Who's Century?

 Hey Bobby. Been thinking about something and since you are far more erudite in regard to international affairs, I thought I'd bounce it off you.

 I saw a news opinion piece sometime ago suggesting that the American century was over. I grew up with that concept and felt I was very lucky to be born into the nation which had become the leader of the world.

To be honest, I didn't bother to read the article. Still, the headline got me thinking.

I expect you remember that during Trump's first term I said I don't think our allies are ever going to trust us again. Even if Trump doesn't win a second term, who knows who we will elect next time? 

And here he is. 

It's not just that he's trying to destroy the American government except for a few powerful arms which he will remake into his servants carrying out  his will, he's already trying for a third term but I question that he will be able to get it. Not to mention, the man is damned old. I doubt he has a third term in him.

I think this is something that runs a whole lot deeper than Trump. He's just a symptom of the disease.

My feeling is that the American people are in a position that reminds me very strongly of the British at the end of World War II. After centuries of empire building (and empire holding) the British people were tired of their young men going off to die in foreign countries so that the people back home could swagger about in imperial pride and the ultra rich could benefit from the loot  collected from around the subservient globe.

They adored Winston Churchill as the unparalleled leader who led the crusade against the Nazis, but they had no interest in following this old noble in struggling to retain the British Empire.

They wanted a national health service. They wanted to be exactly what Napoleon always said they were, a nation of shopkeepers rather than a nation of conquerors.

Trump, with his whole America first thing, is about in the same position right now. The original America first movement headed by Lindbergh simply didn't want us to be used by the European powers as cannon fodder to grow their empires. The America first movement today is not that old movement brought back to life. Today it's a rejection by the American people of being the world's policeman. Many Americans don't want American soldiers going to war in foreign lands.  

They're tired of paying the price for leading the world and no wonder, it's a very expensive price. I recently saw a report that today America still spends more on its military budget than the next 10 nations combined. We could do a lot domestically with even a portion of those funds.

We're almost a century late to the party, but I really think a lot of of us are ready to turn into a more thoroughly socialized nation.

Yes, the Trumpsters say that that's what they hate the most, but as was pointed out before the affordable care act was adopted, once people have it, they do not want to let it go. The Brits traded their world empire for the NIH, but I think we're getting prepared to do that ourselves.

I hate to say it, but I think what we really need right now is Teddy Roosevelt. Not the rough rider (me he-man) but the trustbuster. Even Trumpsters might be able to get behind that if  the theoretical hero promised to bring our troops home and stop leading the world at the cost of American treasure and blood.

This brings up the next part of the question. If we do resign from the position who replaces us?

China desperately wants to, but China's in desperately bad shape. Her economy is nothing but a giant bubble. Corruption is so extremely pervasive bridges regularly collapse alongside of buildings and the rapidly built cities are on the edge of an economic disaster. Even their fake islands that they constructed in order to claim the South China Sea are beginning to erode away right out from under their naval and airbases.

India has potential but it's wrapped up in its own extreme right ring hatred and bigotry and I think lacks the industrial base to be regarded as a serious contender.

Remember a few decades back when everyone thought Brazil was going to rule the world? No one's even suggesting it now.

Russia? " I will quote Baron Stein, "Theirs is the rage of dreaming sheep!"  Russia had an opportunity to be a economic powerhouse. Putin has crushed Russia for the foreseeable future. Even if he wins in Ukraine, he has lost every other battle, including the economic struggles.

I think the best bet is the European Union. It's hard to credit tired old Europe becoming the world leader again, but a united Europe is a new beast. If Europe  can successfully stop its endless efforts to conduct war against itself, it will be an economic powerhouse with plenty of resources and plenty of manpower -- and it's highly industrialized as well. We all have assumed that Europe is that stable, but then Europe was assuming that Russia was that stable too. (remember  Angela Merkel  assuring the world that Russia was now a friendly bear?) The European Union is still an experiment that's in its early stages. If they can keep it together, I think this century will be called the European Union century.

So, lots to cover here. I wonder how you respond to my oddball thoughts.

Greedy Is As Greedy Does

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/tim-gurner-australian-ceo-unemployment-video-rcna104957

>Tim Gurner wants you to be miserable. Yes, you.

Speaking at the Australian Financial Review’s “property summit,” the property developer and CEO — net worth $584 million — complained that the country’s 3.7% unemployment rate was, in fact, a problem. “We need to see unemployment rise. Unemployment has to jump 40, 50%,” said Gurner, because “arrogant” workers aren’t productive enough for his liking. “We need to see pain in the economy. We need to remind people that they work for the employer, not the other way around.”<

He did apologize for these comments later. However, I am convinced he was only apologizing for having been foolish enough to say it publicly and being caught in  being truthful. I think he was being honest and completely sincere in his original statement rather than in his apology.

