Dr. Diablo
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Keen, Keen, Keen…seriously? Yes, the government owns–or can own–the central bank. Yes they can print their own currency if they’re willing to take over the national bank. However, printing up somewhere between $20 and $300 Trillion off the digital press will have real-world effects. Like high to hyper inflation, complete loss of confidence in the United States, a halt of foreign imports, inability to pursue foreign wars and bases, loss of control of the seas, and unrest to insurrection due to food price increases at home. He’s promoting the single most regressive tax in existence–the inflation tax–which savages the poor exclusively. Even the middle class can hide in stocks, housing, etc, while the truly wealthy have alternatives that can actively MAKE trillions in inflation. The only ones who are truly savaged, killed by the millions, as you see in Venezuela, Zimbabwe, etc, are the poor.
So sure…go ahead and try it. There’s no other solution, we were never going to pay our debts back anyway. For one thing it’s mathematically impossible. But it just MIGHT be a LITTLE disingenuous to propose such a course without noting it may collapse society, the entire country, it’s economy, and possibly the world. This is what those in power are up against, which may explain their awkward behavior over the years.
That said, there’s no difference in private debt. You just said you’d take over the national bank, so, once you do that, you have them print up another $20 Trillion and pay that off too. What’s the difference, printing doesn’t have any ill effects, right? I mean except how one man’s debt is another man’s asset.
In any case, well or ill advised, this must mathematically happen. The inflation he promotes, that will execute the poor by millions, will also solve the private debt problem, as with currency inflation the $100,000 in debt each American owes becomes enough to buy a breakfast special at Denny’s. So hey, two birds with one stone!
Keen, I’m sure you know all this. So does the Automatic Earth. So try not to be disingenuous about the consequences of where we’ve found ourselves. Your countrymen need you.
Russia hasn’t been Communist in literally a human lifetime. When will anyone (i.e. the U.S.) notice? 50 years? 100 years? 200? Never?
Leads to why these guys are losing, losing, losing. They’re “Red Scare”, “Russia is attacking!”, “Just like Watergate.” How decrepit are these guys? What are they, like 100 years old? Not to make us all feel old, but more than half the population has never lived in a time when the USSR existed. You’d have to be 60 to even have read about Watergate. Vietnam Veterans are now 72. WWII vets are 100 and we’re still talking about gol-derned Nazis. Did this happen under Napoleon? In 1955 were they still arming for the inevitable French invasion?
Clue phone: nobody knows what you’re talking about. Advertizing, these storylines and memes work by emotion, and nobody but the equally senile and geriatric has any emotional connection to Soviet Russia and the Nazi regime. I mean, nice try, but without some firsthand contact, you can get people mentally hepped up, but not move them to real action.
You know what does move them? Firsthand experiences with a 17-year Depression that’s pushed youth income 80% below their parents, provides no jobs, prevents marriage and family formation, and assures no stake in society as they can’t start businesses and are priced out of housing, forever. F.O.R.E.V.E.R. You will die owning nothing but an iPhone. THAT sells. And over half the population now has never seen anything else in their adult lifetimes. That’s why Bernie Sanders, Corbyn, and incidentally Donald Trump DO have traction to make people act. Because THAT is real. Not these abstract, mythical stories told by obsolete old men to other obsolete old men pretending they’re still the young Woodward and Bernstein. You could be 18 and have never purchased a newspaper, or seen one read at home. That’s why they were losing, are losing, and have already lost. Because they won’t share, transmit power, and time marches on. Bye bye, losers.
Sorry to be so extreme but the turning of the millennia, the infinite future, the year 2000, is almost 20 years ago and people are voting who never lived in a time marked “19”. Will anyone notice? With all the wealth and power pointedly and excruciatingly removed from the young, it’s easy to pretend, easy to ignore, easy to forget, but as time moves, THEY are what is relevant, not you. And all the wealth and power and cruelty in the world can’t stop it.
Renewables can take a pleasant portion of the load, but not the way these guys do it. Renewables are so marginal, so energy anemic that you can’t afford to lose 10-20% in transmission losses. Therefore, any centralization in them is a non-starter, instead working small in an independent, distributed household level. But then there’s no subsidies and profit centers, just very long term energy savings — kind of like when Carter promoted the ultra-un-cool house insulation. Goes to show what they, the greens + government really care about. Not the earth, not energy, but the power of centralized control, taking money from others, and forcing other people to do what they want without doing it themselves. And wouldn’t that be the definition of tyranny? Not a fan.
If they want this to work, call an engineer. They’ll set you straight about what’s possible and cost effective real solution to the problem parameters.
Outrage? We cover it every day. As Michael Moore said, the people would elect anybody to give the biggest F-U in history to the elite and the present system. In some ways, an outrage better placed than just kvetching on chat boards.
But…is what it is.
I felt Diogenes’ comment was appropriate. An open argument is about the quality of ideas, not their people. This is what western civilization is based on: the right to hold opinions, to express them, to promote them, and even advocate them, and in fact, as a right, we defend the people holding a different opinion from violence, sometimes even from harassment because someday we too may hold an unpopular view on some subject. Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do? Defend the minority from attack and oppression, even if we disagree with them? That’s the basis of the American principle at least, however poorly executed.
Even worldwide, we must stick to the facts, the theories, because scientists themselves disagree violently, about practically everything. If they descended to the temptation of ad hominem attacks, educated discussions would immediately fall to “you’re a poopy-pants” “nanana-peepee”, and we’ve got enough of that as anyone who’s been to a scientific conference can attest.
A former Svalbard coal miner, [said] “I am really surprised they made such a stupid construction.”
If that doesn’t say it all about these days that nobody would deign to ask a working guy how to accomplish the most simple — idiotic almost — stone-age task: how to make a hole. You’d think these guys would be experts in digging holes for themselves by now. Ok geniuses, bonus round: who sited this “failsafe” vault, envisioned to save mankind itself “forever”, basically at sea level? Nevermind the permafrost, you do know that earthquakes occur from time to time, and lead to tsunamis in timescales somewhat shorter than “forever”? You’ve heard of subsidence? And they didn’t ask a miner how to mine? So who DID they ask? M.I.T.? What am I saying? Probably the E.U has 50 pages of expert regulations on the construction of holes.
I’ll take my chances on seed preservation on an opoid-addled former farmer squatting in a broken down trailer in Indiana over these guys, because even after a decade-long diet of Cheetos and Jerry Springer, he is still smarter than our Intellectual-yet-Idiot class.
Don’t worry, according to economists like Keen, the thermodynamics of companies dispersing more energy than they collect isn’t a problem: all you need to create true wealth is to print more money.
Gold, BTC and Stocks are all rising, but compared to WHAT? Aren’t we pricing them in USD? And if everything else is rising, does that not mean the USD is falling against, perhaps, reality?
