Debt Rattle July 22 2020
- This topic has 11 replies, 9 voices, and was last updated 3 years, 9 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
Ben Shahn for the Farm Security Administration Daughter of Virgil Thaxton, farmer, near Mechanicsburg, Ohio 1938 • It Has Become Clear Eliminat
[See the full post at: Debt Rattle July 22 2020]Ben Shahn for the Farm Security Administration Daughter of Virgil Thaxton, farmer, near Mechanicsburg, Ohio 1938
Great photo…
The daughter of Virgil Thaxton doesn’t look all that impressed…
Overall, me too…
…my avocation has become a renewed interest in reading; blazing through Hesse (my favorite author) and Chuang Tsu (via Thomas Merton) and…so many books and so much time…for the present…
😉
Oh, and Heller’s Picture This is the next read.
Got through 1/2 of it and just quit reading…everything…
Things change………constantly…………..:-)I never really mention the Farm Security Administration, because it makes for too long captions with the photos, but many of the Depression era pics I post come from there. A little bit strange maybe for an organization founded to “combat rural poverty”, but today they’re probably best known for those pictures. And they helped many young photographers start their careers, like Jack Delano, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Marion Post Wolcott, Gordon Parks, Arthur Rothstein, John Vachon and more.
In the USA, Its about money, and me me me
“AstraZeneca said its vaccine would be provided at no profit under its agreement with the United States for allocation of some 300 million doses.”
No profit is not the same as FREE.
The cost have already been paid by grants.
We at TAE have known this for a long time. This is old news for us.
———–
” …. the problem is clear, but as for the solution, is it possible? Realistic? Or just too late?”“……Billions of children died from infectious diseases……”
Gaia way = Population control
Our way = Birth control
———–
SECOND HAND SMOKE KILLS YOU
SECOND HAND COVID KILLS ?????http://www.johndayblog.com/2020/07/waiting-for-it.html
There has been a lot of fearful name calling in political circles in recent years.
“FASCIST!”
“”COMMUNIST!”
There are others, but those hit the buttons pretty well.
What are the components that make up a political movement? Let’s call them “Axes” for this exercise, please.
There’s Left and Right, which are mostly feelings and patterns of social engagement.
Lefties tend to be more spontaneous, take superficial risks more, engage socially in a “lefty” kind of way.
Morality may be perceived as more situational than absolute.
Rightists tend to be more concerned with consequences, and more formal.
Morality is not a casual thing to rightists, but a serious concern for society, and when it is abandoned, some very bad things happen, especially to children. That’s certainly true.
I adjust my presentations to people based on whether I’m with lefties or rightists. It’s all valid and useful.
I seek to avoid offense. It’s possible. It’s more productive. We all have to work together.There is Liberal, or Free, vs Illiberal, or Totalitarian.
I’m kind of bent-outta’-shape about how many ways the term “liberal” is used and misused recently, so I’d prefer “free” and “totalitarian” as an axis. Fascism and Soviet Communism, as Americans know them were both totalitarian, illiberal.
I might make the argument that Teddy Roosevelt was a right liberal populaist and Franklin Roosevelt was a left liberal populist. Some might well disagree, but I just want to show that such things have existed.The next axis, and Americans have a hard time seeing it as independent, is Private vs Social dominant values.
It’s never one or the other, and we are at the extreme of a swing to private-ownership, including means of production, money creation, and credit-taking. If you own the media, you get the credit for whatever good happens, but not the blame for bad stuff. We admire groups of pioneers, settlers, who raised barns together, and cleared fields to grow crops together. We encourage children to cooperate. Most of what we have accomplished as a species has come from our stellar ability to cooperate.
Right now the wealth disparity is as high in the US as it has ever been in our history, maybe a tad higher, and it’s absolutely high by the standards of world history.Let me argue at this point, that the only way for society to go is to more socialism/populism. The elite owner class absolutely hates this fact, but they also see it. they just want as little safety net action as possible, and they want assurances that they will still get the first drink of all the fresh money that is created, before they pass it through their systems to the rest of us. I don’t think it’s possible for wealth to remain this concentrated without breaking the social order, and I think it is actually broken, and denial won’t be sustainable, even for the elites. I don’t know what will burst that bubble for them, but it will be most unpleasant for you and me, too.
What about Left and Right? America seems stuck at an impasse between left and right dominant values. It was Left in the “Roaring 20s”, and swung to Right during the “Great Depression”.
It swung to the left in the 1960s and 1970s, and it seems sort of that way now, but it doesn’t feel real. I think “Limousine Left” is not “left”. I seem to know more and more people who were moral-left in 1960s and 1970s, anti-war, and are now moral-conservative, anti-war.
The pro-war-left is now a thing that bombs babies to protect them. Weird.