And his attitude is not a rare one among the privileged and entitled class. >According to the Pew Research Center, a majority of the wealthiest Americans believe the “poor have it easy because they can get government benefits without doing anything in return.”<

It is attitudes like this which are all too common among the wealthy, which drove Marx and Engels to create their poisonous manifesto. And therein lies the old teeter totter problem. An excess of wrong on one side of the teeter totter is not balanced by an excess of opposing  wrong on the other side.  Well regulated capitalism is highly beneficial to everyone in a society. Unrestricted capitalist warfare and greed are destructive.

When you think about it, it's really quite obvious. The poor are desperate and don't create a stable society in their desperation because desperate people do desperate things.  The wealthy care only about themselves and will gut and cannibalize the society they live in in order to make themselves wealthier than they already are.  The middle class is stable and mutually beneficial to society as a whole.

Aristotle was well aware of this over two millennia ago. His Nicomachean Ethics and his Politics explored this issue:

>Aristotle pointed out that if the middle class disappears, then the poor will become the majority. The poor tend to be less educated than the rich, and they tend to struggle just to make ends meet. If the poor are the majority, then in a democracy they will vote to take away the money from the rich!

So, what are the rich to do?

Well, do away with democracy of course! Democracy, at that point, becomes too much of a threat to the elite, and the elite start taking steps to limit the power of government. (Moves to limit voting by the poor, anyone?)

Therefore, as the middle class disappears, democracy disappears with it.

On the other hand, with a MAJORITY middle class, democracy works, and it works well. Why? Because the middle class tends to be educated and has just enough prosperity that members of that class can see themselves becoming rich some day, so they don’t punish the rich, and they have compassion for the poor, being that many of them came from poverty. The middle class stands between the two extremes, the poor and the rich, and you end up with a well functioning democracy.

Here Aristotle describes just that in his book Politics:

The best constitution is one controlled by a numerous middle class which stands between the rich and the poor. For those who possess the goods of fortune in moderation find it “easiest to obey the rule of reason” (Politics IV.11.1295b4–6). They are accordingly less apt than the rich or poor to act unjustly toward their fellow citizens.< -- stanford.edu

This matters to us because our middle class has been steadily shrinking since the days of Ronald Reagan. That is because the middle class is being cannibalized by the ultra wealthy who want desperately poor people who will work for incredibly low wages so that the excessively wealthy can become even more excessively wealthy.

Remember what we're supposed to be doing in this country? 

-- We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.--

This is what a middle-class can do. This is what the poor would like to do, but in their desperation cannot do.  This is what the wealthy absolutely refuse to do because only their own interests matter to them.

Shoppin' Around

 Interesting post from Facebook so I thought I'd reproduce it over here.

Post: Just want to see how many people think that shop class should be put back in our schools...if you are 1 of the few, re-post.

My two responses:   Thankfully it's not totally extinct though there are fewer offered than there used to be.

Schools should educate every child not just those regarded as college material.

The world takes a lot of skills to run and some of those skills are better paying  than those for most college  graduates.

There is a new kind of shop class called tech classes. For example my grandson just aced his robotics class.  It doesn't fix sinks or cars or wire homes, but at least it recognizes the need for real world skills as opposed to purely academic skills.

Just thought of an interesting story that I should add. Talking to a guy in a bar about five years ago, somehow the discussion turned to the theories of a well-known physicist (can't remember which one). He commented that they had been  classmates back in his undergrad days, but he realized that physicists don't usually make a lot of money so he changed his major and became an electrician. He said he had no regrets.

Utilitarianism In Utopia

 Bobby, I was thinking about your friend who’s into utilitarianism. Somehow, I forgot about that when I was making my response to Prospera, but I shouldn’t have, because all utopias end up based on utilitarianism. Sooner or later, usually a lot sooner, the architects of the perfect utopia realize that not everyone is prepared to agree with them and some force is going to be necessary. This means suffering. How can utopia be based on suffering? The answer, of course, is utilitarianism. Yes, many must to suffer right now, right here, but then nobody ever suffers again.

This, of course, was the argument used by every brutal dictator in history. Let’s just look at recent history.

All those millions of people had to die for Hitler to purify the race and to conquer Russia, but then think of all the thousand years of perfect happiness that would follow for everyone who wasn’t killed and all their descendants. Utilitarianism says Hitler was onto something, Or at least he had some justification for his actions, very real, quantifiable justification

Marx? Lenin?  Pol Pot? Trump?

A relatively small number (sometimes even millions) had to suffer and die so as to guarantee the ultimate victory of the Utopia and thus the eternal happiness of mankind. At least for the next thousand years or so.

