a multi stage effort, beginning with us regular citizens being able to recognize the problem. The first issue involves the math of finance. I'll set the stage with the following set of facts:
Our economy has grown at an average pace of 2.56% annually over the past thirty years. Economist's like Mark Blyth have said that unless "investments" pay more than 5%, you might as well burn you money in the back yard, so we can use that 5% as a baseline for "rate of return".
Wealth takes many forms, so I am going to focus on "financial assets". In 2019, privately held financial assets exceeded $90 trillion. The economy of 2019, by comparison is much smaller at $21.5 trillion. Investments are supposed to earn their rate of returns from the real economy, so the question is this, how does a huge pile of wealth ($90 trillion) make 5% interest from a much smaller economy ($21.5 trillion) that only grows by 2.56%?
Here are the real numbers. In 2019, the economy grew by $848.8 billion. Financial assets grew by $4.5 trillion. If only 19% of the value growth in financial assets we cashed in as capital gains, it would wipe out ALL economic gains for the year. The "real economy" cannot pay these huge economic gains, this is why we have had three huge banking "bailouts" from the federal government over the past twenty years.
Our economy has been rigged like a huge Monopoly game, at this rate it will only take 12 to 15 years before all wealth is owned by the top 10%. Understanding this fact is the first step. Unless we want to become serfs in a new feudal system, we must understand how our current finance system is set up and we must tell all our friends and neighbors.
The next stage involves our vote. We cannot keep voting for the person with the most campaign money. In the primaries, I vote for the person who raise the least amount of campaign money, if they have a decent campaign platform. We must all do this, or wealth will always select our politicians.
There is more, but these are the first two stages. We ordinary people must understand the finance trap, or we are doomed.
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@_derpderp - Honest answer: UBI and price controls will not work for housing under present economic conditions. Both must be combined with a significant number of other components to become useful and relevant economic policy. UBI and price controls are parts of a system, they cannot work alone or separate without all the other parts working in assembly. UBI is being experimented with, but universal UBI could not work without wealth capping programs and potentially utilizing several other "limiter" policies. The real problem is the exponential growth of "asset" classes, that growth creates a vacuum which is only partially filled by extraction of present and future wealth. These assets are an unrecognized threat, artificial constructs that harm society because they grow faster than any productive economy, if they were biological I would call them fatal viruses. But if you look at any media, stock watching and buying stock in part or "slices" is mainstream business, because the 1% need us to buy into "wealth growth" (stocks used to mean something, now it is a scam). UBI might lower the crime rate, people are getting desperate out there because whether they realize it or not, "assets" are strangling everyone except the 1% asset owners. I'm not holding my breath though, too many people are hoodwinked and I was one not that long ago. The wealthy will fight any UBI and they will win until enough people get wise to this game. Bottom line: the economy is tiny compared to the mountain of "asset" wealth, and the mountain grows faster every year. In a few years, the growth rate of the wealth mountain will eat our entire GDP and still need more wealth to grow, which will be harvested from the future through borrowing. This system puts us all in bondage, but the prevailing belief is that we are all "free". Unless, and until that prevailing belief changes to a realistic planetary economic system, things will get worse year over year.
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What I have seen so far, suggests that the George Floyd murder and the subsequent property damage during the Minneapolis protest over the following days, was a coordinated effort by white suprematism movements embedded in the Minneapolis police department and the White House.
Trump needs a diversion from his abject failure of a presidency, and a way to kill more black, brown and poor people by state sponsored violence, and through more infections with the Covid-19 virus. The provocative killing of George Floyd was done on purpose, in order to provoke a response from minorities and the poor people who are suffering economic devastation because of the federal governments failure to help the population, and to divert our attention from the aggressive Wall Street and corporate looting of the federal treasury that just took place, using the CARES Act as cover.
The final goal is to upset the 2020 election so that Trump can maintain his freedom, because when he loses the election, he, his family and his entire Cabinet will be going to prison.
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Dedier - You are very correct in that "the majority of the populace is either too uneducated to understand or too disinterested to be concerned." This is something that concerns me greatly, because it leaves only the very few to come up with AND enact change for the better, on behalf of that greater part of the populace. Those very few on the "light" or good side are poor in resources when compared to the vast wealth of the very few and powerful who represent the "dark" side.
When it comes to collaboration, I have a specific "something" for which I could greatly use more minds to flesh out the idea and build it into something real. The inspiration on my end comes from the "Star Trek" economy of the future. I just finished writing out a version for another post, so I will copy and paste the text body here and I would greatly appreciate your critique and criticisms. Mostly I am wary because past reforms have always been eventually undermined and eliminated by the "royals" of our time, the oligarchs and mega-corporations. So here goes:
I would like to impart two main items, one simple and the second
requiring some elaboration. First: It was because of the Justice
Democrats and their campaign platform that I switched my voter
registration from Independent to Democrat. JD's are very appealing and
they are in the main on the correct track. However, reform is not
enough. Reforms are always undermined and then removed by the oligarchs
and their minions. That leads to my second item.
I live in California and my eldest daughter (29) lives in Missouri with
her husband. Over this past weekend I called her and we discussed my
wealth cap proposal. She asked me to define a "life of luxury" so we
could have a basis for discussion. Since "luxury" is defined differently
by different folk, I provided this baseline for our discussion:
"If a family lives can afford to live in a 29 room mansion and they are
building an new mansion with 92 rooms, that is too much wealth."
