Atomization of workforce and establishment of national security state after 9/11 so far prevented
large organized collective actions (recent riots were not organized, and with the current technical
capabilities of the three letter agencies any organization is difficult or impossible). I think that
conversion of the state into national security state was the key factor that saved a couple of the
most notorious neoliberals from being hanged on the electrical posts in 2008 although I remember
slogan "Jump suckers" on the corner of Wall Street.
But neoliberal attacks on organized labor started much earlier with Ronald Reagan and then
continued under all subsequent presidents with bill Clinton doing the bulk of this dirty job. his
calculation in creating "New labor" (read neoliberal stooges of Wall Street masked as Democratic
Party) was right and for a couple of elections voters allow Democrats to betray them after the
elections. But eventually that changes. Vichy left, represented by "Clintonized" Democratic Party
got a crushing defeat in 2016 Presidential elections. Does not mean that Trump is better or less
neoliberal, but it does suggest that working class does not trust Democratic Party any longer.
2008 was the time of the crush of neoliberal ideology, much like Prague string signified the
crush of Communist ideology. but while there was some level of harassment, individual beatings of banksters in 2008 were non-existent.
And in zombie stage (with discredited ideology) neoliberalism managed to continue and even
counterattack in some countries. Brazil and Argentina fall into neoliberal hands just recently.
Neoliberals actually managed to learn Trotskyites methods of subversion of government and playing
on population disconnect in case of economic difficulties as well if not better as Trotskyites
themselves.
Neoliberalism is based on unconditional domination of labor by capital ("socialism for the rich,
feudalism for labor"). American scholar and cultural critic
Henry Giroux alleges that
neoliberalism holds that market forces should organize every facet of society, including economic
and social life. In labor relations neoliberalism promotes a
social darwinist ethic which elevates self-interest over social needs.A new class of workers lost "good" jobs in the USA since arly 90th. They all, especially, "over 50" caterory, facing acute socio-economic insecurity,
There is no a special tern for such people. They are called 'precariat'.
The imposition of neoliberalism in the United States arose from a the political counterrevolution
led by financial oligarchy in the 1970s. It was their reaction on the falling rate of
profitability in manufacturing industry as well as the emergence of strong competitors both in Europe and Asia,
competitors which no longer were hampered by WWII decimation of industrial potential and in some way
even manage to benefit from reconstruction getting newer better factories then in the USA.
Neoliberalism doesn't shrink government, but instead convert it into a national security state,
which provides little governmental oversight over large business and multinationals, but toughly
control the lower classes, the smacks -- including mass incarceration those at the bottom. With the
inmates along with illegal immigrants slowly becoming an important source of low-wage labor
for some US corporations. Essentially a new incarnation of slave labor.
Neoliberal policies led to the situation in the US economy in which 30% of workers earn low wages
(less than two-thirds of the median wage for full-time workers), and 35% of the labor force is
underemployed; only 40% of the working-age population in the U.S. is adequately employed. The Center
for Economic Policy Research's (CEPR) Dean Baker (2006) argued that the driving force behind rising
inequality in the US has been a series of government step to impose on the society deliberate, neoliberal policy choices including
anti-inflationary bias, anti-unionism, and profiteering in the health industry
It can not be hidden. Redistribution of wealth up is all the neoliberalism is about.
Simplifying, neoliberalism can be defined as socialism for the rich and feudalism for poor.
So forms of brutal exploitation when people work 12 hours a day (as many "contractors" do now,
as for them labor
laws do not apply) or when even bathroom breaks are regulated now are more common. Amazon, Uber and several other companies have shown that neoliberal model can be as brutal as
plantation slavery.
In a way, we returned
to the brutality of the beginning of XX century on a new level characterized by much higher level
of instability of employment. This is not disputed even for neoliberal stooges in economic departments of
major universities. As interesting question arise: "What form the backlash might take, if any ?"
I think it is an observable fact that the US neoliberal elite is now is discredited and entered political crisis in which it
can't govern "as usual": defeat of
Hillary Clinton and ability to Trump to win nomination from Republican Party and then managed to win them despite opposition from
intelligence agencies and attempt to discredit him by trying him to Russia national
elections. Tump victory signifies the start of discreditation of the neoliberal political elite. The sma is true for the success of Sunders in
Democratic Party primaries and the fact that DNC needed to resort to dirty tricks to derail his
candidacy signifies the same. Even taking into account his betrayal of his voters.
If this does not suggest the crisis of neoliberal governance, I do not know what is. Neoliberal Democrats ("Clintonized"
Democratic Party) by and large lost workers and lower middle class votes. It became "Republicans light", the second War Party in
Washington and now rely of "CIA-democrats" (candidates with background in intelligences serves or military) to win the seats in
Congress much like Republicans in the past. There was even (quickly suppressed) revolt against Pelosi in the House of
Representatives, as it is clear that Pelosi represents the "Party of Davos" in the Congress, not American people.
The crisis
of neoliberalism created conditions
for increased social protest which at stage mostly result in passive "f*ck you" to
neoliberal elite. In 2016 that led to election of Trump, but it was Sanders who captures
social protest voters only to be derailed by machinations of DNC and Clinton clan. At the same
time, the efficiency with which Occupy Wall Street movement was neutered means
that the national security state is still pretty effective in suppressing of dissent, so open
violence probably will be suppressed brutally and efficiently. "Color revolution" methods of
social protest are not effective in the USA sitution, as the key factor that allow "color
revolutionaries" to challenge existing government. It is easy and not so risky to do when you
understand that the USA and its three letter agencies, embassies and NGOs stand behind and
might allow you to emigrate, if you cause fail. No so other significant power such as China or
Russia can stand behind the protesters against neoliberalism in the USA. Neoliberals controls all
braches of power. And internationally they are way too strong to allow Russia or China to interfere
in the US election the way the USA interfered into Russian presidential election.
Neoliberalism is the key reason fro the drop in life expectancy
Notable quotes:
"... Declines or stagnation in longevity can signal catastrophic events or deep problems in a society, researchers say. ..."
"... More deaths from homicide, diabetes and chronic liver disease -- which is related to heavy alcohol use -- also contributed to last year's life expectancy drop, the CDC said ..."
"... The declines were largest for Hispanic and Black people, who as population groups were disproportionately affected by the pandemic . The largest drop for any cohort was 3.7 years, for Hispanic men, bringing their life expectancy to 75.3 years of age. ..."
Life expectancy in the U.S. fell by 1.5 years in 2020, the biggest decline since at least
World War II, as the Covid-19 pandemic killed hundreds of thousands and exacerbated crises in
drug overdoses , homicides and some chronic diseases.
... ... ...
The full toll of the pandemic has yet to be seen, doctors and public-health officials said.
Many people skipped or delayed treatment last year for conditions such as diabetes or high
blood pressure and endured isolation, stress and interruptions in normal diet and exercise
routines.
"That has led to intermediate and longer-term effects we will have to deal with for years to
come," said Donald Lloyd-Jones, chair of the department of preventive medicine at Northwestern
University Feinberg School of Medicine and president of the American Heart Association.
Life expectancy is a measure of a nation's well-being and prosperity, based on mortality in
a given year. Declines or stagnation in longevity can signal catastrophic events or deep
problems in a society, researchers say. Life expectancy fell in the U.S. by 11.8 years in
1918, during a world-wide flu pandemic. Many victims were young.
... ... ...
More deaths from homicide, diabetes and chronic liver disease -- which is related to
heavy alcohol use -- also contributed to last year's life expectancy drop, the CDC said...
Life expectancy would have fallen even more, the CDC said, if not for decreases in mortality
due to cancer, chronic lower-respiratory diseases such as bronchitis, emphysema and asthma, and
other factors.
The declines were largest for Hispanic and Black people, who as population groups were
disproportionately affected by the pandemic . The largest drop for any cohort was 3.7
years, for Hispanic men, bringing their life expectancy to 75.3 years of age.
U.S. longevity had been largely stagnant since 2010, even declining in three of those years,
due in part to an increase in
deaths from drug overdoses , rising death rates
from heart disease for middle-aged Americans and other public health crises. "Getting back
to where we were before the pandemic is a very bad place," said Steven Woolf, director emeritus
of the Center on Society and Health at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine
and author of a recent study comparing the effects of the pandemic on life expectancy in the
U.S. and other high-income countries. "We've got a larger problem here."
... ... ...
Drug-overdose deaths rose nearly 30% last year, driven by a proliferation of the deadly
synthetic opioid fentanyl as well as stress, isolation and reduced access to treatment during
the pandemic, public-health experts said. One study published this month found a 28.3%
decline in initiation of addiction treatment in California from March through October
2020..... ...
Life expectancy for white people dropped 1.2 years to 77.6 years in 2020, the lowest level
since 2002.
What is missing from this article is a comparison of the US with other advanced economies in
Europe and Asia. What is disturbing is how the US spends the most and achieves less than our
economic peers starting with expected average longevity. We had the lowest longevity averages
pre-pandemic and now we have dropped further. This is happening despite the fact that our
health care spending is twice the per capita of other advanced economies (Approx. $11K in the
US vs. $6K based on 2019 data). Contributing to our dismal longevity statistics, with respect
to other wealthy economies, are the highest rates of drug overdose deaths and suicides by
gun. This is just the tip of a long list of sad statistics where we are unfortunately number
1 or close to it. The usual (partisan) response is to claim its government's fault or the
fault of a greedy healthcare system or just say the data is wrong. So far, none of these
strategies is working very well.
Dave Berg SUBSCRIBER 1 hour ago
Life expectancy is the wrong phrase. It's current average life duration. COVID will have no
impact on the life expectancy of babies being born right now. I have two new grandchildren,
their life expectancy will be impacted by things we don't even know about yet.
Walmart Brings Automation To Regional Distribution Centers BY TYLER DURDEN SUNDAY,
JUL 18, 2021 - 09:00 PM
The progressive press had a field day with "woke" Walmart highly
publicized February decision to hikes wages for 425,000 workers to an average above $15 an
hour. We doubt the obvious follow up - the ongoing stealthy replacement of many of its minimum
wage workers with machines - will get the same amount of airtime.
As Chain Store
Age reports , Walmart is applying artificial intelligence to the palletizing of products in
its regional distribution centers. I.e., it is replacing thousands of workers with robots.
Since 2017, the discount giant has worked with Symbotic to optimize an automated technology
solution to sort, store, retrieve and pack freight onto pallets in its Brooksville, Fla.,
distribution center. Under Walmart's existing system, product arrives at one of its RDCs and is
either cross-docked or warehoused, while being moved or stored manually. When it's time for the
product to go to a store, a 53-foot trailer is manually packed for transit. After the truck
arrives at a store, associates unload it manually and place the items in the appropriate
places.
Leveraging the Symbiotic solution, a complex algorithm determines how to store cases like
puzzle pieces using high-speed mobile robots that operate with a precision that speeds the
intake process and increases the accuracy of freight being stored for future orders. By using
dense modular storage, the solution also expands building capacity.
In addition, by using palletizing robotics to organize and optimize freight, the Symbiotic
solution creates custom store- and aisle-ready pallets.
Why is Walmart doing this? Simple: According to CSA, "Walmart expects to save time, limit
out-of-stocks and increasing the speed of stocking and unloading." More importantly, the
company hopes to further cut expenses and remove even more unskilled labor from its supply
chain.
This solution follows tests of similar automated warehouse solutions at a Walmart
consolidation center in Colton, Calif., and perishable grocery distribution center in Shafter,
Calif.
Walmart plans to implement this technology in 25 of its 42 RDCs.
"Though very few Walmart customers will ever see into our warehouses, they'll still be able
to witness an industry-leading change, each time they find a product on shelves," said Joe
Metzger, executive VP of supply chain operations at Walmart U.S. "There may be no way to solve
all the complexities of a global supply chain, but we plan to keep changing the game as we use
technology to transform the way we work and lead our business into the future."
Walmart Brings Automation To Regional Distribution Centers BY TYLER DURDEN SUNDAY,
JUL 18, 2021 - 09:00 PM
The progressive press had a field day with "woke" Walmart highly
publicized February decision to hikes wages for 425,000 workers to an average above $15 an
hour. We doubt the obvious follow up - the ongoing stealthy replacement of many of its minimum
wage workers with machines - will get the same amount of airtime.
As Chain Store
Age reports , Walmart is applying artificial intelligence to the palletizing of products in
its regional distribution centers. I.e., it is replacing thousands of workers with robots.
Since 2017, the discount giant has worked with Symbotic to optimize an automated technology
solution to sort, store, retrieve and pack freight onto pallets in its Brooksville, Fla.,
distribution center. Under Walmart's existing system, product arrives at one of its RDCs and is
either cross-docked or warehoused, while being moved or stored manually. When it's time for the
product to go to a store, a 53-foot trailer is manually packed for transit. After the truck
arrives at a store, associates unload it manually and place the items in the appropriate
places.
Leveraging the Symbiotic solution, a complex algorithm determines how to store cases like
puzzle pieces using high-speed mobile robots that operate with a precision that speeds the
intake process and increases the accuracy of freight being stored for future orders. By using
dense modular storage, the solution also expands building capacity.
In addition, by using palletizing robotics to organize and optimize freight, the Symbiotic
solution creates custom store- and aisle-ready pallets.
Why is Walmart doing this? Simple: According to CSA, "Walmart expects to save time, limit
out-of-stocks and increasing the speed of stocking and unloading." More importantly, the
company hopes to further cut expenses and remove even more unskilled labor from its supply
chain.
This solution follows tests of similar automated warehouse solutions at a Walmart
consolidation center in Colton, Calif., and perishable grocery distribution center in Shafter,
Calif.
Walmart plans to implement this technology in 25 of its 42 RDCs.
"Though very few Walmart customers will ever see into our warehouses, they'll still be able
to witness an industry-leading change, each time they find a product on shelves," said Joe
Metzger, executive VP of supply chain operations at Walmart U.S. "There may be no way to solve
all the complexities of a global supply chain, but we plan to keep changing the game as we use
technology to transform the way we work and lead our business into the future."
when the tax rates increase even more, it just encourages automation or DIY (bring your own sheets to avoid paying the cleaning
fee), which just grinds down growth rather than accelerates it.
Notable quotes:
"... Applebee's is now using tablets to allow customers to pay at their tables without summoning a waiter. ..."
Companies see automation and other labor-saving steps as a way to emerge from the health crisis with a permanently smaller
workforce
PHOTO:
JIM THOMPSON/ZUMA PRESS
... ... ...
Economic data show that companies have learned to do more with less over the last 16 months or so. Output nearly
recovered to pre-pandemic levels in the first quarter of 2021 -- down just 0.5% from the end of 2019 -- even though U.S.
workers put in 4.3% fewer hours than they did before the health crisis.
... ... ...
Raytheon Technologies
Corp.
RTX
0.08%
,
the biggest U.S. aerospace supplier by sales, laid off 21,000 employees and contractors in 2020 amid a drastic
decline in air travel. Raytheon said in January that efforts to modernize its factories and back-office operations
would boost profit margins and reduce the need to bring back all those jobs. The company said that most if not all
of the 4,500 contract workers who were let go in 2020 wouldn't be called back.
... ... ..
Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc. HLT -0.78% said last week that most of its U.S. properties are adopting "a
flexible housekeeping policy," with daily service available upon request. "Full deep cleanings will be conducted
prior to check-in and on every fifth day for extended stays," it said.
Daily housekeeping will still be free for those who request it...
Unite Here, a union that represents hotel workers, published a report in June estimating that the end of daily
room cleaning could result in an industrywide loss of up to 180,000 jobs...
... ... ...
Restaurants have become rapid adopters of technology during the pandemic as two forces -- labor shortages that are
pushing wages higher and a desire to reduce close contact between customers and employees -- raise the return on such
investments.
...
Applebee's is now using tablets to allow customers to pay at their tables without summoning a
waiter.
The hand-held screens provide a hedge against labor inflation, said John Peyton, CEO of Applebee's
parent
Dine
Brands Global
Inc.
... ... ...
The U.S. tax code encourages investments in automation, particularly after the Trump administration's tax cuts,
said Daron Acemoglu, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies the impact of
automation on workers. Firms pay around 25 cents in taxes for every dollar they pay workers, compared with 5 cents
for every dollar spent on machines because companies can write off capital investments, he said.
A lot of employers were given Covid-aid to keep employees employed and paid in 2020. I
assume somebody has addressed that obligation since it wasn't mentioned.
But, what happens to the unskilled workers whose jobs have been eliminated? Do Raytheon
and Hilton just say "have a nice life on the streets"?
No, they will become our collective burdens.
I am all for technology and progress and better QA/QC and general performance. But the
employers that benefit from this should use part of their gains in stock valuation to keep
"our collective burdens" off our collective backs, rather than pay dividends and bonuses
first.
Maybe reinvest in updated training for those laid off.
No great outcome comes free. BUT, as the article implies, the luxury of having already
laid off the unskilled, likely leaves the employer holding all the cards.
And the wheel keeps turning...
Jeffery Allen
Question! Isn't this antithetical (reduction of employees) to the spirit and purpose of
both monetary and fiscal programs, e.g., PPP loans (fiscal), capital markets funding
facilities (monetary) established last year and current year? Employers are to retain
employees. Gee, what a farce. Does anyone really care?
Philip Hilmes
Some of this makes sense and some would happen anyway without the pandemic. I don't need my room
cleaned every day, but sometimes I want it. The wait staff in restaurants is another matter. Losing
wait staff makes for a pretty bad experience. I hate having to order on my phone. I feel like I might
as well be home ordering food through Grubhub or something. It's impersonal, more painful than telling
someone, doesn't allow for you to be checked on if you need anything, doesn't provide information you
don't get from a menu, etc. It really diminishes the value of going out to eat without wait staff.
al snow
OK I been reading all the comments I only have a WSJ access as the rate was a great deal.
Hotel/Motel started making the bed but not changing the sheets every day for many years I am fine as
long as they offer trash take out and towel/paper every day
and do not forget to tip .
clive boulton
Recruiters re-post hard to fill job listings onto multiple job boards. I don't believe the reported
job openings resemble are real. Divide by 3 at least.
But wait: wasn't this recent rise in wages in real terms being propagandized as a new boom
for the working class in the USA by the MSM until some days ago?
And in the drive-through lane at Checkers near Atlanta, requests for Big Buford burgers and
Mother Cruncher chicken sandwiches may be fielded not by a cashier in a headset, but by a
voice-recognition algorithm.
An increase in automation, especially in service industries, may prove to be an economic
legacy of the pandemic. Businesses from factories to fast-food outlets to hotels turned to
technology last year to keep operations running amid social distancing requirements and
contagion fears. Now the outbreak is ebbing in the United States, but the difficulty in hiring
workers -- at least at the wages that employers are used to paying -- is providing new momentum
for automation.
Technological investments that were made in response to the crisis may contribute to a
post-pandemic productivity boom, allowing for higher wages and faster growth. But some
economists say the latest wave of automation could eliminate jobs and erode bargaining power,
particularly for the lowest-paid workers, in a lasting way.
"Once a job is automated, it's pretty hard to turn back," said Casey Warman, an economist at
Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia who has studied automation in the pandemic .
https://www.dianomi.com/smartads.epl?id=3533
The trend toward automation predates the pandemic, but it has accelerated at what is proving
to be a critical moment. The rapid reopening of the economy has led to a surge in demand for
waiters, hotel maids, retail sales clerks and other workers in service industries that had cut
their staffs. At the same time, government benefits have allowed many people to be selective in
the jobs they take. Together, those forces have given low-wage workers a rare moment of
leverage , leading to higher pay
, more generous benefits and other perks.
Automation threatens to tip the advantage back toward employers, potentially eroding those
gains. A
working paper published by the International Monetary Fund this year predicted that
pandemic-induced automation would increase inequality in coming years, not just in the United
States but around the world.
"Six months ago, all these workers were essential," said Marc Perrone, president of the
United Food and Commercial Workers, a union representing grocery workers. "Everyone was calling
them heroes. Now, they're trying to figure out how to get rid of them."
Checkers, like many fast-food restaurants, experienced a jump in sales when the pandemic
shut down most in-person dining. But finding workers to meet that demand proved difficult -- so
much so that Shana Gonzales, a Checkers franchisee in the Atlanta area, found herself back
behind the cash register three decades after she started working part time at Taco Bell while
in high school.
"We really felt like there has to be another solution," she said.
So Ms. Gonzales contacted Valyant AI, a Colorado-based start-up that makes voice recognition
systems for restaurants. In December, after weeks of setup and testing, Valyant's technology
began taking orders at one of Ms. Gonzales's drive-through lanes. Now customers are greeted by
an automated voice designed to understand their orders -- including modifications and special
requests -- suggest add-ons like fries or a shake, and feed the information directly to the
kitchen and the cashier.
The rollout has been successful enough that Ms. Gonzales is getting ready to expand the
system to her three other restaurants.
"We'll look back and say why didn't we do this sooner," she said.
The push toward automation goes far beyond the restaurant sector. Hotels,
retailers ,
manufacturers and other businesses have all accelerated technological investments. In a
survey of nearly 300 global companies by the World Economic Forum last year, 43 percent of
businesses said they expected to reduce their work forces through new uses of
technology.
Some economists see the increased investment as encouraging. For much of the past two
decades, the U.S. economy has struggled with weak productivity growth, leaving workers and
stockholders to compete over their share of the income -- a game that workers tended to lose.
Automation may harm specific workers, but if it makes the economy more productive, that could
be good for workers as a whole, said Katy George, a senior partner at McKinsey, the consulting
firm.
She cited the example of a client in manufacturing who had been pushing his company for
years to embrace augmented-reality technology in its factories. The pandemic finally helped him
win the battle: With air travel off limits, the technology was the only way to bring in an
expert to help troubleshoot issues at a remote plant.
"For the first time, we're seeing that these technologies are both increasing productivity,
lowering cost, but they're also increasing flexibility," she said. "We're starting to see real
momentum building, which is great news for the world, frankly."
Other economists are less sanguine. Daron Acemoglu of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology said that many of the technological investments had just replaced human labor
without adding much to overall productivity.
In a
recent working paper , Professor Acemoglu and a colleague concluded that "a significant
portion of the rise in U.S. wage inequality over the last four decades has been driven by
automation" -- and he said that trend had almost certainly accelerated in the pandemic.
"If we automated less, we would not actually have generated that much less output but we
would have had a very different trajectory for inequality," Professor Acemoglu said.
Ms. Gonzales, the Checkers franchisee, isn't looking to cut jobs. She said she would hire 30
people if she could find them. And she has raised hourly pay to about $10 for entry-level
workers, from about $9 before the pandemic. Technology, she said, is easing pressure on workers
and speeding up service when restaurants are chronically understaffed.
"Our approach is, this is an assistant for you," she said. "This allows our employee to
really focus" on customers.
Ms. Gonzales acknowledged she could fully staff her restaurants if she offered $14 to $15 an
hour to attract workers. But doing so, she said, would force her to raise prices so much that
she would lose sales -- and automation allows her to take another course.
Rob Carpenter, Valyant's chief executive, noted that at most restaurants, taking
drive-through orders is only part of an employee's responsibilities. Automating that task
doesn't eliminate a job; it makes the job more manageable.
"We're not talking about automating an entire position," he said. "It's just one task within
the restaurant, and it's gnarly, one of the least desirable tasks."
But technology doesn't have to take over all aspects of a job to leave workers worse off. If
automation allows a restaurant that used to require 10 employees a shift to operate with eight
or nine, that will mean fewer jobs in the long run. And even in the short term, the technology
could erode workers' bargaining power.
"Often you displace enough of the tasks in an occupation and suddenly that occupation is no
more," Professor Acemoglu said. "It might kick me out of a job, or if I keep my job I'll get
lower wages."
At some businesses, automation is already affecting the number and type of jobs available.
Meltwich, a restaurant chain that started in Canada and is expanding into the United States,
has embraced a range of technologies to cut back on labor costs. Its grills no longer require
someone to flip burgers -- they grill both sides at once, and need little more than the press
of a button.
"You can pull a less-skilled worker in and have them adapt to our system much easier," said
Ryan Hillis, a Meltwich vice president. "It certainly widens the scope of who you can have
behind that grill."
With more advanced kitchen equipment, software that allows online orders to flow directly to
the restaurant and other technological advances, Meltwich needs only two to three workers on a
shift, rather than three or four, Mr. Hillis said.
Such changes, multiplied across thousands of businesses in dozens of industries, could
significantly change workers' prospects. Professor Warman, the Canadian economist, said
technologies developed for one purpose tend to spread to similar tasks, which could make it
hard for workers harmed by automation to shift to another occupation or industry.
"If a whole sector of labor is hit, then where do those workers go?" Professor Warman said.
Women, and to a lesser degree people of color, are likely to be disproportionately affected, he
added.
The grocery business has long been a source of steady, often unionized jobs for people
without a college degree. But technology is changing the sector. Self-checkout lanes have
reduced the number of cashiers; many stores have simple robots to patrol aisles for spills and
check inventory; and warehouses have become increasingly automated. Kroger in April opened a
375,000-square-foot warehouse with more than 1,000 robots that bag groceries for delivery
customers. The company is even experimenting with delivering groceries by drone.
Other companies in the industry are doing the same. Jennifer Brogan, a spokeswoman for Stop
& Shop, a grocery chain based in New England, said that technology allowed the company to
better serve customers -- and that it was a competitive necessity.
"Competitors and other players in the retail space are developing technologies and
partnerships to reduce their costs and offer improved service and value for customers," she
said. "Stop & Shop needs to do the same."
In 2011, Patrice Thomas took a part-time job in the deli at a Stop & Shop in Norwich,
Conn. A decade later, he manages the store's prepared foods department, earning around $40,000
a year.
Mr. Thomas, 32, said that he wasn't concerned about being replaced by a robot anytime soon,
and that he welcomed technologies making him more productive -- like more powerful ovens for
rotisserie chickens and blast chillers that quickly cool items that must be stored cold.
But he worries about other technologies -- like automated meat slicers -- that seem to
enable grocers to rely on less experienced, lower-paid workers and make it harder to build a
career in the industry.
"The business model we seem to be following is we're pushing toward automation and we're not
investing equally in the worker," he said. "Today it's, 'We want to get these robots in here to
replace you because we feel like you're overpaid and we can get this kid in there and all he
has to do is push this button.'"
The number of U.S. truck drivers sidelined due to substance abuse violations has surpassed
60,000 and continues to climb by roughly 2,000-3,000 per month, according to federal data. The
latest monthly
report by the Drug and Alcohol Clearinghouse, administered by the Federal Motor Carrier
Safety Administration since January 2020, revealed that 60,299 CDL holders have a drug or
alcohol violation recorded in the clearinghouse as of June 1, up from 57,510 as of May 1 and up
from 18,860 recorded in the clearinghouse as of May 1, 2020.
Drivers with at least one substance abuse violation are barred from operating a commercial
truck until they complete a return-to-duty process, which includes providing a negative
follow-up test result. The percentage of drivers who are completing the RTD process has
steadily increased over the past year, however, from 5.2% as of May 1, 2020, to 22.1% as of May
1, 2021.
Marijuana consistently tops the list of substances identified in positive drug tests, far
outpacing cocaine and methamphetamine, the second- and third-highest drug violations,
respectively, among CDL holders.
The number of violations now recorded in the clearinghouse stands out for another reason:
It's coincidentally just a few hundred shy of an estimated number of drivers needed to fill a
shortfall of commercial drivers to keep pace with freight demand.
"According to a recent estimate, the trucking industry needs an additional 60,800 truck
drivers immediately -- a deficit that is expected to grow to more than 160,000 by 2028,"
testified American Trucking Associations President and CEO Chris Spear at a Capitol Hill
hearing on freight mobility in May.