I think the biggest problem is people persist in trying to find the magic formula that gives you the right answer in every single moral situation. The difficulty is, as always, anything involving human beings isn’t simple math. Remember the quants on Wall Street?  You’re familiar with all the economists who just knew that everybody always did whatever was in their best financial interest. This is why the social sciences will never actually be sciences. They cannot be because every one of them involves emotion. They involve the  irrationality of our species. It can’t be quantified and calculated in an exact manner. At most you can make it somewhat statistical.

I spent decades trying to find something the equivalent of utilitarianism, but actually effective. That is, a true moral code, a reliable guideline that could be applied in any situation. I wasted those years. Although, maybe not.   At  least I learned a few things in the process. The main thing I learned was what I said above; there is no simple universal answer that can encompass the full scope of humanity.  Ultimately we are emotional, not rational. You must look at every individual situation. The best you can come up with some general guidelines which may or may not be applicable in any given specific case.

And even then you get problems. Was Bomber Harris a hero, or was he a monster? The Brits put up a statue to him (I think about 20 years ago) because they think he’s a hero. The rest of Europe was horrified and disgusted, because as far as they’re concerned, he should’ve been hanged at Nuremberg along with the other war criminals. I bet you can guess which group I agree with. If you don’t know about Bomber Harris we’ll talk about it next time we are together.

(And I’m not even beginning to think about the whole issue in Japan, where the war is still officially taught in Japanese schools as Japan being forced into the war by bully America and Class One war criminals are honored as heroes.)

Post script:  I really hate this dictation system because it’s so bad. I use it because it is still better than typing but it requires so much proofreading! For example even when I referred to Marks, Lennon and communism… You see what spelling it gave me.

Bomber Harris was just as bad. I don’t know of anyone named Bommer. Maybe that some famous person or maybe not, I wouldn’t know, but Bomber Harris was named after the strategic bombing airplanes he commanded not after some person named Bommer.

I won’t even repeat what it did to Paul pot. Well, there it is anyway.

I give up.  I’m gonna post this on my blog.  And, yes, I did say I am going to. But it never writes going to. No matter how slowly and carefully I pronounce it, it always types Ghana.

Enough! Enough!

Say Again!?

An interesting exchange with a friend on Facebook.

It started with a meme containing a partial quote from Thomas Paine.

L:  “To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead...”

(The complete quote is as follows, “To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.”)

Me:  I know. But I do care about America so I keep trying to talk to conservatives and Republicans anyway. It’s a bad habit but at least I try.

L:   so the turn towards socialism doesn't bother your heart for our grandkids? Common Core, learning the Quran and condom races in the 5th grade here are fine with you?

— Picture of an eagle wrapped in a flag banner—

Me: Common core is not in and of itself a bad idea but I haven’t studied in it in sufficient detail to know how effective or ineffective it is. 

Socialism is extremely effective all across all of Europe. Please note that socialism and capitalism are working together there in a mutually cooperative situation. It’s not an either or forced choice false dichotomy as you present it.  I am opposed to mindless cutthroat capitalism that lets children die for lack of medication because they can’t afford to buy it. And equally opposed to any extreme form of socialism which ignores the powers of capitalism.  

I know of no public school system that is learning from the Koran. That is simply a really bizarre statement. But I do know many school districts down south using A very limited interpretation of the Bible as lesson plans. Jefferson was right, there must be a wall of separation between church and state.

I have never heard of anything so insane as condom races in the fifth grade. Where do you get this information? Please state some sources. If you state the sources I will check them out. But without sources for such weird statements I simply cannot credit them.

More to come? If so I will add them to this post or to the comments below.

Privatization By Any Other Name Still Stinks As Foul

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/student-loan-experts-congress-193001992.html

I have been criticizing the privatization movement since George Bush Junior was sitting in the White House. We have gone long way down that antisocial road — and look where we are today. This article shows even more successes for the privatization-cutthroat capitalism model. Very few people who love the ultra conservative economist Hayek remember that he predicted that most societies would destroy themselves. He considered that to be a very good thing. He was, after all, an economic Social Darwinist. Survival of the fittest. The strong survive. The weak die.

America is well along on the road to dying.

> “...debt is tearing our country apart,” Seth Frotman, former student loan ombudsman and the executive director of theStudent Borrower Protection Center stated. <

The Inner-City Of God

From http://bizstandardnews.com/2015/08/20/jim-bakker-urging-followers-to-buy-real-estate-in-heaven

"I’m urging people to make these regular donations so we can offer up special prayers to guarantee their homes in heaven,” Bakker said. “People need to look at this like a down payment on their heavenly mortgage.”
Bakker and his ex wife Tammy Faye were among the most flamboyant televangelists of the 1980s, until they were brought down by financial and sex scandals. Bakker went to jail, but has resumed his ministry.
“Heaven has all kinds of property, ghettos, shacks, apartments, starter homes and mansions,” Bakker said. “Send in your love offering to ensure you have a palatial mansion in heaven. You want to make sure you are in a good heavenly neighborhood.”