I have to protest Keen again. Like other economists, he believes in everything but thermodynamics. An economy is not just numbers, it’s a representation of real, existing matter and energy flows. It may be a better or worse representation, but the map is not the territory. As it’s a real thing, and finite reality is out there and exists, then you obviously can’t double, triple, quadruple the representations on the map and expect the territory to also double. I mean, duh. So doubling, tripling the money supply, the spending of government doesn’t double or triple the activity, the factories, the machine tools in that nation, its ability to plant and harvest crops, provide goods, provide nursing, to get things done. If it did, Zimbabwe and Venezuela would be the richest nations on earth, and it astonishes me that I have to point this out to otherwise intelligent people.
There are just so many fields, so many mines, so many tools, so many people. Therefore, there ARE limits on government spending and abilities, which means there IS a budget the government must live in, and a primary one is that government specializes in graft and influence peddling, so that the projects it funds and undertakes are invariably less productive protections of the already powerful instead of needed national activity. So come on, Keen, you really think if Trump hands out another $20Trillion this year, everyone in America will get rich? The economy will start humming along better than ever? If so, you should move to Venezuela immediately and tell me how it works out for you.
Economics is not about “money”. Remove money entirely from your thinking about it. It’s thermodynamics: real objects and real energy applied and moving in a giant scale. Like other machines it can be good or bad, efficient or inefficient. And it’s not nice to fool Mother Nature. You can avoid believing in reality, but you can’t avoid the consequences of not believing. Likewise our illusionary economy, where “unemployment is 4%” with 100M out of work and 40M on food stamps. Encouraging that illusion may convince people to behave irrationally for a while. Until it doesn’t, and the real and unavoidable consequences of reality are at last perceived, often build slowly but pierced quickly. That’s what a bubble is, and we’re in one.
The Myths About Money That British Voters Should Reject (Chang)
This article was incredible, I see why you posted it. It’s as if a monkey pulled socio-economic words out of a sack and arranged them into plausible sentences. Nothing he says either makes sense or is true except by complete accident. Breathtaking example of the new universal irrational.25-30% Of US Shopping Malls To Close In The Next Five Years (LATimes)
Amazon? Maybe. They lose billions a year and have never turned a profit. And if cloud services are any indication, they never will. So the question is: can you drive your competitors out of business if you borrow money and sell at a perpetual loss until they are all out of business? Ask Wal-Mart, the answer is yes. But that doesn’t make them an actual business. They’re a financial construct, one that could never exist in a free market of profit and loss.That said, the U.S. has what, 5x the sq. m/customer of any other nation on earth? So…perhaps we’re a wee overbuilt and a 30% drop would reduce us merely to being 1.5x more retail space than the next highest nation? Don’t cry for me, Argentina. Then we’d only have to have those few remaining companies be profitable, but don’t hold your breath. I believe NONE of the top Dow/Nasdaq companies are profitable. Uber burned through more money than NASA, and Musk is in the running for the greatest (corporate) welfare queen the universe has ever known. These guys make John Law and the Duke of Bourbon look responsible. But with financial and political reporting on caliber of Chang, it’s no wonder.
“Buy Buy Buy!!!” –Cramer
“…cut off from their most basic entitlement to: housing, food, health care, social care and general protection from hardship.”
While I overwhelmingly agree with the sentiment and unfairness of austerity, there is no human right for other people to give you things. And a right to total protection from hardship? Are you joking me?
This is a total misunderstanding of “Rights,” and what “Rights” are, and I wouldn’t bring it up except whenever they get started, millions die. People in need do indeed have rights, but so do the people who are not in need. Rights of one group cannot trample the rights of another, or there can be no such thing as “human rights” at all. That’s why the Enlightenment chose the specific “Rights” they did, and did NOT declare free food, free medicine, and a life of ease and leisure as the Right of Man. Why? Because if you GET the food, another man must grow it. If you get free medicine, someone must work without pay to provide it. That would be slavery, not Liberty, and enslaving other men for your profit is not a right.
The basic right of the Enlightenment is the right to be left alone. That’s it. The right to speak and be left alone. The right to have opinions and be left alone. The right to act so long as you’re not hurting others, and be left alone. The right to keep the things you make because you’re being left alone. The right to be left alone rather than searched, badgered, imprisoned, railroaded. Why? Because being left alone doesn’t cost anyone else their freedom to be left alone, while forcing others to work on your behalf for free is not leaving them alone.
If you want another system, fine, but don’t invent new democratic “rights” to have others feed you bon-bons while you play video games just because you’re peckish. 5,000 years of history shows that as soon as that happens, those other guys unhelpfully stop working for free, everyone goes on strike, nothing gets done, and society collapses. I wish this were hyperbole, but only history itself can describe how complete and devastating mis-defining human rights can be. In that system of theft and counter-theft, slave and counter-slave, not only do you get nothing, but everyone gets nothing, and your countrymen die. There are many books on the horrors of the faulty generosity of socialism, but in our more modern sense of faceless, automatic wealth transfer, “Dying of Money” by Jens O. Parsson and “History of Monetary Inflation in France” by White should be sufficient. Or you could just scan the news for formerly wealthy nations like Venezuela.
It’s perhaps unfortunate this is so, but we don’t need another 100 million to die to prove it ourselves again. Words have consequences as well as meanings. Please let’s use them well.
A 1976 F-16 can destroy the F-35 all day long. The Indian Air Force turned the latest air exercises into a turkey shoot. The USAF F-35 might as well have stayed in the hanger. Well, what do you want from a plane that officially can’t fly in bad weather or turn at altitude? If the Indian Air Force can annihilate you, what chance do you have against a real plane, like a MIG?
But I have the solution: let’s bring our forces home!
Well, maybe, but we know from Wikileaks own release of Hillary’s emails that she specifically ordered those sympathetic to her cause to put Trump in the media 24/7. Why? Because the whole plan, and the plan of encouraging Trump (her pal) to run was to paint DJT and the GOP as the “Extreeeme” and take the middle. They WANTED him in the news. The PUT him in the news. You notice other candidates like Ron Paul, going back 50 years they just shut them out of the news, and they fade away. And we know all that. It’s public record. That he took her up on the offer, and played into the media’s depiction of him as “Right Wing” and “Extreme” (when really he’s a 50-year centrist Democrat from multicultural NYC, supporting abortion, gun control et al) that that backfired on Hillary and Podesta, well, whose fault is that? I’m not making this up, we have the emails, we have the DJT quotes, we have the open admissions from the media (“we did everything we could for her” –Cuomo), just go read them. I’m sorry she lost, but that wasn’t due to the media helping. The people’s perception’s got this one right, the media’s been pretty open about it.