"In fact, when anticipated driver retirement numbers are combined with the expected growth
in capacity, the trucking industry will need to hire roughly 1.1 million new drivers over the
next decade, or an average of nearly 110,000 per year."
Scopelitis Consulting Co-Director Sean Garney pointed out that the growing number of
prohibited drivers is not a bad thing from a safety standpoint.
"The database is doing what it's supposed to do, which is identify those who should not be
driving," Garney told FreightWaves. "Losing drivers due to positive drug tests may not
necessarily be a good thing for truck capacity, but I think what many others in this industry
also care about is safety."
The problem is that many people face long term unemployment without substantial emergency funds, which further complicates
already difficult situation.
Notable quotes:
"... More than 2K adults to were interviewed to try and ascertain how long they could survive without income. It turns out that approximately 72.4MM employed Americans - 28.4% of the population - believe they wouldn't be able to last for more than a month without a payday. ..."
Imagine you lost your job tomorrow. How long would you be able to sustain your current
lifestyle? A week? A month? A year?
As we await Friday's labor market update, Finder has just published the results of a recent
survey attempting to gauge the financial stability of the average American in the post-pandemic
era.
More than 2K adults to were interviewed to try and ascertain how long they could survive
without income. It turns out that approximately 72.4MM employed Americans - 28.4% of the
population - believe they wouldn't be able to last for more than a month without a payday.
Another 24% said they expected to be able to live comfortably between two months and six
months. That means an estimated 133.6MM working Americans (52.3% of the population) can live
off their savings for six months or less before going broke.
On the other end of the spectrum, roughly 8.7MM employed Americans (or 3.4% of the
population) say they don't need to rely on a rainy day fund since they have employment
insurance which will compensate them should they lose their job.
Amusingly, men appear to be less effective savers than women. Some 32.4MM women (26.7% of
American women) say their savings would stretch at most a month, compared to 40MM men (29.9% of
American men) who admit to the same. Of those people, 9.7MM women (8% of American women) say
their savings wouldn't even stretch a week, compared to 15.5MM men (11.6% of American men) who
admit to the same.
A majority of employed Americans over the age of 18 say their savings would last six months
at most. About 70.7MM men (52.8% of American men) and 62.8MM women (51.8% of American women)
fear they'd be in dire straits within six months of losing their livelihood.
Unsurprisingly, younger people tend to have less of a savings buffer - but the gap between
the generations isn't as wide as it probably should be.
While increasing one's income is perhaps the best route to building a more robust nest egg,
Finder offered some suggestions for people looking to maximize their savings.
1. Create a budget and stick to it
Look at your monthly income against all of your monthly expenses. Add to them expenses you
pay once or twice a year to avoid a surprise when they creep up. After you know where your
money is going, you can allot specific amounts to different categories and effectively track
your spending.
"... Indeed, economists and analysts have gotten used to presenting facts from the perspective of private employers and their lobbyists. The American public is expected to sympathize more with the plight of wealthy business owners who can't find workers to fill their low-paid positions, instead of with unemployed workers who might be struggling to make ends meet. ..."
"... West Virginia's Republican Governor Jim Justice justified ending federal jobless benefits early in his state by lecturing his residents on how, "America is all about work. That's what has made this great country." Interestingly, Justice owns a resort that couldn't find enough low-wage workers to fill jobs. Notwithstanding a clear conflict of interest in cutting jobless benefits, the Republican politician is now enjoying the fruits of his own political actions as his resort reports greater ease in filling positions with desperate workers whose lifeline he cut off. ..."
For the past few months, Republicans have been waging a ferocious political battle to end
federal unemployment benefits, based upon stated desires of saving the U.S. economy from a
serious labor shortage. The logic, in the words
of Republican politicians like Iowa Senator Joni Ernst, goes like this: "the government pays
folks more to stay home than to go to work," and therefore, "[p]aying people not to work is not
helpful." The conservative Wall Street Journal has been beating the drum for the same argument,
saying recently that it was a " terrible
blunder " to pay jobless benefits to unemployed workers.
If the hyperbolic claims are to be believed, one might imagine American workers are
luxuriating in the largesse of taxpayer-funded payments, thumbing their noses at the earnest
"job creators" who are taking far more seriously the importance of a post-pandemic economic
growth spurt.
It is true that there are currently millions of jobs going unfilled. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics just
released statistics showing that there were 9.3 million job openings in April and that the
percentage of layoffs decreased while resignations increased. Taking these statistics at face
value, one could conclude this means there is a labor shortage.
But, as economist Heidi Shierholz explained in a New York
Times op-ed , there is only a labor shortage if employers raise wages to match worker
demands and subsequently still face a shortage of workers. Shierholz wrote, "When those
measures [of raising wages] don't result in a substantial increase in workers, that's a labor
shortage. Absent that dynamic, you can rest easy."
Remember the subprime mortgage housing crisis of 2008 when
economists and pundits blamed low-income homeowners for wanting to purchase homes they
could not afford? Perhaps this is the labor market's way of saying, if you can't afford higher
salaries, you shouldn't expect to fill jobs.
Or, to use the logic of another accepted capitalist argument, employers could liken the job
market to the surge pricing practices of ride-share companies like Uber and Lyft. After
consumers complained about hiked-up prices for rides during rush hour,
Uber explained , "With surge pricing, Uber rates increase to get more cars on the road and
ensure reliability during the busiest times. When enough cars are on the road, prices go back
down to normal levels." Applying this logic to the labor market, workers might be saying to
employers: "When enough dollars are being offered in wages, the number of job openings will go
back down to normal levels." In other words, workers are surge-pricing the cost of their
labor.
But corporate elites are loudly complaining that the sky is falling -- not because of a real
labor shortage, but because workers are less likely now to accept low-wage jobs. The U.S.
Chamber of Commerce
insists that "[t]he worker shortage is real," and that it has risen to the level of a
"national economic emergency" that "poses an imminent threat to our fragile recovery and
America's great resurgence." In the Chamber's worldview, workers, not corporate employers who
refuse to pay better, are the main obstacle to the U.S.'s economic recovery.
Longtime labor organizer and senior scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies Bill Fletcher Jr. explained to me in an email
interview that claims of a labor shortage are an exaggeration and that, actually, "we suffered
a minor depression and not another great recession," as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
In Fletcher's view, "The so-called labor shortage needs to be understood as the result of
tremendous employment reorganization, including the collapse of industries and companies."
Furthermore, according to Fletcher, the purveyors of the "labor shortage" myth are not
accounting for "the collapse of daycare and the impact on women and families, and a continued
fear associated with the pandemic."
He's right. As one analyst
put it, "The rotten seed of America's disinvestment in child care has finally sprouted." Such
factors have received little attention by the purveyors of the labor shortage myth -- perhaps
because acknowledging real obstacles like care work requires thinking of workers as real human
beings rather than cogs in a capitalist machine.
Indeed, economists and analysts have gotten used to presenting facts from the perspective of
private employers and their lobbyists. The American public is expected to sympathize more with
the plight of wealthy business owners who can't find workers to fill their low-paid positions,
instead of with unemployed workers who might be struggling to make ends meet.
Already, jobless benefits were slashed to appallingly low levels after Republicans reduced a
$600-a-week payment authorized by the CARES Act to a mere
$300 a week , which works out to $7.50 an hour for full-time work. If companies cannot
compete with this exceedingly paltry sum, their position is akin to a customer demanding to a
car salesperson that they have the right to buy a vehicle for a below-market-value sticker
price (again, capitalist logic is a worthwhile exercise to showcase the ludicrousness of how
lawmakers and their corporate beneficiaries are responding to the state of the labor
market).
Remarkably, although federal jobless benefits are funded through September 2021,
more than two dozen Republican-run states are choosing to end them earlier. Not only will
this impact the bottom line for
millions of people struggling to make ends meet, but it will also undermine the stimulus
impact that this federal aid has on the economies of states when jobless workers spend their
federal dollars on necessities. Conservatives are essentially engaged in an ideological battle
over government benefits, which, in their view, are always wrong unless they are going to the
already privileged (remember the GOP's 2017
tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy?).
The GOP has thumbed its nose at federal benefits for residents before. In order to
underscore their ideological opposition to the Affordable Care Act, recall how Republican
governors
eschewed billions of federal dollars to fund Medicaid expansion. These conservative
ideologues chose to let their own
voters suffer the consequences of turning down federal aid in service of their political
opposition to Obamacare. And they're doing the same thing now.
At the same time as headlines are screaming about a catastrophic worker shortage that could
undermine the economy, stories abound of how American billionaires paid
peanuts in income taxes according to newly released documents, even as their wealth
multiplied to extraordinary levels. The obscenely wealthy are spending their mountains of cash on luxury
goods and fulfilling
childish fantasies of space travel . The juxtaposition of such a phenomenon alongside the
conservative claim that jobless benefits are too generous is evidence that we are indeed in a
"national economic emergency" -- just not of the sort that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce wants
us to believe.
West
Virginia's Republican Governor Jim Justice justified ending federal jobless benefits early
in his state by lecturing his residents on how, "America is all about work. That's what has
made this great country." Interestingly, Justice owns a resort that couldn't find enough
low-wage workers to fill jobs. Notwithstanding a clear conflict of interest in cutting jobless
benefits, the Republican politician is now enjoying the fruits of his own political actions as
his resort reports greater ease in filling positions with desperate workers whose lifeline he
cut off.
When lawmakers earlier this year
debated the Raise the Wage Act , which would have increased the federal minimum wage,
Republicans wagged their fingers in warning, saying higher wages would put companies out of
business. Opponents of that failed bill claimed that if forced to pay $15 an hour, employers
would hire fewer people, close branches, or perhaps shut down altogether, which we were told
would ultimately hurt workers.
Now, we are being told another story: that companies actually do need workers and won't
simply reduce jobs, close branches, or shut down and that the government therefore needs to
stop competing with their ultra-low wages to save the economy. The claim that businesses would
no longer be profitable if they are forced to increase wages is undermined by one
multibillion-dollar fact: corporations are raking in record-high profits and doling them out to
shareholders and executives. They can indeed afford to offer greater pay, and when
they do, it turns out there is no labor shortage .
American workers are at a critically important juncture at this moment. Corporate employers
seem to be approaching a limit of how far they can push workers to accept poverty-level jobs.
According to Fletcher, "This moment provides opportunities to raise wage demands, but it must
be a moment where workers organize in order to sustain and pursue demands for improvements in
their living and working conditions."
Sonali Kolhatkar is the founder, host and executive producer of "Rising Up With Sonali,"
a television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations. She is a writing
fellow for the Economy for All project at the Independent Media Institute. This article was
produced by Economy for All , a project of the
Independent Media Institute.
In IT corporate honchos shamelessly put more then a dozen of very specific skills into the
position rescription and want a cog that hit that exactly. they are not interested in IQ, ability
to learn and such things. that want already train person for the position to fill, so that have
zero need to train this persn and they expect that he will work productively from the day
one.
But corporate elites are loudly complaining that the sky is falling -- not because of a
real labor shortage, but because workers are less likely now to accept low-wage jobs.
Duh. This is so blindingly obvious, but NC is the only place that seems to mention this
fact.
Here in the UK, the outmigration of marginally paid workers from Eastern Europe and the
resultant "labour shortage" triggered by Brexit has made it abundantly clear that Blair's
change to open borders was not from any idealistic considerations but as a way of importing
easily exploited labor.
Business leaders quoted in the the tsunami of hand-wringing MSM articles about the current
catastrophe are offering such helpful solutions as allowing housekeepers to use pools and
gyms in off hours, free meals to waiters, etc. Anything but a living wage.
" I don't actually see any untruths to the GOP talking points. "
"" Workers are less likely to accept a job while receiving Gov't benefits" and "workers are
less likely to accept low wage crappy jobs ".
Well,if u can survive on a $300/week program that ends after several weeks pass,bless u.
No one else in America can. That's a $7.50 hr full time "summer job" with no pension or
medical benefits that teenagers with no dependents,few bills n maintenance issues might be
interested in; adults with adult responsibilities,no way. That so called RepubliCons, the
"economics experts", can make such a fraudulent claim n anyone out of elementary school
believes it has a quantum particle of reality or value is . well I'll just say a sad n
unbelievable situation.
They get 300 dollars plus regular UI. They can also get Medicaid and CHIP, or if they are
still making too much they are eligible for Obamacare exchange. Plus they're eligible for
SNAP and housing vouchers
There is one significant fallacy in this article: The author conflates Republican
opposition to enhanced benefits with opposition to unemployment benefits overall.
I very much stand with labour over business on most (probably all) points, but the
Republican argument is to end the enhanced benefits in most cases – Not to abolish
unemployment assistance. They believe the role of government is to step in to help pay basic
bills in the event of unemployment, but oppose the current higher level of benefit due to the
market distortions it causes (Hence the appearance of the term 'labour shortage'.)
I agree that it basically forces mcdonalds et al to up their wages if they want to do
business, which should be a positive for society, but I find it unlikely that the author
could have unintentionally mistunderstood the argument on such a fundamental level, and all
it does is try to drive a wedge further between each side of the argument.
Anyone that believes that workers supported their jobs being sent overseas is either
demented or delusional or suffers from a mental hernia. The same goes for the common working
stiffs supporting massive immigration to help drive down their ability to demand a livable
wage.
American labor has been sold down the river by the International Labor Leaders,
politicians and the oligarchy of US corporate CEO's.
======
Got a new hip recently. Do your P.T., take it easy, follow the warnings of what not to do
until you heal and you should discover that decades feel like they are lifted off your
shoulders.
Sierra,
You've made a very interesting point that actually never occurred to me and one in which I
never seen fully examined.
Exploiting labour and outsourcing it are two sides of the same coin with the same goal in
mind, diverting revenue streams into the C-suite and rentier class.
Obviously you cannot outsource most of the workers in the hospitality industry or the
non-virtual aspects of world's oldest profession, but a lot of the tech industry and the
virtual aspects of the latter are very amenable to being shipped overseas.
Immigrants are extremely visible and an easy target, while outsourcing is essentially an
impossible to contain concept that creates real world hardship.
Dear NC readers, do you know of any studies comparing and contrasting the economic impact of
immigration and/or limiting it and outsourcing?
Indeed, economists and analysts have gotten used to presenting facts from the
perspective of private employers and their lobbyists.
You are acting if economists and lobbyists are separate groups, as opposed to largely a
subset thereof. Funny how a field entirely based on the study of incentives claims incentives
don't distort their policy prescriptions, isn't it?
As for low-paid jobs, they are traditionally the last resort of immigrants and other
marginalized populations, but the anti-immigration push that began under Obama, and
enthusiastically continued by Trump and Biden, has perfectly predictable consequences.
One factor not mentioned is many free-riding businesses refuse to pay for training, then
wonder why there are no trained workers to hire.
Now, there are definitely fields where there is a genuine and deliberate labor shortage.
Usually white-collar credentialed professions like medical doctors and the AMA cartel.
Economics is not based on incentives. That's behavioral economics. I hate to quote Larry
Summers, but this is Summers on financial economics:
Ketchup economists reject out of hand much of this research on the ketchup market. They
believe that the data used is based on almost meaningless accounting information and are
quick to point out that concepts such as costs of production vary across firms and are not
accurately measurable in any event. they believe that ketchup transactions prices are the
only hard data worth studying. Nonetheless ketchup economists have an impressive research
program, focusing on the scope for excess opportunities in the ketchup market. They have
shown that two quart bottles of ketchup invariably sell for twice as much as one quart
bottles of ketchup except for deviations traceable to transaction costs, and that one
cannot get a bargain on ketchup by buying and combining ingredients once one takes account
of transaction costs. Nor are there gains to be had from storing ketchup, or mixing
together different quality ketchups and selling the resulting product. Indeed, most ketchup
economists regard the efficiency of the ketchup market as the best established fact in
empirical economics.
Happy to see you back at a keyboard, and hoping your recovery is progressing well. I had
the misfortune of spending two days in the hospitals while they got my blood chemistry
strightened out. Here's the kicker; the hospitalist, who I saw 3 times, submitted a bill for
a whopping $17,000. Just yesterday, the practice she works for submitted a bill that was
one-tenth her charges for the work she did, yet her bill is still sitting waiting to be
processed.
OMG, how horrible. HSS is a small hospital for a big city like NYC, only 205 beds and 25
operating rooms. No emergency room. They are not owned by PE and so I don't think play
outsourcing/markup games (they are very big on controlling quality, which you can't do if you
have to go through middlemen for staffing). Some of the MDs do that their own practices
within HSS but they are solo practitioners or small teams, which is not a model that you see
much of anywhere outside NYC
The last time I was hospitalized, all the hospitalists were in the employ of the hospital,
now they are in the employ of a nationwide hospitalist practice, which has all the smell of
private equity around it. I'm really beginning to think that a third party focusted on
healthcare might have a real shot at upsetting the political order – maybe it's time to
drag out your skunk party for 2024.
As for low-paid jobs, they are traditionally the last resort of immigrants and other
marginalized populations, but the anti-immigration push that began under Obama, and
enthusiastically continued by Trump and Biden, has perfectly predictable
consequences.
Well I'm sorry you can't find easily exploitable labor, except I'm not immigrants face the
same ridiculous costs, and weren't hispanic workers more heavily impacted by covid due
to those marginal jobs (I'll switch your dynamic to low wage workers , and
marginal jobs, thanks), so by your logic more should have been let in to die from
these marginal jobs? but yeah we need more PMC except we don't Now, there are definitely fields where there is a genuine and deliberate labor shortage.
Usually white-collar credentialed professions like medical doctors and the AMA
cartel."
Last I checked it was private equity, wall st and pharmaceutical companies and their
lobbyists that drive up costs so labor needs to charge more.
Wake up and smell the coffee.
How much of this is over specification on the part of employers in the ad for the job? We
want the perfect candidate who can do the job better than we can with no training .
OMG this is such a long-standing pet peeve! We've commented on this nonsense regularly.
Companies took the position that they don't have to train and now they are eating their
cooking.
The mismatch between job openings and job applicants is not just about wages.
In fact, if companies were willing to take a chance on people who didn't exactly match the
job requirements, the likely effect would be to raise the wages some of those that did not
qualify under the over exacting job requirements. [And likely paying these new employees less
than they had contemplated paying the perfect candidate.]
But that seems like someone making the hiring decision might, just possibly, be seen as
taking a risk.
At my empolyer we know we can't find any colleges that teach mainframe skills, so we bring
in graduates who are willing to learn those skills – we submit them to a 3-month
bootcamp and then there's a long period of mentorship under a senior person to their group
that has an opening. Since everybody and their dog are now moving headfirst into DevOps,
where all the tooling is in somewhat less ancient software, they get exposed using those
Eclipse/VScode-based tools and are able to come up to speed somewhat quicker. Still, no one
in corporate America dares to bite the bullet and re-platform their core systems with few
exceptions (SABRE) for fear of losing all the institutional knowledge that's in software,
rather than wetware (humans).
Just think what is happening right now with everyone holding an Indian outsourcing
contract. You don't have individual's cellphone numbers over in India, which would cost you
an arm and a leg to call, never mind what's going on in their facilities.
On the other hand, there's something to be said for employers not training their staffs.
In the SF Bay Area computer industry, employees and independent contractors alike continually
race to train themselves in the new technologies that seem to crop up like mushrooms after a
rain. Many companies train their customers–and charge them for it–before they'll
train their staffs. This is a principal reason there's a market for contractors. Training
oneself in new technologies lays a base for opportunities that don't appear if you spend a
decade in the same job (unless, like mainframe programming, your job is so old it's new). I
suppose this is a beneficial side of capitalism?
I get that you want experience for mid to senior level jobs but the experience
requirements for what are ostsensibly entry-level jobs have gotten absurd. The education
requirements have also gotten out of hand in some cases.
That being said, a lot of the shortages are in low-wage, part-time jobs so the issue isn't
necessarily ridiculous requirements, like you sometimes see for entry level white collar
jobs, but wages that are too low and awful working conditions.
How many people want to be treated like dirt–be it by customers, management, or
both–for not much more than minimum wage if they have other options?
A wage increase will help fill these jobs but there also needs to be a paradigm shift in
how employees are treated–the customer is not always right and allowing them to treat
employees in ways that would not be tolerated in other businesses, and certainly not in many
white-collar workplaces is a huge part of the problem and why these jobs have long had
high-turnover.
It never ends – when it was about immigrant labor under George B junior – I
think – the call was
-- - They do jobs that Americans won't -- or something to that effect.
It always bothered me that the sentence was never, in my mind, completed. It should have been
said
-- They do jobs that Americans won't do at that pay level. --
The tax system, economic system and higher education departments have been perverted by the
continuous bribery and endowments by the rentier class to our elected law makers and dept
heads for decades –
The creditor, debtor relationships distorted for eons.
The toll takers have never, in history, been in any higher level of mastery than they are
now.
It is not to throw out the constitution but, to throw out those who have perverted it.
The construction industry knows how to exploit immigrant labor, documented as well as
undocumented. I'm sure most peole born here refuse to work for the same wages.
The exploitation occurs on many levels. For small residential jobs, a lot of wage theft
occurs. For larger jobs, a lot of safety regs get ignored. When you have a population that
won't use the legal avenues available to other citizens to push back against abuse you can
get a lot done :/
When I go looking for a job if a degree isn't required I am very unlikely to pursue it
further. Same if the list of 'required' is overly detailed. I'm making assumptions in both of
these cases (that might not be correct) about pay, benefits, work environment, etc. and what
is actually going on with a job listing. Why? Chiefly my likelihood of actually getting a
reasonable offer. I expect either being seen as overqualified in the first case or the job
only being listed because of some requirement in the second.
I have to wonder if many places know how to hire. This is made much more difficult by
years of poorly written (maybe deceptive) job postings. You probably know many of the
phrases; flexible schedule, family ___, reliable transportation required, and so on. Its no
surprise if puffery doesn't bring back the drones.
If we're playing with statistics. How many of these posted job openings, how many
interviews did the companies offer v. how many offers were made until the position was
filled? If position remains open, has the company increased the base pay offer? guaranteed an
increased min. number of weekly hours? offered bonuses or increased benefits? How many times
has this same job opening using the original posting criteria been re-posted? Is this a real
single job opening that the company plans to fill in real time or just a posting that they
keep opening because they have high turnover? etc., etc., etc.
The real problem with this workers are lazy meme is that it is repeated and repeated all
year long on the local news from the viewpoint of business. It has filtered down to local
people. I hear them repeating what the local news said without giving it any critical
thought. Even those who say that we need unions and believe themselves to be on the side of
workers.
Ear wigs are good for businesses. Insidious for workers.
In the UK, in the days of Labor Strive, before Neo-liberalism , there was always newspaper
reports about "Labor Strife" and "bolshy workers." Never once did the press examine
Management had behaved and caused the workers to become "bolshy" – a direct reaction to
Management's attitudes and behavior, probably based on the worst attributes of the UK's class
system.
Definition: A bolshy person often argues and makes difficulties.
Management get the workers (Their Attitudes) it deserves.
I recommend reading "The Toyota Way" to explore a very successful management style.
This song is getting a probably getting more hits these days
Take this job and Shove It https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIjEauGiRLo
But I hear lots of businesses will close to to no labor, so when they close they can go work
for 7.25 an hour for one of their competitors who also needs laborors Solidarinosc!
If businesses are suffering, it's restaurants and small scale enterprise. The Covid
response was tailored to the needs of economy of scale mega biz. They likely knew multitides
of mom-n-pops would go away- and they have. But that's fine.
So if state governments can turn down federal unemployment supplements because they want
labor to go back to work for unlivable wages this means the federal government can do nothing
about it. When push comes to shove the question that must be settled is, Is it a human right
to receive employment assistance until a job is found that pays a livable wage? (Not even a
republican will actually say No). So then that puts all the stingy states on notice that
there is a human rights issue here. States will have the choice to either let businesses shut
down for lack of workers, or states can subsidize minimum wages and benefits. If states
choose, in desperation, to subsidize minimum wages, then the states can apply to the feds to
be compensated. The thing that is needed in the interim, between when the real standoff
starts and ends, is a safety net for workers who are being blocked by the state from
receiving unemployment benefits. I say call in the national guard. This is a human rights
issue.
The real exploitation happened when we allowed companies to delocalize, manufacture
product in China and sell it here with no strings attached.
James Goldsmith seems like a prophet now, he was so absolutely right.
Wow. The Clinton flack was insufferable. AND WRONG about pretty much everything. Goldsmith
was brilliant. I wasn't paying enough attention at he time, but how many high profile people
were making the arguments he was making?
I'm surprised that nobody has taken the opportunity to comment on how this discussion
shows how hypocritical Biden and the democrats were not to press for raising the minimum
wage.
The pretense (which they must have coached the "Senate scholar" on) was that raising the
minimum wage was not related to revenue (i.e., a revenue bill). But of course it is! Right
now, paying below-poverty wages enabled Walmart and other employers to make the government
pay part of their wage bill. Higher minimum wages would raise these government aid recipients
out of the poverty range, saving public revenue.
That is so obvious that the failure of the Democrats to make the point shows that they really
didn't want to raise wages after all.
I didn't expect much from Biden but he's even worse than I thought. Along with those
bought senators hiding behind Joe Manchin. Depressing to think how much worse everything will
become for working people here.
When I think about how they're complaining about Manchin now when there was a serious
primary challenge against him last year, and how the Democrat organization rallied around
Manchin and not his challenger, it is disgusting to see Slate/The Guardian/NYT/other "Blue no
matter who" mouth breathers write articles asking what can be done to salvage a progressive
agenda from the curse of bipartisanship.
I had given up on national politics long before the 2020 election circus but this latest
has confirmed my resolve. The destruction of the Democrat party can't come soon enough.
If I call them Hypocritics, when I never believed them in the first place, will they feel
any shame at all? Or must I be part of their class for them to feel even the tiniest of
niggles?
Perhaps they'll feel ashamed once they cut the check for the $600 they shorted us this
winter. Or maybe that they are reneging on the extended unemployment benefits early or
One side makes you sleep on a bed of nails and swear allegiance.The other side generously
offers to help you out, no strings attached, but you might bleed out from the thousands of
tiny means-testing cuts. Each side want the lower tiers to face the gauntlet and prove one's
worthiness, hoping to convince us that a black box algorithm is the same thing as a jury of
peers.
Exactly right! And keep in mind deluge of op-eds telling us that Biden is a
transformational president! The same authors presented a deluge of op-eds telling us how
Senator Sanders was to radical for the American people after he did well in early primaries.
That the reforms he supported like Medicare for all, raising the minimum wage, lowering drug
costs, help with daycare, doing something about climate change etc. were reforms that the
people would never accept because the people value their freedom and don't want to live in a
socialistic country.
It looks like none of the promises Biden made during the campaign will be implemented by
President Biden. That why he is in the White House.
Would a lot of these positions be filled if the US had single payer healthcare or similar?
Would workers accept low paying positions if they didn't have to lose so much of their pay to
crappy health insurance?
At our local Petsmart they cut staff during the pandemic. They laid off all full time
workers
And are only hiring back part time. I knew several of the laid off people and they are not
coming back. Two of the people that worked full time have found other jobs one with slightly
better pay the other with slightly better benefits. We are in California where rent is very
high so another person we know decided to use this as a chance to relocate to another state
where housing is less expensive. Our older neighbor retired, although vaccinated now, he
decided it just wasn't safe and after the CDC told everyone to take off their mask off. He is
glad he just decided to live on a little less money. I suspect there are a lot of reasons as
Yves stated above for a lack of workers, but this "they are lazy" trope is capitalistic
nonsense.