She told me that "mansions" in her area ran from 1.6 to 3 million
dollars, so we started our "thought experiment" using the upper limit of
3 million dollars for housing and another 3 million for property taxes
over a lifetime. I would ask her for the upper limit on what she
considered "luxury" for transportation, food, clothing, entertainment,
furniture, healthcare, travel and other lifestyle luxury amenities.
Together we came to a total of 50 million dollars in accumulated wealth
which would allow her and her family to live in the utmost of luxury and
security. So if we break that down into an annual income over a 30 year
working life, no one should really require more than 1.75 million
dollars per year of total income after taxes.
You see, there are only a small proportion of millionaires and
billionaires who use their wealth to benefit mankind. Elon Musk, Sir
Richard Branson, perhaps the Gates (though I don't actually see what
they are doing, My Lady reminds me of their Foundation work) . . . and
the guy who made his fortune making and selling those 5-Minute Energy
drinks (Billions for Change). On the diabolical power hungry side of the
ledger we have the Trump's, the Mercers, the Koch Brothers, Julian
Sinclair Smith of Sinclair Broadcasting, Rupert Murdoch and family, the
Bush family, the Dupont's, the Johnson family, plus countless others I
cannot name without looking them up. Throw into the mix the lobbying
cartels for every known corporation using their money to buy OUR
government representatives.
Put a wealth cap on all of them and big companies and corporations will
have to break apart, ending monopolies. Co-operatives between many
stakeholders will become the new norm instead of the exception. Large
building projects will require the cooperation of many builders instead
of a few Mega-Corps. Large companies owned by individuals will be forced
into reinvesting into their employees and company infrastructure. Many
of the things the Justice Democrats stand for will happen by default
with one simple and sweeping change.
I could go on, but if you are as intelligent as I believe, you will see
the possibilities in this once you give it some thought. So many of
societies ill's will get attention and even cures with the revenues
generated by a wealth cap tax . . . and no one will suffer the
deprivation of their chance to earn millions. With vastly increased tax
revenue, funding the vast potential of technical and artistic talent
among our population can be unleashed. With a Universal Basic Income
people are no longer bound to the useless hamster wheel of human wastage
the current capitalism economy creates. ALSO: There will no longer be
an oligarchy with the means and tools to undermine these societal
reforms. Just think about it.
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Sheila chambers - I share your concerns, they are quite valid. From my current point of view, there is abundant evidence that we as a people are being actively maneuvered about by unseen hands. This shows in the election problems, the economy . . . even our constitutional rights. Right now I am in my late fifties and it is only recently that I have become aware of how bad the bigger picture is. Most of my life there has been a sense of disquiet in my mind for reasons I could sense but not pin down.
We have been scammed by the capitalists who own our government. Capitalism is unsustainable, government won't do its duty . . . I fear the eventual collapse of both will lead to famine as our people cannot feed themselves. Whatever happens, it will not be pretty.
This is why I attack the source. History has shown that all reforms for the people get undone by the wealthy over time. Reform enactment and eventual undoing follow a historical cycle, same as regulatory enactment then deregulation and the up/down "business" cycle. The wealthy like it that way, even promoting regulation and reform, because it provides ample distraction from the "Achilles Heel" of the oligarchy, that vast wealth which is central to their power.
There is really only one solution that will result in permanent reforms. Take down the wealth of everyone to the point that no one person can "buy" or unduly influence the government of the people. No one needs "billions" of dollars, so that is a starting point. How many millions then, does one "need"? There is not an issue with rewarding good works handsomely, for ideas, inventions and successful business acumen, . . . . however there is a point in luxury life where more money is a pointless acquisition . . . . unless your goal is to wield power.
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@OMGAnotherday - You are correct, there is no move to bring manufacturing back into the economy. The exit from the USA, of industrial capitalists from the 1960's onward, should never be reversed, or so it seems if one is to take seriously the guru's of the modern financial age. I think that to even make the suggestion, creates fear that the details of acquisition and asset stripping which has characterized the past 30 years of "business" in the USA would become all too apparent to the common citizen.
Michael Hudson wrote a long, two part paper on compound interest. When I look at the charts for financial assets and even GDP growth, they are on "exponential curves". Exponential curves applied to anything on a finite planet is an expression of the impossible. Michael referred to Richard Price, who wrote in 1772 the following: "Money bearing compound interest increases at first slowly. But, the rate of increase being continually accelerated, it becomes in some time so rapid, as to mock all the powers of the imagination. One penny, put out at our Saviour’s birth at 5% compound interest, would, before this time, have increased to a greater sum than would be obtained in a 150 millions of Earths, all solid gold".
Bottom line: We have been lied to by the smartest, most powerful and wealthy people, and many other smart people believe in those lies. That must be the type of persons who run and work at the Federal Reserve, because the economy we have grown up with is impossible to mange with infinite growth.
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yzeew w - That recession you are forecasting is already something we are familiar with from recent decades.
So it was not a good idea then, to move the steel industry out of the USA decades ago and thus seriously impact the GDP. Countless other manufacturing jobs have been exported over the decades, did that not affect the GDP? How did the GDP double over the decades will all that loss of productive jobs? I'll wager it was the growth of non-producing business entities like health insurance companies. They help the GDP of the rich, not the average person or worker.
