Comments by "coolmodelguy" (@coolmodelguy6304) on "Thom Hartmann Program" channel.

  1. With the exception of natural disasters being the cause, the downfall of every human society can be traced to greed. If this species is going to survive, we need to grow up.
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  2. Kevin Kanzler - So what you are saying is that the same group that preceded U.S. and Allied troops in the WW2 fight to defeat Hitler, Mussolini and Franco, the same group that fought the fascists in Spain before Chamberlain finished appeasing Hitler in Europe are now terrorists? Are you saying that Antifa is worse than the fascist murderers the USA and the Allies went to war with? So are you saying that you support the KKK and neo-nazi's modern day resurgence in the USA? Are you saying that is what all of our soldiers died for in WW2, to bring freedom to fascism's supporters in the modern age? So you are saying that you now support a fascist regime under tRump in the USA? If that is what you are saying, then it is yourself who is revolting. Sad. Pathetic. If that is not what you are saying, please clarify.
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  3. I just took that last few minutes to check on the stock market. In December 2008 the market was approximately 9000, as of today the market is 22,400 . . . that is a ten year span. This indicates a 148% growth of the stock market in ten years with little commensurate growth in the real economy. I concur with your personal economic findings, they mirror my own. Additionally, worker productivity since Reagan has gone up 321% while worker wages have gone up less than 10% over the same period ( I am being generous, the number is close to 0.5% ). Meanwhile the cost of housing, energy, transportation have tripled in the same time period . . . health care has gone up over 500% and the cost of higher education has gone up a whopping 14,000%. This is how the wealthy are getting their returns, through extraction economics.
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  4. There is no system in existence, natural or artificial, that has no upper and lower limits to operate within. The con job that we have been sold is that in our economy, we can have unlimited wealth growth and no bottom limit. There is a direct correlation between the growth of millionaires/billionaires and the growth of homelessness in our country, the more people who become wealthy, the more the homeless population grows.
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  5. Why is it that Thom never asks Professor Wolff about the ratio of total financial assets to the economy? The sheer amount of financial assets "earning" interest a 5% or more annually, dwarfs our puny economy. From what I can see, the economy has averaged 2.56% growth annually for 30 years and was at $21.43 trillion for 2019. On the other hand, there are over $100 trillion being held in financial assets with an average rate of return of over 5% annually at the end of 2019. The "earnings" of those financial assets is approaching 25% of our GDP and is growing larger every year. At some point, the "earnings" of financial assets will be greater than the economy. So what then? Print more money and hand it straight over to the 1/10th of 1% and tell everyone else to eat mud?
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  6.  @katiekane5247  - My representative is putting forth legislation to help the homeless. When I read the email, I immediately called his office. While I applaud the effort, no legislation to help the homeless or for that matter, any of us economically is going to work until we put a hard cap on wealth accumulation. This metaphor explains it simply, if your towns water main has a break and you found out the break was artificial, with all the water going into the rich man's gigantic swimming pool while no houses could get water . . . . that problem would be fixed by the towns people. We need to fix the gusher of wealth going to the very top, so that way the rest of us don't have to suffer the consequences of homelessness and low paying jobs because of no money in the pipeline.
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  7. You are correct. The stock market grew by 100% in ten years, yet none of that was actual productivity in the "real" economy.
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  8. Get a "doutor" fast? Do we need any more proof that right wingers are brain dead? I'll speculate "OnTheEDge" does not even know what "socialism" is, or that it has been part of the USA since the Constitution was written.
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  9. The real problem we have is this, interest payments on the 1%'s wealth exceed three times our annual GDP growth. The 1% are eating us alive.
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  10. Francesann Jackson - Manafort pleaded guilty in Federal Court to all 18 counts he was originally charged with. Part of the leverage being used on him is that if he proves to be less than fully cooperative, more federal charges can be brought along with overlapping state charges. States can charge the same crimes as the Federal Courts can, because states are separately harmed by those crimes. If states were stripped of that ability when a federal charge of criminality is filed, then states become helpless victims at the whim of federal prosecutors. At this moment, state charges are a means of charging crimes that cannot be pardoned by the president . . . the only real leverage there is against a criminal president and his allies.
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  11. Terri Suder - Thom hit the nail on the head two days ago with this summary: Worker productivity since Reagan has gone up 321%, while worker wages have risen only 1/10 of 1%. Meanwhile, the simple costs of living such as housing and energy have tripled and our Federal Treasury has been raided by private interests for trillions of dollars. We, as in you, I and the ordinary people of the USA must fight back. It is time for a Maximum Annual Income . . . . and an Accumulated Wealth Cap. That is the only way to fight what is happening, open ended profits are killing us. Personally, I think the wealthy oligarchy is taking revenge on us for the FDR New Deal . . . even though the wealthy never really suffered under the New Deal. Any reforms we get will be dismantled until we the people take away the tools used to dismantle reforms. Than means capping wealth and income, no two ways about it.