UBI article is the craziest thing I’ve ever read. Other guys built a restaurant. Other guys constructed the building. Other guys built the power plant that powers it. Other guys grew the food they serve. Other guys work there to make meals. But because I’m part of the same “Society” they are — even though I did no work — I get to eat there for free, without helping at all. Sounds great! Where do me and 300 Million others sign up? Oh wait, no one will WORK there if you get the same benefits as NOT working there?
…I think we might have tried this experiment before. Over and over and over and over and over and over and…bend over. It’s failed every time. Hundreds of years in a row. Everywhere on earth. Hundreds of millions have died and more are dying today. But not this time. This time people will work for free and eat for free, due to the overwhelming beneficence of man. Where’s this writer live? I’m going to live at his house.
Taxes certainly aren’t discussed clearly, and that’s cleary the point. However what the article points out is correct: there is a point of maximum taxation somewhere between 0 and 100%. (Unlike the theories of the UBI-ers) But we don’t need math to figure it out. There has been taxation and records since Babylon. We alredy know at what point no more tax hikes will work; we’ve been over that level for decades. That’s why it seems odd that one side would say cutting taxes is always a benefit and will always work. Because as long as they’ve been alive, that’s actually been true. So true you’d have to go back over 100 years to look at a time where government has actually helped anyone.
The same thing is true of government spending. Government spending presently is measurable waste. It’s Keynes’ plan of making everyone rich by digging holes and filling them up again, i.e. total stark-raving nonsense. Things get done by men doing things, not by wasting their time. But although presently government does perhaps 10% function with 90% waste (and I can prove it), that doesn’t mean it HAS to be this way. 19th c infrastructure projects were quite a storm, but a lot of them had government doing expensive projects for sizeable “returns”, that is, social and thermodynamic net benefit. It’s just that no one alive today has ever seen governments benefit the people by spending.
So unfortunately, no, government spending on 100 medical-adjusters to obstruct the care provided by one doctor is not the same as having 100 doctors providing care with 1 adjuster supporting them. And we should know this, although we no longer do. So it’s easy to prove government spending is not equal to citizens spending, and you have to dig deep in history indeed to find any examples where it was.
Just heard the same thing about the Steel industry. “National Security” for the steel industry? Pfffft!! What for? The U.S. doesn’t have a steel industry anymore. It’ll just antagonize China. Start a trade war. It’s just going to raise prices on the customer. Who is this going to help? What a maroon!
Who is it going to help? Wasn’t everyone upset when the industry moved OUT? Didn’t it measurably — and I hope we’re not still arguing about this — kill jobs, destroy the economies of cities and whole states? Like 40 of them? But now it’s terrible if industry moves back in? National Security? Never heard anything so dumb. It’s not like you make warships, tanks, planes, missiles, railroads, factories out of steel…oh wait, I forgot, you DO need those things to have an army. It IS an issue of national security. That and virtually every other industry because we don’t have any, and bringing them home will piss everyone off inside and outside the borders. Buyers and sellers. Owners and workers. But it has to be done. Or should we be nice and just give away our last 500 jobs too?
Okay, wood n stuff. Not much different. You’d have to look case by case what happens, where it is, who’s affected, what it means, who pays. That’s why generally you need an invisible hand. But after the heavy and visible hand of government has been central planning the motion and price of most goods for 100 years, markets are so distorted it’s very hard to tell what the consequences are. Cedar stops to one factory: bad. Wood conflict halts imports and leads to more logging and other wood processing factories here: good. More logging leads to deforestation: bad. Less deforestation in Canada: good. Limits lead to higher prices, choking demand: good. Choking demand means job loss in retail: bad. etc.
But let’s go one deeper. Suppose you knew that there was about to be a massive economic and political dislocation, I dunno, because one had been predicted and delayed by using ever-increasing violence and intervention for 40-100 years. Suppose you had the brains God gave a rock and realized other nations would cut you off and ring-fence your economy when that happens. Suppose you came late to the ball and had only 6 months to adjust a 100-year trend. And heck, suppose you hate NATFA to boot, because it legally undermines the very concept of sovereignty. So maybe you’d try any plausible excuse to kick-start home industry before Canada won’t ship us a Loonie? Maybe get Canada and Mexico so annoyed with the non-help, self-serving capriciousness of NATFA they’ll tear it up themselves in disgust and never sign again? Maybe that helps Canada too because this customer is going away one way or the other, and Justin now has someone to blame, something to act on? And maybe knowing we’re at the peak of the world’s greatest ever housing bubble, with 25M empty houses in the US alone, losing a window-making factory doesn’t seem so bad compared to having 200 nations try to forcibly collect the $200T the U.S. fraudulently loaned them?
Just saying there’s a lot of moving parts, winners, losers, competing priorities to consider. And no free lunch.
What would we need revenue for? The debt isn’t going to get paid. It was never meant to be repaid. In 1775 Adam Smith told us no government ever repays, they always default. So will we. So what’s all the hubub, bub?
Russia has asked the OPCW to visit and analyze chemical samples on the ground in Khan Sheikhoun as part of this thing called “investigating”. The U.S. has so far refused, although obviously invited, welcome, and protected by Assad’s forces for this investigation. It will be interesting to see what results will be reported when the U.N. finally has, and finishes the investigation. Could it be that Sarin does not cause foaming at the mouth? Could it be that you can’t pick up Sarin-exposed people with your bare hands and wash them off with a garden hose? Could the 2013 Wikileaks email describing in detail the U.S. plan to create a chemical attack as a pretense to attack Assad be real?
Well, don’t ask the NY Times: if it doesn’t promote war, they’ll never figure it out. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the Democratic party is trying to expel Gabbard for even questioning an illegal, unconstitutional, unprovoked attack on a soveriegn nation in “violation of international law” (h/t The Hill), because hitting 4 children and a turnip field means “He’s now our President” and as The Nation says, acting like this demonstrates “Trump’s Adherence To American Values”. Because that is what they believe our American values should be, even though American voters chose peace instead the 60th year in a row. Yellow ribbons for all.
Re: the Prius put electric on the map, not Tesla. A Tesla battery weighs 1200lbs. If the world ran on them, we might use more lithium than is the surface of the earth with the requisite mining, smelting, shipping, re-smelting, etc. Oh, and if it still isn’t apparent, the Tesla runs on coal. At the power plant. Or nuclear, the only source powerful enough to create the thick cloud of smug for 6-figure greenies. As Nassim points, there is no substantial green power, and probably never will be. If the massive green structure we built so far — wind mills from Melbourne to Exmouth, and from Szczecin to Saville — isn’t turning the dial, it isn’t going to be turned.
But of course the Tesla, which makes like 50 loss-making cars a year, is now worth more than Ford International, or GM, who produce millions.
If you ever wanted example of a giant worldwide tulip mania to tell your kids about, here it is. But hey– all the rising FANG stocks lose money every month on clicks, and all the rapidly falling stocks make steady incremental profits producing real goods. That’s just common sense, right?