An industry like steel is productive, making a contribution. You want a non productive industry practice (medical insurance companies) with proven predatory behavior, to be protected as a ward against recession?
McDonalds is soon going to install order taking kiosks in 2500 stores, a very efficient move for McDonalds bottom line. They will make a lot more profit, which will go to the top executives. Meanwhile a few thousand workers will become a redundant and unprofitable expense. McDonalds will let the workers go, its nothing personal you know . . . . and the externalities like the now greater cost to society at large is not McDonalds concern. Does not McDonalds actions here contribute to recession? What responsibility resides with McDonalds for the concerns of the economy or even of society?
We have to decide as a people what to place in higher esteem, the unfettered capitalism that enriches a few at the top, or the social responsibility of society as a whole (including business and corporations) to take care of our people.
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Dick Hamilton - Ok, very good short summary, I don't necessarily disagree with your assessment, mostly is sounds like what have read so far. This is still fairly new to me and I do not claim to be an expert, just very-very alarmed over what I am learning.
The parts that I am mostly inflamed over is what Milton Friedman said about social responsibility and market principles, that a company manager who makes a socially responsible decision that costs more than a straight up business bottom line decision . . . is stealing money from the company. Business has no business making socially responsible decisions, that is government and society's responsibility. When business infiltrates government, society becomes an externality. This is unacceptable.
My perception is this particular conservative/neoliberal mindset has spread like cancer throughout the world, the bottom line is paramount and "externalities" are not to be concerned about. This is madness. Market principles cannot be applied everywhere when the fallout is to simply say that only business bottom line matters, when without society there would be no business or profits to have. We have to take care of our people.
Also, my understanding of Conservatism, especially of the fiscal type, is to make financially responsible decisions within the framework of budgetary allowance. That is how we run our household.
Neoliberalism seems to have broken out of the descriptive framework you have laid out and has become this all consuming monster. Hayek or Friedman's economic theories may have started out in the "conservative economists" camp, but I don't think that is where they are camping out right now.
The Preamble of the Constitution may not have direct legal standing, yet I think neoliberalism is diametrically opposed the the idea of "promoting the general welfare" of "We the People". Something is very wrong with the course our government has taken over the last forty years, and I'll wager it has a great deal to to with the neoliberal mindset that has infiltrated into government through our elected officials.
Thank you for the civilized discourse.
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yzeew w - Don't count on the supreme court. They have been compromised, three at least are in the pockets of the billionaire class.
I'm doing a copy and paste here:
Congressional Progressive Caucus
Co-Chairs Mark Pocan and Raúl Grijalva
First Vice Chair Pramila Jayapal
Whip Matt Cartwright
Vice Chairs David Cicilline, Keith Ellison, Ruben Gallego, Ro Khanna, Sheila Jackson Lee, Jamie Raskin, Jan Schakowsky and Mark Takano
More:
On May 9, 2017, House Representative Ro Khanna of the California 17th district announced that he would become a Justice Democrat, making him the first sitting member of Congress to join.
Back to my own words:
The Justice Democrats seek to add members to the Congressional Progressive Caucus, make it stronger and eventually overwhelm the corporate democrats, thus taking the party from the inside. A worthy cause if ever we are going to fight for one.
Plus this: We have a larger mission, save human kind and all life forms on the planet. Look this up:
Methane Hydrate Gasification and the Permian–Triassic Extinction Event.
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Dick Hamilton - Sorry about the name mixup when I first posted. Your definition is pretty much spot on from my readings and research. With neo-libralism it is impossible to compress adequate information into just a few sentences without losing the essence of what we are dealing with.
It seems to me the goal of neo-liberalism is to create two classes, the upper class and the *under class*. The upper class has the vote, power, wealth and rights, the under class has none of those.
Employer/employee, Royalty/subject, Lord/serf, Master/slave, the neo-liberals crave return to the rightful order. From their highly punitive social perspective, wealth is king and the only thing that really matters. Health and well being are meaningless, especially for the greater population. (Society is dead, it matters not.)
The framers of the U.S. Constitution tried their best to give us the tools to fight this kind of tyranny. Neo-liberalism is in direct conflict with the U.S. Constitution because it does not serve to "promote the general welfare" of "We the People".
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What I have seen so far, suggests that the George Floyd murder and the subsequent property damage during the Minneapolis protest over the following days, was a coordinated effort by white suprematism movements embedded in the Minneapolis police department and the White House.
Trump needs a diversion from his abject failure of a presidency, and a way to kill more black, brown and poor people by state sponsored violence, and through more infections with the Covid-19 virus. The provocative killing of George Floyd was done on purpose, in order to provoke a response from minorities and the poor people who are suffering economic devastation because of the federal governments failure to help the population, and to divert our attention from the aggressive Wall Street and corporate looting of the federal treasury that just took place, using the CARES Act as cover.
The final goal is to upset the 2020 election so that Trump can maintain his freedom, because when he loses the election, he, his family and his entire Cabinet will be going to prison.