Some highlights:
>> everyone but an idiot knows that the lower classes must be kept poor, or they will
never be industrious.
-- Arthur Young; 1771
>>Even David Hume, that great humanist, hailed poverty and hunger as positive
experiences for the lower classes, and even blamed the "poverty" of France on its good
weather and fertile soil:
'Tis always observed, in years of scarcity, if it be not extreme, that the poor labour more,
and really live better.
>>Poverty is therefore a most necessary and indispensable ingredient in society It
is the source of wealth, since without poverty, there could be no labour; there could be no
riches, no refinement, no comfort, and no benefit to those who may be possessed of
wealth.
I'll just point out, per the Old Testament, that wage, debt and rent slavery were the
exception, not the norm (as they are in the US) for citizens (Hebrews) in ancient
Israel/Judah.
That's because the assets in ancient Israel/Judah were roughly equally owned by all
citizens with provisions in the OT Law (eg. Leviticus 25, eg. Deuteronomy 15, eg. Deuteronomy
23:19-20) to keep it that way in the long run (but less than 50 years).
Contrast that to US where we have privileges for a private credit cartel, aka "the banks",
and no limits to the concentration of land ownership and the roots of our problems are
evident.
So begging for better jobs for citizens is, in the Biblical context, pathetically weak tea
indeed.
On a personal note I had a great job interview Thursday at the local food co-op. This is
my first in person interview since I was terminated without cause by IBM (after almost 24
years there in a server development job) almost a year ago. Despite applying for over 100
positions. I'm over 60 and haven't worked in a year so I admit I'm grateful to even get the
chance.
I have another interview with them next week and hoping to start soon as a produce clerk
making $13.50 an hour. If I can get on full time they offer a decent insurance plan including
dental. The HR person acknowledged that I was "wildly overqualified" but encouraging. The
possibility of getting health care is key; my IBM Cobra benefits will start costing me almost
$1400/monthly for myself and my husband in September after the ARA subsidy expires.
I've adjusted my expectations to reinvent myself as a manual laborer after decades in
fairly cushy corporate life. I've managed to keep my health and physical capacity so somewhat
optimistic I can meet the job requirements that include lifting 50 lb boxes of produce. But
we'll see.
You mean you haven't had a job in a year since it's highly doubtful that you have not done
any work in a year; eg. cooking, cleaning, shopping, car maintenance, gardening,
chauffeuring, mowing the lawn, home maintenance and caring for others count as work.
We need to stop conflating work (good) with wage slavery as if the former necessarily
requires the latter.
Okay sure. I haven't earned in a year. But it's still a problem I'm trying to sort
out best as I can.
Since I still live in the US where earning is highly correlated with insurance
coverage, and I still have about 5 years until we're both qualified for Medicare this may
turn out to be a great thing that has happened.
And since I don't see a path out of wage slavery today I'll be happy to accept almost any
offer from the food co-op. It's a union job with decent pay and benefits and may offer other
opportunities in the future. They mostly buy and sell products that are locally made so that
makes it easier too. The money we are all enslaving each other over is staying around here as
much as possible. Okay.
Good luck! Fyi i strongly suggest u look into taking your IBM pension asap as 1. It will
minimally impact your taxes as u r now earning less n 2. How many more years do u think it
will be there? ( I usually recommend most people take their social security at 62 for similar
reasons but in your case I'd do your research b4 making any move like that. ) Take a blank
state n Fed tax form n pencil in the new income n see what the results are.
Btw truly wonderful people are involved in food co-ops,enjoy!
No one really questions the idea of maximising profit.
How do you maximise profit?
You minimise costs, including labour costs, i.e. wages.
Where did the idea of maximising profit comes from?
It certainly wasn't from Adam Smith.
"But the rate of profit does not, like rent and wages, rise with the prosperity and
fall with the declension of the society. On the contrary, it is naturally low in rich and
high in poor countries, and it is always highest in the countries which are going fastest to
ruin." Adam Smith
Exactly the opposite of today's thinking, what does he mean?
When rates of profit are high, capitalism is cannibalising itself by:
1) Not engaging in long term investment for the future
2) Paying insufficient wages to maintain demand for its products and services
Today's problems with growth and demand.
Amazon didn't suck its profits out as dividends and look how big it's grown (not so good on
the wages).
The benefits of the system can be passed upwards in dividends or downwards in wages.
Both actually detract from the money available for re-investment as Jeff Bezos knows only too
well.
He didn't pay dividends, and paid really low wages, to maximise the amount that he could
re-invest in Amazon and look how big it's grown.
The shareholders gains are made through the value of the shares.
Jeff Bezos hopes other people are paying high enough wages to buy lots of stuff from Amazon;
his own workers don't have much purchasing power.
Where do the benefits of the system go?
Today, we pass as much as possible upwards in dividends.
In the Keynesian era they passed a lot more down in wages.
> Jeff Bezos hopes other people are paying high enough wages to buy lots of stuff from
Amazon; his own workers don't have much purchasing power.
You are missing the tree in the forest. Jeff hopes other people will pay a high enough
price for Amazon stawk. We already know Jeff doesn't give a shit about the stuff he sells, or
the inhumane working conditions that go along with the low pay and short "career". I mean,
not even the nastiest farmer would treat his mules like that, even if mules were easy and
cheap to come by.
We don't think people should get money when they are not working.
Are you sure?
What's the point in working?
Why bother?
It's just not worth all the effort when you can make money doing nothing.
In 1984, for the first time in American history, "unearned" income exceeded "earned"
income.
They love easy money.
With a BTL portfolio, I can get the capital gains on a number of properties and extract
the hard earned income of generation rent at the same time.
That sounds good.
What is there not to like?
We love easy money.
You've just got to sniff out the easy money.
All that hard work involved in setting up a company yourself, and building it up.
Why bother?
Asset strip firms other people have built up, that's easy money.
"West Virginia's Republican Governor Jim Justice justified ending federal jobless
benefits early in his state by lecturing his residents on how, "America is all about work.
That's what has made this great country."
Have you had a look around recently?
In 1984, for the first time in American history, "unearned" income exceeded "earned"
income.
America is not about work at all.
The US is largely about exploiting or being exploited with most of US doing both.
We should resent an economic system that requires we exploit others or be a pure victim
ourselves.
That said and to face some truths we'd rather not, the Bible offers some comfort, eg:
Ecclesiastes 7:16 Do not be excessively righteous, and do not be overly wise. Why should you ruin
yourself?
Ecclesiastes 5:8-9 If you see oppression of the poor and denial of justice and righteousness in the province,
do not be shocked at the sight; for one official watches over another official, and there are
higher officials over them. After all, a king who cultivates the field is beneficial to the
land.
Nonetheless, we should support economic justice and recognize that most of us are net
losers to an unjust economic system even though it offers some corrupt compensation* to
divide and confuse us.
*eg positive yields and interest on the inherently risk-free debt of a monetary
sovereign.
Jim Justice made his money the old fashioned way, he inherited it:
From Wiki: James Conley Justice II (born April 27, 1951) is an American businessman and
politician who has been serving as the 36th governor of West Virginia since 2017. With a net
worth of around $1.2 billion, he is the wealthiest person in West Virginia. He inherited a
coal mining business from his father and built a business empire with over 94 companies,
including the Greenbrier, a luxury resort.
I wonder how much of this is also related to a change in the churn we assume existed
pre-pandemic? For example, the most recent JOLTS survey results from April
2021 show the total number of separations hasn't really changed but the number of quits
has increased.
So, one possible interpretation of that would be employers are less likely to fire people
and those who think they have skills in demand are more interested in leaving for better
opportunities now. That makes intuitive sense given what we've been through. If you had a
good gig and it was stable through 2020 you had very little reason to leave it even if an
offer was better with another company. That goes double if you were a caregiver or had
children. Which of course is why many women who were affected by the challenges of balancing
daycare and a career gave up.
This is also my experience lately. While it's only anecdotal evidence, we're having a hard
time hiring mid career engineers. Doesn't seem like pay is the issue. We offer a ton of
vacation, a separate pool of sick time, decent benefits, and wages in the six figures with a
good bonus program. We're looking to hire 3 engineers. We can't even get people to apply. In
2019 we could be sure to see a steady supply of experienced candidates looking for new
opportunities. Now? If you have an engineering position and your company is letting you work
from home it seems you don't have a good reason to jump.
Look no further than Cedar Point Amusement Park in Sandusky, Ohio. They had only half the
staff they normally need at $10 an hour. So they double the wage to $20 an hour and filled
every job in less than a week. The Conservaturds will never admit they are lying.
As a small business owner providing professional services I am grateful for the comment
section here.
I have called professional peers to get a behind the corporate PR perspective of their
businesses. Although anecdotal, the overall trend in our industry is to accept the labor
shortage and downsize. Most firms have a reliable backlog of work and will benefit from an
infrastructure bill. Our firm has chosen to downsize and close vacant positions.
Remote work, although feasible, has employees thinking they are LeBron James, regardless
of their skill set. Desperate employers are feeding their belief. Two years from now it will
be interesting to see if these employees they fail forward. Company culture minimized
employee turnover pre-covid. This culture has little meaning to an employee working in his
daughter's playroom.
For context, in California, I believe the median income for licensees is approximately
$110,000 with lower level technicians easily at $75k in the urban areas.
Lastly, the "paltry" $300 per week is in additional to the state unemployment checks and
is not subject to taxes. As stated previously, $300 is equal to $7.50 per hour. Federal
minimum wage is $7.25 and is adopted by many states minimum, for what it's worth.
With respect, I do not see any there there in the comment. Adjusted for inflation the
minimum wage at its height in 1968 at 1.60, would be just under $13 per hour today. However,
even at $15 in California, it is inadequate.
Anyone making anything like the minimum wage would not be working from home, but would be
working in some kind of customer service job, and would find paying for adequate food,
clothing, and shelter very difficult. Not in getting any extras, but only in getting enough
to survive. People, and their families, do need to eat.
If the response of not paying enough, and therefore not getting new hires, is to downsize,
perhaps that is good. After all no business deserves to remain in business, especially if the
business model depends on its workers being unable to survive.
I am also fed up with the "lazy worker" meme. Or rather, propaganda. People are literally
exhausted working 2 or 3 lousy jobs and no real healthcare. Equally irritating to me is a
misguided notion that we have some magically accessible generous safety net in the US. As
though there aren't thousands and thousands on waiting lists for government subsidized
housing. Section 8 vouchers? Good luck.
We've ended "welfare as we [knew] it" (AFDC) thanks to Bill Clinton and then the screw was
turned tightly by Junior Bush (no child care, but go to work.) The upshot was bad news for
kids.
Seems to me one of the few things left is the food stamp program, and I can't imagine how
that's been reconfigured. Whomever gave that fantastic list of goodies people can get in the
US with a mere snap of the fingers isn't in the real world, imho.
Ok! Yves, lovely to see you again, my friend! (Cue the Moody Blues ) Get well!
Here is my story.
I am 56 years old, on dialysis and I was collecting SSI of 529 a month.
I was living with and taking care of my mother in her home because she had dementia.
She died in December and I had to start paying the bills. In March I inherited her IRA which
I reported to SS. I was able to roll it over into my own IRA because I am disabled, due to
the Trump tax law changes.
I reported the changes in a timely manner and because I couldn't afford to live here without
a job, I took a part time job for 9 an hour.
So now, because I inherited my mother's IRA and have too much resources I no longer qualify
for SSI and have been overpaid to the tune of almost 2 grand, which I am assuming I will have
to pay back. I have no idea how that works either. Do they just grab money out of your
account? Anyone who knows please tell me.
I would run, run, run to the nearest public assistance counselor or lawyer. In the San
Francisco Bay Area, it is should not be too hard to find one. They saved me. There are also
in California several state websites. There was a useful to me benefits planning site (It only covers nine states though).
The rules for SSI (Supplemental Security Income), SSDI (Social Security Disability
Insurance), Social Security, Medi-Cal or Medicaid, and Medicare are each different. Each
state has its own modifications as well, so that is fifty additional sets of modified rules
especially for the medical benefits. If they are determined to claw back the money, how it is
done might depend on the individual state. It is truly a maze of flycatchers and trapdoors
out for you and your money.
The overworked benefits clerks often do not have the knowledge to deal with anything even
slightly unusual and are not encourage or at least discouraged from finding out due to
the never shrinking pile, not from anyone's malice. This means you could lose benefits
because they did not know what they were doing or just by mistake. So, it is up to you to
find those nonprofit counselors or the for profit lawyer to help you through the laws, rules,
and whatever local regulations there are. Hopefully, you will not have to read through some
of the official printed regulations like I did. If wasn't an experience paper pusher.. The
average person would have been lost. Intelligence and competence has nothing to do with.
Hell, neither does logic, I think.
In my case, when I inherited a retirement account, SSDI was not affected, because of how
the original account was set up. However, SSDI is different from SSI although both have
interesting and Byzantine requirements. I guess to make sure we are all "deserving" of any
help.
So don't ask anonymous bozos like me on the internet and find those local counselors. If
it is nonprofit, they will probably do it completely free. If needed, many lawyers, including
tax lawyers, and CPAs will offer discounted help or will know where you can go.
What is the floor on wages?
Disposable income = wages – (taxes + the cost of living)
Set disposable income to zero.
Minimum wages = taxes + the cost of living
So, as we increase housing costs, we drive up wages.
The neoliberal solution.
Try and paper over the cracks with Payday loans.
This what we call a short term solution.
Someone has been tinkering with the economics and that's why we can't see the problem.
The early neoclassical economists hid the problems of rentier activity in the economy by
removing the difference between "earned" and "unearned" income and they conflated "land" with
"capital".
They took the focus off the cost of living that had been so important to the Classical
Economists as this is where rentier activity in the economy shows up.
It's so well hidden no one even knows it's there and everyone trips up over the cost of
living, even the Chinese.
Angus Deaton rediscovers the wheel that was lost by the early neoclassical economists. "Income inequality is not killing capitalism in the United States, but rent-seekers like
the banking and the health-care sectors just might" Angus Deaton, Nobel prize winner.
Employees get their money from wages and the employers pay the cost of living through wages,
reducing profit.
This raises the costs of doing anything in the US, and drives off-shoring.
The Chinese learn the hard way.
Davos 2019 – The Chinese have now realised high housing costs eat into consumer
spending and they wanted to increase internal consumption. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNBcIFu-_V0
They let real estate rip and have now realised why that wasn't a good idea.
The equation makes it so easy.
Disposable income = wages – (taxes + the cost of living)
The cost of living term goes up with increased housing costs.
The disposable income term goes down.
They didn't have the equation, they used neoclassical economics.
The Chinese had to learn the hard way and it took years, but they got there in the end.
They have let the cost of living rise and they want to increase internal consumption.
Disposable income = wages – (taxes + the cost of living)
It's a double whammy on wages.
China isn't as competitive as it used to be.
China has become more expensive and developed Eastern economies are off-shoring to places
like Vietnam, Bangladesh and the Philippines.
"The bots' mission: To deliver restaurant meals cheaply and efficiently, another leap in
the way food comes to our doors and our tables." The semiautonomous vehicles were
engineered by Kiwibot, a company started in 2017 to game-change the food delivery
landscape...
In May, Kiwibot sent a 10-robot fleet to Miami as part of a nationwide pilot program
funded by the Knight Foundation. The program is driven to understand how residents and
consumers will interact with this type of technology, especially as the trend of robot
servers grows around the country.
And though Broward County is of interest to Kiwibot, Miami-Dade County officials jumped
on board, agreeing to launch robots around neighborhoods such as Brickell, downtown Miami and
several others, in the next couple of weeks...
"Our program is completely focused on the residents of Miami-Dade County and the way
they interact with this new technology. Whether it's interacting directly or just sharing
the space with the delivery bots,"
said Carlos Cruz-Casas, with the county's Department of Transportation...
Remote supervisors use real-time GPS tracking to monitor the robots. Four cameras are
placed on the front, back and sides of the vehicle, which the supervisors can view on a
computer screen. [A spokesperson says later in the article "there is always a remote and
in-field team looking for the robot."] If crossing the street is necessary, the robot
will need a person nearby to ensure there is no harm to cars or pedestrians. The plan is to
allow deliveries up to a mile and a half away so robots can make it to their destinations in
30 minutes or less.
Earlier Kiwi tested its sidewalk-travelling robots around the University of California at
Berkeley, where
at least one of its robots burst into flames . But the Sun-Sentinel reports that "In
about six months, at least 16 restaurants came on board making nearly 70,000
deliveries...
"Kiwibot now offers their robotic delivery services in other markets such as Los Angeles
and Santa Monica by working with the Shopify app to connect businesses that want to employ
their robots." But while delivery fees are normally $3, this new Knight Foundation grant "is
making it possible for Miami-Dade County restaurants to sign on for free."
A video
shows the reactions the sidewalk robots are getting from pedestrians on a sidewalk, a dog
on a leash, and at least one potential restaurant customer looking forward to no longer
having to tip human food-delivery workers.
Job gains in May were led by leisure and hospitality, with the sector adding 292,000 jobs.
Payrolls grew by
559,000 last month, the Labor Department reported Friday, up from a revised 278,000 in
April, which marked a sharp drop from March's figure.
The labor recovery has slowed from earlier in the year -- in March, the economy added
785,000 jobs
... The labor-force participation rate, the share of adults working or looking for work,
edged slightly lower in May to 61.6%, down from 63.3% in February 2020.
Republicans, always eager to snatch the bread from the mouths of the poor, are blaming
unemployment benefits for the reluctance of workers to return to jobs. In some red states,
they already are snatching it.
But more men are returning to work than are women. Doesn't that prove that unemployment
benefits are not holding back former workers?
I'll bet more women will return to work in September, after schools start up in-person
classes.
William Lamb
Republican turn a blind on helping people, except themselves. They would rather have one
being a slave and get pay less then nothing with little perks in making less then high
quality item that will still have defects, even if we pride our workmanship that is suppose
to equal to none. It would like being in 1950s, when there was not much world competition,
when world economy was still recovering from WW2.
I guessed Republican want American to continue working by low paying wages so they can
enrich themselves, and show that America can still produce things with slave wages.
johm moore
Most of the jobs are insufficient to support a reasonable quality of life. A job today is
about like a half a job pre-NAFTA and the job export process in terms of the quality of life
that it supports.
Bryson Marsh
If UI was holding back employment, then why are we adding so many low wage jobs? The missing
jobs are in *middle income* sectors.
David Chait
I wouldn't call people returning to work "new" jobs, that just seems disingenuous.
rich ullsmith
Asset prices rise when the jobs report is lukewarm. Thank you, Federal Reserve. May I have
another.
Sam Trotter
It should be made mandatory to publish the offered wage/rate. I see so many fake jobs posted
on LinkedIn with no description of bill rate for contract positions or Base+Bonus for
Full-Time roles. Too many mass scam messages.
The percentage of people quitting their jobs, meanwhile, also rose to a record 2.8% among
private-sector workers. That's a full percentage point higher than a year ago, when the
so-called quits rate fell to a seven-year low.
...A recent study by Bank of America, for example, found that job switchers earned an extra
13% in wages from their new positions. That's a big chunk of money.
...Normally people who quit their jobs are ineligible for unemployment benefits, but they
can get an exemption in many states for health, safety or child-care reasons.
About half of the states, all led by Republican governors, plan to stop giving out the
federal benefit by early July to push people back into the labor force. Economists will be
watching closely to see how many people go back to work.
Just to stay at the oil field – Meth addiction and overtime work goes hand in
hand.
Meth and it's derivates was the drug of the 50s in Germany during rebuilding from the war
(Pervitin, Weckamin). They have been legal until the 70s.
It's the easy way first – just take it and you can work longer. Want to drive a truck
16 hours? Just throw a few Pervitins. Side effects and addiction come later. And the unclean
stuff from the black market kills people faster.
"The bots' mission: To deliver restaurant meals cheaply and efficiently, another leap in
the way food comes to our doors and our tables." The semiautonomous vehicles were
engineered by Kiwibot, a company started in 2017 to game-change the food delivery
landscape...
In May, Kiwibot sent a 10-robot fleet to Miami as part of a nationwide pilot program
funded by the Knight Foundation. The program is driven to understand how residents and
consumers will interact with this type of technology, especially as the trend of robot
servers grows around the country.
And though Broward County is of interest to Kiwibot, Miami-Dade County officials jumped
on board, agreeing to launch robots around neighborhoods such as Brickell, downtown Miami and
several others, in the next couple of weeks...
"Our program is completely focused on the residents of Miami-Dade County and the way
they interact with this new technology. Whether it's interacting directly or just sharing
the space with the delivery bots,"
said Carlos Cruz-Casas, with the county's Department of Transportation...
Remote supervisors use real-time GPS tracking to monitor the robots. Four cameras are
placed on the front, back and sides of the vehicle, which the supervisors can view on a
computer screen. [A spokesperson says later in the article "there is always a remote and
in-field team looking for the robot."] If crossing the street is necessary, the robot
will need a person nearby to ensure there is no harm to cars or pedestrians. The plan is to
allow deliveries up to a mile and a half away so robots can make it to their destinations in
30 minutes or less.
Earlier Kiwi tested its sidewalk-travelling robots around the University of California at
Berkeley, where
at least one of its robots burst into flames . But the Sun-Sentinel reports that "In
about six months, at least 16 restaurants came on board making nearly 70,000
deliveries...
"Kiwibot now offers their robotic delivery services in other markets such as Los Angeles
and Santa Monica by working with the Shopify app to connect businesses that want to employ
their robots." But while delivery fees are normally $3, this new Knight Foundation grant "is
making it possible for Miami-Dade County restaurants to sign on for free."
A video
shows the reactions the sidewalk robots are getting from pedestrians on a sidewalk, a dog
on a leash, and at least one potential restaurant customer looking forward to no longer
having to tip human food-delivery workers.
Customers wouldn't have to train the algorithm on their own boxes because the robot was made
to recognize boxes of different sizes, textures and colors. For example, it can recognize both
shrink-wrapped cases and cardboard boxes.
... Stretch is part of a growing market of warehouse robots made by companies such as 6
River Systems Inc., owned by e-commerce technology company Shopify Inc., Locus Robotics Corp. and Fetch
Robotics Inc. "We're anticipating exponential growth (in the market) over the next five years,"
said Dwight Klappich, a supply chain research vice president and fellow at tech research firm
Gartner Inc.
As fast-food restaurants and small businesses struggle to find low-skilled workers to staff
their kitchens and cash registers, America's biggest fast-food franchise is seizing the
opportunity to field test a concept it has been working toward for some time: 10 McDonald's
restaurants in Chicago are testing automated drive-thru ordering using new artificial
intelligence software that converts voice orders for the computer.
McDonald's CEO Chris Kempczinski said Wednesday during an appearance at Alliance Bernstein's
Strategic Decisions conference that the new voice-order technology is about 85% accurate and
can take 80% of drive-thru orders. The company obtained the technology during its 2019
acquisition of Apprente.
The introduction of automation and artificial intelligence into the industry will eventually
result in entire restaurants controlled without humans - that could happen as early as the end
of this decade. As for McDonald's, Kempczinski said the technology will likely take more than
one or two years to implement.
"Now there's a big leap from going to 10 restaurants in Chicago to 14,000 restaurants
across the US, with an infinite number of promo permutations, menu permutations, dialect
permutations, weather -- and on and on and on, " he said.
McDonald's is also exploring automation of its kitchens, but that technology likely won't be
ready for another five years or so - even though it's capable of being introduced soooner.
McDonald's has also been looking into automating more of the kitchen, such as its fryers
and grills, Kempczinski said. He added, however, that that technology likely won't roll out
within the next five years, even though it's possible now.
"The level of investment that would be required, the cost of investment, we're nowhere
near to what the breakeven would need to be from the labor cost standpoint to make that a
good business decision for franchisees to do," Kempczinski said.
And because restaurant technology is moving so fast, Kempczinski said, McDonald's won't
always be able to drive innovation itself or even keep up. The company's current strategy is
to wait until there are opportunities that specifically work for it.
"If we do acquisitions, it will be for a short period of time, bring it in house,
jumpstart it, turbo it and then spin it back out and find a partner that will work and scale
it for us," he said.
On Friday, Americans will receive their first broad-based update on non-farm employment in
the US since last month's report, which missed expectations by a wide margin, sparking
discussion about whether all these "enhanced" monetary benefits from federal stimulus programs
have kept workers from returning to the labor market.
Canadian economist Mario Seccareccia, recipient of this year's John Kenneth Galbraith
Prize in Economics, says it's time to reconsider the idea of full employment. He spoke to Lynn
Parramore of the Institute for New
Economic Thinking about why 2021 offers a rare opportunity to rebalance the economy in
favor of Main Street.
Once upon a time – not so long ago, really – unemployment was not a thing.
In agricultural societies, even capitalistic ones, most people worked on the land. A smaller
number worked in villages and towns – shoemakers and carpenters and so on. Some might go
back and forth from the countryside to the town, depending on the availability of work. If your
work in town building houses dried up, you might come back to the country for the harvest.
Economist Mario Seccareccia, who loves history, notes that before the Industrial Revolution,
it was unthinkable that someone ready and able to work had no job to do.
Questions: If unemployment was once unknown, why do we accept it now?
Where did unemployment come from?
In those pre-Industrial Revolution times, there were paupers, mostly people who could not
work for some reason such as a disability. These were deemed deserving of charity. A small
number of paupers were considered deviants and treated harshly, perhaps made to labor in public
work-houses under vile conditions.
Seccareccia notes that early classical economists like Adam Smith and David Ricardo
recognized that able-bodied people could experience temporary joblessness, but not the
long-term variety. The word "unemployment" only became widely used in the nineteenth century.
As cities grew and manufacturing took off, people living in cities and towns grew apart.
Movement between the two places grew less fluid. The agricultural sector of the economy was
shrinking.
At first, if you lost your factory job, you could still probably pick up something in the
countryside to tide you over. But if you had grown up in the city, as more and more people did,
you might not know how to do rural work. By the late nineteenth century, most city dwellers
could no longer count on falling back on agricultural work during hard times.
Karl Marx noted that England's enclosure movement, which gained momentum as early as the
seventeenth century, had made things hard for agricultural workers as wealthy landowners
grabbed up the rights to common lands that workers had traditionally been allowed to use and
were a vital part of their sustenance. Uprooting peasants from the land and traditional ways of
life, Marx observed, created an "industrial reserve army" – basically a whole bunch of
people wanting to work but unable to find a job during times when industrialists held back
investment or when machines took over certain jobs.
Marx saw that this new kind of unemployment was a feature of capitalism, not a bug. Still, a
lot of mainstream bourgeois economists thought that the market would somehow sort things out
and eventually provide enough job openings to prevent mass unemployment.
It didn't turn out that way. Exhibit A: The Great Depression.
Especially after World War I, many later economists, most notably John Maynard Keynes,
warned that high rates of unemployment were getting to be the norm in the twentieth century.
Keynes predicted that a lot of people would go on being jobless unless the government did
something. This was very bad for society.
Keynes emphasized that full employment was never going to just happen on its own. Mainstream
economists thought that if wages fell enough, full employment would eventually prevail. Keynes
disputed that. As wages fell, demand contracted even further, leading to even less business
investment and so forth in a never-ending cycle. No, capitalism, with its business cycles led
to involuntary unemployment, according to Keynes.
Seccareccia observes that economist Michał Kalecki agreed that the government could
make policies to help more people stay employed at a decent wage, but there was just one
problem: wealthy capitalists weren't going to have it. They would oppose state-supported
systems to hold demand up so that fear of unemployment checked workers' demands for better pay
and improved work conditions.