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  12. In the past month and a half, the Federal Reserve has pumped at least $1.2 trillion of liquidity into the banking system. This has devalued the dollar by several percent (perhaps up to 5%) just in a few months time. If there is any solution, it is to place a cap in individual wealth. To visualize the effect of unlimited wealth accumulation, just blow up an balloon and leave the stem untied. All these bailouts and liquidity injections are trying to replace the escaping air from the open ended economic balloon, so the answer is to tie it off. Cap wealth accumulation at $10 million and a vast majority of these economic problems will abate.
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  13. Median income today buys less than half of what median income purchased 30 years ago.
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  14. Mitch McConnell has shown through his actions that the "representative republic" of the USA no longer exists.
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  15. Maybe that is why "we" should take greed out of the system. A system has boundaries, or it is not a system. Our economic system is like a car engine leaking oil. We allow unlimited wealth growth, that is the leak in our system. Run a car engine after all the oil leaks out, well there will be problems to say the least. Our problem is we have an "economic system" that is malfunctioning, therefor the cycles of breakdowns. The one thing in common for all the era's Professor Wolff talks about is, there is no upper limit on wealth growth. Therein lies our problem and our answer.
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  16.  @davidlafleche1142  - Geez David, give it a rest.
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  17.  @davidlafleche1142  - Trump accuses himself. We don't need "talking heads" to know this: When a person goes to incredible lengths to hide information and has a documented record of not telling the truth over a span of years in public office, that IS information which is public, absolute and irrefutable. No one who surrounds themselves with so many criminals, while telling bald faced lies we can all fact check, is someone who is misunderstood. If you cannot acknowledge or even see the publicly available evidence, then you are the one with the problem.
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  18.  @bluenami7520  - No system has unlimited power or growth, not trees, not animals, nor any construct created artificially by man. Not even a star can be larger than a certain mass without collapsing. What we need to do is put a hard cap on accumulated wealth. This much, and not a penny more. The cap needs to apply both to individuals and to businesses.
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  19.  A OK  - If you care so much about the killing of the unborn, then you should care in equal measure and with equal vigor for those who are already among the living. Yet like all those who spout such false care for the unborn, you care nothing for your fellow humans. Go suck on your big toe and be gone already, you deserve no credence for your blasphemy.
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  20. YouTube algorithms keep Thom down, the owners and investors in Google/YouTube don't want people to understand the truth, it is against their best interests.
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  21.  @romanromanowski9038  - The Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act, which repealed the Glass Stegall Act and which Clinton signed, was completely written by republicans. This made Clinton no different than republicans, he may as well have been one.
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  22. I agree with Cindy. There is no system in existence, natural or artificial, that has no upper and lower limits to operate within. The con job that we have been sold is that in our economy, we can have unlimited wealth growth and no bottom limit. There is a direct correlation between the growth of millionaires/billionaires and the growth of homelessness in our country, the more people who become wealthy, the more the homeless population grows.
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  23. Sooo . . . what is the point? How does this information help the American people? Are you dividing us too? What are you getting at? Who are you? What do you want?
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  24. "I don't think Americans want to pay that price". The standard of living for us Americans has been deteriorating for decades, with the quality of living on life support. As an American, I'm getting sick and tired of mandatory costs rising every year while getting no commensurate pay increases. What I have witnessed in the past several decades is increasing debt, not as a spending plan problem but as a necessity to keep up with health care and housing. As a child of the 60's, I was looking forward to robots doing the work so that we humans could explore inner and outer space. And what did we really get? Financialized capitalism where the top 10% spend loads of money on yachts and everyone else is loaded with unpayable debt. Dan. J. Mitchell is just another schill for wealthy interests, thanks Thom, for the contrasting points of view.
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  25. Individualism has been sold to us . . . When I got curious and read the republican 2016 platform, I was appalled at the number of references to individualism. Reading between the lines, individualism provides justification for billionaires not to be taxed and to escape legal actions resulting from their bad behavior, while at the same time building the foundation to oppress individuals using vehicles like binding arbitration and revoking collective actions like class action lawsuits. The Constitution reads "We the People" . . . not "I the individual". The republican platform essentially reads as Anti-Constitution.
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  26. Not the only way. The noted Marxist David Harvey has opined that capital is too entrenched, has grown too deep of roots to remove by revolution. Therefor, capitalism itself cannot be removed by revolution. There is a way however to evolve capitalism so that the eventual path to a better society can be achieved. Put a cap on wealth accumulation for both individuals and business. Stop allowing for the limitless accumulation of wealth. No system, natural or artificial can grow forever, there are always limits. The problem with capitalism now is that it can grow until destruction. Limits are the path forward, preserve capitalism, with limits on accumulation of capital and wealth.
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  27. The caller is apparently unaware that fully half of emissions from oil come from maritime use in the import/export businesses, and that 40% of U.S. emissions are generated by the U.S. Navy. Making changes on a personal level will be required, yet the larger movement will have to be in our distribution of goods and in the military.
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  28. "Housing Units" are categorized as capital assets. As long as this is the case, we will never have affordable housing again.
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  29. The 1% are taking $4 out of every $5 of new wealth created, Median wages have been stagnant for over three decades, Purchasing power of median wages have dropped by more than half over three decades, Everybody enjoying that giant sucking sensation?