Who are these rich countries of which they speak? Retail is collapsing here, and with it, further jobs.
If they’d like to tax just San Francisco, Greenwich and the other idiots who support this, I’m all for it. But I suspect they really want to pay is Akron, Detroit, and Indianapolis. Gosh, I can only dream of buying a new hoodie or being able to afford a new sign or maybe a bus trip. –Sigh–
So if 59 missiles were shot, 36 were shut off in flight, and 4 were killed with little airstrip damage because “Any expert can tell that the decision to strike was made in Washington before the events” and Russia and thus Syria were informed hours before in order to completely and safely evacuate, then what really happened?
A. 59 obsolete missiles from 1975 were disposed of over the ocean.
B. No real military damage was sustained by Syria or Russia, nor did Isis advance though forewarned. (N.B.)
C. “they stopped sharing information with the U.S. they prevented the Pentagon from warning the terrorists”
D. Isis is being carpet bombed and no one can cry collateral damage.
E. Russia now has justification to send Syria a new Russian radar and/or S400 missile system to protect center/south Syria.
F. The Neocons pull a quid pro quo and ally with DJT or at least can no longer while he’s in the middle of a massive investigation/indictment of D.C. insiders, viz. them.
G. Donald is no longer “allied with/agent of the Russians” so that narrative dies and he can talk to/negotiate with Russia freely.
H. The Neocons get everything they asked for, which will only hasten their public demise tactically and popularly. When this goes astray in the U.N. resolution, or the failed war, everyone will blame the U.S. for bombing too much, instead of being too soft.
I. As the Neocons — who are equally D. and R. — are satisfied the war-drums are back on track and DJT is under control, they reduce pressure and allow the required appointments to go through before the economy collapses from the Fed’s purposeful rate hikes.
J. As a response to continuing U.S. attacks, Russia and China pull the plug on the US$. This can now be blamed on war and overreach, and obeying the Neocons against the will of the people.Of course this could be a plan or this could be stupidity, your choice, but it certainly seems odd to send 60 Alzheimer missiles, 20 of which land, with 4 killed, exclusively as a political message, in order to, what exactly? Impress Xi that none of our hardware works? That we’re tactical idiots? That DJT is now prosecuting the Obama war by warning everyone and hitting nothing? Yes, that would be stupid. Your choice. I don’t think anyone knows at this point. But for the moment let’s look at the real consequences and not bother with intent. Qui bono?
I’ll dispute it. Mikey will dispute anything.
Profit motive would innately require a trust-based cooperative economy. Why? Because you can’t/won’t do business with people you don’t trust. Can I buy a car from someone I don’t trust? Get a furnace that might be used/broken/empty box? No. Can I show up to buy something if like war zones, they will just shoot me and take the money back? No. Further, there literally is and can be no capitalism whatsoever without trust. The entire wholesale system, end to end, requires the trust of delivering goods more or less as contracted, with payments more or less released as contracted, with banks that behave to move the marker chits around as contracted. If there is any wobble in the trust system, as in ’08, commerce halts. Banks don’t trust each other, container ships don’t move, factories halt.
What we have is not a trust-based system but one based on violence and coercion, and increasingly have for decades. I don’t buy insurance, I’m legally force by law, as a living being, to pay a corporation money. If I don’t, I will be sent to prison. I am legally required, by law, to purchase electricity and running water. If I don’t, my children will be removed and sent to prison. The same at different levels for pretty much the whole remaining economy: cable, phone, health, cars, mortgages, etc. If I don’t like it, I have the “freedom” to live in a cave whereupon the sheriff will forcibly remove me to an institution for my own good…and the taxpayers will be legally required, by law, to pay for it.
Needless to say, that’s neither freedom nor capitalism. It’s the merger of government and corporate power, centrally planned and controlled. What part of this has to do with me making things and trading them with you? And why would it be bad if we both voluntarily do that? We think we both came out ahead or we wouldn’t trade to begin with. And that I want something you have, and we make a free cooperative trade that we’re both happy about is the “profit motive” that is wrecking everything and what you so oppose. So should we only do trades if we are both UNhappy with them? If we both lose? Or we should not be allowed to fairly share amongst ourselves without permission? If some middle man approves and gets paid too? How exactly does this work?
Yes, profit is not the ONLY thing that should be calculated: society, community, environment, religion, future generations, should all be considered. But profit motive IS a thing that MUST work within its appropriate sphere. If you don’t believe me, look at Venezuela or any other place it’s been tried. There’s nothing worse than Capitalism, except every other system that’s been tried.
Please grant me the permission to be left alone and trade my wood, my time, for my neighbor’s tractor, his time, and try not to prevent me from trying to live, okay? Try not to tell us both what to do and accidentally kill us with good intentions. Life is hard enough already and hardly anybody’s working as it is.
As the Democratic side doubles down and refuses to adjust at all — Bigly — (as shown by pointedly paying to sabotage very normal and popular choice Ellison for DNC head and force artificial installation of Hillary-wing Perez) we have one half of the nation sort of in the mainstream narrative and half who doesn’t believe anything.
That’s well-known, but there’s an interesting consequence unfolding, illustrated by the recent advertiser’s boycott of Youtube: with the nation running 50-50, publishers, advertisers, corporations, are now speaking to only HALF of U.S. consumers, only half of the public. Everything else aside, boycotting half your customers is not good for business. So let’s see: half of YouTube is made of Alt-somebodies, and they are the very reason YouTube exists at all: if I wanted to listen to the unexamined mainstream perspective, I would just open my gullet and turn on MSNBC/CNN/FOX on TV. Therefore, not only are the advertisers boycotting half their customers, and further exacerbating the feeling that Flyoverlanders are the Deplorable Unwashed, they-who-are-too-stupid-to-name and must-be-told-what-it-good-for-them but YouTube itself will cease to be as it only exists as an outlet for things, videos, opinions, that weren’t allowed in the mainstream to begin with.
So aside from politics, we are now moving to have two countries economically. One who deals with cities and acceptable events and narratives, the sales of new the new i-7, Teslas, $1M+ houses, and self-driving autonomous car/drone/housebots, and another nation of the forgotten who deals with food, water, and not dying. Your Hunger Games universe, if you will. Companies and advertisers who are willing to deal with one, the Alex Jones-ville as it were, will refuse to deal with the other, and vice-versa. Two populations, two corporation sets, two media sets, two realities. But when you take the whole wealth of the nation and send it to powdered-wig parties in Paris, 1788, that’s what happens.