There are bad heavenly neighborhoods? They must be in the ghetto. You know, the inner-city of God.

Well... In one of the lost Gospels, a wealthy man hires an apostle to build a mansion. When the wealthy man checks he finds that the apostle has been using the money building homes for the poor. Confronted, the apostle replies that by building these homes for the poor here in this world I have built you a mansion in heaven. Sorry, can't remember which lost Gospel it was.

Of course, the lesson of that parable would be the opposite of what the preacher man is saying. Building actual mansions for an actual rich man is not quite the point.

Ever wonder why people are so upset with self-proclaimed "Christians" these days? It's not persecution. It's disgust.

Howard Roark, Foiled Again!

http://architectureau.com/articles/affordable-sustainable-high-quality-urban-housing-its-not-an-impossible-dream/

I found this really interesting, so I posted the link and added:

Nicholas, this is right in your area of interest. It sounds so nice in the article. Is it practical? Would it be applicable in America where we have a different attitude toward housing?

Nick responded:

Hmmm, I'm reading this right, these are essentially mid rise, middle density buildings that try to keep costs ultra low, and also be environmentally friendly. 

That sounds good but each part has different obstacles and varying degrees up importance. 

Take the idea of middle density units. These are very much needed in supply constrained urban regions, particularly the outer edges of the core. But of course most of these areas are zoned for single family homes or office spaces, and don't allow anything in this size. Unfortunately these zoning laws have a lot local protection and are very difficult to overcome--especially with all the brain dead thinking out there about the critical need of new housing stock. 

The cost of building isn't a bad idea but I don't think much of a problem. The cost of construction isn't really the problem, but rather the cost of land and regulations. Plus soon to be coming 3D printing will dramatically lower construction costs and speed.

Environmental stuff all sounds good too and I'm sure if we ever get our needed building boom, a lot of this kinda stuff will be incorporated. SF just mandated all new buildings must have solar panels for example.

I responded:

So, not such a bad idea, but a little hard to apply in the real world. I shouldn't be surprised. It seemed  like such a good idea though.

Later I added:

I can't help but recall news reports that when a Catholic charity group (Mother Theresa's?) tried to convert a decrepit high-rise in New York into a refuge for the homeless, they were unable to do so. What prevented it? It was too expensive for them to install elevators and if they renovated the building they were required to install elevators. So the homeless stayed on the streets.

In a similar case, when George Air Force Base closed, a California group tried to take over the base housing and use it for the homeless. They were not allowed to do so because state regulations wouldn't allow anyone to be housed in buildings which had asbestos content. 

There are two ironies here. Number one, this housing was considered adequate and safe even for the Colonel  commanding the base and his family.   Second, the asbestos in question was only dangerous if you broke open the walls and accessed the insulation.

The California regulation was not unreasonable. However, hundreds of the homeless could have been very comfortably housed and conditions which were safe as long as no one broke open the walls.  The question is, were the homeless better being left out on the streets and down by the river bed where they tend to collect here in the Victor Valley?

In the end the housing simply sat, and is still sitting, and is slowly rotting away.

Fast Breeder Manipulators

"The most hated sort, and with the greatest reason, is usury, which makes a gain out of money itself, and not from the natural object of it. For money was intended to be used in exchange, but not to increase at interest. And this term interest, which means the birth of money from money, is applied to the breeding of money because the offspring resembles the parent. Wherefore of an modes of getting wealth this is the most unnatural.”
- Aristotle (not Onassis)

Today we accept some level of interest charging as reasonable and necessary.  However, the interest levels which money is loaned out today (at a time when the lenders can borrow money almost interest free) are wildly exorbitant. I think usury is an appropriate term here.

More importantly, so much of the money in America today is in the hands of the ultra wealthy who gained it through such means as stock market manipulations and financial activities which benefit no one except the wealthy, who set the rules of the game.  A reasonable level of interest is requisite for modern life, but these manipulations are merely ways to take money from those who have less and give it to those who have more.

These methodologies were unknown and Aristotle's day, but I think it is clear that he would condemn them. I know I do.

Millennials, Now Label Free

So, John Della Volpe, Polling Director of the Harvard Institute of politics, reports that millennials have a strong dislike of political labels. 

I find this a very refreshing position. I don't like labels either. When people try to put a label on me and say,  "I know what you think because you're a fill-in the blank and they all think exactly the same way," I always say "Sorry, I don't fit in your nice little categories."

I find this so interesting regarding millennials.  They don't like to be called socialist, they don't like to be called capitalist. They prefer to look at the details and the hard realities. They want to know, is this working? Where has it failed? How can we make it work? They seek answers without regard to whether that answer is included in a given label which has been attached to them.  Their thinking is much more open and unconstrained than that of traditional political participants.