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Yasmine Steinbauer - That line you wrote: "Of course I can't rule it out 100%, but everything we know today speaks against it being real experiences." is probably the least pompous and most relevant contribution you have made to this conversation. If humanity manages to survive another 2500 years, what is known now will be quite comparable to what Democritus knew compared to knowledge of the present day. We are adolescent children who know virtually nothing at this stage of our development. Thank you for finally making a contribution that deserves merit. As before however, you immediately resume with the grand pomposity we have all come to expect.
Axiom: The first two sentences which started this comment thread are a statement that is taken to be true, to serve as a premise or starting point for further reasoning and arguments.
You have been participating in axiomatic arguments against the subject of this conversation. You have grounded your arguments in what seems to you . . . to indicate the only potential truths. You have consistently ruled out other possibilities based on the fact that you-yourself have never experienced anything supporting what "The Everyday Liberal Show" has postulated, which is not a reasoning approach. As history has shown, that is an extremely short-sighted posture for a supposedly scientifically minded person (the "I can rule it out to 99.9%" remark). You have no yardstick for which such a remark can be compared for accuracy, so declaring "I can rule it out to 99.9%", would be the same as declaring you know exactly where the universe ends.
This is why I made the "you live in your own universe" observation. Reality . . . My Dear Lady, is not made entirely of what you are able to perceive . . . reality is far grander than your limited perception. My advice, learn to be humble before the universe . . . after all, it made all of us and everything else.
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@wesleygordon1645 - We are in agreement about one thing you wrote, the unscrupulous super rich do abuse capitalism. What people are experiencing with China and their allies, have been described by journalists and scholars as authoritarian socialism. Russia on the other hand, is not a socialist country. There are other wings of socialism, which is not a "one size fits all" economic system. What you wrote "Socialism first creates poverty, then starvation", clearly references the authoritarian model. That model is highlighted in our propaganda, which conveniently leaves out other wings of socialism.
Venezuela has a successful version of socialism even under duress, that country has has vast resources with which to support it's people. Venezuela is under siege warfare and blockade by the USA and it's allies, yet even under that duress the people of that country are not starving or living in squalor. What you hear about Venezuela in the USA is pure capitalist propaganda or the result of the use of financial and military force being applied against that country, which puts Venezuela outside your narrow interpretation of socialism.
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bluewater454 - Before I begin my main comment I want to make this statement. I have greatly enjoyed reading your comments and have come to respect you knowledge, indeed I have learned from you about the FR dollar and its devaluation. It is indeed a rare thing when someone in the comment section with adversarial economic viewpoints actually contributes to my education in a meaningful manner. Thank you.
Your reference to the Titanic is an apt one and a good metaphor to use. In like vein I am going to use nautical metaphors to illustrate points I will be making . . . because they work so well. The reference also fits into an area of interest for me, as a model ship designer I have more expertise on the history of ships than I do on the history or workings of the economy.
In your valiant effort to answer my question, you have highlighted by many examples of what I will term "damage control" attempts. None of these attempts were effective, in fact they made the problem worse.
Your comment subjects reminded me of two segments of naval military history.
1). In the Battle of Jutland, Vice-admiral Beatty is reported to have remarked "there seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today," after two of them had exploded within half an hour during the battle. His crews had started to disregard safety procedures during the battle, in an effort to fire their guns faster. This bit of history reminds me of how banking regulations when removed, seems to result in future disaster for the associated economy.
2). In the WW2 naval aircraft carrier engagements, the Japanese inflicted heavy damage as did the American forces. We were outnumbered 2 to 1 at the beginning of the war, yet our carriers prevailed over and over again. Both the British and Americans had excellent measures of containing any avgas fires (seawater annulus fuel lines, carbon dioxide filled lines, extinguishers readily available etc) and every sailor was taught on how to fight fire. Not so with the Japanese, and they paid dearly for that oversight. The British had learned their lessons from the previous war and did not repeat their mistakes.
We have an economic system that does not learn from previous disasters and whatever safe guards that have been developed are being shredded and destroyed on purpose by this economic system. Can you imagine what would have happened to the British and American navies in WW2 if lessons from the previous war were ignored?
A). Going off the gold standard, B). Devaluing the FR note, aka the U.S. dollar, C). Pushing sub-prime mortgages, D). Debt based economy, E). Sustaining household income requiring women and children to work, F). Deregulation G). Tax cuts. . . . . these are examples that I would liken to "damage control parties" which are doing ineffective work, . . . but were is the damage, what is the nature of the damage and what caused it?
You have done a great job pointing out many of these thing yet the core question still remains unanswered. How can we do damage control and repairs, not to mention go on sailing when we don't understand what happened to us?
I have come to understand it this way. We did not hit an iceberg or have shellfire score a direct hit on our powder magazines. That would be clearly understood. What has happened, the cause of the economic shift which has in my opinion doomed our economy . . . was the death of 1000 cuts.
Our demise was not in any of the items you brought up, they all happened after our 1000 cuts were administered. Our demise was brought about during the 1960's when I was a child, when our leading capitalists abandoned our national economy and labor force. One by one and then by the hundreds, our U.S. industrialists who owned the means of production here in the States, sought to abandon the overpaid U.S. labor market because (dramatic pause), thanks in part to WW2 . . . . the entire world of labor had opened up to them and was beckoning seductively (come hither you profit seeking and very handsome men of capitalism . . . ).