For a while, after World War II, the capitalists were on the defense. The Great Depression
and the Communist threat got western countries spooked enough to go along with Keynes's
argument that governments should try to encourage employment by doing things like creating big
projects for people to work on. Safety nets were created to keep folks from falling into
poverty. The goal of full employment gained popularity and many more workers joined unions.
Capitalists v. Full Employment
Economists have bandied about various definitions of what full employment ought to look
like, explains Seccareccia: "A well-known definition came from William Beveridge, who said that
what you wanted was as many jobs open as people looking for them – or even more jobs
because every person can't take every type of job."
In the mid-twentieth century, with the economy doing well, neoclassical economists like
Milton Friedman started to push back against the idea of full employment. He discouraged the
use of fiscal and monetary policy to support employment, arguing that attempts to push down
unemployment beyond what he insisted was its "natural" rate in the economy would simply lead to
inflation.
In the 1960s, some of what Friedman warned about did actually happen. Employment was low and
prices started to go up mildly, particularly during the Vietnam War era. However, the biggest
boost to the credibility of Milton Friedman came with the OPEC cartel oil-price hikes of the
1970s that pushed the inflation rate to double-digit levels while simultaneously pushing up
unemployment. So, in the '70s, western countries started backing off from encouraging full
employment and maintaining strong safety nets. Proponents of the new neoliberal framework were
in favor of cutting safety nets, shedding government jobs, and leaving it to the market to
decide how much unemployment there would be. They said that it had to be this way to keep
inflation from rising, even though the cause of that high inflation of the '70s had nothing to
do with high public spending and excessive money creation that Friedman and his friends talked
about.
Seccareccia points to proof that the neoclassical logic didn't hold up. In the two decades
before the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-8, the rate of unemployment went down, but inflation
didn't go up. That proved that the neoclassical economists were wrong. But unfortunately,
policymakers didn't really digest this before the Great Recession hit. So, they bungled the
response badly by putting the brake on public spending too quickly because of fears of
excessive budget deficits and potentially higher future inflation that never materialized. They
kept insisting that the employment level would return to that "natural" state Friedman had
talked about if they just left things to the market.
"But it didn't work out that way," says Seccareccia. "Unemployment skyrocketed and it took a
decade to return to pre-crisis levels.
Which brings us to the COVID-19 crisis.
A Crisis Is a Terrible Thing to Waste
Seccareccia says that we have to understand the difference between the current situation and
the Global Financial Crisis. This time, it really is different.
"The earlier crisis started in the financial sector and spread to the real economy," he
explains. "But in 2020, when the Coronavirus emerged, the financial and industrial sectors got
hammered at the same time." This meant that people in both sectors stopped spending. Households
couldn't spend even if they wanted to because traveling, dining out, and other activities were
off-limits. Businesses cut investment as uncertainty loomed and exports declined due to
restrictions at borders. Unless you were Home Depot or an e-commerce company, you couldn't sell
anything.
The COVID-19 crisis also saw workers pulled out of activities thought to be too high risk
for spreading the virus. Across the country, non-essential workers were sent home and told to
stay there. Most, especially in sectors like leisure and hospitality,
can't do their work from home . A lot of these people lost their wages, and because most of
them were low-wage to begin with, they could least afford the hit. Many were only able to
maintain their incomes through government unemployment insurance. Businesses, meanwhile, were
kept afloat with subsidies.
Seccareccia notes that unemployment had an interesting twist in the pandemic because it was
both the problem and the initial cure for the health crisis. Unemployment kept the virus from
circulating. It saved lives.
Fast-forward to late spring, 2021. As America and other western countries seek to put the
pandemic behind them, the economy is opening back up. Employers are wanting to hire, and they
are even competing with each other for workers. But many job seekers are waiting to go back to
work. There are a lot of reasons why: caregiving for kids is still a huge burden, and people
are still worried about getting sick. Transit routes have been disrupted making it harder for
people to get to work. It's also possible that some workers may be resisting jobs on offer
which come with low pay and inadequate benefits.
Employers have started complaining they can't find workers and blame the social safety net
as the problem. Some employers, like those in the hospitality industry, are offering higher pay
to lure workers back.
Just as Kalecki predicted, the wealthy capitalists are getting uneasy. The Chamber of
Commerce, for example, has pushed the U.S. to stop expanded unemployment insurance benefits so
that people will be forced to return to low-wage jobs. Some Republican-dominated states have
jumped on board with this idea. Economist Larry Summers, for his part, is warning about
inflation and telling the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates so that wages don't go up. He
complains that when he walks outside,
all he sees are people eager to fill job vacancies . It's unclear where he was living when
he said that, or which people he is talking about.
Others argue that expanded unemployment insurance isn't the problem, but the crappy jobs on
offer. Seccareccia believes that it's a good thing if employers raise their wages, even if that
means a little bit of inflation.
Rising inequality, he emphasizes, is unsustainable in a healthy society, and it's about time
ordinary people had a little power to improve their lot. "When employers are worried about
people quitting," he says, "that's when you know you're getting close to full employment. And
in a capitalist society, it's an extremely rare situation when the number of quits begins to
exceed the number of new hires as an economy nears the peak of a business cycle."
In Seccareccia's view, "there's a balancing act between workers 'fearing the sack' and
employers 'fearing the quit.'" He observes that capitalists are very good at making sure that
the former situation is more common, and they've been spectacularly successful in the last 40
years. "This is why you have flat wages and runaway inequality," says Seccareccia.
"Productivity goes up but the workers don't share in it." Profits pile up at the top.
Right now, inflation has been creeping up in some areas. In a couple of sectors, like used
cars, it's rising a lot. The question is, beyond a couple of unique cases, what will happen to
inflation overall? And will be temporary? A lot of economists think that inflation will be
short-lived and will not get very high, so it's nothing to get excited about. Some economists,
like Antonella Palumbo, think the
worry about inflation is overdone . She notes that with unemployment still high and vast
numbers of people who formerly worked but are still out of the labor force, the ranks of the
famous reserve army of unemployed are still huge. As the economy restarts, all kinds of
short-run bottlenecks are cropping up, but that reserve army is not going anywhere fast and
will continue to limit wage increases.
Seccareccia points out that wealthy capitalists trying to stop workers from getting paid
better and conservatives complaining about laziness fail to mention that meanwhile, the stock
market is soaring, making the rich richer. Plus, the housing market is booming because the more
affluent people lucky enough to have kept their jobs over the pandemic now have extra money
saved to spend on big-ticket items. "Is it really fair," he asks, "to complain about a few
hundred dollars a week received by those at the bottom of the economic ladder? Especially how
much the economy is already titled in favor of the haves?"
So, what exactly should the government do about unemployment? Should it do anything at all?
For Seccareccia's part, he thinks this is a perfect time to reconsider the idea of full
employment, which has been so long abandoned by policymakers in favor of some "natural"
unemployment rate. "Policymakers need to understand why COVID may offer a chance not seen since
the end of WWII," he says. "We could actually make the economy fairer for ordinary people."
> So, what exactly should the government do about unemployment?
My favoured solution, and that of other readers of this blog, I suspect, is the Job
Guarantee as promoted by MMT.
Because a well designed job guarantee would provide a floor on wages and benefits, the
private sector would be forced to match it at the very least. But as has been pointed out on
this blog many times before, Kalecki's point that full employment would remove employers
ability to effectively threaten workers with the sack, means that it will be very difficult
politically to see it implemented.
Next week I start my 2nd year of pandemic triggered unemployment after I was terminated
without cause. On June 26th my extended UI benefits will be halted by TX Governor Greg Abbot.
Okay.
In a year of applying for new positions I have managed to get exactly 1 phone interview
after a 40 year career in technology development, ending up with almost 24 years at IBM. In
my last year with them I received both a performance bonus and a salary hike. But I'm now
over 60 and have been unemployed longer than 3 months so that's probably fairly typical
experience. Okay.
The path to full employment is probably going to require the creation of new opportunities
in a still contracting economic system. It's not impossible if you're focused on the goal.
Here's my shortlist of policy initiatives that could dramatically and quickly grow the number
of available jobs, particularly for the under employed younger people who are paying off
student loans.
Dramatically increase social security and medicare eligibility/benefits to convince older
workers to leave the workforce.
Expand paid family leave and vacation policies to align with other industrialized nations in
order to require businesses to hire to cover needed absences.
Drop the number of hours that define full time work to allow more workers to get full
benefits.
Yeah, I'd like to be considered for another good paying job in a still viable industry. I
spent decades developing skills that are still relevant and valuable. But I'm old and I'm
expensive because I have expectations based on my own employment history that 40 years of
neoliberal policies have rendered obsolete. Okay.
I'm close enough to retirement and lucky enough in my ability to save and plan that this
won't wreck us. I try to imagine my pandemic inspired involuntary retirement as an
opportunity to become a labor rights activist. It helps.
My situation is virtually the same, although in academia as research scientist at major US
university, with last 6 years as invited scientist at German research institute. Returned to
US to the nightmare of Trump at 63, but fully (and naively) intending to continue working.
I've lost count of how many job applications I've tendered, with only one interview in two
years, then COVID. Now resigned to the fact that work for me from here on out will be
different. I continue to write papers with colleagues at university to maintain a reputation
in my field. Now recognize that people take one look at my CV, and think: "Old! Expensive!"
-- but the truth is I would be willing to work for little just to stay active in a field
applying expertise I've spent decades acquiring. I've since met many, many seniors in the
same boat: trained professionals with lots of experience who still want to work (and, in my
case, need at least some income).
But at least I had a career. I can't imagine the hopelessness of people 35-40 years my
junior, with huge debt from college, grad school, and unable to find a decent job.
Something must change. The situation as it exists is unsustainable. One bright light seems
to be increasing recognition of the way the economy actually functions, the role of public
spending, and the real limits to growth, prosperity.
Appreciate your commiseration Rolf. I expect there is an army of people like us who are in
this situation or about to be.
Fwiw (maybe not much), I'm actively trying to get hired full time at the food coop near my
house. The workers there are represented by a union and get full insurance benefits including
dental with a 40 hour work week. The Vt minimum wage of $11.75/hr doesn't matter as much as
those insurance benefits do; we're still in that 5 year gap between age 60 and age 65 where
you are on your own if you need healthcare.
And I've pretty much decided to laugh off Beaux Jivin's campaign promise to drop the
medicare eligibility age to 60 etc. It's abandoned along with many other campaign promises.
Okay.
Thanks, A/S, for your kind words. Yes, benefits are key. I really am increasingly worried
that Biden, and the Democratic Party in general, don't seem the grasp the fact that the GOP
is absolutely committed to recovering control of Congress and the White House by *any* means
necessary. Biden in particular seems to entertain the notion that he can bring the right wing
to his way of thinking by conciliation, negotiation, compromise, and good performance. But
the GOP is not interested in Dem's performance or compromise -- McConnell has made this quite
clear. So Dems have an opportunity to make significant history, a true course correction, but
only this once. To pursue "bipartisanship" with a party that has no interest in compromise is
hugely naïve -- I can't imagine Biden is that foolish, except that he did begin his
campaign with the promise that "nothing would fundamentally change".
The food coop gig sounds like a good, sound shot -- all the best to you.
Fellow army member, age 61. Lucky to have health care via spouse but definitely not enough
wealth to retire. Two interviews in last two years, both in retrospect clearly designed to
fill out an interview field when preferred (much younger) hire had already been identified.
The canard about atrophied skills might apply in the occasional instance but IMO is just more
bullsh1t in defense of existing social order.
Dem obliviousness to the reality all around us is truly horrifying. I used to argue that
the big sort would result in fenced "progressive" enclaves in which all parties – those
inside and those outside – would be thrilled to not have to interact with each other.
But it's clear to me now that progressives don't need physical separation to avoid seeing
what they don't want to; they are completely able to not see the world right in front of
them.
I guess I should include this post script regarding my IBM termination:
After I'd been unemployed for about 90 days I was contacted by a recruiter working on
behalf of IBM and my former managers. They were looking for people with exactly my skills and
experience to come back to work at IBM as temporary contractors. I agreed to a short phone
interview to learn more about the opportunity.
Once the recruiter verified my experience and contacts at IBM, I managed to confirm that
they expected to bring me back on at about 80% of my former salary. With no benefits and zero
job security. I laughed out loud at this acknowledgment of their duplicity but agreed to let
myself be considered and provided a resume. Never heard back which is probably okay.
Amateur Socialist, Rolf and Left in Wisconsin -- I take my hat off to all of you. Work
left both my partner and me a number of years ago, and we quickly learned that we had aged
out of the market and were useless to society as we thought of it. Fortunately, we relatively
quickly became eligible for Medicare, which even in its steadily diminishing state was (and
is) a significant help.
Good luck to all of you, and A/S, please let us know the outcome of your pursuit of the
job with benefits at your local Food Co-op.
I think your experience demonstrates the problem with defining full Employment as, "anyone
who wants a job has one". Using this definition, the simple way to get the economy to FE then
is to just make all the jobs so terrible and low paying that no one wants them. You dont need
a job, and you dont want just any old crappy job. You want one similiar to your old one, If
that doesnt exist anymore, one would reasonably say you dont want a job, since what you want
doesn't exist, hence we're at full employment
All of this is to say, we shouldnt necessarily just encourage the government to get us to
FE. Capitalists by themselves are quite capable of getting us there, as I'd argue they did in
the 19th century. Its government interventions like minimum wage and basic safety protocols
that keep us from reaching FE since that's what makes people actually want a job
it was unthinkable that someone ready and able to work had no job to do.
I think there is a conflation of the language terms bandied
about–work-v-jobs-v-employment are all couched in the concept of a Consumption Based
Economy. I am tired of this.
weeding the garden is work–unless I'm paying you then it becomes a job. In both
instances, however, you are employed in the endeavor. This is grooming behavior using
language, imo, and needs to stop.
I think this muddle is a componant of the current 'Jobs Discussion".
Covid has rattled generations coming out of Displacements following the very unequal GFC,
and an undefined(maybe) examination of Meaning and Place within the current state of the
world and the Economy that has been chosen to fulfill the needs of that Economy (Societal and
Personal). More Intuitive than cognitive to many.
Selling Plastic bric-a-brac for the Man, to make the rent in an endless cycle, may have
lost its cache' subconsciously, to the 'common man' in this time of apparent Climate Crises
et al.
There is still plenty to do, and little time for Idleness( itself a "reward' promoted as a
'something' by the Consumptive Economy).
"Proponents of the new neoliberal framework were in favor of cutting safety nets, shedding
government jobs, and leaving it to the market to decide how much unemployment there would be.
They said that it had to be this way to keep inflation from rising,"
"The market" – that's the first con people have to get over. There is.no "the
market" like there it is something like nature.
It's system of intentional, changeable human decisions backed by beliefs and emotions of all
kinds now matter how many theories or quantifications occur. And a corporate beuracracy is
still a beuracracy.
And actually this neoliberal thinking of letting some imaginary entity "the market"
"decide" (we should be lughing at this silliness!) to keep people unemployed to avoid
"inflation" only makes sense if it actually meant to signify "avoid inflation of the
population."
The modern police force is a consequence of idle and unemployed city dwellers. Idled
workers don't just sit down and die from malnutrition. Instead, they roam around looking for
food, or opportunities that would lead to procuring food. Hungry, impoverished mobs are never
a good idea: Ask Czar Nicholas, Kaiser Wilhelm, or the French aristocrats of the 1780's
(rather, interrogate their ghosts) how idle, hungry crowds furthered their reigns. For all
that, look to the unrest of the 1930's in the US.
Given this reality–that unemployed and starving people refuse to sit down and die
peacefully–what will happen as automation starts to rob routine jobs? Already we are
seeing robots prowling the Walmart aisles, driverless vehicles delivering pizzas, and
self-checkout lines in big box stores. We who work are losing the war on unemployment, which
leads to a question: Who is the winner?
Almost as an afterthought, one wonders how much in contributions to Social Security and
Medicare have been lost because of automation. Robots don't pay taxes.
After the achievement of the 40-hour workweek, paid vacations, and other labor
concessions, many influential figures believed that egalitarian access to leisure would
only increase in the 20th century. Among them was economist John Maynard Keynes, who
forecast in 1930 that labor-saving technologies might lead to a 15-hour workweek when his
grandchildren came of age. Indeed, he titles his essay, "Economic Possibility for our
Grandchildren."
The benefits of labour-saving technologies have mostly been taken as money instead of time
and by doing so the capitalist class kept power thereby leading to them getting the
lions-share of the benefits of the labour-saving techologies.
The political class could, and still can, side with people and decide that labour-saving
technologies is to be taken out as reduced amount of hours spent working for someone else. As
is the politcal class have bought the 'lump of labour'-fallacy-fallcy hook, line and sinker
so what we see is increased pension-age etc
I tried out retirement for a few months. I'm 62 and got SS and a very small pension. It's
not enough so I went back – temping. The jobs I can get as a paralegal/admin person
don't pay a lot but there seem to be quite a few of them based on companies that are merging
or have merged and have a huge mess to clean up. So they hire you for a few months to slog
through chaos and fix it. Then on to the next one. I'll keep doing this until I can move to a
cheaper part of the U.S. Remote helps in that if I don't have a Zoom interview they can't
tell how old I am. I feel for everyone who can't even get tedious work. If my SS was higher I
would stop working. If my salary had matched that of the male co-workers that had the exact
same job as me, my pension would be higher. Retiring in America for many people is part
nomadic as you have to move out of your area to survive after you leave your regular job, or
it gets rid of you and the other part is being extremely frugal. Woohoo what a life after
over 40 years of helping companies make money.
Yes a totally true statement. For it to be higher I would have had to wait until almost 67
to take it. It will go up a tad from my additional employment – maybe. Anyway it's a
mostly a set amount. I make as a temp in 2 weeks (take home) what I get in SS once per month.
If I make over about $19k annually while taking the SS, the US gov will begin to reduce the
SS payment.
Social Security takes the highest 40 quarters (10 years) of your earnings to calculate
your benefit. If your current work results in higher numbers than are being used currently,
the higher numbers will be used and your benefit will increase.
I tried to reply to your question – yes it is a true statement. What I wrote
additionally may have been moderated out for some reason so I won't repeat it. It only
mentioned dollar amounts and the US gov so maybe that was bad – not sure!
Victoria H
and I thank you for that.
But I think you, and I will 'work' until we die–
What does work mean?
noun. exertion or effort directed to produce or accomplish something; labor; toil. productive
or operative activity. employment, as in some form of industry, especially as a means of
earning one's livelihood: to look for work. the result of exertion, labor, or activity; a
deed or performance.
Work | Definition of Work at Dictionary.comhttps://www.dictionary.com › browse
› work
I am personally familiar with what you are going through and My wife is there right
now.
I waited till full retirement at 66 to collect–not being able to leave 2k on the
table(diff btwn 62 and 66 for me). I cannot describe the amount of effort and gyration I
needed to extend to achieve that– which may explain why I am the only one in my
'Friend Circle' to actually accomplish it.
Trigger Warning
I thought the coup de grace was when I had to sign up for–and Pay For, with cash,
Quarterly–Medicare without a SS check to have it automatically deducted from. Because
of my birthday I needed to pony up about 5 months worth of premiums(but i had 3 months to
save up for the next Q pymt). I doubt you've ever been curbed at the end of a physical
altercation, but that is what it felt like to me. Best think about all that.
Good news–do your own taxes for your enlightenment and you will see that the SS Income
Worksheet provides a path to structuring your Income to counter-balance additional
Income.
Discalimer–I am in no way an Acc'tant or Tax Man or even giving Advice. I am a
Carpenter–but Written Instructions are Written Instructions and Numbers are Numbers and
I made a paid living following both–so it's understandable enough to give you some
options to ponder.
And to Rolf/AmSoc and all the others -- IMNSHO(the first ever time I have used this
phrase) the most dispiriting element about 'Retirement' in America is the Stranding of So
Many Valuable Assets embodied in the Retired when the world desperatly needs "All Hands On
Deck" to resist the Man Made Extinction looming.
the most dispiriting element about 'Retirement' in America is the Stranding of So Many
Valuable Assets embodied in the Retired when the world desperately needs "All Hands On
Deck" to resist the Man Made Extinction looming.
These are true words, Rod. I think catastrophic changes (no hyperbole) lie ahead, for
which there is little precedent. Many make absurdly blithe assumptions, thinking they
won't be affected, or that wealth will insulate them. This is arrogant folly, and we will
need everyone to row in the same direction.
The man who owns the Heating and Air Conditioning company I have been using for the last
decade lives in the neighborhood and is 88 years old. After his brother had health problems,
and the young nephew he employed left for greener pastures,he now does pretty much all the
work himself, and let me tell you, he knows his stuff. I know I should have a back-up in
mind, just in case, but so far, haven't found anyone else I can trust.
Well said. I took retirement at 62 for several reasons,number 1 being i didn't believe it
would be around long enough to pay me back.
"All hands on deck" is imo exactly what is needed,but the mostly planned divisiveness
(fake right vs fake left aka RepubliCons vs Dumbocrats) will help ensure that never occurs,to
someone's benefit.
Just think how many people would quit working, or enter self-employment, if they weren't
dependent on employer providedmedical insurance. I don't know the answer/estimate; it would
have to be a large number, enough to significantly raise wages across the board.
Retiring in America for many people is part nomadic
This observation made me remember a critical scene from the excellent oscar winner last
year, Nomadland . Frances McDormand's character meets a friend who explains why she
took to the road: "Five hundred forty dollars a month from Social Security. After working non
stop for over 40 years. How am I supposed to live on that".
I'm paraphrasing possibly badly from memory; it's a very short scene that isn't really
pursued farther in the script. But I do remember thinking "Aha! This is the root cause of all
this misery and despair "
We moved to southern Vermont from Texas just prior to the pandemic believing we had
relocated to a cheaper part of the US as you also mentioned. But Vermont's strong public
health track record during the pandemic has unleashed a huge real estate boom here so who
knows We may end up priced out of Vermont eventually too.
Real estate is still relatively cheap in Texas (at least around Houston), with the caveat
that Republicans don't always keep the power on or the water pressure up in the middle of
winter.
Unfortunately our place was in the Austin exurb of Bastrop. Which is now part of the
Austin insane real estate boom. And yes Houston can be cheap but only if you don't mind
living near a refinery. Or in the path of many future hurricanes. Hard pass.
I keep seeing references to "flat wages." While it's technically true, I suspect it's
enormously deceptive.
Yes, we have flat wages. But the cost of necessities that add little or no value to
people's lives but which they're FORCED to pay for have shot up far, far beyond the pace of
inflation. Think medical care, housing and education, to name just three, all of which are
somehow ignored or slighted in official inflation stats.
Right now the best transition is for the government to regulate capitalism in the
direction the future (sustainability) dictates. The problem with regulating capitalism is
that most capitalists think it is already too regulated; taxes are too high, etc. They are on
the edge of revolution themselves. And regulated capitalism is almost an oxymoron to most
Americans. It's just business as usual to a European because they have better social spending
and blablablah. The statistic I remember is that the EU spends about 45% of its revenue on
social stuff; the US spends a little less than 35%. The problem, as I see it, is this: If we
in the US do not achieve adequate social spending we create the perfect breeding ground for
exploitation of the environment. People will be desperate for a job – any job. Which
will not only cause worse CO2 problems, it will poison off, or starve off, many many species
now living on the edge. We will further pollute the oceans and waterways. And we will not
only stick with our sick and poisonous agricultural practices, we will exponentiate them
– precluding all efforts to fix these unsustainable things. Capitalism as we have known
it must change. So, even the great idea of capitalism must adapt to reality. Somebody please
tell Larry. At this point "inflation" is an absolutely meaningless word. It would be a very
good thing if we followed Eisenhower's advice to LBJ and began to create social structures
that are fair to all of society – to the capitalists whose current mandate of voracious
profiteering is clearly unsustainable, as well as to "labor" – as we see it evolving
– and now, most importantly, we must include the rights of the planet itself and all of
our fellow travelers. We won't last very long if we kill them all off and trash the Earth.
The race to the bottom that all privateering capitalism eventually creates is the most absurd
thing in the history of civilization.
A good start would be breaking up all of the ubiquitous monopolies/monopsonies/cartels,
that have taken over every sector of the economy, from food processing to entertainment to
banking to manufacturing to politics to (ad infinitum/nauseum).
I went to Firehouse Subs yesterday there was a whiteboard inside on a table, facing into
the restaurant, that said they were hiring and offered starting pay of $9.00 for crew members
and $12.00 for shift managers.
Just inside the door, facing out, was a whiteboard offering starting pay of $11.00 for
crew members and $14.00 for shift managers. Seems like they're getting the message.
As an aside, I'd like to give props to Firehouse Subs for using pressed paper clam boxes
and paper bags.
Regarding, "skills shortage," I don't expect t businesses that respect their employees well
will have trouble hiring and retaining staff. The ones in trouble are those who bought into
the "end of employees" propaganda and laid off the people they already had:
The End of Employees Updated
Feb. 2, 2017 12:41 p.m. ET
Never before have American companies tried so hard to employ so few people. The
outsourcing wave that moved apparel-making jobs to China and call-center operations to
India is now just as likely to happen inside companies across the U.S. and in almost every
industry. Hiring an employee is a last resort and "very few jobs make it through that
obstacle course."
Companies with that attitude shouldn't expect easy hiring now. They were bad
companies to work for then, and probably still are. Productive employees now have options on
where to work. Bad employers are at the bottom of the totem pole and will only get the least
desirable people who have nowhere else to go.
Executives at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP have voiced worries that workers who stay remote
could wind up as second-class corporate citizens, falling behind in
promotions and pay , so the company plans to track rates of advancement for office-based and
remote staff in an effort to make sure nobody lags behind.
Ford Motor Co. is
pushing ahead with digital efforts to help bring office workers back to its Dearborn, Mich.,
corporate headquarters, while eyeing a future where many of them continue to work from home,
company officials say.
For now, the auto maker is aiming for a gradual return of some employees to the sprawling
campus beginning in July, with "significantly reduced capacity" to retain social distancing, a
spokeswoman said.
Boston Dynamics, a robotics company known for its four-legged robot "dog," this week
announced a new product, a computer-vision enabled mobile warehouse robot named "Stretch."
Developed in response to growing demand for automation in warehouses, the robot can reach up
to 10 feet inside of a truck to pick up and unload boxes up to 50 pounds each. The robot has a
mobile base that can maneuver in any direction and navigate obstacles and ramps, as well as a
robotic arm and a gripper. The company estimates that there are more than 500 billion boxes
annually that get shipped around the world, and many of those are currently moved manually.
"It's a pretty arduous job, so the idea with Stretch is that it does the manual labor part
of that job," said Robert Playter, chief executive of the Waltham, Mass.-based company.
The pandemic has accelerated [automation of] e-commerce and logistics operations even more
over the past year, he said.
... ... ...
... the robot was made to recognize boxes of different sizes, textures and colors. For
example, it can recognize both shrink-wrapped cases and cardboard boxes.
Eventually, Stretch could move through an aisle of a warehouse, picking up different
products and placing them on a pallet, Mr. Playter said.
Looks like this guys somewhat understands the problems with neoliberalism, but still is captured by neoliberal ideology.
Notable quotes:
"... That all seems awfully quaint today. Pensions disappeared for private-sector employees years ago. Most community banks were gobbled up by one of the mega-banks in the 1990s -- today five banks control 50 percent of the commercial banking industry, which itself mushroomed to the point where finance enjoys about 25 percent of all corporate profits. Union membership fell by 50 percent. ..."