When you add to this that millennials also dislike belonging to a specific religion, and thus being labeled and categorized, I find reason for great hope for the future. Even in the area of their religion, millennials don't want to  mindlessly submit to authority, they prefer to think for themselves. In the 1950s, when I was young, a great deal of criticism by social observers was aimed at how rigidly society enforced a strict code of behavior. Everyone was expected to conform. We even spoke of "conformism" as a critical issue.  Not everyone was speaking of it in a negative way.

That millennials' minds are so generally open and unwilling to be shoved in rigid categories makes me feel that I may have been born in the wrong generation. Their attitude, in some ways, is much more similar to mine than mine is to so many of my generation. I am not alone in this.  I have friends my age with a similar mindset. We are the outliers of our generation, however.

Sadly, the guest also indicated that about half of millennials believe that the American dream is dead.  They are not terribly hopeful about the future. I find this ironic because I think the very reason that the future is so hopeful, and I find it very hopeful indeed, is because of those very millennials. It is they who will bring this country to a new level of greatness. It is they who have opened the minds of this nation.

In millennials, I trust.

The relevant portion of the interview from C-SPAN. (Sorry, but the dialogue on the C-SPAN website was in all caps and is difficult to read due to a number of errata as well.  I have made some minor corrections, these are not in caps):

John Della Volpe

GUEST: THIS IS A COLLABORATION I HAVE WITH A COUPLE DOZEN STUDENTS OF HARVARD AND ONE STUDENT FROM OREGON WAS REALLY INTERESTED IN TRYING TO MEASURE WHETHER OR NOT YOUNG PEOPLE COULD ASSOCIATE WITH -- OR CALL THEMSELVES A SOCIALIST OR CAPITALIST. WHAT WE FOUND WAS A COUPLE OF THINGS, YOUNG PEOPLE REALLY DON'T LIKE ANY LABELS. VERY FEW PEOPLE AS you indicated feel COMFORTABLE CALLING THEMSELVES A SOCIALIST OR CAPITALIST. MORE TELLING IS THAT A MAJORITY OF YOUNG PEOPLE TODAY indicated that they do not support capitalism. That's frankly, I think, what I consider one of the most significant findings of this survey -- THE FIRST THING WE DID WAS, WE EXPANDED THE POLLS FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER AS YOU NOTED AND ASKED PEOPLE OVER THE AGE OF 30 AS WELL, WE CONDUCTED A separate SURVEY AND FOUND THAT until you get OVER THE AGE OF 50, THERE IS NOT A LOT OF SUPPORT FOR CAPITALISM. until YOU GET OVER 50, A MAJORITY OF PEOPLE IN AMERICA TELL US THEY DO NOT SUPPORT CAPITALISM. I WENT BACK TO A COLLEGE CAMPUS AND CONDUCTED A FOCUS GROUP OF OVER A DOZEN OR SO IN Lancaster AND FRANKLIN AND MARSHALL COLLEGE AND WHAT I LEARNED WAS CAPITALISM THAT IS PRACTICED TODAY IS SOMETHING THAT IS UNFAVORABLE FOR STUDENTS. THEY TELL US THAT IT PROVIDES OPPORTUNITIES NOT FOR ANYONE BUT FOR A CHOSEN FEW THAT KNOW HOW TO MANIPULATE THE SYSTEM AND THAT THOSE OF THE MAIN REASONS WHY CAPITALISM IS NOT SUPPORTED BY MEMBERS OF THIS GENERATION. LARGEST GENERATION IN THE HISTORY OF AMERICA.

Frenemies

 In response to a post regarding Missouri's proposed religious freedom laws which pointed out that religious conservatives are now finding themselves opposed by their business allies, I responded:

This may go to a public vote, "triggering an even bigger fight, pitting Christian conservatives against their old allies in business."

But, my conservative friends,  The members of the business community, especially the wealthy class, were never your allies. On the surface they appeared to be; but they weren't. They used to you. That's why so much of their agenda been adopted on a national level and almost none of yours has been.

This is because they didn't really care about your agenda. They used you to get what they wanted done. They had no interest in helping you accomplish your goals. And now that your "alliance"  has become inconvenient for them, they're showing their true colors and abandoning you by the roadside.

Many of us who are not conservatives are not surprised. You shouldn't be either.

You Pay Your Taxes And Take You Your Chances

A popular Internet meme list how government types supposedly operate. It's a clear attempt to sneer at socialists, aka, Bernie Sanders. It promotes a total misunderstanding of the concept of democratic socialism. A more accurate view is as follows:

Socialist
Helps you buy a herd of cows, then buys back their products. Also orders you to run the farm their way.