Clinton did that in Bosnia. It worked for team Clinton-Bush.It could/should be that moral-right is the next swing. I’m ready for some real morality in politics. It has been such a looong time…
We could also get totalitarian-right, which is what a lot of people are afraid of. We call that Fascism, and lack of freedom of speech is a big part of totalitarian-subjugation. Hard totalitarianism is not open to debate. Obey or be branded for prison, torture and death. This is what the American military and covert mercenary armies have been doing throughout the world since 9/11.
The public was against this immorality in Vietnam, but has been neutered since 9/11.
No draft. No TV news showing horrors of war, not lately.I look around and see a subtle slide into immoral-left already underway. There is no longer full support for freedom of speech. Standing up for freedom of speech is “hate speech”, now, and gets professors fired without recourse. This seems like the early days of the Cultural-Revolution we are seeing.
People were really hungry, starving and desperate in China’s Cultural Revolution. We are not… Yet.We should best pick a healthy path before things get really bad.
Left and Right are matters of style, and will decide themselves.
I suspect a swing to the Right will happen as history tightens up, and social leftist identity-politics has played some pretty impractical cards recently.Individual is at an extreme swing, and absolutely must give way to Social. We have tremendous changes to make, to recreate a living, working economy, as energy supplies delete, the globe heats up, and the consequences and failures of a system based on infinite growth crash all around us and on our heads.
Let’s just help each other and be seen doing it. Grow vegetables together. That’s our basic successful social function.
It’s nice. It feels good, once you get in the groove.The threat to us all, including our selfish, parasitic, sociopathic elite owners (no offense intended) is totalitarian SUBJUGATION
The efforts to extend the current private-ownership-of-the-world paradigm can only be totalitarian-subjugation efforts, because the system has gotten too inefficient and bureaucratic for anything but threats of pin and violence to extend it. Threats of pain and violence are comparatively cheap. They force the systemic costs onto the people complying with the threats. That arrangement is inherently unstable. Working people are already cracking from the stress.
The last cards of make-believe are being played right now, with the Fed and high-frequency trading manipulating equity markets and bond markets to higher and higher nominal valuations. All investors are getting rich as the real economy simultaneously evaporates. This is the final, manic, fear-of-missing-out phase of financial bubbleism.
It’s all police state when the happy-lies go POOF!
Unless we chose FREEDOM.
The last Moral Candidate for POTUS, that I saw was US Army Reserve Major and Congresswoman , Tulsi Gabbard.
I would categorize Congresswoman Gabbard as Freedom-loving, Right, Populist/Socialist. You might disagree.
Bernie Sanders has always been left, “mostly-Socialist” and Freedom-propounding, though he plays-well-with-capitalists, Bernie did accidentally become a “millionaire” through the wonders of inflation and old-age.
Bernie Sanders would do, but it’s a bit late in the life-cycle for him. Times like this call out for youthful vigor.
I see the need for a national leader with an independent moral compass as the highest priority.
The current political system has not let any candidate advance without being controllable by the current elite oligarchs, except for this orange haired Tasmanian Devil accident that happened 4 years ago.
Weird fluke. It was supposed to be Clinton or Bush again…
The “You’re-Fired” guy is trying to look moral, but he accidentally held the Bible upside down in that photo-op the Army cleared the crowd for last month. “Grab-em-by-the-…..” He sued the porn-queen-for-snitching-after-he-paid-her-off.
Donald Trump is none of the categories above. He’s Left-right, Billionaire-populist, too-erratic-to-be-a-hypocrite.Trump And Biden Should Debate While Attached To A Lie Detector
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/rabo-trump-and-biden-should-debate-while-attached-lie-detectorCharles Hugh Smith: Inequality Is America’s Monster Id
The only possible result of this system is that the wealth of the nation is increasingly concentrated in the hands of the few with access to the Fed’s nearly free money, and so the unearned income (interest, dividends, rents, etc.) all flow to them–not because they created value or goods and services, but because they were closest to the Fed’s money spigot.
The political game is to obscure this source of inequality and distract the unprivileged many with bread and circuses: an extra $600 tossed to the restive crowd of unemployed, $1,200 to the fitful audience, and eventually, some monthly amount of Universal Basic Income (UBI) calibrated to be just enough to get by but not enough to ever own any productive assets.
As I often point out, the real goal of UBI is to ensure debtors can make their credit card / student loan / auto loan payments, as these monthly payments by the masses are the interest income of the super-wealthy with the privileged position by the Fed’s money spigot.
The privileged super-wealthy also own the media, of course, and so they’re delighted to virtue-signal their support of purely symbolic actions such as toppling statues and occupying worthless chunks of cities. None of these symbolic actions threaten their privileged position by the Fed’s money spigot, and even better, they distract and divide the exploited populace.
For if the people never catch on to the source of inequality, that ignorance is all the protection the privileged super-wealthy need.