Still, it’s an incredibly interesting development, and not one I have the intricate language to tease out yet. Just know that, as easily proven by viewership numbers, the core cities/media are talking to literally no one, and yet it’s impossible for shutting down the alternative discussions to work, as it only alerts, antagonizes, and alienates more people, (lookin’ at you, Pewtie-Pie) affirming the popular suspicion that’s the center is all a rigged, dishonest and extractive game, and we the people are the target of its violence. Tune in next week, more to come…
I was going to say the opposite. The reason you know it isn’t “Privatized” is exactly because they follow no normal business rules or laws — absolutely none –. “Private” business cannot do that. Only government-controlled and protected cartels can. Look at the time the U.S. chart diverged from the world: 1990, when they-who-must-not-be-named got government involved in healthcare with HMOs. It was straight deterioration from there, although that itself was a way to extend the crooked cartel protections from the Sherman Act established under the late St. Reagan.
You notice that under ACA, costs easily doubled — easily — although we had 3-4 multiple 10% y-o-y increases going into it. People are “covered” with a $4,000 deductible, and yet we’re terrified people won’t be covered under a plan like mine that they can’t afford and would instantly bankrupt them if they used it. At that point, not sure it makes much difference if we’re “covered” or not, as, if anything, our coverage would be better if we were homeless and walked into the E.R., I kid you not. $12,000+ cash saved at the end of every year by being uninsured would buy a lot of health care…but only if it weren’t a cartel charging $97,000 for same-day outpatient, a $4,000 procedure.
Anyway, all to get back to the main point: the U.S. had pretty good care for 200 years in a row until 1980. Amazing, huh? Then when government got involved in protecting insurance profits — a little thing we call “fascism” — costs rose and care dropped. With every addition of government to protect insurance company profits, it’s gotten exponentially worse. So if we went back to a plan only as awful as 1984, it would look like a bloody miracle to us now, except that everyone’s too young to remember we used to do this simple task just fine at a decent cost. For more interest, Denninger at market-ticker.org has a de facto boycott of all other subjects, since this is the only one large enough, compounding fast enough, to bankrupt the nation in 2 years. We used to pay what? 5% GDP on health care and it’s far over 20%, while results — even in the simplest things, like infant mortality, like correct prescription drug fatalities, like not dying — are dropping like a millstone in the ocean. I was nearly bankrupted for 6 stitches — thanks Obamacare! And like your case, they both had no idea what or why I was billed, and sent it to collection without process or redress.
So believe me when I say the corruption is so bad that if the entire U.S. had NO healthcare, NONE, but cash, with almost mathematical certainty we would have better, cheaper healthcare for more people with better results. (See Raul’s article on NGO’s) That’s not idle fantasy: the price of health care is dropping rapidly, is far safer, and is now affordable to everyone in the only two places it has competition: Lasik eye, and cosmetic surgery, as well as being 1/5th the nationwide cost at cash-only Oklahoma Medical.
The problem no one is addressing is just what you outlined: the COST. When we talk economics, too often we think about it in terms of MONEY. Add more money, solve more problems. It’s not. (again see Raul’s article on NGO’s) Money is capitalism’s way of measuring how HARD something is. How much time, attention, and resources does it take, and what do we gain from it? That’s fine, but the minute you release activities from some measure of accounting, you relieve it from all oversight — which is exactly why the Insurers lobbied to find more taxpayer cash rather than reduce costs and therefore profits. Without government’s gun working for them, they would have had to return to reason decades ago, and millions more people would be alive now. But without any sort of cost-accounting that relates to anything, what things “cost” is simply whatever they make up on a given day. A band-aid costs $16,000, but we’ll give you an insurer discount of $12,000, and insurance will pay $2,500. You pay the low, low price of $1,500 per band-aid. Wow, thanks! Meanwhile, a drug that might cost $1,500 is sold for a $2 co-pay. Why? Because we just made it all up. We’ve been so removed from any actual cost, any actual capitalism for so long no one even knows what things should cost. Until capitalism returns, there’s literally no way to tell, because we can’t accurately measure — anything.
Giving away all the care for “free” is C-L-E-A-R-L-Y not going to improve things because we still have no system of accounting what we do or what it takes to accomplish it, no measurement for results, and have not addressed why we get African health care (sorry Africa!) for Swedish prices. Which is simply the next planned level of Insurer bailout. We’ll have the U.S. government pay for ALL of it, and we still don’t account for or reduce prices. Because that would reduce profits. That is the apex and inevitable pinnacle of fascism unless someone stops the constant ongoing merger of industry and government into the same unit. Unfortunately, that means getting OUT of medicine, not into it, and means a service disruption that will be very, very, bad. That’s the extortion side of the racket, and it’s working great.
Conclusion: It doesn’t matter what you do. It doesn’t matter what Trump or Ryan do. It doesn’t matter what Obama or Hillary would do. The system is going to crash into ruins whether they “reform” it or ignore it. That’s the simple math of compounding 10% over 40 years. So there’s actually not a lot of point in discussing what it is or why it is, or who’s being most abused by it right now because in 2 years it won’t exist. Why? Because either the U.S. goverment and US$ will exist in 2 years, or the Insurance companies will, not both. And as the Insurers do not have tanks and planes, I’m not betting on them. When it goes down, it will return to a crude system humans understand: cash. Trade. As it has in Greece and Ukraine already, I’m sure. But we already showed that system — however awful — is still 80% better than the ACA. Incredible what you can do if you apply a little corruption and a lot of time, isn’t it?
Casey is your classic thoughtless rich guy, as well-seen in his Argentine fiasco. He thinks somehow he will be rich in a world where “everyone is sovereign” and therefore by definition there is no central authority to protect his property rights. Pull the other one.
The idea the U.S. would be better broken up is so dangerous it should be addressed, however. The world isn’t that different from 1789 when the colonies realized if they didn’t coordinate defense they’d be picked off by U.K. and the larger powers. Spain may realize this soon, as governments–already barely strong enough to fight off MNC’s and organizations like the IMF (as shown with smaller states like Greece being utterly devoured for profit) want to split and divide their power further while the power of corporations over government continues to expand.
Here’s a map of the last election, https://americablog.com/2016/12/trump-supporters-tens-millions-democratic-votes-cities-dont-count.html I don’t really see how those 15 cities are going to survive without 92% of the counties. At the moment they are annihilating every area in flyoverland to further their lifestyle and barely treading water (think of all the desperate poor even IN those areas). What do you think NYC and D.C. would be like as an island with no access to or influence over the entire continent? How long would they defend themselves against a continent of hostile, MAGA-toting “red-skins”? Fantasy. Appalling fantasy Casey doesn’t care the least about.
At the same time, how long would the countryside prosper without their ports, R&D, and financial centers? Equal madness. So I’ve got an idea: stop exploiting and killing your countrymen. Stop having everyone try to live at everyone else’s expense. Stop stealing the same financial widget back and forth and work. Make something. Do something. Then your mutual cooperation as opposed to violent theft will make everyone richer, as proven so often in the past. But I know that’s too much to ask.