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  30. ​ @davidlafleche1142  - You wrote: "No evidence". Next stop? Padded room for you Buddy.
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  31. There is no system in existence, natural or artificial, that has no upper and lower limits to operate within. The con job that we have been sold is that in our economy, we can have unlimited wealth growth and no bottom limit. There is a direct correlation between the growth of millionaires/billionaires and the growth of homelessness in our country, the more people who become wealthy, the more the homeless population grows.
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  32. I don't know how accurate this thought of mine may be, but it seems for every new billionaire there is ten thousand new homeless. After getting my second Covid-19 shot on Wednesday in Stockton CA, I decided to visit the Mokelumne River for some gold panning. The drive out of Stockton showed me hundreds of new homeless tents that I had not seen before. These are all people being "shed" by our economic system. As an engineer, I know every system has upper and lower limits. Our economy has no upper or lower limits, which is why it is failing.
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  33. The number of stock related ads on this show and others has become simply staggering. The tipping point is drawing closer and some people are trying to get rubes in place to buy them out of the stock market before the crash.
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  34. Rob Pape - Yes, and our news media has dropped the ball for decades, they keep saying the economy is "good", unemployment is "low" and the stock market is "booming". All it took for me was one afternoon of research to find out something that should be headline news. "Median income today buys less than half of what median income purchased 30 years ago." Why? Found that out also, but that took a little longer than one afternoon.
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  35. No, this is not on us at all. I've looked closely at the numbers. The pool of "wealth", in my lifetime (60 years) has always been larger and grown at a faster rate than our economy. This condition has always been carefully arranged, going back fifty years or one hundred and fifty years. We cannot change this save under one condition, that we become laser focused on how much wealth any one person should control before such holdings become a threat to the rest of us. As it stands right now and for all of history that I can access, we have simply accepted the right to hold as much wealth as a person could gather, but now the mass of wealth available has tipped the scales so far past safety for society that we must change the permissions we give to individual persons to hold wealth. Do do anything but be laser focused on these permissions, it to commit ourselves as a species to extinction.
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  36.  @InternetMameluq  - Didn't you mean "since they have been embargoed since the fifties"? My observation is that if the USA would just butt out, they might be just fine. Same thing for Venezuela.
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  37. Until we have a major change, like an economic meltdown, no such thing will happen here. Housing is considered a capital asset, Wall Street will fight tooth and nail to keep any changes from being made that will disadvantage investors.
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  38. "Housing Units" are categorized as capital assets. As long as this is the case, we will never have affordable housing again.
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  39.  @rustynailsish  - For you, ignorance is bliss.
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  40.  @zx7siovia213  - Well said. What is little understood, is that the multiple crises of capitalism grow from the idea that infinite growth is possible. Realistically, no system of natural or artificial origin is capable of infinite growth. That said, the path forward is to use the structure of capitalism that is in place currently, to evolve into something better, made possible by introducing one major modification to capitalism, a universal individual limit to wealth accumulation. I would propose setting the wealth cap at three million dollars, thus allowing for the rewarding of endeavor but not allowing the buildup inherent in systems using compounded annual growth.
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  41.  @grantjohnston7148  - Agreed. We also need to apply critical thinking skills to our economy. Exponential growth is not possible. Worker productivity and efficiency can only be improved so far without expanding the real economy (not the financial economy) beyond planetary resource capability. The sheer mass that wealth has attained is five times the size of our economy and grows at a rate three times greater than GDP. This system is insane. We also need to think up something productive for sociopaths to do, because we cannot let them run government or corporate business ever again.
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  42. nuvisionprinting - That is so sad, sounds like your countrymen are being brainwashed. Seems they are unaware that in a decade or less, the private insurance will break open their wallets and purses . . . leaving nothing behind for them to live on. That is what has happened here, health care costs have increased 500%-600% over the past three decades while wages have stagnated. That is what your communist hating countrymen are in for also . . . if they cannot get a grip.
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  43. The Low Cap on Disability Income? Not a word on the subject during this segment Thom. What happened?
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  44. Bye-bye humanity if the republican scam of personal responsibility and individualism replaces government.
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  45.  @stuckinthemud4352  - Have you not been paying attention? In what way are we worse? Did you even listen to this video?
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  46. The real problem we have is this, interest payments on the 1%'s wealth exceed three times our annual GDP growth. The 1% are eating us alive.
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  47. Blame the pursuit of infinite wealth. We allow it, even though no system can achieve infinite growth.
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  48.  @lawrencehamm1478  - You wrote: "I am a independent conservative and a Christian". Doctor! The x-rays are in and we have a severe blockage of blood flow to the brain!
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  49. Bernie Sanders 2020. Go centrist and we the people will be crushed. Go republican and we the people will be crushed. The only way the people of the United States can save ourselves is to vote for rational change over the status quo. Bernie Sanders 2020.
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  50. Yes. If we are going strictly by the Constitution, the office of Justice on any court is only "during good behavior". Kavenaugh has already lied to the Senate and a real investigation by the FBI would reveal this and more "bad behavior" which can be used to impeach him. Additionally, there is no provision for lifetime appointment of judges and justices to any court in our Constitution.
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