"... Ninety-four percent of the jobs created between 2005 and 2015 were temp or contractor jobs without benefits; people working multiple gigs to make ends meet is increasingly the norm. Real wages have been flat or even declining. The chances that an American born in 1990 will earn more than their parents are down to 50 percent; for Americans born in 1940 the same figure was 92 percent. ..."
"... Thanks to Milton Friedman, Jack Welch, and other corporate titans, the goals of large companies began to change in the 1970s and early 1980s. The notion they espoused -- that a company exists only to maximize its share price -- became gospel in business schools and boardrooms around the country. Companies were pushed to adopt shareholder value as their sole measuring stick. ..."
"... Simultaneously, the major banks grew and evolved as Depression-era regulations separating consumer lending and investment banking were abolished. Financial deregulation started under Ronald Reagan in 1980 and culminated in the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 under Bill Clinton that really set the banks loose. The securities industry grew 500 percent as a share of GDP between 1980 and the 2000s while ordinary bank deposits shrank from 70 percent to 50 percent. Financial products multiplied as even Main Street companies were driven to pursue financial engineering to manage their affairs. GE, my dad's old company and once a beacon of manufacturing, became the fifth biggest financial institution in the country by 2007. ..."
The logic of the meritocracy is leading us to ruin, because we arc collectively primed to ignore the voices of the millions getting
pushed into economic distress by the grinding wheels of automation and innovation. We figure they're complaining or suffering because
they're losers.
We need to break free of this logic of the marketplace before it's too late.
[Neoliberalism] had decimated the economies and cultures of these regions and were set to do the same to many others.
In response, American lives and families are falling apart. Ram- pant financial stress is the new normal. We are in the third
or fourth inning of the greatest economic shift in the history of mankind, and no one seems to be talking about it or doing anything
in response.
The Great Displacement didn't arrive overnight. It has been building for decades as the economy and labor market changed in response
to improving technology, financialization, changing corporate norms, and globalization. In the 1970s, when my parents worked at GE
and Blue Cross Blue Shield in upstate New York, their companies provided generous pensions and expected them to stay for decades.
Community banks were boring businesses that lent money to local companies for a modest return. Over 20 percent of workers were unionized.
Some economic problems existed -- growth was uneven and infla- tion periodically high. But income inequality was low, jobs provided
benefits, and Main Street businesses were the drivers of the economy. There were only three television networks, and in my house
we watched them on a TV with an antenna that we fiddled with to make the picture clearer.
That all seems awfully quaint today. Pensions disappeared for private-sector employees years ago. Most community banks were
gobbled up by one of the mega-banks in the 1990s -- today five banks control 50 percent of the commercial banking industry, which
itself mushroomed to the point where finance enjoys about 25 percent of all corporate profits. Union membership fell by 50 percent.
Ninety-four percent of the jobs created between 2005 and 2015 were temp or contractor jobs without benefits; people working
multiple gigs to make ends meet is increasingly the norm. Real wages have been flat or even declining. The chances that an American
born in 1990 will earn more than their parents are down to 50 percent; for Americans born in 1940 the same figure was 92 percent.
Thanks to Milton Friedman, Jack Welch, and other corporate titans, the goals of large companies began to change in the 1970s
and early 1980s. The notion they espoused -- that a company exists only to maximize its share price -- became gospel in business
schools and boardrooms around the country. Companies were pushed to adopt shareholder value as their sole measuring stick.
Hostile takeovers, shareholder lawsuits, and later activist hedge funds served as prompts to ensure that managers were committed
to profitability at all costs. On the flip side, CF.Os were granted stock options for the first time that wedded their individual
gain to the company's share price. The ratio of CF.O to worker pay rose from 20 to 1 in 1965 to 271 to 1 in 2016. Benefits were streamlined
and reduced and the relationship between company and employee weakened to become more transactional.
Simultaneously, the major banks grew and evolved as Depression-era regulations separating consumer lending and investment
banking were abolished. Financial deregulation started under Ronald Reagan in 1980 and culminated in the Financial Services Modernization
Act of 1999 under Bill Clinton that really set the banks loose. The securities industry grew 500 percent as a share of GDP between
1980 and the 2000s while ordinary bank deposits shrank from 70 percent to 50 percent. Financial products multiplied as even Main
Street companies were driven to pursue financial engineering to manage their affairs. GE, my dad's old company and once a beacon
of manufacturing, became the fifth biggest financial institution in the country by 2007.
It's hard to be in the year 2018 and not hear about the endless studies alarming the general public about coming labor automation.
But what Yang provides in this book is two key things: automation has already been ravaging the country which has led to the great
political polarization of today, and second, an actual vision into what happens when people lose jobs, and it definitely is a
lightning strike of "oh crap"
I found this book relatively impressive and frightening. Yang, a former lawyer, entrepreneur, and non-profit leader, writes
showing with inarguable data that when companies automate work and use new software, communities die, drug use increases, suicide
increases, and crime skyrockets. The new jobs created go to big cities, the surviving talent leaves, and the remaining people
lose hope and descend into madness. (as a student of psychology, this is not surprising)
He starts by painting the picture of the average American and how fragile they are economically. He deconstructs the labor
predictions and how technology is going to ravage it. He discusses the future of work. He explains what has happened in technology
and why it's suddenly a huge threat. He shows what this means: economic inequality rises, the people have less power, the voice
of democracy is diminished, no one owns stocks, people get poorer etc. He shows that talent is leaving small towns, money is concentrating
to big cities faster. He shows what happens when those other cities die (bad things), and then how the people react when they
have no income (really bad things). He shows how retraining doesn't work and college is failing us. We don't invest in vocational
skills, and our youth is underemployed pushed into freelance work making minimal pay. He shows how no one trusts the institutions
anymore.
Then he discusses solutions with a focus on Universal Basic Income. I was a skeptic of the idea until I read this book. You
literally walk away with this burning desire to prevent a Mad Max esque civil war, and its hard to argue with him. We don't have
much time and our bloated micromanaged welfare programs cannot sustain.
This is a very short book, almost an essay -- 136 pages. It was published in October 2004, four years before financial crisis of
2008, which put the first nail in the coffin of neoliberalism. It addresses the cultural politics of neo-liberalism ("the
Great Deception")
Notable quotes:
"... By now, we've all heard about the shocking redistribution of wealth that's occurred during the last thirty years, and particularly during the last decade. But economic changes like this don't occur in a vacuum; they're always linked to politics. ..."
"... Ultimately, The Twilight of Equality? not only reveals how the highly successful rhetorical maneuvers of neoliberalism have functioned ..."
"... The titles of her four chapters--Downsizing Democracy, The Incredible Shrinking Public, Equality, Inc., Love AND Money--summarize her argument. ..."
"... Her target is neoliberalism, which she sees as a broadly controlling corporate agenda which seeks world domination, privatization of governmental decision-making, and marginalization of unions, low-income people, racial and sexual minorities while presenting to the public a benign and inclusive facade. ..."
"... Neo-liberalism seeks to upwardly distribute money, power, and status, she writes, while progressive movements seek to downwardly distribute money, power, and status. The unity of the downwardly distribution advocates should match the unity of the upwardly distribution advocates in order to be effective, she writes. ..."
"... "There is nothing stable or inevitable in the alliances supporting neoliberal agendas in the U.S. and globally," she writes. "The alliances linking neoliberal global economics, and conservative and right-wing domestic politics, and the culture wars are provisional--and fading...." ..."
"... For example, she discusses neoliberal attempts to be "multicultural," but points out that economic resources are constantly redistributed upward. Neoliberal politics, she argues, has only reinforced and increased the divide between economic and social political issues. ..."
"... Because neoliberal politicians wish to save neoliberalism by reforming it, she argues that proposing alternate visions and ideas have been blocked. ..."
By now, we've all heard about the shocking redistribution of wealth that's occurred during the last thirty years, and
particularly during the last decade. But economic changes like this don't occur in a vacuum; they're always linked to politics.
The Twilight of Equality? searches out these links through an analysis of the politics of the 1990s, the decade when
neoliberalism-free market economics-became gospel.
After a brilliant historical examination of how racial and gender inequities were woven into the very theoretical underpinnings
of the neoliberal model of the state, Duggan shows how these inequities play out today. In a series of political case studies,
Duggan reveals how neoliberal goals have been pursued, demonstrating that progressive arguments that separate identity politics and
economic policy, cultural politics and affairs of state, can only fail.
Ultimately, The Twilight of Equality? not only reveals how the highly successful rhetorical maneuvers of neoliberalism have
functioned but, more importantly, it shows a way to revitalize and unify progressive politics in the U.S. today.
Mona Cohen 5.0 out of 5 stars A Critique of Neoliberalism and the Divided Resistance to It July 3, 2006
Lisa Duggan is intensely interested in American politics, and has found political life in the United States to have been "such
a wild ride, offering moments of of dizzying hope along with long stretches of political depression." She is grateful for "many
ideas about political depression, and how to survive it," and she has written a excellent short book that helps make sense of
many widely divergent political trends.
Her book is well-summarized by its concluding paragraph, which I am breaking up into additional paragraphs for greater
clarity:
"Now at this moment of danger and opportunity, the progressive left is mobilizing against neoliberalism and possible new or
continuing wars.
"These mobilizations might become sites for factional struggles over the disciplining of troops, in the name of unity at a
time of crisis and necessity. But such efforts will fail; the troops will not be disciplined, and the disciplinarians will be
left to their bitterness.
"Or, we might find ways of think, speaking, writing and acting that are engaged and curious about "other people's" struggles
for social justice, that are respectfully affiliative and dialogic rather than pedagogical, that that look for the hopeful spots
to expand upon, and that revel in the pleasure of political life.
"For it is pleasure AND collective caretaking, love AND the egalitarian circulation of money--allied to clear and hard-headed
political analysis offered generously--that will create the space for a progressive politics that might both imagine and
create...something worth living for."
The titles of her four chapters--Downsizing Democracy, The Incredible Shrinking Public, Equality, Inc., Love AND
Money--summarize her argument.
She expected upon her high school graduation in 1972, she writes, that "active and expanding social movements seemed capable
of ameliorating conditions of injustice and inequality, poverty, war and imperialism....I had no idea I was not perched at a
great beginning, but rather at a denouement, as the possibilities for progressive social change encountered daunting historical
setbacks beginning in 1972...."
Her target is neoliberalism, which she sees as a broadly controlling corporate agenda which seeks world domination,
privatization of governmental decision-making, and marginalization of unions, low-income people, racial and sexual minorities
while presenting to the public a benign and inclusive facade.
Neo-liberalism seeks to upwardly distribute money, power, and status, she writes, while progressive movements seek to
downwardly distribute money, power, and status. The unity of the downwardly distribution advocates should match the unity of the
upwardly distribution advocates in order to be effective, she writes.
Her belief is that all groups threatened by the neoliberal paradigm should unite against it, but such unity is threatened by
endless differences of perspectives. By minutely analyzing many of the differences, and expanding understanding of diverse
perspectives, she tries to remove them as obstacles towards people and organizations working together to achieve both unique and
common aims.
This is good book for those interested in the history and current significance of numerous progressive ideological arguments.
It is a good book for organizers of umbrella organizations and elected officials who work with diverse social movements. By
articulating points of difference, the author depersonalizes them and aids in overcoming them.
Those who are interested in electoral strategies, however, will be disappointed. The interrelationship between neoliberalism
as a governing ideology and neoliberalism as a political strategy is not discussed here. It is my view that greater and more
focused and inclusive political organizing has the potential to win over a good number of the those who see support of
neoliberalism's policy initiatives as a base-broadening tactic more than as a sacred cause.
"There is nothing stable or inevitable in the alliances supporting neoliberal agendas in the U.S. and globally," she
writes. "The alliances linking neoliberal global economics, and conservative and right-wing domestic politics, and the culture
wars are provisional--and fading...."
Reading this book adds to one's understanding of labels, and political and intellectual distinctions. It has too much jargon
for my taste, but not so much as to be impenetrable. It is an excellent summarization and synthesis of the goals, ideologies, and
histories of numerous social movements, both famous and obscure.
Duggan
articulately connects social and economic issues to each other, arguing that neoliberal
politics have divided the two when in actuality, they cannot be separated from one another.
In the introduction, Duggan argues that politics have become neoliberal - while politics
operate under the guise of promoting social change or social stability, in reality, she argues,
politicians have failed to make the connection between economic and social/cultural issues. She
uses historical background to prove the claim that economic and social issues can be separated
from each other is false.
For example, she discusses neoliberal attempts to be "multicultural," but points out that
economic resources are constantly redistributed upward. Neoliberal politics, she argues, has
only reinforced and increased the divide between economic and social political issues.
After the introduction, Duggan focuses on a specific topic in each chapter: downsizing
democracy, the incredible shrinking public, equality, and love and money. In the first chapter
(downsizing democracy), she argues that through violent imperial assertion in the Middle East,
budget cuts in social services, and disillusionments in political divides, "capitalists could
actually bring down capitalism" (p. 2).
Because neoliberal politicians wish to save neoliberalism by reforming it, she argues that
proposing alternate visions and ideas have been blocked. Duggan provides historical background
that help the reader connect early nineteenth century U.S. legislation (regarding voting rights
and slavery) to perpetuated institutional prejudices.
Lifetime real earnings of the median male worker declined by 10% from those who entered the
US labor market in 1967 to those in 1983, or roughly a loss of $136,000.
The study shows the United States shows a "wage stagnation of average earnings and a rise in
income inequality since the 1970s." The charts are based on US Social Security Administration
(SSA) records over 57 years.
The charts are more than a bit confusing unless one carefully dives into the details.
The lead chart is titled " Median Lifetime Earnings " but shows instead annualized real
(inflation adjusted) annual wages, not lifetime or real lifetime earnings.
Lifetime
Definition
Lifetime earnings means earnings between the age of 25 and 55 inclusive.
Annualized lifetime earnings as depicted in the chart is the sum of real annual labor
earnings from ages 25 to 55, divided by 31.
When nominal earnings are deflated by the personal consumption expenditure (PCE) deflator,
the annualized value of median lifetime wage/salary earnings for male workers declined by
$4,400 per year from the 1967 cohort to the 1983 cohort, or $136,400 over the 31-year working
period.
The lifetime earnings of the median male worker declined by 10 percent from the 1967 cohort
to the 1983 cohort. Further, more than three-quarters of the distribution of men experienced no
rise in their lifetime earnings across these cohorts.
Cohort Definition
As used in the article, cohort means all of those who turned 25, 35. 45, etc. in a
particular year.
Median initial earnings fell from $33,300 for the 1967 cohort to $29,000 for the 1983
cohort (PCE adjusted in 2013 dollars).
The analogous figures at age 55 were $55,900 for the former cohort and $54,100 for the
latter, a decline of $1,800, showing no sign of catch-up over the life cycle.
Median initial earnings for men was only $24,400 in 2011, virtually the same level as in
1957.
Cohorts of female workers have seen robust and steady gains, on the order of 22% to 33%
for the median female worker. However, because these gains started from a very low level of
median lifetime earnings for the 1957 cohort, they were not large enough at the aggregate
level to offset the losses by men.
Using the CPI rather than the PCE to convert nominal earnings to 2013 dollars lowers
lifetime earnings growth for both men and women.
Inflation Adjustments
The two most commonly used price indexes are the personal consumption expenditure (PCE)
deflator from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) and the consumer price index (CPI) from
the Bureau of Labor Statistics' (BLS). The (older) CPI and the (newer) PCE differ in several
ways that are by now well understood.
The PCE is generally accepted to be the superior index for measuring the overall price
level and its evolution over the business cycle. It is thus the standard choice in aggregate
(macro) economic analyses. However, for more micro work, such as the analyses in this paper,
the CPI has some advantages. In particular, the CPI aims to capture the price level faced by
the typical household for its out-of-pocket expenses and is thus based on a detailed survey
of U.S. household expenditures, whereas the PCE is based on business surveys and also
includes purchases made by others on behalf of households. Consequently, relative to the PCE,
the CPI places a lower weight on health care prices (since a large fraction of total
expenditures is paid by Medicare/Medicaid and insurance companies) and a much higher weight
on housing and transportation.
In our empirical analysis, we choose the PCE as our baseline measure for deflating nominal
earnings because it implies a lower cumulative inflation over this period than the CPI . We
report all values in 2013 dollars.
Lifetime Earnings for Men and Women
From the 1957 to the 1983 cohort, annualized mean lifetime earnings for men rose by
around $10,000, from $42,200 to $52,200. This rise corresponds to a cumulative increase of
23.7%, or an average increase of 0.82% between two consecutive cohorts.
However, the bulk of these gains -- 21.9% of the total 23.7% -- accrued to only the
first 10 or so cohorts. From the 1967 to the 1983 cohort, mean lifetime earnings increased
by only 1.5% cumulatively.
Median lifetime earnings for men has barely changed from the 1957 cohort to the 1983
cohort, increasing by only about $250 -- or less than 1%.
Across almost the entire distribution of males, there have been either trivial, or even
negative, gains in lifetime earnings.
Women, on the other hand, have seen increases in lifetime earnings throughout the entire
distribution. Median lifetime earnings increased nearly monotonically from $14,100 for the
1957 cohort to $22,300 for the 1983 cohort.
This steady increase in lifetime earnings for women has been broad-based, with all parts
of the distribution experiencing consistent lifetime earnings growth across cohorts.
Median lifetime earnings for women grew at an average rate of 1.8% per cohort for the 27
cohorts from 1957 to 1983, with almost the exact same annualized growth rates for the 10
cohorts from 1957 to 1967 and the 16 cohorts from 1967 to 1983.
Looking at the population as a whole, we find that the trends for men and women combine
in sometimes offsetting ways.
Closing the Gender Gap
The chart looks severely dated but cohort means the year in which someone turned 25.
Figure 3 plots the ratio of the mean lifetime earnings of females to that of males
In 1960, median inflation adjusted wages for women aged 25 were less than 40% of males. But
fewer women than men were working and fewer women than men were college educated.
After 1965, the gap started to close quickly (showing an almost linear trend), and by the
1983 cohort (working women who turned 25 in 1983), the lifetime earnings of women reached more
than 60% of their male counterparts.
To the extent real median wages have risen in aggregate, it is because of the headway made
by women relative to men.
Decline of Men vs Women
The mean lifetime income for men rose until 1972. The median topped out a bit earlier in
1967 albeit by an arguably meaningless 0.13 percentage points.
Those who turned 25 in 1983 were 55 in 2014. Thus the study misses the last 7
years.
Even Worse Than It Looks
The charts and findings are even worse than they look.
The PCE measure of inflation is understated relative to the CPI.
Both are severely understated since 1999 relative to housing. Housing-adjusted real wages
have been hammered in aggregate, and even more so for men.
The Fed with tremendous help from Congress seeks to destroy the dollar. They have succeeded.
Yet the Fed rails against income inequality.
The Fed, Congress, and Progressive need to look in the mirror to see who is to blame for
falling real wages.
" It costs only a few cents for the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to produce a $100
bill, but other countries had to pony up $100 of actual goods in order to obtain one ,"
accurately quipped American economist Barry Eichengreen .
In addition to trade distortions inaccurately blamed on NAFTA, real wages is another data
series that goes back to Nixon closing the gold window in 1971.
For April 2021 the official Current Unadjusted U-6 unemployment rate was 9.9% down from 10.9%
in March, and 11.6% in February, January was 12.0%. It was also 11.6% October "" December 2020.
But It was 18.3% in June, 20.7% in May, and 22.4% in April. It is still well above the 8.9% of
March 2020 when unemployment rates started jumping drastically due to massive shutdowns due to
the Coronavirus.
Initial Jobless Claims tumbled (positively) to their lowest since the pandemic lockdowns
began, adding just 406k Americans last week (well below the 425k expected). This is still
double the pre-pandemic norms
y_arrow 1
Truthtellers 11 hours ago (Edited) remove link
Companies laid off an additional 400K people last week and they actually think we are
dumb enough to believe there is a labor shortage? That line of crap is obviously just a
ploy to get employee's to accept lower salaries.
I'll believe there is a labor shortage after 16 million jobs have been added and the
weekly initial claims number is zero.
Until then, I guess if you have a "labor shortage" you better get that pay up.
AJAX-2 13 hours ago (Edited)
Another 400K+ applying for 1st time unemployment benefits and yet they piss on my leg,
tell me it's raining, while proclaiming there is a labor shortage. Bu!!****.
PerilouseTimes 9 hours ago
Close to a million people a week were signing up for unemployment for a year and
unemployment has been extended. Wouldn't that mean at least 40 million Americans are on
unemployment not to mention all the people on welfare and disability? I think the number is
closer to 100 million Americans on the government dole and that doesn't count all the
worthless government jobs out there.
Normal 12 hours ago remove link
I'm on unemployment except California seems to have quit paying people on unemployment.
I tried every-which-way to contact them but there is no way in hell to get through to a
live person. I went and typed in how to speak with a real person at the EDD, and hundreds
of people have posted that they haven't been paid in 12 weeks. I spoke with their Cal-Jobs
representative and she said that many people haven't been paid since March of last year. I
think they are forcing the so-called unemployed to their Cal-Jobs site by not paying
them.
ay_arrow
NEOSERF 13 hours ago
Worst month during the GFC appears to be about 650K...we are only 50% below that....with
21 states preparing to end the extension, things will be fantastic in these numbers shortly
if not the real world...waiting for all the cold/flu season coughing and cold weather in
November...
History repeats and the repetition is coming with some minor variations.
Notable quotes:
"... "Corporate bond rates have been rising steadily since May. Yellen is not doing what Greenspan did in 2004." ..."
"... There isn't much of a difference between signaling tighter money to a market that is skeptical of Fed forecasts and actually tightening. ..."
"... While at 5.0 percent, the unemployment rate is not extraordinarily high, most other measures of the labor market are near recession levels. The percentage of the workforce that is involuntarily working part-time is near the highs reached following the 2001 recession. The average and median duration of unemployment spells are also near recession highs. And the percentage of workers who feel confident enough to quit their jobs without another job lined up remains near the low points reached in 2002. ..."
"... While wage growth has edged up somewhat in recent months by some measures, it is still well below a rate that is consistent with the Fed's inflation target. Hourly wages have risen at a 2.7 percent rate over the last year. If there is just 1.5 percent productivity growth, this would be consistent with a rate of inflation of 1.2 percent. ..."
"... One positive point in today's action is the Fed's commitment in its statement to allow future rate hikes to be guided by the data, rather than locking in a path towards "normalization" as was effectively done in 2004. ..."
Washington, D.C.- Dean Baker, economist and a co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) issued the
following statement in response to the Federal Reserve's decision regarding interest rates:
"The Fed's decision to raise interest rates today is an unfortunate move in the wrong direction. In setting interest rate policy
the Fed must decide whether the economy is at risk of having too few or too many jobs, with the latter being determined by the
extent to which its current rate of job creation may lead to inflation. It is difficult to see how the evidence would lead the
Fed to conclude that the greater risk at the moment is too many jobs.
"While at 5.0 percent, the unemployment rate is not extraordinarily high, most other measures of the labor market are near
recession levels. The percentage of the workforce that is involuntarily working part-time is near the highs reached following
the 2001 recession. The average and median duration of unemployment spells are also near recession highs. And the percentage of
workers who feel confident enough to quit their jobs without another job lined up remains near the low points reached in 2002.
"If we look at employment rates rather than unemployment, the percentage of prime-age workers (ages 25-54) with jobs is still
down by almost three full percentage points from the pre-recession peak and by more than four full percentage points from the
peak hit in 2000. This does not look like a strong labor market.
"On the other side, there is virtually no basis for concerns about the risk of inflation in the current data. The most recent
data show that the core personal consumption expenditure deflator targeted by the Fed increased at just a 1.2 percent annual rate
over the last three months, down slightly from the 1.3 percent rate over the last year. This means that the Fed should be concerned
about being below its inflation target, not above it.
"While wage growth has edged up somewhat in recent months by some measures, it is still well below a rate that is consistent
with the Fed's inflation target. Hourly wages have risen at a 2.7 percent rate over the last year. If there is just 1.5 percent
productivity growth, this would be consistent with a rate of inflation of 1.2 percent.
"Furthermore, it is important to recognize that workers took a large hit to their wages in the downturn, with a shift of more
than four percentage points of national income from wages to profits. In principle, workers can restore their share of national
income (the equivalent of an 8 percent wage gain), but the Fed would have to be prepared to allow wage growth to substantially
outpace prices for a period of time. If the Fed acts to prevent workers from getting this bargaining power, it will effectively
lock in place this upward redistribution. Needless to say, workers at the middle and bottom of the wage distribution can expect
to see the biggest hit in this scenario.
"One positive point in today's action is the Fed's commitment in its statement to allow future rate hikes to be guided
by the data, rather than locking in a path towards "normalization" as was effectively done in 2004. If it is the case that
the economy is not strong enough to justify rate hikes, then the hike today may be the last one for some period of time. It will
be important for the Fed to carefully assess the data as it makes its decision on interest rates at future meetings.
"Recent economic data suggest that today's move was a mistake. Hopefully the Fed will not compound this mistake with more unwarranted
rate hikes in the future."
RC AKA Darryl, Ron said in reply to Peter K....
I like Dean Baker. Unlike the Fed, Dean Baker is a class warrior on the side of the wage class. He makes the point about the
path to normalization being critical that I have been discussing for quite a while. Let's hope this Fed knows better than Greenspan/Bernanke
in 2004-2006. THANKS!
likbez said in reply to RC AKA Darryl, Ron...
Very true !
pgl said in reply to RC AKA Darryl, Ron...
"Longer-term bond rates barely moved, showing that there was very little news." This interest rate rose from 4.45% to 5.46%
already. So the damage was already done:
"... This interest rate rose from 4.45% to 5.46% already..."
Exactly! Corporate bond rates have been rising steadily since May. Yellen is not doing what Greenspan did in 2004. Yellen's
Fed waited until the bond rate lifted off on its own (and maybe with some help from policy communications) before they raised
the FFR.
So far, there is no sign of their making a fatal error. They are not fighting class warfare for wage class either, but they
seem intent on not screwing the pooch in the way that Greenspan and Bernanke did. No double dip thank you and hold the nuts.
I remember when my mom used to bring me to the Walmart super center when I was a kid,
around 1990. They were exploding in popularity. The cheap goods were a blessing for our
growing family. But we all know how the goods got so cheap.
The 1990s for Walmart was the equivalent of the 2010’s for Amazon. The
low wage job model worked for them then and continues to work for them now.
And in the 1990s, Reich was running around being Labor Secretary, of all things.
There’s some simple solutions to this, like strengthening collective
bargaining, but that’s nowhere in sight.
Employers will pay the lowest possible wage until they absolutely need to.
He quit after the first term and wrote a book about how frustrated he was by
Clinton’s refusal to address widening income disparity and labor
issues.
Totally agree with your point about labor markets. But, Just because he
wasn’t successful doesn’t mean he
didn’t try. Correct me if I’m wrong (I often am) but I
don’t think he’s the villain. Seems to have been trying
to do good in whatever way he can and is also very open about the corruption and greed that
makes change so difficult.
One of the biggest risks to U.S. recovery is the difficulty aroun...
U.S. job growth significantly undershot forecasts in April, suggesting that difficulty
attracting workers is slowing momentum in the labor market and challenging the economic
recovery.
Payrolls rose 266,000 from a month earlier, according to a Labor Department report Friday
that represented one of the largest downside misses on record. Economists in a Bloomberg survey
projected a 1 million hiring surge in April.
The unemployment rate edged up to 6.1 per cent, though the labor-force participation rate
also increased.