I’ll do ya one better: what would he devalue it against? The USDX is 50% Euro. You think the U.S. is in substantially worse shape than them? To devalue, they’d have to make the yardstick forreserve assets something other than little green papers or little Euro papers.
“unprecedented heat across the globe…and surging sea-level rise.”
There was incredible snow in Europe in 2017 all the way down to Greece, and I believe Syria, Cyprus, and Sicily. There was 2 feet of snow all over the Northeast U.S. in mid-March. I checked the web cams in Venice, NYC, and London and the water levels looked the same as 2000, in fact as measured in San Francisco, the same as 1900. We’ve been at this some 20-30 years. Am I missing something?
What a fascinating idea! You know, you’re right: those who don’t do actual work shouldn’t get paid, and we should implement this immediately.
No more Idiot Trust Fund Kids. No more subsidized industries. No more Capital gains. No more inherited wealth. No more annuities. No more pension funds.
No more Social Security. Stop it today! No more State retirement funds. No more Medicare. No prescriptions, no free health care. No more free food and housing.
I mean, if it’s unjust to receive money for doing the work of capital accumulation and investing to fund new projects and ideas, then certainly it must be unjust to receive money for doing nothing whatsoever.
Unless you mean that we should still give all those things for doing no work, and should not give any money to those who ARE doing work. In which case, who do you think is going to do all the work you’re giving away? Me? I don’t think so, and history has proven this out 1,000 times.
Will F won’t be renting to you, and I won’t build your house. Neither will you build it yourself as the hammer salesman won’t sell you nails, since that requires someone to own a nail-making machine and someone to own an iron-digging and iron-transport machines which are paid back at capital depreciation. But hey, if you want take down trees with the burn-and-scrape method and use a deer hip-bone you killed yourself to hoe your garden in the woods, you’re welcome to. Because that’s all you’ll have. You may think 5% interest on a borrowed axe cheap then, but I doubt it. If Venezuela’s taught us anything, it’s that people will die by the millions before they change their minds.
Just for a rough estimate — and being completely generous — the % of U.S. GDP taken by Wall St. has doubled from 10 to 20% since 1947. Assuming the laughable notion that Wall St. wasn’t taking more than a required in order to smooth and facilitate commerce, we have 10% of U.S. GDP created then funneled directly to Wall St. paychecks. With a supposed $15T economy, that’s $1.5T a year in straight waste. Think we can fill a budget gap with that?
But that’s not all: Since Greenspan, GDP has been made up of some very questionable parts. Government spending is a prime example. Who really believes that government spending on pork, or bombs, bases, and silos that sit, rust, and are later decommissioned and sold at a loss to the lowest bidder are measuring “productiveness”? Or the implication, that GDP measures an increase in the quality of life? At $6.66T (sic) we can either remove all of it as necessary/unnecessary overhead, But let’s be generous and knock out half, not 90%. $3 Trillion.
But wait, there’s more! While we’re including wasted military GDP in the regular numbers, the Iraq-Afghanistan and other wars are off-budget. While it is purposefully hard to get an accurate handle on this, recent estimates put it at $6T over the last +10 years, or let’s be generous and make it a rough $400B/year.
But that’s not all you’re getting! If you order now, we’ll remove the fraud from the U.S. inflation numbers, and thereby adjust the GDP correctly! There are deep issues with John Williams’ numbers, but we know the official are an admitted fraud because the U.S. itself does not use their official inflation rate to adjust GDP…they use a better, even more fraudulent number, the “GDP deflator”. But Williams has the inflation rate at 6%, which is pretty plausible depending what you put in it (health care and taxes are rising +10%, easily) https://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts The official deflator is around 1.6% https://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/gdp-deflator for a +4% difference. 4% of $15T = $600B
Speaking of Health Care, spending in the U.S. has skyrocketed since the Government started getting involved in the 90’s. The U.S. now spends more per capita than France while getting as close to zero health care as can be measured without special equipment. https://www.mercatus.org/publication/us-health-care-spending-more-twice-average-developed-countries Taking the incredible assumption that health care in 1980 was appropriate when we sharply diverged from RoW –and not including Obamacare, which raised costs and cut services sharply — the U.S. now spends roughly 20% on health care instead of 10%, for a 10% overcharge. 10% of $15T is $1.5T.
This is not counting the budget deficit, by which we print $1.5T and receive real goods from the world, nor many Trillions in bond and derivative rigging, nor HFT skims that add to GDP by cross-selling the same digital widget back and forth between two owners. It also doesn’t remove the “Goodwill” value of multi-trillion in stocks like Apple, or removing the clearly illusionary value of many Trillions of Silicon Valley stocks that have never turned a profit, ever, like Amazon, Facebook, or arguably Netflix — the FANG value that upholds the entire U.S., and therefore world, stock markets. No, we’re being generous here.
Putting it together, we have $1.5T + $3T + 0.4T + $0.6T + $1.5T = $6.6T subtracted from $15T = $8Trillion.
From living here, I’d be surprised if the U.S. had 40% of $15T, or around $7 Trillion, which matches pretty well the envelope numbers above. Which is exactly how much they’re going to devalue the US$ to once the reserve currency ends. Gas at $5.50 anyone? It’s not that the U.S. isn’t powerful or we don’t make anything. It’s just that we’re really more the size of Brazil or Japan, and should take our place among the many nations, as we are — and probably never were — a hyperpower.
Orwell never sleeps. You see the Fed decision? After 8 years of positive growth…which was false; and a 4% unemployment rate…which was false; we coincidentally had Obama’s GDP miraculously rise to +3% so he wouldn’t be the foremost failure ever…which was false.
So now that we had +3% (false) GDP, the Fed’s own GDP is falling, to .9%…which is also, of course, false. It’s been years since it’s even been above 0% by any normal measure. Also unemployment is rising, but collapsing taxes, collapsing retail, ever-worsening wages, employment, loan paybacks, and GDP are actually signs of a STRENGTHENING economy, which is why they hiked. Who knew? …Which is false. This is because the Fed is not politicized…which is false, and is very careful to prevent bubbles and not fall behind the curve…which is false.
So the Fed, who had already raised interest rates for the first time in a decade…which is false, they claimed to raise rates but 10-year rates were unchanged last rate ‘hike’ … raised them again yesterday, which is false. Rates dropped sharply. This rate hike will of course cool off the US$ and stock market…which is false: both US$ and US stocks rose, and look to continue to do so.
Okay then, understand? You got it? Because they’ve given it to all us Americans doubleplus good.
@ V. Arnold.
From being here, you are quite correct. The Usain’s have lost their minds. You could walk all day and night and not meet someone who can think clearly for more than a few sentences. But that’s what happens when everything you’ve heard for 50-70 years has been a total, intentional, clever, plausible, pre-meditated lie.