There was no conspiracy to do this, it was capitalism taking advantage of market conditions. Yet due to this action and the fact that they basically kept it all hush-hush at first, the citizens of the USA and the U.S. economy (that WAS working for workers) . . . began to bleed out all over the floor. Our representative politicians reacted by painting the floor red and whistling a jaunty tune that with the lyrics "I can't see so, nothing to see here".
When our industrialists abandoned the national economy, they royally screwed us over. Everything else since then has been ineffective damage control.
Earlier on you wrote:
"Like most socialists, you are long on rhetoric and short on accurate information."
Well now, I am not an expert on the economy and never wanted to be one. I actually trained to be a capitalist machinist, then retrained as an capitalist architect, then retrained again as a capitalist pizza delivery driver. As a 56 year old, what capitalist job set do I retrain for now that I am broke and broken?
There is currently a 62% labor participation rate, and I have not participated in the jobs economy since 2008-2009. There are so many my age that are "ghosts" in this economy, we are not wanted any longer. So now I am doing what you advocated for, trying to attain the means of production and become "self sufficient". The economic headwinds are horrendous, and thus I began to doubt what the old timers in business were telling me about how to succeed.
That is why I made it a project two years ago to find out what the hell was happening with our economy. Being an accomplished and proper "capitalist project manager" and the kind of person who takes projects all the way from design to completion, I brought that knowledge and research capability to bear on "my economic research project". My biggest discovery was that all of us workers are "short on accurate information" as you stated, because our news media/representative government has been lying to us and misdirecting us. I felt betrayed.
Naturally I started seeking alternatives to the economy we have, and now here we are talking about true Marxism and Resource Based Economies, not that propaganda bullshit lies the government and media have been feeding us about what "socialism and communism" is.
So . . . how do you think we get out of this disastrous economic conundrum?
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@xandro2445 - Respectfully Sir, the military will eventually be used to keep the capitalist oligarchy in power. It does not take much research to find out that our economy is being cannibalized. Here is how that cannibalization is being done. The top 20% of the USA are holding 2.5 times our annual GDP in financial assets (over $50 trillion). The interest on those assets is five times greater than our economy can support and that is supposing that the entire GDP growth is used solely to pay interest. As they say, the facts on the ground are are these, GDP growth in 2018 was 2.56% or $560 billion, while the interest on the top 20%'s financial assets topped $2.5 trillion.
Simply put, you cannot have accumulated wealth that is greater than the entire U.S. economy without gutting our country. Since the oligarchy has gone to great pains to demonize socialism, the only course of action remaining is to sic the military on our people when the serious social unrest begins . . . and that will not be long in coming now. The only thing keeping the lid on things now is active propaganda measures which are being disseminated by republicans and corporate democrats alike.
The current economic situation has been a long time in the making and as long as our people remain ignorant of the truth, they will remain governable. The oligarchy know the tide is turning however, that is why they spend so much on propaganda lies, to get our own people to turn on each other rather than on them. Marshall law will not be that far into our future, unless we have a sea change in our politics and our economic system.
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Charles keeps talking about research and development as an corporate entitlement to intellectual property. The basic research done over decades which make these vaccines possible was not done by these big pharma corporations. What Pfizer put in ($2 billion) to quickly develop its version of a Covid-19 vaccine, came after a long chain of research and development. When I just did a cursory search, I came up with the names of the research scientists (Dr. Uğur Şahin and his wife Dr. Özlem Türeci), followed that to Uğur Şahin's career history, where I selected University Medical Center Mainz to follow up on, where he became head of the junior research group. Following the funding for University Medical Center Mainz showed they were funded by EUR 32 million by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.
This was but a small slice of information, yet I wonder of what share of Pfizor's profits go back to the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research? This is yet another example of how "our money" does the major funding for basic research and then the positive results gets "handed off" for free to a private corporation and we get nothing. So Pfizer put in $2 billion, they should simply do that as a public service. In the first quarter of 2021, Pfizer sold $3.5 billion of the Covid-19 vaccine, 20% of which will be profit. They will make their money back in nine months, but my view is they should not make any profit from a pandemic, they already make enough profit from their other products.
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Tomato Pa - You are making excellent points that I agree with and am loath to tear down. Both selfish and stupid, yes. Temporarily embarrassed millionaires, yes (though I seek to use that as a tool). Blind, fools, idiots, easily-bought, easily manipulated, self-defeating selfish jerks? Yes.
To your question, my answer is one word: Fear. The workers are afraid. They have bills to pay and no other source of income. Once again, you make a good point. But why are they so afraid? Can't they just get a better paying job? (I am being rhetorical.) Check out this Bloomberg Economics opinion article dated July 31, 2018:https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-08-01/too-many-jobs-feel-meaningless-because-they-are
About failing gracefully, once again I agree. What you have not explained with sufficient clarity are your opposites to bottom up, for me, the context is missing and is therefore not relevant. Thus in the same manner I believe you are missing something in the idea of a wealth cap that is "bottom up" in the same manner as converting capitalist companies to co-ops. I see both ideas following the same track, in fact the wealth cap is easier to understand for those folk at the beginning of your comment than are the co-ops.
