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Eat The Rich!

Re: Eat The Rich!

Unread postby Plantagenet » Wed 05 Sep 2018, 16:25:30

baha wrote: If the Dems were in charge we would get 3 and 6 with no 1 and 2. What happened to compromise?.


Actually, the unions shrank away under the Ds and the Ds did nothing except give speeches filled with crocodile tears.

The most positive thing for unions is the growth of manufacturing we are seeing the in the US right now for the first time in decades. Manufacturing factory jobs are the natural milieu for unions, and the Trump tax cuts and tariffs are making companies do more of their manufacturing in the US. It may not last, but for now manufacturing jobs in the US are growing again.

Record number of manufacturing jobs returning to US

Cheers!
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Re: Eat The Rich!

Unread postby Newfie » Wed 05 Sep 2018, 16:30:16

Ever meet an economist that was not pro growth?
Or politician?
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Re: Eat The Rich!

Unread postby ralfy » Wed 05 Sep 2018, 21:46:10

Ibon wrote:It would not be hard to come up with a set of regulations and laws that would integrate some of the agendas and proposals from both political parties as a way to reduce the inequities and build resiliency

1) Reduce immigration
2) Employ tariffs on imports of strategic industries
3) Reinstate unions to negotiate living wages with corporation
4) Reduce off shoring production to cheap labor markets
5) Eliminate exports of fossil fuels and classify them as a strategic reserve.
6) Increase minimum wage to a livable wage for a family of 4
7) Eliminate the profit of health care providers by going to a single payer health care plan
8 ) Go to a flat consumption tax to curb consumption and provide money to fund public social security, health care, medicare, etc.
9) Increase taxes on the very wealthy in a new approach whereby the tax payer gets to direct his or her extra taxes to specific public works and is thus honored with a big fat gold star on his or her forehead.
10) Drastically reduce the military to a defensive army to protect our borders and abandon the role of being a global power. Let the rest of the world fend for themselves.

I just came up with this in sitting down here and thinking this up for 10 minutes. Notice there are proposals that are a mix from both political parties.

Globalism be damned in this scenario which it will anyway soon enough once peak oil and climate change and other stresses will anyway force nations to contract and prioritize resources within their borders

Why we can't we find this pragmatic middle? Any other ideas?


It might have to do with the point that the government works for the rich by default, and has been doing so since robber barons set up various companies to exploit natural resources, followed by control of money supply with the formation of the Fed and the establishment of a military-industrial complex, later used to keep the petrodollar propped up. In return, the rich provide credit to both government and citizens to support that same complex plus consumer spending.
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Re: Eat The Rich!

Unread postby Ibon » Wed 05 Sep 2018, 23:39:13

Before citizens can unite they need to wake up and exercise their brains.
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Re: Eat The Rich!

Unread postby Zarquon » Thu 06 Sep 2018, 00:08:07

In a two-party system, with both parties agreeing on BAU, how exactly do you change anything?
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Re: Eat The Rich!

Unread postby Newfie » Thu 06 Sep 2018, 06:14:08

A great opening paragraph from a story on our home page.

https://peakoil.com/enviroment/the-wate ... heyre-here

What I like is the concept of “wet water” vs “paper water”. In my view the vast majority of the 1% wealth is “paper water” or in this case “digital money”. I think the truth to that can be seen in the rise of crypto currency, why invent such a thing if it’s not more “real” (even in its abstraction of assigning algorithms value) than our current fiat money system.

Here’s a concept: paper water. Paper water is water the government grants certain farmers who are drawing water from a river or a watershed in, say, California. The phrase describes the water the farmer, under premium conditions, is entitled to. Practically, however, paper water is mostly notional water, conceptual water, wish water, since over the years California has awarded many times as much paper water as there is actual water—which, to distinguish it, is quasi-legally called wet water. Some paper water might be made real during years of exceptional abundance, but most of it will forever be speculative and essentially useless, since it can’t realistically be traded, having no value. Paper water thus amounts to a type of hypothetical currency, backed by the Bank of Nowhere, Representing Nothing since 1960 (or thereabouts), when modern water troubles arrived in America and especially in California, where the wildly expanding citizenry required new state and federally managed water systems run by Watercrats.
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Re: Eat The Rich!

Unread postby GHung » Thu 06 Sep 2018, 09:56:15

Zarquon wrote:In a two-party system, with both parties agreeing on BAU, how exactly do you change anything?


No point in stampeding the heard and pissing off benefactors by suggesting that BAU is time-limited. Besides, those in power like things pretty much the way they are and have little incentive to change things much.

Change will be forced. Such has it always been with a species that is largely reactionary rather than proactive.
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Re: Eat The Rich!

Unread postby Ibon » Thu 06 Sep 2018, 09:57:54

GHung wrote:
Change will be forced. Such has it always been with a species that is largely reactionary rather than proactive.



By both external events and social upheaval.
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Re: Eat The Rich!

Unread postby Outcast_Searcher » Thu 06 Sep 2018, 18:26:09

Plantagenet wrote:
baha wrote: If the Dems were in charge we would get 3 and 6 with no 1 and 2. What happened to compromise?.


Actually, the unions shrank away under the Ds and the Ds did nothing except give speeches filled with crocodile tears.