Democrat
Depends on the Democrat. Some are Conservative, some are Liberal, some are moderate...in short, unpredictable and unreliable governance is the rule.

Communist
Runs everything, very badly. Tells you you live in Paradise.

Republican
Takes half your herd, gives it to the rich, then pays the rich not to do any work with the herd. When the rich man's herd dies from neglect, the government takes more of your cows to give to him, and pays him a bonus for being such a great farmer.

Democratic Socialist
Helps you buy a herd, helps you care for it, helps you sell its products. Taxes you for the profit you make and provides you and your family with world class health care, a clean and safe environment, the world's best schools, and so on.

Fascist
See Republican.

ADDENDUM

A friend posted an addendum to this which I cannot resist adding here with my commentary. The original post said something on the line of:


Libertarian. I have a cow and I don't care of you have one.

I read this as:

Libertarian: You have a cow. The government doesn't give a damn about your cow or anything else. Hope your starving neighbors don't come and murder you and steal your cow. But if they do, it's none of our business. You libertarians are on your own. Every man for himself. Libertarianism, anarchy with lipstick on.

Job Security

Nick's post:

Lunchtime deep thought:



While standing in line at Home Depot, I overheard a man loudly complain about self-checkout machines, and how they were taking away jobs from people. He was expressing a larger, common fear: machines taking our jobs, which often is joined at the hip with foreigners taking our jobs (via free trade).



It is true that machine and foreign competition do change our labor markets, and they do so in ways that threaten the livelihood of our most vulnerable workers. But the worry about "losing our jobs" to machines or foreigners is misdiagnosing the real problem:



Our society has plenty of work that is desperately needed, and plenty of people who desperately need work, but we prefer rich people to pay low taxes.



Just look around. There is work everywhere that needs to be done. There are roads, bridges, and pipes to be fixed. There are railroad lines to be built. There are homes to be constructed. There are solar panels to be installed. There is massive amounts of infrastructure needed to be built to mitigate the dangers of global warming. There are children that need to be taught. There are working families who need someone to provide day care. There are the elderly who need care. There are case workers and public defenders who are extremely overburdened. Work is needed.



There are even things we don't yet know we need or want, but which only exist in the mind of someone overburdened with debt and trapped from starting their own business and realizing their dreams.



If we had a healthy economy, we'd celebrate losing low paying jobs to machines and foreign competition, as it would bring lower prices, leaving more money to be paid in higher wages to workers doing more important work.



While we are a wealthy economy, we are far from a healthy economy. Instead of taxing the immense wealth within our country to lower debt and pay wages to people to do the things we need, we collectively decide to avoid "class warfare" and instead blame the machine or the foreigner.



Sad!

My response:

Nick, I've said for years the goal of the Republican Party is to turn America into Mexico. A very tiny ultra wealthy privileged class, the Dons, rule a huge class of impoverished, desperate peons and just enough of a competent middle-class to provide the rich with their needs.

Ironically, Mexico is beginning to show the signs of a growing middle-class, something that was always an American right -- until Ronald Reagan happened. He reignited the class war that Franklin Delano Roosevelt had won for the majority. That counterrevolution has been incredibly successful. With the death of Antonin Scalia and the presidency of Barack Obama, we might be seeing the beginning of the Restoration.



Hmmm...The French Revolution would be a better example. But I'm too tired to change the Restoration into one of the Republics.



PS, although I did mean "Dons" in the strictly Spanish sense, it does make pretty good pun.

One Kleptocracy, Under Greed...

In response to a Facebook post which pointed out that much of what we feared would befall us if Communism won the Cold War has come true under capitalism, I responded:

Sort of.  I have no respect for unrestricted free enterprise, but the United States does not currently follow this capitalist ideal.  We are becoming less a democracy and more a kleptocracy in which the government serves the ultra wealthy in amassing ever greater amounts of our national wealth through corrupt politics, tax breaks, and immunity from legal restrictions or consequences.

Of course, it could be argued that this is the inevitable result of under regulated capitalism.

How Much Money??

Republicans are fond of hysterically screaming that the United States is in desperate trouble due to a seemingly eternal list of threats. One of the dangers which most terrifies them is the idea of the rich paying higher taxes than they currently do. But what impact would it actually have if we went back to the distribution of wealth which was normal in America's past? How much would it help the middle class? How much would it really hurt the ultrarich? Here are some answers:

Larry Summers was being interviewed by Charlie Rose. He is former secretary of the treasury and a key economic advisor to Pres. Obama, and former president of Harvard University.

"Think about this: if the income distribution of rhe United States were the same as it was in 1979,there would be $1 trillion more in the hands of the lower 80%…1 trillion, or $11,000 per family inthe hands of the bottom 80% of the population and there would  be $1 trillion less in the hands of the top 1%.  …that would be $750,000 less on average, per family for them.