“We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.” — CIA Director William Casey, 1981
This lie was intended to bring down the United States on schedule and replace it with something more…ameniable. But lies have consequences. When you don’t know what’s going on, you won’t know what to do about it. And worse, if everyone disagrees on what is true, they will fight each other and not you. Which is why lies and propaganda are the currencies of armies and spies. So…Mission Accomplished? Until we start telling the truth somewhere, — until someone even LIKES the truth somewhere as they hate the truth passionately now — this social unrest will not and can not end.
Reminds me of another quote: “Whom the Gods would destroy they first make mad.” In this CNN/NYT-led Reality-Optional world of “I just thought it up so it must be true”, this world of universal, personal psychosis is the very definition of a nation gone insane. I’d worry more about the inability of *anyone* to think clearly than the actions of any one man. This is also why it cannot change without an event. A very VERY big event.
A wide number of issues. First, as you may guess, I don’t mean the working person literally starves, just that he does work for goods he can’t enjoy, just as the receiver gets those goods for work he doesn’t do.
Astonishing hyperbole to advocate mass dieoff. If people keep their own work, they will do the work they feel like doing or must do to survive. It’s the opposite that happens in history. While yes, some always fall off if work is required, some are falling off now. Some fell off in every socialist systems, too. In fact, to support a few extra at the bottom, 100% of the society was impoverished, a perfect example of diminishing returns. However in systems of mass redistribution, when the center fails as is happening now, millions die because they have no goods, no skills, and are not nearby the work that sustains them. Then like France or Ukraine, Zimbabwe or Berlin, they attack and wipeout the very production and producers that sustain them, no longer understanding how production works. So you get the same number of people unserved PLUS the option of a mass dieoff. If you’re in Lexington, 1840, how do you not eat? You wander off to a field and cut a deal with the farmer to help him grow more, win win. You glean the field or sit in his church or on his porch until he helps you. If you’re in Lexington today, the fields, the factories, the energy that sustains you are 100, 1,000, 10,000 miles away. That’s baked into a re-distributive system because you and the whole neighborhood no longer has a shovel, a shuttle, a loom. You have an EBT card from Chase, calling on a farmer in Argentina and an oil rig in Alaska. No leverage, no options. So, direct opposite: if you work you have skills, options, networks, tools, leverage, values. Your argument is literally that working kills people, but sitting around saves them. I don’t see how that can be supported.
This helps solve the second problem that most of the work we do is useless. Granted. But that’s not related to whether the work people do is then handed to others. I mean, 50% of the work is handed away in taxes now. Are we richer? Are the poor cared for in Cleveland or in Greece? Not so much. It is however, wildly more inefficient. The problem is that the system has been hijacked, and the work is all mispriced. That can only happen with widespread intervention.
This goes to having oil slaves. Sharing the oil with “The Nation” is fine but you don’t get oil from a puddle with a bucket. Somebody has to find it, drill it, ship it, refine it, and this is ever-harder, less certain work, now at a 10:1 energy ratio. So, the guys who get up at 5am and work with toxic, dangerous, rare, expensive equipment should just give it away? Hand it to the guy who pushes the fries button, the mattress salesman, safe and warm on the 9-5? Because it’s the “people’s” oil. Okay, so far as it goes, if the fry cook wants to drive out to North Dakota in January with a $5M drill and get a couple gallons to refine in his apartment. Otherwise you’re telling the guy standing in the cold in January he doesn’t matter. We’re just going to take his hard work ’cause he didn’t build that. (TM) And he won’t then stay home for what reason, exactly?
This is not to say the work is properly compensated because it overwhelming, hilariously isn’t. How about a stock clicker clipping pennies off a Cisco router in Secaucus, or a Congressman insider trading in collusion with the CEO of Apple, offshoring his profits or paying zero taxes like GE. But to say “it’ll be fair if we redistribute it”, well WHO redistributes it? The same government that allows the tax dodge and the stock clipping? The same government that has so openly, murderously failed us today? Every time for 100 years they’ve added redistribution it’s gotten measurably LESS fair, as the redistributors succumb to predictable blackmail and human weakness. The Soviet Union redistributed it on behalf of the people, and had the same system: a shattered working class with collapsing cities in poverty and a few palatial estates for insiders. We need to move beyond that to systems that have been proven to work. Of which there are very few.
What is a “Capital Income”? “Capital,” is stuff. If you borrow my shovel, should I loan it to you for free? It wears out. What if you break it? In concept, “capital” like money is no different. It’s a marker chit, an open call on PHYSICAL goods in the real world that do real things and like all of us are subject to entropy. So if I loan you my shovel, should I not get paid? But I didn’t do any work! …Oh but I did the work of getting the shovel you want. You won’t pay rent? Fine, I won’t loan it then, make your own shovel out of your own cash labor. This doesn’t speak to whether the rent is accurately priced, but perhaps you see the point of how “Capital,” is not, and can never be divorced from “Work.” Somebody invented it, somebody made it, somebody stored it, somebody fixed it, somebody lent it. That’s work, the seen and the unseen.
Same with “Taxing the land.” Okay, great. Now send that land a legal writ and tell it to deliver a chicken to the SNAP kitchen in Muncie. What? It can’t? Only humans deliver taxes by human effort? Even cutting a tree standing right there or lifting a bucket of water requires limitless human work to transform the “land” into something of value? Yes. And if you tax the “land”, it’s indistinguishable in practice from taxing the work done on that land. Which is all done by ME, not your theories. I’m the one you’re taxing. It’s my life that goes down the drain paying those taxes, in hours of my life I cannot enjoy and cannot recover. YOU then take those hours of my life, using them to relax and watch cable, type on free internet, while I’m in the cold, struggling with a deadly chainsaw. You’re welcome.
This isn’t theory. In my area of flyoverland, most able-bodied people are not working in lieu of the few remaining people who are collapsing of over-work. And as there are ever-fewer workers, ever-less is being accomplished. Such that at this point, the infrastructure itself — electric lines, roads, pipelines, railroads, grain facilities — have collapsed and no longer exist. Yet the solution is to give MORE to the people who aren’t working. And that would be FROM the ever-dwindling handful of men who still are working, with ever-worse tools, for ever-decreasing pay. But nevermind the rights of the working, the only rights that matter are the rights of the people who left the stove cold, the fields empty, and the grain elevator rot.
How do you think that story will end? As a systems analyst wouldn’t you suggest that we cannot redistribute wealth until we have some means by which to HAVE wealth? To create it? And since that means is near collapse we might need to employ more men to do more of the work that now needs to be done? And if redistribution worked so well, what went wrong in the last 100 years? What went wrong in Cuba, Vladivostok, Venezuela, and everywhere else it’s been tried? Is it possible that men who work are as other men and share and help voluntarily, fairly, efficiently, and whose efficiency and local application leads to better outcomes? Because as much as men complete, they also cooperate. In fact, they cooperate far, far more.