Not losing the foundation of the work preceding is absolutely necessary. The words "failing gracefully" are elegant, however their meaning is lost on the selfish and stupid. Yet the selfish and stupid, even with that handicap, do understand exploitation. Using that and assuring them their "temporary embarrassment" opportunity will not be revoked, the power of the selfish and stupid can be harnessed to topple exploitation without destroying the work preceding. I am in agreement with both you and Professor Wolff that co-ops are the natural evolution from capitalist enterprises, however the subject is too deep for most to understand . . . people need a "Pied Piper" to lead them forward.
Now I'm back full circle to the wealth cap, something easy to understand. I've written about this in many comment sections now, the number of positive comments and "thumbs up" the idea is getting speaks to the fact that I have hit a nerve. I propose we use that to advantage to advance the conversion from capitalism to the next step. You are quite elegant with your "failing gracefully" definition of bottom up, I propose we try to meld ideas and not use the word "failing".
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Tomato Pa - No, at first I did not understand and maybe I still do not. As I wrote, the context was missing (at the time). Your bottom up analogy is valid upon examination, like layers of bricks are laid from the bottom up . . . you can stop the work and all the bricks already laid are still in place and you can resume at any time without a loss (like waiting for bad weather to pass). Ok, that is fine. However, as with most of life . . . there is more than one mode operating simultaneously in a diverse environment.
Are we getting sidetracked here? After extensive study of my fellow humans, our economy and how we depend on it instead of hunting and foraging, and the real problem that we rarely agree enough to form a decent plan but we can bee bamboozled and stampeded fairly easily . . . it has become really transparently clear to me that a simple plan that achieves multiple target goals is needed. Taken separately, universal health care, living wage, no-cost higher education, promote co-op companies, bring back the unions, stop the wars and reduce the military, etc, etc, etc . . . . produces so much splintering of ideas among progressive minded people that we are not united in cause and get picked off by our enemies.
We need one easy to understand cause to rally around that achieves all goals, like one ship that carries the entire crew along with the parrot who may or may not be part of the crew because it flies away from time to time. I've been searching for that for some time, when staring at my papers I realized that all lines intersect here. Concentrated wealth is trouble for everyone, eventually even the wealthy. Solve that problem. It is easy, like laying bricks.
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Robert Deskins - In your first sentence you said the "reforms you are proposing wouldn't(sic) really work in any form of capitalism". Well then, I guess I am disagreeing with you on that because I'm proposing a mutant form of capitalism that can work. You are certainly correct that they would not work in the current under-regulated rampant form of predatory capitalism that is currently running amok in our society, yet I believe that capitalism when carefully and fully regulated will work just fine as a component or part of a greater operating system to benefit society.
I'm going with this simplified name "The income/wealth cap" for the purposes of our discussion.
So what happens when the CEO and Boards of Directors of major corporations (Apple, Microsoft, McDonalds, Disney, G.E., ect.,) are no longer able to pay themselves extravagant sums? In the simplest terms, they start to reinvest the money they would have paid themselves back into their respective companies. Perhaps they could give long suffering employees a raise. In addition, they would also be able to lower the price of goods and services to the consumer. After all, we know that price increases are used in the main to boost profit so they can pocket said profit. With that avenue closed to traffic, they will be forced to use corporate board time to address other concerns besides raising profits.
Let us next examine what happens to stocks and dividends. With a wealth cap in place, paying dividends is no longer such a high priority. On the matter of stock buy-backs, which are used to inflate stock prices, this strategy will no longer have the same appeal when CEO's are faced with in income cap. The arena of stocks and dividends will be greatly altered by a income/wealth cap, so much so that the stock market will be forced to reorganize priorities. In addition, the income/wealth cap can start doing what the no longer enforced anti-trust laws were supposed to do . . . break up larger companies into many smaller companies, thus creating greater opportunities for a larger number of well qualified people to succeed.
With regards to corporate boards voting to move their companies to different countries to escape the income/wealth cap. As an off-the-cuff reaction I say good! Let them move. Said companies gain so much of their profit by gaining our tax system and we would do better without them. Personally I am sick and tired of Amazon bilking New York for 5 billion dollars to build their HQ2, what happened to paying your own way or going bust? If a company cannot live off what they make doing business, they have no business being in business. Bezos can pay for HQ2 out of pocket and still be the richest man in the world, and 5 billion would pay for a brand new subway system for New York plus house all the homeless in that state. Priorities people, priorities.
In all of my 57 years, I have never heard an accounting of what resources we in this country have available and what has been used up. If conservatives were really conservative, this should be a top priority bit of information so that we know what needs to be conserved, what needs to be husbanded as a precious resource, and what we have in abundance. This has a direct bearing on the matter of private property, which I will address as my final point.
Every single company uses something that we as a people and a country create, and no one can do business without it. Currency. The USA has sole proprietorship over the manufacture and distribution of the U.S. Dollar, which is in point of fact . . . a social contract. This is where the lines blur between private and public property. No one can claim the US Dollar as their own private property. Nor can anyone claim that the products created by a "private" company are solely the property of that company. Sooner or later, a company has to give up product in exchange for currency, which in turn is exchanged for other products. No private company can become successful without the intervention and cooperation of the society at large, therefore society itself "owns" a substantial piece of every company in existence. It is because of this substantial fact that every court will eventually have to recognize that profits are NOT in fact "private property".