... The disappointing payrolls print leaves overall employment more than 8 million short of
its pre-pandemic level and is consistent with recent comments from company officials
highlighting challenges in filling open positions.
... While job gains accelerated in leisure and hospitality, employment at temporary-help
agencies and transportation and warehousing declined sharply.
...
Labor force participation, a measure of the percentage of Americans either working or
looking for work, rose to 61.7 per cent in April from 61.5 per cent, likely supported by
increased vaccinations that helped fuel the reopenings of many retail establishments,
restaurants and leisure-facing businesses.
Average weekly hours increased to match the highest in records dating back to 2006. The gain
in the workweek, increased pay and the improvement in hiring helped boost aggregate weekly
payrolls 1.2 per cent in April after a 1.3 per cent gain a month earlier.
Workforce participation for men age 25 to 54 increased last month, while edging lower for
women.
I keep happening on these mentions of manufacturing jobs succumbing to automation, and I
can't think of where these people are getting their information.
I work in manufacturing. Production manufacturing, in fact, involving hundreds, thousands,
tens of thousands of parts produced per week. Automation has come a long way, but it also
hasn't. A layman might marvel at the technologies while taking a tour of the factory, but
upon closer inspection, the returns are greatly diminished in the last two decades. Advances
have afforded greater precision, cheaper technologies, but the only reason China is a giant
of manufacturing is because labor is cheap. They automate less than Western factories, not
more, because humans cost next to nothing, but machines are expensive.
Neoliberals policies for minority students in education can be called “the soft bigotry
of low expectations.”
Racists want discrimination based on race; wokesters want discrimination based on race too.
One in the name of bigotry, one in the name of “tolerance.” Does the motive really
matter if the outcome is the same?
Notable quotes:
"... the ONS dataset is A09, Labour Market status by ethnic group, is testament to white folks ingenuity to overcome such discrimination ..."
My uncle did admissions at Cambridge and he actively discriminated against Public School
boys, despite being one himself. He was actually involved in hiring that black woman to be
the Master at Christ's College.
Similarly at Citi it was very obvious any remotely competent black was promoted way beyond
there competency, although that was largely limited to back and middle office roles.
Still the ONS dataset is A09, Labour Market status by ethnic group, is
testament to white folks ingenuity to overcome such discrimination and the free market
at work.
"... Hiring is a lot more complex and constrained, than this writeup suggests. In stacks of resumes that I used to review, I found almost all applicants exaggerate or lie. ..."
"... Employers (or the ones the future worker will work directly "" like local manager) are in the majority of cases DO NOT hire directly. ..."
"... There is either a staffing firm/ recruitment firm between, often also a different websites (for job seekers) which only redirects towards those. ..."
"... The problem with the HR/ recruitment firms/ jobseeker websites themselves. They dictate who will work somewhere. ..."
"... It's a new world of fraud, total fraud. Biden is an absurd fraud. They are all frauds, because actual accomplishments, real work, are so very much more difficult than lies. ..."
"... There's nothing new under the sun. It's always been fraud, flimflam and bamboozle. Somebody once said, you can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but not all of the people all of the time. But, then again, he could have just been fooling around. ..."
Hiring is a lot more complex and constrained, than this writeup suggests. In stacks of resumes that I used to review, I found almost all applicants exaggerate or lie. That was very problematic,
because once you hire a person, it's hard to get rid of them, even with "at-will" employment.
There is a major problem with the article/ whole employment process:
Employers (or the ones the future worker will work directly "" like local manager) are in the majority of cases DO NOT
hire directly.(Respect for the ones, who do.)
There is either a staffing firm/ recruitment firm between, often also a different websites (for job seekers) which only
redirects towards those.
Also many company have a HR department, etc... The problem with the HR/ recruitment firms/ jobseeker websites themselves.
They dictate who will work somewhere.
Wish to be workers should meet directly with the ones they supposed to work for.
To see whether racial discrimination exists, researchers send the same CV to employers with the same level of qualifications
but different names attached, to see if the foreign-sounding names lead to a greater degree of rejection. They often find that
to be the case.
Given that British blacks most often bear British sounding names and that foreign whites too bear foreign sounding names, I
don't see how the difference in treatment can be put down to racial bias. Moreover, I don't see anything wrong in giving precedence
to compatriots over foreigners. It is the opposite that is unsound.
As a French national with a foreign sounding name, I never expected to be given precedence over native French candidates and
always counted solely on my competence to get a position. If the world we live in were still normal, that would be the normal
attitude because in a normal world people are allowed to prefer their kin vs folks they don't know from Adam. It is the opposite
that isn't normal.
Discard national preference and you get foreign tribes' nepotism.
researchers send the same CV to employers with the same level of qualifications but different names attached, to see if
the foreign-sounding names lead to a greater degree of rejection. They often find that to be the case.
Because it's a lose-lose to hire a Tyrone or Abdul. Even if they're the most qualified, they're "high-maintenance," arriving
with extra-legal protections and considerations. Down the road they can always hide behind the specter of racism if their performance
is found lacking.
It's a new world of fraud, total fraud. Biden is an absurd fraud. They are all frauds, because actual accomplishments,
real work, are so very much more difficult than lies.
Indians are fantastic fraudsters. Africans are fraud specialists. Many Asians are not so much CV fraudsters as they are test
cheaters.
Agreed as they do it in Swiss. They prefer to employ their folk, if find a suitable person and wait up to 6 months before consider
an outlander. Only then ready to employ someone else.
BUT: Will not employ a dullard just because they share a citizenship/ ancestors. About 20% are foreigners among the employed,
in Geneva probably most of the employed.
And this is strictly the opposite what is common in many place (and self-appointed "nationalists" demand): No matter how incompetent
but employ the dullard native, while send home the competent/ hardworking.
Against meritism/ competition and bad for business.
There are plenty of dishonest Europeans, but honesty as a high value seems Western. Subcons caught in a lie will grin and do
a head waggle something between a nod and a shake. Blacks will insist the lie is true. East Asians will lie until you demonstrate
they cannot get away with it. Latin Americans only lie when they speak.
There's nothing new under the sun. It's always been fraud, flimflam and bamboozle. Somebody once said, you can fool all
of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but not all of the people all of the time. But, then again,
he could have just been fooling around.
Probably $25 an hour or $50K a year is more realistic. Part time jobs are even better to hem to avoid money crunch and at the
same time continue to look for an IT job. Might be a viable option for younger healthy IT specialists. CDL course from a
reputable truck driving school is around $3500 and they
provide you a truck for the DMV exam, but you can try self-study and might pass written exam from a second try as there is nothing
complex in the test, saving half of those money.
Notable quotes:
"... What's happening, he said, is that drivers are looking at the fact that they can make $70,000 'and stay home a little more.' ..."
"... To put the numbers in perspective, Todd Amen, the president of ATBS, which prepares taxes for mostly independent owner-operators, said in a recent interview with the FreightWaves Drilling Deep podcast that the average tax return his company prepared for drivers' 2020 pay was $67,500. He also said his company prepared numerous 2020 returns with pay in excess of $100,000. ..."
David Parker is the CEO of Covenant Logistics and he was blunt with analysts who follow the
company on its earnings call Tuesday.
'How do we get enough drivers? ' he said in response to a question from Stephens analyst Jack Atkins. 'I don't know.'
Parker then gave an overview of the situation facing Covenant, and by extension other
companies, in trying to recruit drivers. One problem: With rates so high, companies are
encountering the fact that a driver doesn't need to work a full schedule to
pull in a decent salary.
'We're finding out that just to get a driver, let's say the numbers are $85,000 (per year) ,' Parker said,
according to a transcript of the earnings call supplied by SeekingAlpha. '
But a lot of these drivers are happy at $70,000. Now they're not coming to
work for me, unless it's in the ($80,000s), because they're happy making $70,000.'
What's happening, he said, is that drivers are looking at the fact that they can make $70,000 'and stay home a little
more.'
The result is a tightening of capacity. Parker said utilization in the first quarter at Covenant was three or four percentage
points less than it would have as a result of that development. ' It's an interesting dynamic that none of
us have calculated,' he said.
To put the numbers in perspective, Todd Amen, the president of ATBS, which prepares taxes
for mostly independent owner-operators, said in a
recent interview with the FreightWaves Drilling Deep podcast that the average tax return
his company prepared for drivers' 2020 pay was $67,500. He also said his
company prepared numerous 2020 returns with pay in excess of $100,000.
Parker was firm that this was not a situation likely to change soon. 'There's nothing out there that tells me that drivers are
going to readily be available over the medium [term in] one to two years,' he said. 'And that's where I'm at.'
Paul Bunn, the company's COO and senior executive vice president, echoed
what other executives have said recently:
Additional stimulus benefits are making the situation tighter. He said that while offering some hope that as the benefits roll
off, 'that might help a bit.'
But what the government giveth the government can sometimes taketh away. Bunn expressed another familiar sentiment in the
industry today, that an infrastructure bill adding to demand for workers would create more difficulty to put drivers behind the
wheel. Construction, Bunn said, is 'a monster competitor of our industry' and if the bill is approved, 'that's going to be a big
pull.'
Labor is going to be a 'capacity constraint' through the
economy, Bunn said, while conceding that trucking is not unique in that. And because of that
labor squeeze, capacity in many fields is going to be limited. ' The OEMs,
the manufacturers are limited capacity ,' Bunn said. 'They're not ramping up in a major, major way because of labor, because of
commodity pricing, because of the costs.'
All that means is that capacity growth is going to be
'reasonable,' Bunn said. 'It's not going to be crazy, people growing fleets [by] significant amounts.'
'It's all you can do just to hold serve, '
he added.
After thirteen months, the BLS still cannot count the Unemployed. Headline U.3
Unemployment also remained deep in non-recovery territory. The BLS acknowledged continuing
misclassification of some "unemployed" persons as "employed," in the Household Survey. Where
the count of the understated unemployed had an "upside limit" of 636,000 persons in March 2021,
the February 2021 upside estimate of understated unemployed was 756,000. The difference would
be a potential headline U.3 of 6.44% instead of today's headline 6.05%, which was down from a
headline 6.22% in February. Fully adjusted for COVID-19 disruptions, based on BLS side-surveys
of Pandemic impact, and with more than six million people missing from the headline U.S. labor
force, actual headline U.3 unemployment still should be well above 10%, the highest
unemployment rate since before World War II, outside of the Pandemic and possibly at the trough
of the 1982-1983 recession. Broader March 2021 headline U.6 unemployment [including some
decline in short-term discouraged workers and those employed part-time for economic reasons]
eased to 10.71% from 11.07% in February. Including long-term discouraged/ displaced workers,
the March 2021 ShadowStats Alternate Measure –- moving on top of the decline in U.6
–- notched minimally lower to 25.7%, from 25.8% in February 2021, reflecting some modeled
transition of "short-term" to "long-term" discouraged workers, with the Pandemic having passed
its 12-month anniversary. The latest Unemployment Rates are posted on the ALTERNATE DATA
tab (above).
The ADL, always attuned to any indication that their subjects are getting restless, is
insisting that Tucker Carlson be fired. What brought on their ire was Tucker's use of the word
'replacement' in the context of a discussion of Joe Biden's Open Border policy. Mentioning
replacement in the context of immigration is pretty much in the same category as doubting that
all races have the same potentialities or the official holocaust narrative. Be prepared for
hatred. Tucker, as quoted in The Hill :
"I know that the left and all the little gatekeepers on Twitter become literally
hysterical if you use the term 'replacement,' if you suggest that the Democratic Party is
trying to replace the current electorate," Carlson said. "But they become hysterical because
that's what's happening actually. Let's just say it. That's true.
Of course it's true, and what's being replaced is the traditional White population of the
country. But Tucker couldn't say that without even more outrage. So he made it all about the
current electorate, which is certainly not just White people.
"I mean, everyone's making a racial issue out of it. Oh, the, you know, white replacement?
No, no, this is a voting rights question," Carlson added later, saying changes to the
population "dilute the political power" of current registered voters.
This is disingenuous but I suppose it's what you have to say to keep your job in the
mainstream media -- and even that might not be enough. Carlson's statement is consistent with
his repeated assertions of color-blindness, and he's careful to restrict his comments to
illegal immigration. His argument is completely color-blind: "every time they import a new
voter, I become disenfranchised as a current voter" -- an argument that would apply to any
American citizen no matter what their race. "How dare you think I care particularly about White
voters!" But isn't it obvious that such an argument would also apply to legal immigration?
Of course the ADL immediately labeled his comments as "white supremacy":
Not clear how replacement theory is "anti-Semitic," but I suppose that Greenblatt considers
anything he dislikes as anti-Semitism. After quoting Greenblatt's tweet, The Hill noted that "the ADL head explained that the "Great Replacement" theory
"is a white supremacist tenet that the white race is in danger by a rising tide of non-whites,"
linking to a Daily Beast article saying the whole idea was a "racist lie." But how much of a
"racist lie" is it when the White population is steadily dwindling, probably to around 60
percent, and the left wants to dramatically increase the rate at which it is dwindling?
Greenblatt also
emailed Fox News, writing "Carlson's full-on embrace of the white supremacist replacement
theory on yesterday's show and his repeated allusions to racist themes in past segments are a
bridge too far. Given his long record of race-baiting, we believe it is time for Carlson to
go." This assertion that Carlson is making a "full-on embrace of white supremacist replacement
theory" is a bald-faced lie, but obvious lies seem to be more and more common in high places
these days -- witness
Biden's lie about the new Georgia voting laws as "Jim Crow on steroids." A full-on embrace
of "white supremacist replacement theory" would at least reference a specific concern for White
people losing political clout. Instead, Carlson religiously repeats his mainstream
conservative, color-blind mantras firmly rooted in individualist ideology ("every time they
import a new voter "). Officially, he could care less about White people as White people. One
wonders if Fox would stand by their most popular talking head if he did come out and just say
it. I am pretty sure he believes it.
Officially, Carlson's heart is bleeding for all those Black, Brown, and Asian citizen-voters
whose political clout is being diluted. But of course, that would be wildly inaccurate,
particularly in the age of identity politics where non-Whites are strongly encouraged to
identify with their racial group and do all they can to advance its interests. The collective
power of non-Whites is being increased by immigration and everyone knows it, and White
political power is decreasing in an age when hatred of Whites is becoming increasingly obvious
-- at a time when Critical Race Theory is dominating the educational establishment and
corporate board rooms. CRT is a theory that essentially says it's fine for non-Whites to hate
Whites while at the same time encouraging White guilt about the supposed sins of their
ancestors. One can only imagine the horrors that await a politically powerless White
minority.
And it's not just White political power that is waning. There is clearly a program to
replace Whites as part of the American elite.
Given the voting behavior of non-Whites, it doesn't make much sense to say that America's
non-White voters are being replaced when they are being "replaced" by more non-White voters,
although I suppose one could make the argument that the traditional American Black population
will have less political clout given that the preponderance of immigrants are from Latin
America and Asia. But in any case, they ain't
White , and the ADL and the Democrats are quite well aware that all non-White groups
strongly skew Democrat. In general, the Democrats are in favor of increased legal immigration,
amnesty for illegals, and non-enforcement at the border, all of which are on the table with
Biden in the White House and a Democrat Congress. Putting these ideas into law along with
allowing no-ID voting would give Democrats more or less immediate and permanent hegemony given
that Texas and Florida are the largest destinations of immigrants -- as noted in my comments on
the January 6 "insurrection,"
The Left Will Now Enact Permanent Hegemony. " Their strategy also includes packing
the Supreme Court , in case some of their laws are challenged; Biden is already laying the
groundwork by establishing a commission packed with a
super-majority of liberals .
Biden's immigration plan calls for an increase in "diversity" visas to 80,000 from 55,000
and has an emphasis on family unification -- a code word for chain migration and a bedrock of
Jewish attitudes on immigration since the 1920s and continuing up to the 1965 immigration law (
here, p. 283) and
beyond. What this means is that one lucky visa recipient from, say, Africa, could bring in his
immediate (likely large) family and when they became citizens, they could bring in their
brothers and sisters outside the quota limit, who could in turn bring in their spouses and
children, etc. All these new people would be able to immigrate outside the quota system for
legal immigrants. And all could become citizens.
Tucker Carlson Is a Mass Murdering Terrorist!
Comment on the left has explicitly compared Carlson's mild comments to the manifesto of the
Christchurch and El Paso murderers.
I found the above clip from The Daily Show on Max Boot's
Twitter feed . Boot, former neocon (i.e., a liberal-leftie masquerading as a conservative
active in promoting U.S. fealty to Israel and moving the GOP to the left on social issues). And
now, because of obsessive Trump hate, now is firmly and explicitly ensconced on the left at
The Washington Post. Boot
wrote that Carlson "the top-rated host on Fox "News" Channel, has been attracting attention
for a while with his vile rhetoric against immigrants. Yet now he's reached a new low."
As the left-leaning Media Matters for America
has chronicled , Carlson has a long history of ugly statements. He has called Iraqis "
semiliterate primitive monkeys " and said that Afghanistan is "never going to be a
civilized country because the people aren't civilized." He has complained that an influx of
poor immigrants "
makes our own country poor and dirtier and more divided ." He has repeatedly described
immigration as an "
invasion ," and called the urgent threat posed by white supremacists a "
hoax " and "a conspiracy theory used to divide the country and keep a hold on power."
And that new low is that Tucker said something a mass murderer had said, implying, I guess,
that if Hitler said the sky is blue, it would be extremely racist for anyone else to say
it.
The Guardian
noted in 2019 that there were already disturbing parallels between Carlson's rhetoric and
that of white supremacist killers in El Paso, Tex., and Christchurch, New Zealand. For
example, in one of his books, Carlson wrote: "When confronted or pressed for details,
[proponents of diversity] retreat into a familiar platitude, which they repeat like a zen
koan: diversity is our strength. But is diversity our strength? The less we have in common,
the stronger we are? Is that true of families? Is that true in neighborhoods or businesses?
Of course not."
And here is what the fiend who killed 51 people at two Christchurch mosques said in his
manifesto: "Why is diversity said to be our greatest strength? Does anyone even ask why? It
is spoken like a mantra and repeated ad infinitum . But no one ever seems to give a reason
why. What gives a nation strength? And how does diversity increase that strength?"
On Thursday night, Carlson moved even closer to white supremacist ideology by
explicitly endorsing the Great Replacement theory, which holds that shadowy elites are
orchestrating a plot to replace native-born White people with immigrants of color. The New
Zealand shooter's
manifesto was literally headlined "The Great Replacement," and the neo-Nazis who marched
in Charlottesville chanted "Jews will not replace us."
In a
previous article I noted that Tucker Carlson's comments on 'replacement' in the context of
immigration had unleashed a torrent of hatred from the ADL and the liberal media. When the ADL
goes after public figures, the usual response is groveling apology in a typically futile effort
to prevent getting ostracized or fired. After all, the ADL's Jonathan Greenblatt had tweeted
that Carlson's comments were "anti-Semitic, racist, and toxic." Accusations of racism -- and
especially anti-Semitism -- are pretty much a death sentence for anyone so accused.
So I was gratified that Carlson didn't back down. Indeed, he doubled down, with a 20-minute
opening monologue elaborating on exactly why the Democrat Party is completely wedded to
importing a new electorate and has been doing so for decades. He also mentioned that Whites
(and Blacks) are being replaced as voters, that the entire project is immoral, and he called
out the hypocrisy of the ADL. As he notes, it's not about compassion as usually advertised, but
about power. And everyone with any brains knows it.
To date, Carlson's monologue is the most powerful and most explicit statement in the
mainstream media that Whites -- as Whites -- have an interest in immigration. Indeed, a vital
interest. In making his argument, he discussed states like California and Virginia that have
become reliably Democrat because of immigration, and he mentions Vermont that is now blue
because of disenchanted New Yorkers who brought their politics with them when they moved there.
He says the same thing is happening to Montana and Idaho as yoga instructors, Google
vice-presidents, and assorted rich White folks leave California for greener pastures. It will
happen to your state. And the result will be permanent hegemony of the left because
the imported electorate are reliable clients of the Democrat Party. 'Client' is the right word
(from the Latin for 'dependent') because these people come to the U.S. for better pay and all
the free stuff -- medical care, welfare if they have children, and the promise of eventual
citizenship and the right to bring in their relatives. This description applies at least to the
Mexicans, Central Americans, and Africans who have flooded our shores (that IQ thing again).
They remain toward the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder and dependent on the government.
Hence reliably Democrat. California went from being the envy of the world to having poverty
levels on par with Mississippi. Without explicitly mentioning Whites, he notes that the middle
class is leaving in droves, resulting in the cost of a U-Haul being five times higher for
people leaving the state as for entering. He portrays the middle class as one of the victim
groups of the Great Replacement as America is transformed into a society with a hostile,
ultra-wealthy elite who are politically supported by a dependent mass of Democrat voters.
Tucker also doubled down on his voter-replacement logic, but this time he was explicit about
White people's vote being replaced, noting that Whites went from 90 percent of Californians to
30 percent since 1960, which means that how White people vote matters much less than it used
to. It's shocking to hear someone in the mainstream media claim that Whites and their vital
interests are victims of the immigration tsunami. One can easily imagine a situation where,
even if White Californians woke up (far too many are still drinking the Kool-Aid), they
couldn't win a statewide election. And that's the whole point. Permanent hegemony.
But because the interests of Whites are definitely not supposed to be paramount, he
emphasized that Blacks in California have also been losing political clout rapidly, with very
large declines in cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco. In my previous article, I noted
that the voter replacement argument doesn't apply so much to Blacks because the people
replacing them have pretty much the same politics. But I stand corrected. Identity politics has
changed everything. Black Californian politicos like Maxine Waters, Willy Brown, and Kamala
Harris may well become a thing of the past. Harris was replaced by Alex Padilla, a Latino,
after being elevated to the vice-presidency, a result that was not
warmly greeted by the Black political establishment.
California progressives had pushed [Gov. Gavin] Newsom to appoint Representative Barbara
Lee [who is Black] or another like-minded Democrat. Mr. Newsom was also under pressure to
appoint a Black woman to take the place of Ms. Harris, the only Black woman in the Senate.
Representative Karen Bass and Ms. Lee were at the top of that list. The Congressional
Hispanic Caucus strongly backed Mr. Padilla. The L.G.B.T.Q. community and Equality California
lobbied for Robert Garcia, the mayor of Long Beach. Black Women United, a co-founder of Black
Lives Matter, and a range of Black elected officials pushed for Ms. Bass or Ms.
Lee.
As Blacks become less of a demographic force, they will also become less of a political
force. There will be less official sympathy for Black issues like BLM, reparations, dealing
with criminals, and centering on Black grievance in the educational system.
Tucker also did some dog-whistling on Jewish involvement by mentioning Michelle Goldberg's
NYTimes op-ed, "
We can replace them, " which celebrates replacing the White electorate by doing a screen
shot of Goldberg's statement: "The potential is there; Georgia is less than 53 percent
non-Hispanic White." He didn't mention Goldberg's ethnicity, but anyone who knows anything
about the media knows she is a strongly identified Jew writing for a Jewish-owned publication
that is the crown jewel of the elite liberal-left media. As Tucker noted, Goldberg is "a
New York Times columnist, not some QAnon blogger."
The left pretends that demographic replacement is an obsession on the right, but in fact,
it's an obsession on the left. "It's the central idea of the modern Democratic Party." So true.
And so refreshing to hear it in the mainstream media.
As always, the left pretends that their plan to replace the White population is a moral
imperative. In 2019 then-Senator Harris condemned Trump's plan to deport illegals on the basis
that Trump was trying to "remake the demographics of the country"; she tweeted that such
actions are "deeply reprehensible and an affront to our values." Of course, the left would
never think of remaking the demographics of the country!
What's immoral -- and obviously so -- is the left's scheme to remake the electorate in
opposition to the legitimate interests of the traditional White majority. Tucker confronted the
issue head-on, turning the tables on the leftist moralizers by framing their actions as
"cheating." This is an important message for Whites to hear. What is happening to the White
population of America is profoundly immoral. It's an important message because we Whites are
uniquely prone to framing our actions in moral terms. As often discussed here, a major weakness
of uniquely individualist culture characteristic of the West is that individualists are highly
prone to forming moral communities rather than
kinship-based communities typical of the rest of the world. It's a very exploitable weakness,
and our hostile elites have taken full advantage by defining the legitimate interests of Whites
as immoral, as Greenblatt and Harris do. Moral communities are fine as long as they serve the
community's interests, and in the long history of the West, they have indeed been a strength.
But the problem now is that the people who define the moral communities of
the West since World War are the hostile elite who have shaped academic and media culture,
i.e., strongly identified Jews and Jewish-owned mainstream media like the New York
Times. So now a substantial proportion of Whites think it's a moral imperative to replace
the White population. No other culture anywhere at any time has ever felt a moral imperative to
replace its founding population.
However, the best part about Tucker's monologue was that he confronted the ADL directly by
highlighting their lack of principle. Confronting any powerful Jewish organization is virtually
unheard of in American media and political culture where groveling, apologies, and firing are
the norm. And he chose a particularly glaring weakness in Jewish rationalizations of the
adversarial culture they have championed in the U.S.: Jewish hypocrisy in claiming the moral
high ground in America by insisting that any opposition to immigration is racist and hence
immoral, while legitimizing Israel's ethnocentric immigration policy because it threatens the
legitimate interests of its Jewish population. In fact, these activist Jews are consummate
ethnic nationalists -- exactly what they condemn in White Americans. White Americans deserve
just what the ADL and the rest of the activist Jewish community want for Jews, a safe homeland
that remains theirs.
Granted, Carlson didn't mention that the ADL was leading the charge against him, but anyone
paying the least bit of attention to this episode knows damn well that the ADL is leading the
campaign against him. Carlson quoted from the ADL website:
With historically high birth rates among Palestinians, and a possible influx of
Palestinian refugees and their descendants now living around the world, Jews would quickly be
a minority in a bi-national state, thus ending any semblance of equal representation and
protections. In this situation, the Jewish population would be politically -- and potentially
physically -- vulnerable. It is unreasonable and unrealistic to expect the Jewish population
to expect the state of Israel to voluntarily subvert its own sovereign existence and national
identity and become a vulnerable minority in what was once its own territory.
This is another recurrent theme on TOO -- that the traditional White majority will
become a hated and oppressed minority ( 58 articles )
because of the immigration of non-Whites in a culture dominated by an elite with a long history
of hatred toward the White majority of the U.S. We already see a multitude of examples of
hatred toward Whites emanating from the elite media, liberal-left politicians, and just
ordinary non-Whites (like this one from James
Edwards on Twitter), and hate crimes against Whites are ignored or quickly buried. Why would
anyone think this will stop if and when Whites become a minority? It will increase. But the ADL
thinks that Jews, who have been and continue to
be the leading force enacting a multicultural United States, beginning with their
influence in passing the
1965 immigration law , should retain sovereignty in Israel because ceding sovereignty would
be dangerous for Jews. This is massively hypocritical, as Tucker implies, and he invited
Greenblatt on his show to explain why the same principles that he champions for Israel should
not exist in the United States. I rather doubt that will happen.
In fact, Greenblatt repeated his attacks on Carlson in a letter to
Fox News , demanding that he be fired while never mentioning that Carlson had broached the
hypocrisy of the ADL. Pretty clearly he wants to avoid the issue like the plague. Fox News CEO
Lachlan Murdoch responded with a typical mainstream media mantra: "Fox Corporation shares your
values and abhors anti-semitism, white supremacy and racism of any kind." But he rejected the
argument that Carlson had endorsed "anti-semitism, white supremacy and racism," retreating to
Carlson's original voting rights argument. Always a safe move to refuse to avoid issues that
vitally affect White America by presenting them in non-racial terms.