So there has been a big  redistribution that has worked to the detriment of the middle class."

He then went on to point out that as this assault on the middle class is occurring, the government is providing less and less support for the middle class in many areas ranging from infrastructure to education costs.  "So there have been a variety of changes that  have exacerbated the inequality."

Rather than believing this is inevitable, he states, "… There are countries, Canada and Australia are two good examples, that, by focusing on these basic investments, by empowering workers, by strengthening education…through healthy regulatory mechanisms...have succeeded in having rising standards of living  for  the middle class."

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It's About Time!

Finally! Someone agrees with me or at least sees the possibility that I might be correct in that President  Obama may be the Left's Ronald Reagan.  John Ward from Yahoo! News wrote an article entitled, How Barack Obama wants to be the Ronald Reagan of the left – Obama hoping to use economic recovery to reshape the political debate for decades. In other words Obama aims to be a watershed president who drew the line and put an end to the dominance of Ronald Reagan's espoused concepts of economics.

Of course, this  article says this is what Obama wants to accomplish where as I have stated that this is what will be remembered as his primary accomplishment.

Rob FromThe Poor, Give To The Rich

Responses to a Bernie Sanders Facebook post which read:

This is what class warfare looks like:

The business Roundtable – representing Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, J.P. Morgan Chase and others – has called on Congress to raise the eligibility age of Social Security and Medicare to 70, cut Social Security and veterans COLAs, raise taxes on working families and cut taxes for the largest corporations in America.

The responses:

Susan: welcome to the new America. Thank goodness I am so old they can't hurt me too much. I am ashamed that we are leaving our children and grandchildren a world that is worse than the one we were given. And you know as well as I do that or problems have not been caused by immigrants, illegal or otherwise, nor is Obamacare the cause of our decline

Lisa:  Glad I'm old too--we're f___d if Bernie Sanders doesn't take the helm.

Susan:  He would have my vote but only if he runs as a democrat.  If he runs as an independent, green or other party candidate, I'm afraid he will split the vote like Nader did in 2000. Look what happened then. All hell broke loose and we will not recover in my lifetime.

Me:  We'll recover when a Dem picks up Obama's defiance of Reaganism and we get a new FDR.  When Clinton declared the era of big government was over, he damned even Dems  to obey Republican ideology.  Triangulation is better known as capitulation.  Now, for the first time since then, Dems are saying Republicans are fundamentally wrong, so let's stop letting them tell us the rules of engagement.

Susan:  Think it will happen in our lifetime? I am afraid repubs would rather see our country go down in flames than work to fix it for the common good.

Me:  I would have to agree that the Republican Party has become as corrupt as a party can be. It is  endlessly pandering to it's fading base of aging, frightened white people, mostly male and to its robber baron bosses.  I would say within 10 to 15 years we will see a radical change as more and more young people become eligible to vote and and carry the resentment of Republicans trying to disenfranchise them. The Republican Party in America may well face the same fate that happened the Republican Party in California. The great victory of Prop 187 changed California from a conservative red state to a blue state in which republicans stand little chance of accomplishing anything.  More likely, Republicans will return to being a party which includes moderates and even some liberals.  The fanaticism has run so deep that this may not be possible.

But remember, the Republican Party was once the most liberal party in the Western world. The Democratic Party was once the party of conservative racial bigots. Things do change, and they often change almost overnight due to one great leader.  The Republicans became the home of  bigots and the Democrats lost that status because LBJ pushed through civil rights legislation.  It was almost literally overnight and shocked the world in its suddenness.

I deeply respect Obama's accomplishment in drawing the line in the sand and declaring that Reaganism would no longer be allowed to dominate unopposed, but he failed to go so far as to be an FDR or an LBJ. That is, to be a great president. Obama is only a much better than average president.

The Moral Wealth of Nations

From C-SPAN January 23, 2015

Edward Kleinbard,  who teaches law and business at the USC Gould school of Law and author of We Are Better Than This How Government Should Spend Our Money, commented that, "...we are under endowed with skeptical members of Congress." He adds, "...government – which is to say, all of us, acting collectively – can make our country healthier, wealthier, and happier, if we put government do useful work..."

He points out that the government should not be competing with private enterprise but complementing it. In other words, the two should work together in a mutually beneficial and cooperative relationship. The situation is not a zero-sum game, with winner take all results. Or at least, it shouldn't be. (This should sound familiar to those who have listened to me in the past.)

As an example of the investment function of the government, he points to a report by David Wessel of the Brookings Institute, "The paper written by some scholars, very careful work, to demonstrate that spending 10% more in public education of kids in  grades K-12...leads to increased wages of about 7.25%. That's a fantastic investment."

He points out that this isn't about taking from the rich to give to the poor. It's about investing in our future. Investment, something every businessman should understand.  In this way the economic pie gets bigger, he continues, not smaller; which benefits all of us.