Up to a point it is reasonable for a company to keep a portion of profit, after that point the keeping of profit becomes toxic to the society that allowed those profits to form in the first place. Society has a claim on all profits generated that are not required to grow the company and pay its employees. Since the profit is in the form of currency, that currency is not the property of the company but rather the property of the people whose country created the currency. Just look at the profits in US Dollars that Apple is hoarding in overseas bank accounts (Apple has grown so much it cannot grow further and thus hoards capital). Those profits are in excess of what the company requires to operate and by keeping that currency out of circulation, they are hurting their own business and doing harm to the greater society that helped create those profits.
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Jeff Betts - There are clues in your comments that like myself of two years ago, your education in economics is founded upon propaganda. You obviously have not read enough of my comments to judge where my "rhetoric" is leading. My "rhetoric" as you called it, is the sum total of a great deal of study of both the economic and political history of the USA over the past 100 years and by default, the study of the effects of unrestrained capitalism all over the world.
Jimmy Dore is a comic and gets a great deal wrong along with what he gets correct . . . at least he is open about that and admits it.
When you indicated that social equity could lead to socialism and then to totalitarianism . . . that was one glue of many, giving away the propaganda roots fueling your point of view. Anyone who has been propaganda trained automatically links socialism to totalitarianism, which is exactly what the capital hoarders who put out the propaganda want your to believe. Now you are their useful tool. Fight them off, don't let them use you like that.
Social equity for human society is an ice-cream-cherry-on-top dream, which will never happen.
The only thing proven about capitalism over the past 300 years is that is is only slightly better than the economic systems it replaced, yet the end result is the same. Concentration of wealth and capital to very few. The system is engineered to benefit those with concentrated wealth during both the turbulent ups and downs of the system. If you really want capitalism to survive, there is only one solution . . . cap income and wealth accumulation so that no one is able to gain the system through unfair advantage. Once the capping occurs the benefits will spread out to create a more uniform "social equity".
You are correct about the "childish state of affairs in the US.". Those who crave and hoard so much wealth are indeed like children, brutish and cruel children. We don't need such children running our affairs or having such exaggerated control over the politics that govern the economy. A wealth cap will deal with them and redirect their energies toward more useful pursuits.
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From the 1970's onward, all economic productivity gains have gone to those who already accumulated wealth. This economic problem has a simple origin with wide ranging effects. We keep trying to solve problems created by the effects instead of solving the problem at its source. The 2019 economic year illustrates the origin clearly.
The sum of privately held financial assets for 2019 is greater than $90 trillion.
The 2019 national output by the productive economy as measured by GDP is about $21.5 trillion.
From these two figures we can compare the size of interest earning wealth to the size of the economy, $90 trillion compared to $21.5 trillion.
Financial assets gain 5% to 7% annually on average.
GDP has grown by 2.56% over the past three decades.
From these two figures we can compare the growth rate of wealth to the growth rate of the economy.
If we use the smaller figure of 5% growth for financial assets, 2019 generated $4.5 trillion in asset growth.
According to The Bureau of Economic Analysis of the United States Department of Commerce, Current-dollar GDP increased 4.1 percent, or $848.8 billion, in 2019 to a level of $21.43 trillion.
If only 18.8% of financial asset growth for 2019 was cashed out as capital gains, that would wipe out the entire $848.8 billion GDP growth for the year. This is why we don't have affordable healthcare, education and housing like they did in 1950's, because all economic gains are going to the 1%. The only solution for this mess is to heavily tax capital gains or finally recognize we need to put a hard cap on individual wealth accumulation. Every system has an upper limit. We need to recognize that our economic system breaks down because there is no governor on the upper end performance. Every race car fan knows what happens to high performance engines running at top speed, they burn up. Same thing is happening to our economy.
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@Dennis-nc3vw - Reagan's tax cuts and the subsequent explosion of 1% wealth have nothing to do with work or employment and everything to do with rate of return on existing capital. The 1% get very little of their wealth through actual employment or labor, they get their money through capital gains . . . which in turn are taxed at 1/3 less than earned income.
Good old boy Ronald Reagan should have accepted the leisure time his movie star income generated and spent more time on his ranch instead of complaining that taxes limited his ability to get more than his already substantial income. Besides, no one actually paid 90%, the effective tax rate was more like 50% and the country was healthier because those with capital reinvested in their companies and earned substantial tax deductions for doing so. That era ended with the suspension of the Bretton Woods Agreement, the removal of the U.S. Dollar from the gold standard and the beginning of international labor exploitation.
With regards to the growing size of housing square footage, that is all part of the real estate scam which has been perpetrated since the 1970's, convincing Americans that the path to prosperity was through real estate. This was the beginning of the "wealth extraction from the middle class" era. With stagnating wages starting in the USA, the 1% started to promote real estate and debt as the main tool for extracting the "undeserved and excessive wealth" gained by the middle classes from 1945 to 1970. The con involves banks and housing developers who are both pushing up the price of housing, something which cannot be accomplished if a greater quantity of smaller housing is built for the purpose of housing the nations population. This is in part why we have such a problem with homelessness today.
Where are you getting your information from? I ask because what you are writing here is highly skewed with oligarch propaganda talking points. You Sir, are a foot soldier engaged in an loose order that we call "guardians of the system", propagandized citizens who defend the oligarchy by believing and regurgitating propaganda specifically designed to keep the oligarchs in control. People like you exist in an information bubble, which means that those of us who have researched why the system fails most of us so badly . . . cannot take you seriously and are able to deconstruct your talking points quite easily.