In his letter to Murdoch, Greenblatt claimed that Carlson "did not accidentally echo these
talking points; he knowingly escalated this well-worn racist rhetoric. At a time of intense
polarization, this kind of rhetoric galvanizes extremists and lights the fire of violence."
Intense polarization indeed. That's what happens when there is a powerful attempt to
dispossess the founding population of the country. Ultimately the polarization is a result of
Jewish activism which has been a necessary condition for the immigration and multiculturalism
that is tearing the country apart.
Greenblatt thinks that Tucker's message will galvanize "extremists." Let's hope that it does
indeed galvanize the White population. In any case, it's important for Carlson to not let this
issue drop. It was courageous of him to broach the issue, but it needs to be repeated, just as
the messages of the left on race and multiculturalism are continually repeated on TV, movies,
print media, and throughout the educational system.
Individualists are less naturally ethnocentric, and the left has created a culture that
encourages Whites to inhibit expressions of ethnocentrism while encouraging non-Whites to be
ethnocentric. Because the media is dominated by the left and because even the conservative
media is terrified of appearing to advocate White interests, explicit messages that would
encourage Whites to become angry and fearful about their future as a minority are rare [and
when they occur, they are subjected to vicious attacks, as has happened to Carlson]. Indeed,
the media rarely, if ever, mentions that Whites are well on their way to becoming a minority.
And this for good reason: Whites in the United States and in Canada who are given explicit
demographic projections of a time when Whites are no longer a majority tend to feel angry and
fearful. They are also more likely to identify as Whites and have sympathy for other Whites.
[1]
In other words, while I have emphasized the ability of the higher brain centers to inhibit
ethnocentrism, explicit messages indicating that one's racial group is threatened are able to
trigger ethnocentrism. This is especially important because many Whites live far from the
areas of their countries undergoing the demographic shifts. Their day-to-day life of living
in an essentially White environment hasn't changed while the population centers of New York,
California, Toronto, and Vancouver have changed beyond all recognition from what they were 50
years ago. An obvious inference to be made is that pro-White activists should appeal to
Whites' higher brain centers with explicit messages emphasizing these transformations.
White replacement is our most powerful message. Let's hope Tucker continues to repeat it. We
certainly will.
Note
[1] H. Robert Outten, Michael T. Schmitt, and Daniel A. Miller, "Feeling threatened about
the future: Whites' emotional reactions to anticipated ethnic demographic changes,"
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 38 (2011): 14–25.
Go Tucker Go.There is a lot of room to advance on this front. It shouldn't take much more
to expose the complete hypocrisy of their argument,but what has being right got to do with
it? We're talking about trillions upon trillions of "wealth,"not, "debt" and the self
absorbed,egotistical materialists will do everything under the sun to continue ignoring
reality,i.e.humanity.Money is "the GOD"and nobody should get in the way of "the PROPHET$"
that assumed divine authority after the black book was written.Gold, diamonds,private
jets,yachts,islands and lots of "faithful followers" to do all the work. They will
assassinate anything that threatens "THIS"religion,good luck.
Tuck has the moral high ground ..not only are we being replaced ..but Greenblatt's buddies
GLOAT openly about our replacement ..that doesn't really seem like being a light unto the
nations.
For a long time, Tucker has been more than just a political talk show host. He's become a
Man on a Mission; even more so since Biden's enablers stole what was left of our "democracy,"
and fixed November's election. Will Fox fire him due to growing Corporate and Jewish
pressure, or will the Murdoch's continue to have the guts to back him?
No one can know for sure. But Tucker, to a large extent, has Fox News over a barrel. He's
even recently expanded his reach, with his newest show on the subscription based Fox Nation,
where he is able to do long form interviews without commercial interruption. The Murdoch's
must be keenly aware that, if they fire their number one ratings star, they've just flushed
their consistently most watched cable news network down the toilet.
There's another huge issue, never mentioned on TV except with derision, that I'd love to
see Tucker address one day soon: SECESSION! It's the only way forward.
I think ol' Tucker may have bit off more than he can chew on this one. He touched the 3rd
rail pretty strongly on live TV and Big Jew doesn't like that whatsoever. Given that Israel
is supported by both right leaning Neocons and the more liberal Jonathan Greenblatts of the
world his days may truly be numbered now.
Tucker does a good job of poking holes in idiotic liberalism. However, I think it is
interesting that almost no one mentions the elephant in the room, which is that whites went
from a fertility rate of 3.7 to 1.7 in the space of 60 years. Americans in general started
murdering their babies, and swallowed all the jewish lies and "isms" hook, line and sinker.
That is why you have lost your country. The brown tide is a symptom of the problem, not the
cause. The problem is a nation given over to greed, foolishness, and perversion.
Since she first appeared as a talk show host on MSNBC during Obama's first presidential
campaign, Rachel Maddow has been bragging about how Democrats were going to ascend to a
permanent majority in the Congress and permanently control the presidency by virtue of
unhindered "minority" migration into this country. The concept had been floated before by
numerous analysts and even termed the "Reconquista" which Hispanic spokespersons
enthusiastically embraced as the rightful recovery of their stolen patrimony from the
Gringos.
I distinctly recall Maddow gloating about this anticipated outcome night after night while
she demeaned the incipient shrinkage of a "rump Republican Party" to complete irrelevance
when this desired scenario came to pass. She spoke excitedly about recruiting not only the
tidal wave of Hispanic migrants into the Democratic fold to cohabit with the long loyal
blacks, but also assumed that every foreigner, including all Orientals, East Indians, Middle
Easterners and Black Africans should naturally ally with the liberal Dem philosophies:
literally every immigrant but White Europeans (the "Eurotrash") would be a part of the coming
new Democratic Golden Age.
Nobody on the left ever thought of calling her and her bigoted ideas to be "racist," and
she is never called out for being "racist" when she spouts her totally hysterical
over-the-top Russophobia (or is "Russophrenia" a more correct descriptor?). Why doesn't the
ADL pick a bone with her while they are attacking Tucker Carlson who has always been much
less excitable and far more logical that Maddow even when she is sober and not fixing mixed
drinks on air.
A newly formed "America First Caucus" in Congress, supported by a
few far-right Republicans in the House of Representatives, is looking to recruit new
members with an old set of arguments.
These white nationalist tropes found a receptive audience in the American people.
Its platform, now circulating in Washington, is little more than a retread of the white
nationalist screeds of the 1910s and 1920s.
"America is a nation with a border, and a culture, strengthened by a common respect for
uniquely Anglo-Saxon traditions," asserts the section on immigration. "History has shown that
societal trust and political unity are threatened when foreign citizens are imported en-masse
into a country."
A century ago, these same sorts of arguments about the "Anglo-Saxon" character of the United
States and the threat that "foreign" elements would bring to its politics and culture were
quite widespread.
... ... ...
The popular panic over immigration and the pseudo-scientific justifications for nativism and
racism came together in the push for the National Origins Act of 1924, a quota-based measure
that drastically reduced immigration from southeastern Europe and banned all Asians from
immigrating entirely.
Kevin M. Kruse is a professor of history at Princeton University. A specialist in modern
American political, social and urban/suburban history, he is the author and editor of several
books, including "White Flight" (2005), "One Nation Under God" (2015) and "Fault Lines: A
History of the United States since 1974" (2019). He grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, and earned
his bachelor's degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his master's and
doctoral degrees from Cornell University.
I wrote a post on the above-mentioned subject but I deleted it. I will not discuss the
demonisation of White heterosexual Males in all its forms for fear of cancellation. I will
instead leave you with my conclusions – which are consistent with The Walrus Law;
Governments achieve the reverse of their stated objectives.
Conclusion 1. No white male corporate manager is going to risk their career by engaging in
any of the following actions:
– Mentoring female subordinates.
– Taking one on one meetings with any female.
– Participating in any but the most innocuous social functions with female subordinates
and certainly not where alcohol is present.
– In fact avoiding any one on one situation with a female.
– It also stands to reason that women will not be employed or promoted if sufficient
excuse can be found. There wasn't a glass ceiling. There is now.
Why? Because a female subordinate can now permanently end a males career in a microsecond by
the act of alleging any impropriety thanks to #metoo. No proof is required.
Conclusion 2. The British/ European/ American class system is coming back with a vengeance.
Young men and their parents will confine their search for partners and social interactions, to
females of the same social strata, values, financial resources and background as their own.
This is not a guarantee of marital harmony, It does however decrease the likelihood of a male
being accused of relationship and career destroying improprieties twenty years after the
alleged event. You can forget marrying 'for love' outside your social class.
Conclusion 3. Male behaviour in the upper and middle classes is indeed going to change. We
will witness the return of the Chaperone for males. We will witness the end of many mixed sex
parties and entertainments because of the ever present threat of denouncement. Expect single
sex private schools to flourish. Co -education is an invitation for a young males career to be
finished before it even starts – all it takes these days is an allegation made perhaps
years and years after the alleged "event". The first a young male will know about it is when he
is arrested and handcuffed.
Conclusion 4. The nature of families is going to change. We are going to see the return of
stereotyped roles. Case in point? As a Grandfather I have decided I will have nothing more to
do with the informal upbringing of grand daughters – there is too much risk that if they
go off the rails in puberty or get involved in drugs, mental illness, etc. they will
conveniently blame sexual abuse by a relative as the cause. That means I will never allow
myself to be alone with them or be responsible for them ever and the rest of the family know
it. Period. The personal risk is just too great
I have examples to back up each conclusion but I will not share them with you.
I have not addressed the American race and firearm based issues but I would expect that
changes to firearm laws and characterisation of various behaviors as "extremist' will also have
the same opposite effect from what Government intended.
Indeed. I suspect that if I were of dating age (and single) today I would go on to die
celibate. A minority of women have made engaging with the entire gender entirely too
dangerous.
Reply
We are an adaptive bunch; witness how successful Prohibition was, or the alleged 'War on
Drugs'. Look at how Trumps border wall was rapidly shot to hell with a few acetylene
torches and some hinges – making really nice gates for the coyotes to run people
through.
It's interesting that there is no actual, physical way that the number of guns out here
'in the wild' is even known, much less can be seized. Guns can be seized by the
ATF/FBI/etc. making a huge raid on a single family and killing them all as examples –
but once that card is played, the ante will be upped and things will not be as easy for
them. The gun grabbers are literally about 200 years too late, as the gun cow is long out
of the barn.
The Covidian Cult is waning finally – in spite of the push by the globalist CDC,
WHO, Big Pharma, MSM and many others. It's hard to push fear of dying when there is nothing
to base it on any longer.
So now we are back to Ukraine, where Biden is both well known and well connected. Russia
will swat anything approaching her borders, and may swat hard. I would not be surprised to
see our puny couple of ships in their sea crippled electronically, again. But Russia
doesn't want what NATO and Biden are serving for dinner.
It's the same old SSDD of world ending disasters to keep everyone afraid of everyone
else while the big wheels in government are sending contracts out to their family members
and their various foundations using money leveraged against our grandkids.
57 genders; women cannot be approached without opening yourself to legal actions and yet
they are all in the military and government positions in far larger percentages than people
realize. Our local school principal was recently accused of "inappropriate conduct" with a
female teacher who is so obese she requires an electric scooter to move her bulk about.
Having actually seen this female, it was obvious to me, as a man with normal appetites,
that approaching her would have resulted in disgorgement of the previous meal and not
engorgement of anything.
It's human nature that when you forbid something unilaterally, it becomes more
attractive to many, just for the sake of flouting convention. Perhaps that is what the
morbidly obese teacher is striving for?
We are entering the Land of Unintended Consequences, and there is no way but
through.
Not only was the March payrolls report a blockbuster, golidlocks number, much higher than expected but not
too
high
to spark immediate reflation/hike fears thanks to subdued wage inflation, job growth in March was also widespread unlike
February, where 75% of all new jobs
were
waiters and bartenders
. By contrast, in March the largest gains occurring across most industries with the bulk taking
place in leisure and hospitality, public and private education, and construction.
Here is a full breakdown:
Employment in leisure and hospitality increased by 280,000 in March,
as
pandemic-related restrictions eased in many parts of the country. Nearly two-thirds of the increase was in food services
and drinking places (+176,000). Job gains also occurred in arts, entertainment, and recreation (+64,000) and in
accommodation (+40,000). Employment in leisure and hospitality is down by 3.1 million, or 18.5 percent, since February
2020.
In March, employment increased in both public and private education,
reflecting
the continued resumption of in-person learning and other school-related activities in many parts of the country. Employment
rose by 76,000 in local government education, by 50,000 in state government education, and by 64,000 in private education.
Employment is down from February 2020 in local government education (-594,000), state government education (-270,000), and
private education (-310,000).
Construction added 110,000 jobs in March,
following job losses in the
previous month (-56,000) that were likely weather-related. Employment growth in the industry was widespread in March, with
gains of 65,000 in specialty trade contractors, 27,000 in heavy and civil engineering construction, and 18,000 in
construction of buildings. Employment in construction is 182,000 below its February 2020 level.
Employment in professional and business services rose by 66,000 over the month.
In
March, employment in administrative and support services continued to trend up (+37,000), although employment in its
temporary help services component was essentially unchanged. Employment also continued on an upward trend in management and
technical consulting services (+8,000) and in computer systems design and related services (+6,000).
Manufacturing employment rose by 53,000 in March,
with job gains occurring
in both durable goods (+30,000) and nondurable goods (+23,000). Employment in manufacturing is down by 515,000 since
February 2020.
Transportation and warehousing added 48,000 jobs in March.
Employment
increased in couriers and messengers (+17,000), transit and ground passenger transportation (+13,000), support activities
for transportation (+6,000), and air transportation (+6,000). Since February 2020, employment in couriers and messengers is
up by 206,000 (or 23.3 percent), while employment is down by 112,000 (or 22.8 percent) in transit and ground passenger
transportation and by 104,000 (or 20.1 percent) in air transportation.
Employment in the other services industry increased by 42,000 over the month,
reflecting
job gains in personal and laundry services (+19,000) and in repair and maintenance (+18,000). Employment in other services
is down by 396,000 since February 2020.
Social assistance added 25,000 jobs in March,
mostly in individual and
family services (+20,000). Employment in social assistance is 306,000 lower than in February 2020.
Employment in wholesale trade increased by 24,000 in March,
with job gains
in both durable goods (+14,000) and nondurable goods (+10,000). Employment in wholesale trade is 234,000 lower than in
February 2020.
Retail trade added 23,000 jobs in March.
Job growth in clothing and
clothing accessories stores (+16,000), motor vehicle and parts dealers (+13,000), and furniture and home furnishing stores
(+6,000) was partially offset by losses in building material and garden supply stores (-9,000) and general merchandise
stores (-7,000). Employment in retail trade is 381,000 below its February 2020 level.
Employment in mining rose by 21,000 in March,
in support activities for
mining (+19,000). Mining employment is down by 130,000 since a peak in January 2019.
Financial activities added 16,000 jobs in March.
Job gains in insurance
carriers and related activities (+11,000) and real estate (+10,000) more than offset losses in credit intermediation and
related activities (-7,000). Financial activities has 87,000 fewer jobs than in February 2020.
It's hardly a surprise that with the US reopening, the one industry seeing the biggest hiring remains leisure and hospitality
where jobs rose by 280,000, as pandemic-related restrictions eased in many parts of the country, with nearly two-thirds of the
increase in "food services and drinking places", i.e., waiters and bartenders, which added +176,000 jobs in March.
And another notable change was in the total number of government workers, which surged by 136K in March, reversing the 90K
drop in February, as a result of 49.6K state education workers and 76K local government education workers added thanks to the
reopening of schools around the country.
Here is a visual breakdown of all the March job changes:
Finally,
courtesy
of Bloomberg
, below are the industries with the highest and lowest rates of employment growth for the most recent month.
7
play_arrow
Jack Offelday
1 hour ago
The "V" recovery. Where Food Service jobs are the new "Golden Age".
Creamaster
47 minutes ago
(Edited)
My wife is a nurse in an outpatient office under a large hospital umbrella here. Normally these outpatient
spots go within days to a week.
Currently they have 2 openings they have been trying to fill for a few months now. Combine that with the
fact my wife got 3 years worth of raises in a single shot, recently and out of the blue for no reason, tells
me the hospitla is really screwed trying to fill nursing spots.
After this pandemic crap, it has likely scared alot of people away from entering healthcare, and if a nurse
was on the fence about retirement , likely decided to call it quits after all this BS.
newworldorder
45 minutes ago
There are an estimated, 30 million illegals currently in the USA waiting legalization.
WHEN legalization happens, they will bring into the USA (by historical averages,) another 60 to 90 million
of their family members in 10 years.
And all of them US Minority workers, by current US Diversity Laws, - same as all Black Americans.
Medicaid
expansion enrollment grew nearly 30% year-over-year in 19-state sample, Andrew Sprung,
XPOSTFACTOID, March 17, 2021
An update on Medicaid expansion enrollment growth since the pandemic struck. Below is a
sampling of 19 expansion states through January of this year, and 14 states through
February.
Maintaining the assumption, explained here ,
"relatively slow growth in California would push the national total down by about 2.5
percentage points." These tallies still point to year-over-year enrollment growth of
approximately 30% from February 2020 to February 2021.
If that's right, then Medicaid enrollment among those rendered eligible by ACA expansion
criteria (adults with income up to 138% FPL) may exceed 19 million nationally and may be
pushing 20 million. Assuming the sampling of a bit more than a third of total expansion
enrollment represents all expansion states more or less and again accounting for slower growth
in California.
"... Last week was the 53rd straight week total initial claims were greater than the second-worst week of the Great Recession. (If that comparison is restricted to regular state claims -- because we didn't have PUA in the Great Recession -- initial claims are still greater than the 14th worst week of the Great Recession.) ..."
One year ago this week, when the first sky-high unemployment insurance (UI) claims data of the pandemic were released, I said
"
I
have been a labor economist for a very long time and have never seen anything like this
." But in the weeks that followed,
things got worse before they got better -- and we are not out of the woods yet.
Last
week -- the week ending March 20, 2021 -- another 926,000 people applied for UI. This included 684,000 people who applied for
regular state UI and 242,000 who applied for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA), the federal program for workers who are
not eligible for regular unemployment insurance, like gig workers.
Last week was the 53rd straight week total initial claims were greater than the second-worst week of the Great Recession. (If
that comparison is restricted to regular state claims -- because we didn't have PUA in the Great Recession -- initial
claims are still greater than the 14th worst week of the Great Recession.)
Figure A
shows continuing claims in all programs over time (the latest data for this are for March 6). Continuing claims
are currently nearly 17 million above where they were a year ago, just before the virus hit.
FIGURE A
Continuing unemployment claims in all programs, March 23, 2019–March 6, 2021
*Use
caution interpreting trends over time because of reporting issues (see below)*
Date
Regular state UI
PEUC
PUA
Other programs (mostly EB and STC)
2019-03-23
1,905,627
31,510
2019-03-30
1,858,954
31,446
2019-04-06
1,727,261
30,454
2019-04-13
1,700,689
30,404
2019-04-20
1,645,387
28,281
2019-04-27
1,630,382
29,795
2019-05-04
1,536,652
27,937
2019-05-11
1,540,486
28,727
2019-05-18
1,506,501
27,949
2019-05-25
1,519,345
26,263
2019-06-01
1,535,572
26,905
2019-06-08
1,520,520
25,694
2019-06-15
1,556,252
26,057
2019-06-22
1,586,714
25,409
2019-06-29
1,608,769
23,926
2019-07-06
1,700,329
25,630
2019-07-13
1,694,876
27,169
2019-07-20
1,676,883
30,390
2019-07-27
1,662,427
28,319
2019-08-03
1,676,979
27,403
2019-08-10
1,616,985
27,330
2019-08-17
1,613,394
26,234
2019-08-24
1,564,203
27,253
2019-08-31
1,473,997
25,003
2019-09-07
1,462,776
25,909
2019-09-14
1,397,267
26,699
2019-09-21
1,380,668
26,641
2019-09-28
1,390,061
25,460
2019-10-05
1,366,978
26,977
2019-10-12
1,384,208
27,501
2019-10-19
1,416,816
28,088
2019-10-26
1,420,918
28,576
2019-11-02
1,447,411
29,080
2019-11-09
1,457,789
30,024
2019-11-16
1,541,860
31,593
2019-11-23
1,505,742
29,499
2019-11-30
1,752,141
30,315
2019-12-07
1,725,237
32,895
2019-12-14
1,796,247
31,893
2019-12-21
1,773,949
29,888
2019-12-28
2,143,802
32,517
2020-01-04
2,245,684
32,520
2020-01-11
2,137,910
33,882
2020-01-18
2,075,857
32,625
2020-01-25
2,148,764
35,828
2020-02-01
2,084,204
33,884
2020-02-08
2,095,001
35,605
2020-02-15
2,057,774
34,683
2020-02-22
2,101,301
35,440
2020-02-29
2,054,129
33,053
2020-03-07
1,973,560
32,803
2020-03-14
2,071,070
34,149
2020-03-21
3,410,969
36,758
2020-03-28
8,158,043
0
52,494
48,963
2020-04-04
12,444,309
3,802
69,537
64,201
2020-04-11
16,249,334
31,426
216,481
89,915
2020-04-18
17,756,054
63,720
1,172,238
116,162
2020-04-25
21,723,230
91,724
3,629,986
158,031
2020-05-02
20,823,294
173,760
6,361,532
175,289
2020-05-09
22,725,217
252,257
8,120,137
216,576
2020-05-16
18,791,926
252,952
11,281,930
226,164
2020-05-23
19,022,578
546,065
10,010,509
247,595
2020-05-30
18,548,442
1,121,306
9,597,884
259,499
2020-06-06
18,330,293
885,802
11,359,389
325,282
2020-06-13
17,552,371
783,999
13,093,382
336,537
2020-06-20
17,316,689
867,675
14,203,555
392,042
2020-06-27
16,410,059
956,849
12,308,450
373,841
2020-07-04
17,188,908
964,744
13,549,797
495,296
2020-07-11
16,221,070
1,016,882
13,326,206
513,141
2020-07-18
16,691,210
1,122,677
13,259,954
518,584
2020-07-25
15,700,971
1,193,198
10,984,864
609,328
2020-08-01
15,112,240
1,262,021
11,504,089
433,416
2020-08-08
14,098,536
1,376,738
11,221,790
549,603
2020-08-15
13,792,016
1,381,317
13,841,939
469,028
2020-08-22
13,067,660
1,434,638
15,164,498
523,430
2020-08-29
13,283,721
1,547,611
14,786,785
490,514
2020-09-05
12,373,201
1,630,711
11,808,368
529,220
2020-09-12
12,363,489
1,832,754
12,153,925
510,610
2020-09-19
11,561,158
1,989,499
10,686,922
589,652
2020-09-26
10,172,332
2,824,685
10,978,217
579,582
2020-10-03
8,952,580
3,334,878
10,450,384
668,691
2020-10-10
8,038,175
3,711,089
10,622,725
615,066
2020-10-17
7,436,321
3,983,613
9,332,610
778,746
2020-10-24
6,837,941
4,143,389
9,433,127
746,403
2020-10-31
6,452,002
4,376,847
8,681,647
806,430
2020-11-07
6,037,690
4,509,284
9,147,753
757,496
2020-11-14
5,890,220
4,569,016
8,869,502
834,740
2020-11-21
5,213,781
4,532,876
8,555,763
741,078
2020-11-28
5,766,130
4,801,408
9,244,556
834,685
2020-12-05
5,457,941
4,793,230
9,271,112
841,463
2020-12-12
5,393,839
4,810,334
8,453,940
937,972
2020-12-19
5,205,841
4,491,413
8,383,387
1,070,810
2020-12-26
5,347,440
4,166,261
7,442,888
1,450,438
2021-01-02
5,727,359
3,026,952
5,707,397
1,526,887
2021-01-09
5,446,993
3,863,008
7,334,682
1,638,247
2021-01-16
5,188,211
3,604,894
7,218,801
1,826,573
2021-01-23
5,156,985
4,779,341
7,943,448
1,785,954
2021-01-30
5,003,178
4,062,189
7,685,857
1,590,360
2021-02-06
4,934,269
5,067,523
7,520,114
1,523,394
2021-02-13
4,794,195
4,468,389
7,329,172
1,437,170
2021-02-20
4,808,623
5,456,080
8,387,696
1,465,769
2021-02-27
4,457,888
4,816,523
7,616,593
1,237,929
2021-03-06
4,458,888
5,551,215
7,735,491
1,207,201
Other programs (mostly EB and STC)
PUA
PEUC
Regular
state UI
Jul
2019
Jan
2020
Jul
2020
Jan
2021
0
10,000,000
20,000,000
30,000,000
40,000,000
Chart
Data
Caution:
Trends over time in PUA claims may be distorted because when an individual is owed retroactive
payments, some states report all retroactive PUA claims during the week the individual received their
payment.
The good news in all of this
is
Congress's passage of the sweeping $1.9 trillion relief and recovery package. It is both providing crucial support to millions
of working families and setting the stage for a robust recovery. One big concern, however, is that the bill's
UI
provisions
are
set to expire the first week in September, when, even in the best–case scenario, they will still be needed. By then, Congress
needs to have put in place long-run UI reforms that include automatic triggers based on economic conditions.
"... freedom is material: a human being must be free from material privation, here and now, in life (and not in the mythical afterlife of reincarnation) in order to be really free. In other words, freedom from need is true freedom. ..."
Marx's concept of freedom is completely different from the liberal or pre-liberal concepts
of freedom. For Marx, freedom is material: a human being must be free from material
privation, here and now, in life (and not in the mythical afterlife of reincarnation) in
order to be really free. In other words, freedom from need is true freedom.
Human beings can only be materially free. Don't fall for the moral victories of
liberalism, the snake oil salesmen's promise of a spot in Paradise from the Abrahamics or the
nihilist bullshittery from the Buddhists et al.
Excellent point by vk here. Despite sometimes pretending to myself that I am a Buddhist (I
am really good at meditating!), real freedom is being free from need. Abstract and
metaphysical "freedoms" are luxuries of the wealthy that few under the thumb of the
empire can afford.
I have been surprised by the explosion in the numbers of people locally living in cars and
vans lately. I guess from my Buddhist perspective they have been freed from the attachment to
a residence. Who could have guessed that capitalism would be such a good teacher of the path
to enlightenment?
It's freedom from Want. The Four Freedoms as articulated by FDR in 1941 were:
1.Freedom of speech
2.Freedom of worship
3.Freedom from want
4.Freedom from fear
Earlier this year on the 80th anniversary of FDR's speech, I wrote a series of comments on
the topic. They remain the four main tasks needing to be accomplished for the Common Man to
be genuinely free. At the time, they were to be the main goals of WW2; goals that were
further articulated by Henry Wallace in 1942 & '43 in his speeches and writings.
Currently, several nations have accomplished those four goals; none of them is a
NATO/Neoliberal nation however.
Contrary to the previous immigrants - who were economic immigrants (not religious
immigrants, as the official history of the USA states) - the post-war immigrants to the USA
are all political immigrants. They're the remnants of South Vietnam, Kuomintang, South Korea,
Mensheviks, Refuseniks, Zionism, Batista's Cuba, Latin American comprador elites. I remember
that once Hugo Chávez or the then president of Ecuador claimed that in Florida alone
were more than 2,000 wanted people (most of them compradores and generals) enjoying political
refugee status.
The only exception to the rule are the Mexican immigrants and some Central American
immigrants (El Salvador, Guatemala in some cases), which had their economies dollarized or
devastated by the advent of NAFTA, and were by chance close to the USA's territory.