"It's most remarkable thing. We are by far The biggest bunch of tax whiners in the world today. The United States is not just a low tax country, it is in fact the lowest tax country among the entire club of rich nations in the world.  If you measure our tax burdens, federal, state, and local as a percentage of our national income, our GDP, we are the lowest taxed. At the same time, we have some of the worst poverty data, our poverty rates are substantially higher than virtually every  other country in the OECD, the club of rich countries, and our inequality data is worse, our health statistics are worse. So we are a low tax country that systematically under invests in ourselves, in our own citizens, and that's really a strange place for the richest most successful country in the world…the history of the world."

"What drives me crazy is to discover, when I was researching the book, that the United States is one of four countries of the 34 countries of the OECD Club of rich countries where we systematically do more on the public education of rich kids than poor kids. What a bizarre way to run a country, when we systematically spend more money on rich kids than poor kids 

In terms of educating them!

There are only two places in our budget, two places, where we systematically spend more than other countries. One is the military and the other is in healthcare."

He then goes on to point out that he's not trying to judge how big or powerful the military should be, but he is saying that if we insist on having the largest and most expensive military in the world, then we should  tax ourselves to pay for it ..."we need to have a tax system that is big enough to enable us to be the new Sparta." 

"If you're looking for waste, fraud, and abuse, healthcare is  a nightmare.  We spend close to double what other rich countries spend per capita per person on healthcare."  He points out that we spend huge amounts of public funds on healthcare, and then spend even more out-of-pocket for personal expenses to health insurance companies. The health insurance companies, in effect, are a private  tax we impose on ourselves when we refuse to do the economically efficient thing, have a single-payer system.

When it was suggested that's what's wrong with our country is that 40% of Americans don't pay any income tax, he responded that this is a red herring. First, most of the Americans who don't pay income tax are either children or the elderly on Social Security.  It is doubtful if the viewer would care to start taxing children and the elderly who are on a very limited income. Most of the rest who do not pay income tax, even while paying many other taxes, are too poor to pay taxes. I add that taxing the poor is stupid.  

If we invested more in our infrastructure and in raising many of our citizens out of poverty instead of pressing them down into it, more of them would have the money to pay taxes. Can this be more obvious?

I also must add that many of the wealthiest corporations in the world not only do not pay their share of taxes, they even get refunds from the US government! Every person in America, even those in that 40%, pays taxes.  Even the incredibly wealthy corporations that get free money instead of paying income tax, pay taxes on their employees and raw materials. Still, I doubt any other rich government in the world allows welfare for the wealthy. We, of course, have corporations which heavily depend upon it.

In other nations, the author points out, higher education is free to the individual. Of course it is paid for in taxes, but that money is paid back in the earnings of the highly educated individual who graduates. In other words, it's not only free, it actually makes a profit! So the next time a conservative tells you nothing is free, tell them it sure as hell is! To put it another way, you won't make money when you won't invest money. We, as a people, as a government, make money when we provide a free education. Not lose it. Make it.

And the idea of that taxes will automatically impede growth? Prof. Kleinbard responds, "Taxes went up on January 1, 2013 for the top earning Americans, went up significantly, and yet the world went on.   Bill O'Reilly showed up for work the next day." Note: Bill O'Reilly is famous for, among other things, having declared that if  taxes go up for him and his wealthy friends, it will no longer be worth his while to go to work.  I guess he's working for free now.  The Professor adds that, "Yet the United States has had two great years of growth over the last two years."  Conclusions: Higher taxes do not necessarily cause rich people to stop working. Higher taxes do not necessarily have a negative impact on growth. It seems they may even have a positive impact in both these areas.

Kleinbard goes on to state that not only do relatively moderate changes in our tax structure not impede growth, "On the contrary, raising tax revenue and using that to fund productive complementary investments like... education..." results in an increase in  economic growth.

A caller asked if the author thought it was fair that people that work hard and earned their wealth should be taxed so that people who have not dedicated themselves to earning money should be rewarded. His response, I think, was off target, referring primarily to luck and the inheritance of intelligence. My response is that the vast majority of the wealthy in America inherited their money. They didn't earn a penny of it. It was handed to them.  Meanwhile, a huge amount of work and labor goes into just getting enough money to feed yourself and your family for  many Americans today. The caller was appallingly ignorant of reality. That is not surprising. She called in on the Republican line.

The professor points out that Adam Smith wrote two books. The first was indeed The Wealth of Nations, referring to the benefits of free enterprise system, but the second was The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Republicans love to refer to the first book, while ignoring the moral obligations specified in the second.

This is the problem conservatives continually bump into today. They forget morality, except when it suits them. For them, as for big business in America, morality has become whatever makes a profit. No wonder we're in so much trouble.

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