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@OMGAnotherday - I did not see the comment made by "Sioux Rose" as anything but advocacy for nature itself. Such advocacy gets left out of entire narratives, even climate change narratives. She ( I'm guessing), is correct. For my part, I find that too complex of a comment will garner no responses, so I try to keep my comments as simple as I can, while hitting on a vital point. I appreciate both you and "Sioux Rose" bringing forward excellent comments in response to my own.
Bottom line is this, the wealthy have control over the media narratives. This means that the population which relies on the media for information will never know about the earth moving beyond the natural tipping point that leads to endless feedback loops we can never exit from. With Trump as president, a senile Biden being pushed by the wealthy and Sanders being shut out, we are going to become extinct. People simply do not understand that endless growth is not possible.
I've used a quote from Michael Hudson's paper on compound interest many times over the years. However, when putting the quote into a recent comment, I found that I had missed a critical word, "millions" in the quote. See if you can catch the significance of understanding this quote, with and without the word "millions". This is from Michael Hudson's paper titled: "The Mathematical Economics of Compound Rates of Interest: A Four-Thousand Year Overview Part II".
"It was in reference to Britain’s war debts that one of Adam Smith’s contemporaries, the Anglican minister and actuarial mathematician Richard Price, graphically explained the seeming magic of how debts multiplied exponentially. His 1772 Appeal to the Public on the Subject of the National Debt described how “Money bearing compound interest increases at first slowly. But, the rate of increase being continually accelerated, it becomes in some time so rapid, as to mock all the powers of the imagination. One penny, put out at our Saviour’s birth at 5% compound interest, would, before this time, have increased to a greater sum than would be obtained in a 150 millions of Earths, all solid gold."
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@be4unvme - I don't disagree with what you are saying. The problem is that your observations don't account for the the earlier years before we had any real international trade, when the mass of wealth got built up several times the size of our economy. The main issue is one of math, wealth builds up faster than a productive economy can support because matters are arranged that way on purpose, which leads to inevitable bubbles and crashes. The only real solution is to confine wealth building to within parameters that a productive economy can support. All endeavors plateau at some point, the stock market has done so at least three times in the past 30 years, but instead of letting nature take its course, the market is propped up artificially so that the wealthy don't lose.
Unfortunately, wealth building has very little to do these days with products. It is now all about financial instruments which produce nothing, yet are able to drain wealth from the mass of people and concentrate it into large masses that "must grow", regardless of how much damage is being done to society. Take gasoline these days, the market cap for oil companies grew by over 50% in two years (before the inflation started), a virtual guarantee that gas prices would have to be increased just to keep floating the profit margin. Inflation is simply a mask for the transfer of wealth, that is why inflation exists (it is not a natural phenomenon).
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This racism and other-blaming was all brought to the surface and promoted by the very wealthy and industrial capitalists over 40 years ago, who needed a convenient narrative to obscure the neo-liberal agenda to create the modern Kings and Serfs society. . . which they knew would strip most Americans of their assets and wages over the past 40 years and accelerate the stripping over the next 40 years. This racism narrative is how they are hiding their action from all of us.
Here is what we really need to be concerned with: The Macro Economic Scales. Right now 17 international wealth funds have $50 Trillion in their portfolio's seeking a rate of return. Even at a paltry 5% rate of return, it will only take 14.4 years to double. That is $50 trillion in "free" money gained in 15 years. Where is that going to come from? Certainly not from the legitimate "productive" economy, no . . . it will be "extracted" from all of us and from "regime change" countries.
It is time for us to back public policy that puts a hard limit on wealth accumulation, because the appetite of "rate of return" investments cannot possibly be met. When you extrapolate out to 45 years, the $50 trillion of today will becomes $400 trillion. That means $350 trillion dollars gets sucked out of the planet just to pay interest. This is beyond unsustainable, it is destruction, disaster, rape, murder and plunder rolled into one ugly ball.
You ever see what happens to a rooftop when too much snow accumulates on it? Collapse. The modern narrative of racism and other-baiting is meant to obscure the nature of the coming collapse. The sheer mass of that much accumulated wealth is going to collapse everything world wide . . . and we have to stop this. Time for an income and wealth cap, it is the only way we can manage this outrage.
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public domain - Not sure how much debate is possible if we share a like mindset. So I would like to entertain you with a thought experiment my daughter and I did not too long ago. Exactly how much money does one require to live a lifetime in the utmost of luxury?
Her numbers came out to be five times higher than my own, but I was happy to adopt her numbers. The parameters I set before we began was this: If you already own a 42 room mansion and you are building a new 96 room mansion . . . you have far too much money and/or wealth. Also excluded from this thought experiment was the purchase of companies, corporations and any other business medium that does not fall under the
categorization of lifestyle needs and/or wants. Keeping these thoughts in mind we set to it. Housing, food, transportation, clothing, entertainment, medical coverage, education expenses, having children, energy, taxes (local, federal property and income), travel, vacations, . . . all of these areas were covered.
I'd like to get another point of view on this, so I will not say yet what numbers we came up with. The point of the thought experiment was to come up with a maximum annual income and total wealth cap that will allow a person and/or family to live in the utmost luxury for a lifetime.
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