What we have today is a system that based on insiders gaming the system for themselves and selling it with happy words and ideas like “sharing”, by which they mean *I* share and they don’t. They could care less. They did not care when 10% of the population was downtrodden, desperate, and unrepresented, and they also do not care when 80% of the population is today. They don’t care what they have to say, do, or report, what lies they tell, what professors they have to pay to write happy books that “should” work, what judges or newsmen or Congressmen or armies they have to buy off. They don’t care. Outlawing commerce and public property is a positive boon for them, because all that remains is the system of raw power and personal favors they already live in, but has eliminated pesky representation and equality under the law. They’d love for you to hand them these keys and say “fix it for me.” Lies. Corruption. Bribery. Murder. Leading to unequal enforcement of the law. That’s your problem. Allowing men to make things, swap them, and keep them from being stolen? Not so much.
Do you believe you have the right to create? To make things? Do you think you should be allowed to trade the things you create for the things made by your neighbors? Do you think others should not be allowed to come to your house and steal your things because they want them? Congratulations, you’re a capitalist.
Thomas Paine neglects to observe that for a man to eat and not work, another man must work and not eat. It would be different if you could roam the wild earth with your mouth open and skittles would fall in, but being human is not like that. EVERY thing we eat, every thing we do for our very life involves work, involves transforming the raw forest into life. So it’s jolly to support the “rights” of the dispossessed, but you are and must do so only by denying the rights of those who transform raw nature into human substance with raw, precious time, great intelligence, and sweat, i.e. with hard, unrelenting work. That’s why the philosophical basis of the nation is to do what you like so long as you do not harm others, a.k.a. Liberty, as is their Right of free action given by a Creator. TAKING the life-work of others without their permission is not and can never be a “Right.” That’s why we have representation NOT of a Democracy but a Republic, and require due compensation in Eminent Domain for example. Rights, properties, can not be curtailed without excruciating due process, a point so long forgotten we can actually discuss this with a straight face.
From long experience, I know whenever I hear this language, they are about to take more of my life and work without due process, leaving me and my land more impoverished than we already are. My and our labor will go to the slightly poorer but far smarter men who do not work because — why should they? — and the wide majority of it to the redistributor’s castle and yacht as their fee. If Paine wants to return to a society of hunter-gatherers, owning little or nothing, yes, this plan may work. But I have the strong feeling that a foreign power would invade and dispossess this proposed bounty, as the people would lack adequate means of resistance, as was hard-proven the first time.
So, let me ask you, in a world of unemployed men and robot overlords, the owner of the robot factory is just going to give you your life’s worth and never ask anything in return? Nothing at all? Really now? Would that not be the income disparity we all oppose now, but times a million, with the life of every other man hung in the balance? It does not seem a plan in accordance with any part of the ten thousand year history of human nature, but maybe this time, right?
I’m sorry, the Soviet Union, Venuzuela, Argentina, Cuba, are all considered “Conservative Society”? Because they had a massive income disparity akin to feudalism. Or perhaps this is something in human nature that accumulates when it can, and focuses on the self first and others after?
Speaking of, the other day there was a comment on the benefits of outlawing Capitalism. Are they going to outlaw my trading pickles for cider with my neighbor? Or prevent me from helping him fix his car on Sunday for loose change? If we are too backward to exchange among ourselves — which would be the “free market” — who instead will proctor all economic changes between humans on planet earth? To whom will I say, “mother may I?” or “your Lordship may I?”.
Or maybe they mean the accumulation of “Capital” must be outlawed. That is, I must not accumulate cabbages, hoes, shop tools, or garden sheds, as they are the concentration of das Capital, in private control, which can be used to create more capital, used for example, to eat and not starve. But in fact, even my bearskin and flint knife is capital and private property, i.e. Capitalism. Seems a bit on the extreme, don’t you think?
“The future of Europe should not become hostage to elections…”
Yes, what are these “elections” that dare to direct the future of Europe? Who do the populace think they are, with their “populism”? What we really need is an unelected, unaccountable, unremovable, full-time 4th layer bureaucracy to protect Europe from hurting itself with any illusions of participation. Oh wait, we have that. It’s the EU.
And speaking of Greece, there’s still Greeks left alive? My God! What will it take to exterminate these people??? The EU is looking into new measures to solve this continuing Greeks-still-exist problem daily.
Mayor of Denver: Souix? The Souix live more in N. Dakota. Don’t you mean something more like Arapaho?
They’re calling the young “generation snowflake” and such. Perhaps it might be better to imagine GenY as mirroring the rest of the country: sheltered coastal suburbanites working for insider industries who might actually be snowflakes, contrasted with dirt poor, forgotten children who’ve grown up on welfare, beaten by parents and authorities alike, tough as woodchucks in the 92% of red counties in Flyoverland. Snowflakes, not so much. But hey, if they’re not the kids in the 20 blessed cities lke Denver, D.C., and Seattle, they’re just representatives of a vicious, selfish culture that deserves to die. Amirite?
Come to think of it, these are the same forgotten kids hustling in the inner cities. So, who are these snowflakes exactly? Your 0.5%? The 99 & 44⁄100% pure? And a generation that has all the jobs, a house, free retirement health care, a pension check while they’re eating ramen to pay undischargable student loans and dying in the E.R. calls Gen Y “entitled.” Yeah, we know you had it great all your life, we heard. You inherited a beautiful world. And now you’ve left everyone else a hollow, rotten husk. No wonder they don’t to talk to the older generations, what’s the point? How am I going to prepare or grow a garden? To get hand skills? Got no house, no stability, no savings, no tools, no job, and may never have one. All the institutions are dead or specialize in wealth extraction. The only thing you have are your friends, so you better believe they’re on txt, every day.
Since I’ve been denied a stake in jobs, corporations, or government, and priced out of houses and hobbies, I’ll be over here playing a game on my smartphone. It’s the only thing I can afford and at least at home with friends I won’t be squeezed raw and insulted. K? BAI.
I want to see this too. Since running the system to the end was the written plan since at least 1979, this is as good a way as any. Because unless you’re under some kind of math spell, we’re not going to repay the debt. We never were, for decades and decades. We were always going to default.
The only harm was we didn’t go honest in 1979, in 1987, in 1994, in 2000, or 2008. How may million people died and American lives were ruined because honesty wasn’t restored then. That’s why I want to see this, not for misplaced schadenfraude to watch your countrymen, who have been systematically savaged, who are now dying by thousands, to undergo more misery for your viewing pleasure.
The events you describe are the only way to control fraud, instill honesty, and restore math.