The most positive thing for unions is the growth of manufacturing we are seeing the in the US right now for the first time in decades. Manufacturing factory jobs are the natural milieu for unions, and the Trump tax cuts and tariffs are making companies do more of their manufacturing in the US. It may not last, but for now manufacturing jobs in the US are growing again.

Record number of manufacturing jobs returning to US

Cheers!

And yet, in the overall scheme of things, it's peanuts. Under 10% of the needed jobs being filled is better than jobs going away, but it doesn't remotely "Make America Great Again" compared to the many millions of former factory jobs that have been lost in the US.

The number of full time workers in the US has increased by over a million a year for the past 25 years.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/192 ... ince-1990/

Even if more factories open in the US, the number of workers per unit of factory production is going to tend to be less than it used to, and that number will continue to decrease, due to computers and automation.

Also, the decent jobs in factories are increasingly going to be for folks who understand technology and can deal with programming and fixing complex machinery -- not simple physical labor. Thus education will be key -- even for a lot of "factory" jobs.

Examples: 1). The hotshots in car repair are becoming guys who never get greasy. They utilize the computers to understand the electronic diagnostic data, plot the best repair strategy, and tell the guys who get greasy what to do. 2). In car manufacturing, a way to have a great future at a place like Toyota is to know how to program and repair the robots which do much of the labor. Even better -- to improve the way the robotic labor is implemented (safety, efficiency, scope of jobs they can do, etc).

Again, high tech jobs requiring lots of education.
Given the track record of the perma-doomer blogs, I wouldn't bet a fast crash doomer's money on their predictions.
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Re: Eat The Rich!

Unread postby Newfie » Fri 07 Sep 2018, 20:22:40

Here is an interesting article sort of saying we are looking at another 2008 style crash.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion ... -mistakes/
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Re: Eat The Rich!

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Fri 07 Sep 2018, 21:03:56

Newfie, I didn't read that. I just finished watching the Friday political commentary on PBS News Hour. They were discussing the anonymous Trump op ed critique.

David Brooks, who like most of us is no Trump admirer - nor a R nor a conservative, probably expressed things best:

"The Republicans stand by in shocked horror at the new criticisms of Trump. Meanwhile it should be noted that the new numbers announced today indicate the best economy in our lifetimes."

It comes to me, that our opinions of the POTUS don't really matter much, not to this man. Meanwhile, Barack Obama, following his own severely critical political commentary at my alma mater the University of Illinois, has jumped into the fray of the Mid-Term elections. The last time this much-admired man did that, the D's really tanked the Mid-Terms.
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Re: Eat The Rich!

Unread postby Newfie » Sat 08 Sep 2018, 11:17:37

AND then here is this. It seems these guys want the banking bureaucrats to have more power to avert the next crash.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/07/opin ... %2Fopinion
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Re: Eat The Rich!

Unread postby onlooker » Sat 08 Sep 2018, 13:11:41

Newfie wrote:AND then here is this. It seems these guys want the banking bureaucrats to have more power to avert the next crash.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/07/opin ... %2Fopinion


Seriously. A case of the wolf watching the henhouse. Their reckless speculation is what seems to be a contributing factor in these crashes. Not the only factor but just part of the endemic corruption in the financial world and the Govt does little to nothing about it. What ever happened to the 1% movement anyway.
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Re: Eat The Rich!

Unread postby Newfie » Sat 08 Sep 2018, 16:40:02

Oh the government does lots about it; mostly they support it whole heartedly.
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Re: Eat The Rich!

Unread postby dohboi » Sun 09 Sep 2018, 13:46:43

"a group of oligarchs equal in number to the population of Plano, Texas or Nottingham, England own more than the poorest 80 percent of the world—some 5.6 billion people."

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/0 ... s-s08.html
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Re: Eat The Rich!

Unread postby Ibon » Mon 10 Sep 2018, 07:48:52

Since civilization began there were surfs and peasants and peons and slaves doing the bidding of the rich. There was a brief pause in this arrangement during the 20th century due to the abundance of fossil fuels that allowed for an empowered middle class. It would seem that in the 21st century we are returning to the historical norm. Surfs and peasants with no real wealth, just ersatz symbols like cell phones where you can share your mediocrity with others.
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Re: Eat The Rich!

Unread postby Newfie » Mon 10 Sep 2018, 10:37:50

It’s much easier to submit to control. I’ve a lot of aquaintenances I like to call “cliff dwellers.” They live in high-rises. Condo fees pay for the Super to change the light bulb.

Self-driving cars are the way of the future.

Robot factories, robot farms.

We have made ourselves redundant through sloth and then wonder why we have little value. How many of us would survive a week picking cotton?

The 1% are the ones in control, driving the vehicle of state. We are all huddled on the back of the bus, along for the ride. Who care if we fall off?

If we are the rich who would drive? We would need someone to take the wheel. We peons, on the other hand, are expendable in the grand scheme of things, a liability even.
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Re: Eat The Rich!

Unread postby Cog » Mon 10 Sep 2018, 11:35:56

Things are rarely as bad as the doomers think they are.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/20 ... dle-class/

About half of American adults lived in middle-income households in 2016, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of government data. In percentage terms, 52% of adults lived in middle-income households, 29% in lower-income households and 19% in upper-income households.
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