The privileged super-wealthy are feeling very confident in their control of the financial system, the source of inequality. They own the wealth, the income streams, the media, Big Tech, and the machinery of political power.
What they don’t understand is inequality is America’s Monster Id: the more you try to suppress it, the more powerful it becomes. The Monster Id of inequality is already rampaging through the social and political orders, and eventually it will burn through the Fed’s free-money vault with a white-hot intensity that will surprise the privileged super-wealthy and their armies of self-serving toadies, lackeys, apparatchiks and technocrat flunkies.
https://www.oftwominds.com/blogjuly20/inequality7-20.html” …. People were really hungry, starving and desperate ….”
Not in Chicago, Detroit, slums etc. /s
Not in the gated community
Not among the highly educated enablers
Not among the advisors of the elites
Not in the long term care home
Not in the retirement communitiesNot among the street people /s
Watch!
The professional educated ivy tower elites are going to be going through severe, long lasting, delapidating, withdrawal cause by foreign student staying home.BREXIT
Not sure if the UK understands the implications of BREXIT!
It needs to establish trade relations with the world but seems to be keen to alienate most potential markets.
The campaign against Russia is well established, but we now have an expanding campaign against China.
A deal with the EU was never likely, and the EU must take some of the blame for that.
While Trump has declared a willingness to strike a deal they are likely to drive a hard bargain, and if Trump loses a deal is not guaranteed.
On top of that the UK will be suffering from the economic disaster of lockdowns, and it already had a large debt before that.
As a military sidekick to the US the UK is likely to, or already has, alienated other markets. I feel that this militarism will continue even if it harms the economy – the people affected are not the ones in power!
The future of the UK seems bleak.
Australia to self-isolate? Good!
For far too long we’ve been relying on mass immigration to keep the Ponzi scheme operating. It’s about time that reality caught up with us. Infinite, low- or no-cost growth is a thing of the past.
If one can enjoy anything in this Year of the Plague, it’s watching the staunchly, sociopathically neoliberal Federal government being forced to examine its Market Theology and, if only for a few brief months,
- abandon them
. It’s actually been giving suffering people a stipend large enough to survive on! Oh, the horror — ! How amazing is that! The subsidy will be reduced soon from $600 to $250 — at least it’s not stopping entirely.
Sorry, my schadenfreude is getting the better of me.
The smoking mask pic; I don’t know Raul….. that looks like it might be supporting Dr.D’s position…No?
hahahaha!
John Day, See yesterdays Joe Rogan with Oliver Stone. You will enjoy.
Not quite ready to abrogate my 1950’s social contract yet:
@JohnDay
Re left vs right, I like the four quadrant model model with Liberal vs Conservative on the horizontal axis and Individualist vs collectivist on the vertical axis. It makes it easier to distinguish for example between anarchist (individualist) leftist vs socialist, and similar within the conservative spectrum between rugged individualists vs, say religious collectivist conservatives.Caitlin Johnstone made an interesting assertion recently that I’ve been reflecting on: if you want more of something, the best model is capitalism. If you want less of something, then socialism is better. Her example is health care, where the overarching goal should be less ill-health, but the capitalist model in the US is hell-bent on expanding it’s services and profits, and thus winds up extremely expensive. It’s an interesting thought that I want to reflect more on the applicability of.
Covid Never More! (Australia.) Elimination is the best option
It might be possible. But not if one implements cost-benefit analysis, as these rest on ‘coming out a winner, on top’ or ‘not loosing too much money’ or ‘not damaging the economy’, etc.
The closing off would have to be a mostly-consensual decision taken and organised and enforced with determination, not with jackboots and punishment, but resting on a well-thought plan that does the best for all, to save lives.
A few transport hubs (sea, air) with triple zonification would be needed, zone 1, nobody passes further (Aus has to import – export to chug along, survive.. this zone would be like the Black Plague Quaranta in Italia, 40 days, 4x times the mini-10 days self-iso the Brits are imposing), zone 2 also has barriers, etc., and then zone 3 is free to roam after checks, etc.
I know virutally nothing about Aus, sitting on a mountain in CH, but Cov19 and the possible moves to eliminate it are the same all over the world, with islands / isolated continents having an advantage.
A longer, harsher lockdown in Melbourne – and anywhere the virus begins to take hold again – would be enormously challenging for many, especially those who are disadvantaged, marginalised, or poor. from quoted piece.
The author is not serious and is blathering about various dodgy concepts. The impact on the poor is not a given, it could easily be managed, compensated, prevented. In the hands of the Aus. Gvmt, the measures are no-brainers. Ex. Ensure retaining present housing, expand it for homeless if needed, basic health care, testing, job support, food stamps type, etc.
A ‘lockdown’ shouldn’t be implemented because poor ppl will suffer? What kind of hypocritical sleight-of-hand is that?
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.