"... By Guy Standing, Professorial Research Associate, SOAS University of London, Fellow of the UK Academy of Social Sciences, and co-founder and honorary co-president of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN). Subjects of recent books include basic income, rentier capitalism and the growing precariat. He is a council member of the Progressive Economy Forum. Originally published at Open Democracy . ..."
"... the precariat was evolving as a class-in-the-making. ..."
"... we should interpret what Karl Polanyi was to call the Great Transformation as beginning with a period of dis-embeddedness, when the old social formation with its specific systems of regulation, social protection and redistribution was being dismantled mainly by the interests of financial capital, guided by an ideology of laissez-faire liberalism ..."
"... "For the proletariat, the norm was and is to be in a stable job. There is nothing labourists love more than to have as many people as possible in jobs. They romanticise being in a job, promising Full Employment, and quietly resorting to workfare. They conveniently forget that being in a job is being in a position of subordination and fail to recall Marx's depiction of labour in jobs as 'active alienation'." ..."
"... Though for most of the 1848-1945 period, its not really true. The proletariat of Capital and Condition of the Working Class in England had an existence as precarious as today's precariat. Indeed, this was one of the things driving the growing militance. There was little in the way of a consumer goods industry selling to proletarians because until quite late in the 19th century the entire wages of all but the skilled and fortunate went for subsistence. ..."
"... A side note: my understanding is that classical Marxism's worry about the lumpenproletariat, aka a "reactionary mass," was based on the observation that their services could be bought to form King and Country mobs to attack working class organizations, along with serving as pogrom foot soldiers. Part of that function was superseded by the formation of regular armies of domestic occupation, aka the police. ..."
"... By complicating basic class analysis with an elaborate class structure, with the revolution to be led by a minority of young, educated 'progressive' precariats, he may be setting the stage for fragmentation of the Left, and further massive losses for workers. ..."
"... being drawn into platform capitalism, as 'concierge' or cloud taskers, controlled and manipulated by apps and other labour brokers. Above all, they are being gradually habituated to precariatisation, told to put up with a norm of unstable task-driven bits-and-pieces existence. ..."
"... That passage called to mind the increasing use by universities of adjunct faculty positions, which are the very definition of precarious. In recent days the was a report of the dismissal of tenured faculty by a college in New York State, whose name escapes me. ..."
"... I could see the 'Go Fund Me' phenomena for Medical (or just groceries, etc) costs in this thought:(my bold) ..."
"... Those characteristics are bad enough. But it is the distinctive relations to the state that most define the precariat. The precariat are denizens rather than citizens, meaning that they are losing or not gaining the rights and entitlements of citizens . Above all, they are reduced to being supplicants, dependent on the discretionary benevolence of landlords, employers, parents, charities and strangers, showing them pity. ..."
"... The writer of this article seems to be very optimistic, celebratory even when it comes to the insecurity of the precariat. It isn't difficult to romanticize the power and the potential of people suffering extreme insecurity when your employment and your social status are linked to the privileges of the (Left or Right) political elite ..."
"... Open Democracy is a Soros organ. Which immediately brings to mind the aspect of our precarious position that the author does not address or even allude to: the nexus of financial, media and paramilitary power that is the "Deep State" or the Spook Apparat if you will. ..."
"... Much of what Standing refers to as the Precariat is basically just the Proletariat yet again. ..."
"... Now that I know it's an Open Democracy piece, I suppose that it's meant to soften the blow of prolonged, steep unemployment and to desensitize people to the pain of "doing more with less" (as the tippytopp rakes it in) by calling it an Arts & Leisure Society. ..."
"... I must agree with DJG, Reality Czar's and others similar take. The writer of this article seems to be very optimistic, celebratory even when it comes to the insecurity of the precariat. It isn't difficult to romanticize the power and the potential of people suffering extreme insecurity when your employment and your social status are linked to the privileges of the (Left or Right) political elite, and when you are a (most likely well paid) participant in the current political system, by working closely with the leadership of one of the bigger old political parties while holding positions that come with stable income if not fungible prestige ["Professorial Research Associate, SOAS University of London, Fellow of the UK Academy of Social Sciences, and co-founder and honorary co-president of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN)]. ..."
"... "a giant suction pump had by 1929 to 1930 drawn into a few hands an increasing proportion of currently produced wealth. This served then as capital accumulations. But by taking purchasing power out of the hands of mass consumers, the savers denied themselves the kind of effective demand for their products which would justify reinvestment of the capital accumulation in new plants. In consequence as in a poker game where the chips were concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, the other fellows could stay in the game only by borrowing. When the credit ran out, the game stopped" ..."
"... "The other fellows could stay in the game only by borrowing." ..."
"... "When the credit ran out, the game stopped" ..."
"... Revolt of the Public ..."
"... Can't Get You Outta My Head ..."
"... Charter for the Precariat ..."
"... "The labour and time of the poor is in civilised countries sacrificed to the maintaining of the rich in ease and luxury. The Landlord is maintained in idleness and luxury by the labour of his tenants. The moneyed man is supported by his extractions from the industrious merchant and the needy who are obliged to support him in ease by a return for the use of his money. But every savage has the full fruits of his own labours; there are no landlords, no usurers and no tax gatherers." ..."
"... "All for ourselves, and nothing for other people seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind." ..."
"... "The interest of the landlords is always opposed to the interest of every other class in the community" ..."
"... The labourers had before 25 The landlords 25 And the capitalists 50 .. 100 ..."
"... Framing Corbyn's election defeat as a failure to understand the needs of the "Labour" electorate, and hence supporting Standing's premise, whilst totally ignoring the fact that Corbyn was hammered by the powers of the right, BBC, MSM, Israel etc etc is totally disingenuous and seems to me to be a case of very sour grapes. ..."
Lambert here: A dense treatment of a subject of burning concern.
By Guy Standing, Professorial Research Associate, SOAS University of London, Fellow of the UK Academy of Social Sciences,
and co-founder and honorary co-president of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN). Subjects of recent books include basic income,
rentier capitalism and the growing precariat. He is a council member of the Progressive Economy Forum.
Originally published at Open Democracy .
Transformations tend to go through several preliminary phases. In Britain, the 'dis-embedded' phase in the development of industrial
capitalism involved the Speenhamland system launched in 1795, the mass enclosures that created a proto-proletariat, and disruption
by a technological revolution. All this prompted a period of primitive rebels – those who know what they are against, but not agreed
on what they are for – in which protests were mainly against the breakdown of the previous social compact.
Those included the days-of-rage phase that culminated in the mass protest in Peterloo in 1819, brutally suppressed by the state,
and the Luddites, misrepresented ever since as being workers intent on smashing machines to halt 'progress', when in fact what they
were doing was protesting at the destruction of a way of living and working being done without a quid pro quo.
In my A Precariat Charter
written in 2014, sketching a precariat manifesto for today's Global Transformation, I concluded by citing the stanza from Shelley's
The Masque of Anarchy
, written in reaction to the Peterloo massacre. Jeremy Corbyn was later to cite it in his campaign speech of 2017, which James Schneider
recalls in his contribution
to this debate . Shelley expressed it in class, not populist terms, as I did, in my case signifying that the precariat was
evolving as a class-in-the-making. Corbyn seems to have expressed it in support of a left populism.
Until his drowning at an early age, Shelley along with Byron and other artists of that era, including Mozart, were railing against
the bourgeoisie, which is why Mozart and Byron were both drawn to the Don Juan/Don Giovanni theme. The Romantics failed to arrest
the march of industrial capitalism but their art put out a marker for the future counter movement.
The UK and 'Decent Labour'
The trouble was that at the time the emerging mass 'working class', the proletariat, had not yet taken shape as a class-for-itself,
and was not ready to do so until late in the century. Three other primitive rebel events should be read into the narrative – the
pink revolutions of 1848, often called the Springtime of the Peoples, wrongly seen by some at the time as presaging the proletarian
revolution, the brave prolonged activities of the Chartists in the 1830s and 1840s, which advanced the cause of political democracy
despite defeat, and the upheavals in the 1890s that the left have tended to underplay.
The latter marked an enormous historical error by 'the left'. It is why the term 'dangerous class' was in the sub-title of my
The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class
, published in early 2011. Although some Marxists have used it to describe the 'lumpen proletariat', the term 'dangerous class' was
used in the nineteenth century to describe those who were in neither the bourgeoisie nor the emerging proletariat. They were the
craftsmen, artisans, street traders and artists, from whose ranks came the leading figures articulating a version of socialism as
rejection of labourism – freedom from labour, freedom to work and to leisure (reviving ideas of ancient Greece, embracing schole
).
In the 1890s, against William Morris and colleagues, including some anarchists, who championed that emancipatory vision, were
the labourists, state socialists, Fabians and others who wanted to generalise decent labour. By the turn of the twentieth century,
the latter had triumphed and marched forward in labour unions, social democratic parties and Leninism, even though most of the first
batch of Labour MPs in 1906, when asked by an enterprising journalist what book had most influenced them, mentioned John Ruskin's
Unto This Last , not anything by Karl Marx.
So, we should interpret what Karl Polanyi was to call the Great Transformation as beginning with a period of dis-embeddedness,
when the old social formation with its specific systems of regulation, social protection and redistribution was being dismantled
mainly by the interests of financial capital, guided by an ideology of laissez-faire liberalism .
This produced growing structural insecurities, inequalities, stress, precarity, technological disruption, debt and ecological
destruction, culminating in an era of war, pandemics – most relevantly, the Spanish flu of 1918-1920, which may have killed 50 million
people – and the Great Depression.
... ... ...
...Donald Trump epitomised the rentiers; he used anti-establishment rhetoric but jealously preserved and advanced the interests
of the rent-seeking plutocracy. He never followed a neo-liberal economic agenda. He stood for mercantilism in foreign economic strategy
and for rentiers eager to plunder the commons domestically, while pursuing a pluto-populist fiscal policy. It is better to see his
era in Gramscian terms, a malignancy of a class-based system in deepening if not terminal crisis.
"For the proletariat, the norm was and is to be in a stable job. There is nothing labourists love more than to have as many
people as possible in jobs. They romanticise being in a job, promising Full Employment, and quietly resorting to workfare. They
conveniently forget that being in a job is being in a position of subordination and fail to recall Marx's depiction of labour
in jobs as 'active alienation'."
Yep, large scale wage-slavery is not something to be embraced but something to be abolished.
Indeed, per the Bible, wage-slavery was the EXCEPTION, not the rule, for Hebrews in ancient Israel with roughly equal ownership
of the means of production being the rule. Yet this was NOT communism since the means of production were individually owned, and
not by the State, which didn't even exist for 400 years or so.
So accepting wage-slavery as some kind of norm is to concede way too much, Biblically speaking.
An "eved" in the Hebrew bible is not really the same thing as a wage slave. The first time slavery is discussed in the Book
of the Covenant following the Ten Commandments in Exodus, the only limitation is 7 years. There was no requirement to pay the
slave anything. This is modified in the "Second Law" in Deuteronomy where the master is required to pay the slave some compensation
upon the end of the 7 years, but not before. And these "eveds" were only the Hebrew slaves. Foreigners (goys) were slaves for
life, but since neither Israel nor Judah won many wars, there were probably never that many foreign slaves anyway.
I'm using "wage-slavery" in the more general sense that if one does not own assets (impossible for a Hebrew in Israel/Judah
for more than 49 years (cf. Leviticus 25)) then one was de facto either a beggar or forced to live as a scavenger in the wilderness
OR forced to work for wages.
As for foreign "permanent slaves", this is in conflict with no Hebrew OR CONVERT(?) could be held for more than 6 years as
a well-treated indentured servant to be released, well provisioned, in the 7th year. So "permanent slavery" of foreigners was
plausibly, imo, a conversion strategy (see Deuteronomy 23:3-7).
Not that the Old Testament is authoritative for Christians since the New Testament but can't we do at least as well wrt economic
justice?
Though for most of the 1848-1945 period, its not really true. The proletariat of Capital and Condition of the Working Class
in England had an existence as precarious as today's precariat. Indeed, this was one of the things driving the growing militance.
There was little in the way of a consumer goods industry selling to proletarians because until quite late in the 19th century
the entire wages of all but the skilled and fortunate went for subsistence.
And until after the changes beginning with the New
Deal and consolidated in the war and postwar years, the end of a job meant the end of income, period.
One take would be that he underplays the interrelationship of class identity, class aspirations, and class struggle. This comes
out most clearly when he makes it seem as though mid-20th c social democracy lost a vision of the future through negligence, rather
than running up against resistance from capital that was gradually getting its ideological act together after the fascist period.
Strong class identity was contingent on a number of things, but one was maintaining labor militancy, MacAlevey's "strike muscle,"
and that became increasingly difficult, and not just because labor movement leadership went for business unionism.
The same applies to the present. The author seems hesitant to define what a Labor Vision should be now, and oscillates between
UBI and other ideas without directly discussing the intensity of resistance from capital that different programs would set off.
He might at least roll in Kalecki, as we so often do here, and with good reason. UBI will bring a very different response compared
to demands that threaten to supplant capital's control of investment decisions, the sphere of "management prerogative." And so
the author seems to be advocating fresh thinking without directly addressing what stands in its way, both the real threat of intensified
class conflict and how that has been "internalized" in various ways over the last 50 or so years.
A side note: my understanding is that classical Marxism's worry about the lumpenproletariat, aka a "reactionary mass," was
based on the observation that their services could be bought to form King and Country mobs to attack working class organizations,
along with serving as pogrom foot soldiers. Part of that function was superseded by the formation of regular armies of domestic
occupation, aka the police.
There is much substance here but it seems that Standing ignores the elephant in the room -- the role that the age of limits (resource,
environmental/climate change, economic/financial ) plays in the emergence of an era of rentier capitalism.
He says: "Reinventing the future, in class terms, has always been the primary task of 'the left'." But he is quick to condemn
"phoney dualism of crude populism of 'the people' versus 'the elite'".
By complicating basic class analysis with an elaborate
class structure, with the revolution to be led by a minority of young, educated 'progressive' precariats, he may be setting the
stage for fragmentation of the Left, and further massive losses for workers.
being drawn into platform capitalism, as 'concierge' or cloud taskers, controlled and manipulated by apps and other labour
brokers. Above all, they are being gradually habituated to precariatisation, told to put up with a norm of unstable task-driven
bits-and-pieces existence.
This is a great framing of the hoped for (by the technologists)labor contract
That passage called to mind the increasing use by universities of adjunct faculty positions, which are the very definition
of precarious. In recent days the was a report of the dismissal of tenured faculty by a college in New York State, whose name
escapes me.
Proposition 22(?) in California epitomizes precarity.
Quit a lot to think on here, and presented pretty clearly.
De-stranding is a part of understanding (and understanding being part of good progress)
I could see the 'Go Fund Me' phenomena for Medical (or just groceries, etc) costs in this thought:(my bold)
Those characteristics are bad enough. But it is the distinctive relations to the state that most define the precariat. The
precariat are denizens rather than citizens, meaning that they are losing or not gaining the rights and entitlements of citizens
. Above all, they are reduced to being supplicants, dependent on the discretionary benevolence of landlords, employers, parents,
charities and strangers, showing them pity.
Much of this essay seems like a good diagnosis, although, after a certain point, I began to mistrust the foundations of the
analysis. And there is this: "So when it came to framing a Precariat Charter, it seemed appropriate to take as a guiding principle
the adage of Aristotle that only the insecure man is free. That means we must not be stuck in the old sense of security, even
though it is a human need to enjoy basic security."
The author is fudging. Aristotle was writing about a stratified society in which there were many slaves (and, yes, Mediterranean
slavery was different from the Anglo-American version). The ideal was the life of leisure (scholē), which was a kind of contemplation
of how to act (but untroubled by having to work, which is a distraction). The "insecure" man was either Diogenes (who was unique)
or a prosperous citizen with property.
We simply don't live in that kind of society. Yet the author keeps making the mistake of describing "labourists" and their
supposedly antiquated ideas about unions and the organization of the workplace as all wet.
Current labor unrest in the U S of A indicates otherwise. Further, I happened to listened to some deeper analysis of the recent
events at Smith College, and the NYTimes writer, Powell, pointed out how much unions shape attitudes (including eliminating racism),
offer real protections, and teach the value of concerted action.
People like Standing, because of his position in society, can be blithe about being precarious. It is indeed a "philosophical"
issue for them. Yet the current Draghi government in Italy has several members who want to remove labor protections and make more
Italians precarious. Everyone will live the glory of being a U.S. style at-will employee. Hmmm. I wonder why this project still
goes on among the powerful.
The writer of this article seems to be very optimistic, celebratory even when it comes to the insecurity of the precariat.
It isn't difficult to romanticize the power and the potential of people suffering extreme insecurity when your employment and
your social status are linked to the privileges of the (Left or Right) political elite, and when you are a (most likely well paid)
participant in the current political system, by working closely with the leadership of one of the largest old political parties,
while holding positions that come with stable income if not fungible prestige ["Professorial Research Associate, SOAS University
of London, Fellow of the UK Academy of Social Sciences, and co-founder and honorary co-president of the Basic Income Earth Network
(BIEN)].
The author acknowledges that a simplistic, not multidimensional understanding of class is pseudo-Marxist; why not then
go back to the original texts and review the writings of Marx, Engels, Gramsci et al in order to update the concept of class,
perhaps broadening what being "working class" means today?
Why not trying to organize the workers, those who are precariat and
those who aren't, around the goal of "reinventing the future in class terms", as he puts it?
How will the precariat advance its
own sociopolitical goals now (as "a class-in-the-making") and later (as "a class-for-itself)"? Will it be capable of exerting
any pressure and of promote real transformations without unions and without political parties?
The default arrangement for human intercourse is some sort of feudalism. Regardless of best intended efforts to midwife a kinder
gentler world, some sort of feudal hierarchic death-wish inheres in all social efforts. It seems woven into our humanity.
Aboriginal hunter gatherers have managed to maintain a continuous non-feudal culture, even now, for approximately 50,000 years.
Perhaps the precariat are heading that way?
Agreeing with Heelbiter, feudal hierarchies only emerge when there's a surplus that can be stolen, which tempts people with
power (strongmen + sycophants) to keep it for themselves. Remove either the surplus or the agreement to steal, it's not at all
universal.
Surplus also creates lasting valuable institutions which create huge social good (like Universities, Court systems, School
systems, Regulatory oversight of the private sector, etc.).
Naked Capitalism commentators don't have a concept of hierarchical nature of talents which humans have. Meaning, there are
super producer humans in any field of human endeavor: sports, music, arts, mathematics, sciences, film stars, singers, painters,
etc.
Why would you not expect super producer humans in economic realm (business world)?
The talent spectrum is very wide and desire and ability to take risks for a possible "first mover advantage in business" that
some humans go after.
Even luck (right place at the right time) requires the ability, desire and eye to recognize talents in other humans to create
a high powered team which creates truly outsized results.
Talents of some humans is thousands of times the talents of more average humans.
Our job (democracy's job) is to get the most out of them. And I don't mean tax them a lot. I mean channel their energies in
such a way through appropriate rules (laws) so they contribute outsized social good.
And yet in actual, existing polities for as long as records have been kept, there's a tendency for those with "thousand times
the talents" to make off with all the surplus. Leading to, "The default arrangement for human intercourse is some sort of feudalism.
Regardless of best intended efforts to midwife a kinder gentler world, some sort of feudal hierarchic death-wish inheres in all
social efforts. It seems woven into our humanity."
It appears to be the structural force of "surplus" that engages our social heuristics into self defeating and brutal heirarchies.
I'm with HH & FS that the track record of egalitarianism is a great deal longer than that of material heirarchy and hasn't anywhere
threatened the ecosystems on which all life depends.
Not saying we can get out of our exploitative and self destructive rut, but that this condition is no more essential to our
nature than egalitarianism.
Your super producers "talent" is making money, not producing things or goods, and right behind all of your "there are super
producer humans in any field of human endeavor: sports, music, arts, mathematics, sciences, film stars, singers, painters, etc."
all are the face of a machine in the background with some unknowable tech tracking selling data collecting those are your actual
producers but that isn't good pr, we're great at tracking people, we produce surveillance and sell people things they don't need
and support disintegrating institutions in order to undermine your quote here
"Surplus also creates lasting valuable institutions which create huge social good (like Universities, Court systems, School systems,
Regulatory oversight of the private sector, etc.)."
All of these things are being disintegrated for the benefit of your "super producer" BS as we speak. Maybe it's not the NC
commentariat that has an understanding problem.
I think as far as the religious " concept of hierarchical nature of talents " I think the essential workers proved who they
are over the pandemic, they're the ones who had to face risk, grocery workers, garbage collectors etc I doubt these people are
very high up in your hierarchy.
"If human capital theory someday becomes the fly on the power-theory-of-income elephant, it would signal not only a scientific
revolution, but also a social one. I doubt I'll live to see it happen. And if I do, I have no idea what type of society would
emerge from the other side."
Open Democracy is a Soros organ. Which immediately brings to mind the aspect of our precarious position that the author
does not address or even allude to: the nexus of financial, media and paramilitary power that is the "Deep State" or the Spook
Apparat if you will.
Having a token whack at 'atavist' populism is just 'Basket of Deplorables' put another way. The author is deeply tied to the
technocratic set and the slant is clear enough. The constant manipulation through fear-based stochastic 'war' efforts: War on
Terror, War on COVID. Always some empty and obviously fake rallying point. UBI sounds like a sensible solution if we lived in
the Jetsons future the Great Reset promises. But Klaus Schwab is no Bucky Fuller. Gates, Soros and Schwab are just investors.
Investors with the power to manipulate the markets. Heads they win. Tails you lose.
To them, a guy like Trump is just the last echo of the Industrial age and the installation of a senile grifter the triumph
of the technocracy, shielded by the CIA and MI5/6. These spy organizations were always private companies.
CIA was built by Wall Street and British Intelligence is an arm of the British monarchy and has never been accountable to the
public. A realignment is definitely taking place. Behind the curtain. Challenging the old guard is the nexus of more openly private
intelligence organizations like that of Erik Prince and computer oligarchs like Thiel and Mercer. This is exactly who put Trump
over.
Good summary of the evolution and status quo of liberalism. Liberalism being capitalism. And capitalism being profit. So there's
a conundrum: The "strange death of populism" does not equate with some strange death of survival. Survival is always with us.
There were atavists seeking out remote caves even during the agricultural revolution. Maybe even George Soros' ancient ancestors;
the stone age bond vigilantes.
The underlying argument here by Standing seems to be for a Basic Income. Which is OK, but maybe ahead of its time. A jobs guarantee
is a better option because there is so much work to be done that can be done best by humans it's just that none of them are profit
making. That's the problem with all this political (aka economic) analysis. Because, for one thing, who is gonna clean the latrines?
Yes, of course robots are. So then who is gonna arbitrage the robots? Who is monitoring the protection of the environment for
fraud and graft? All of that will be necessary to ensure nobody is profiteering and polluting in a non-capitalist world. Labor
was actually the best defense against rampant profiteering, because it was labor that was always exploited, so what will replace
it? We should stick with a jobs guarantee for now. A better analysis at this point in time is not how do we live with the ruins
of neoliberalism, but how do we live, equitably, without profit? It will take a while to figure that out. Clearly we'll live by
fiat, but it will have to be controlled as well. I'd just say that if the Precariat is condescendingly guaranteed a "basic income"
so should the rest of society be. That controls everyone. And protects the environment, and stays focused on all the things that
are now imperative.
Good investment and growth are definable as whatever investment and growth would remain if all artificial stimulants by the
government and economists were removed. The ordinary liberal is usually several steps removed from real life. That is how he can
be so foolish.
He is almost always either wealthy, or academic, or artistic, or political, or in some other way has escaped from the need
to do productive work for a living.
It's just really weird seeing a 'left' site conflate 'populism' with 'rightism'. As in, "representing the economically hurting
bottom of 50-90% of voters is bad (because the poor, the struggling working class, and the precarious middle class peoples are
obviously morally suspect – or so saith the economic elites. / heh)." No. That's the elite's take on populism. It isn't the populists'
history and political stance. It's almost like reading the elite's dictating what the bottom 50% economic polity must agree to.
(As if the top 50% (or 1%) don't have an economic interest in guiding the bottom 50%'s away from their own economic interest.
/heh )
I didn't get that, maybe I'll re-read when I have a minute.
What I got was dissaggregating the struggling class into groups with common experience and history resulting in what the author
called "reactionary" and I think you are calling 'rightism'.
The basic message I got was the left can no more restore that past than can the right and when it tries it ends up bolstering
the right by accident.
Much of what Standing refers to as the Precariat is basically just the Proletariat yet again. But coming to the fore
in a period resembling the Victorian era in terms of security more than it resembles the short-lived triumphal period of postwar
welfare state, Keynesian, social democratic capitalism.
I think he wants to expand the definitions of work and "productivity," maybe challenging the labor theory of value, etc. This
piece reminded me of David Graeber in that respect.
Now that I know it's an Open Democracy piece, I suppose that it's meant to soften the blow of prolonged, steep unemployment
and to desensitize people to the pain of "doing more with less" (as the tippytopp rakes it in) by calling it an Arts & Leisure
Society. UBI is a lubricant for privatization, although I did notice and appreciate Standing's mention of the commons.
I must agree with DJG, Reality Czar's and others similar take. The writer of this article seems to be very optimistic,
celebratory even when it comes to the insecurity of the precariat. It isn't difficult to romanticize the power and the potential
of people suffering extreme insecurity when your employment and your social status are linked to the privileges of the (Left or
Right) political elite, and when you are a (most likely well paid) participant in the current political system, by working closely
with the leadership of one of the bigger old political parties while holding positions that come with stable income if not fungible
prestige ["Professorial Research Associate, SOAS University of London, Fellow of the UK Academy of Social Sciences, and co-founder
and honorary co-president of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN)].
The author acknowledges that a simplistic, not multidimensional understanding of class is pseudo-Marxist; why not then go back
to the original texts and review the writings of Marx, Engels, Gramsci et al in order to update the concept of class, perhaps
broadening what being "working class" means today? Why not trying to organize the workers, those who are precariat and those who
aren't, around the goal of "reinventing the future in class terms", as he puts it? Will the precariat succeed in advancing its
sociopolitical goals as a class ("a class-in-the-making" or "a class-for-itself") outside of organized structures like unions
and political parties (not necessarily the existing, often compromised ones)?
What has happened to inequality? Pretty much what you would expect really.
Mariner Eccles, FED chair 1934 – 48, observed what the capital accumulation of neoclassical economics did to the US economy
in the 1920s. "a giant suction pump had by 1929 to 1930 drawn into a few hands an increasing proportion of currently produced wealth. This
served then as capital accumulations. But by taking purchasing power out of the hands of mass consumers, the savers denied themselves
the kind of effective demand for their products which would justify reinvestment of the capital accumulation in new plants. In
consequence as in a poker game where the chips were concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, the other fellows could stay in the
game only by borrowing. When the credit ran out, the game stopped"
With the capital accumulation of neoclassical economics wealth concentrates at the top. A few people have all the money and
everyone else gets by on debt. Wealth concentrates until the system collapses.
What could they do? Keynes added some redistribution to stop all the wealth concentrating at the top, and developed nations
formed a strong healthy middle class.
The neoliberals removed the redistribution. With the capital accumulation of neoclassical economics wealth concentrates at
the top. A few people have all the money and everyone else gets by on debt. Wealth concentrates until the system collapses.
"The other fellows could stay in the game only by borrowing." Mariner Eccles, FED chair 1934 – 48
Your wages aren't high enough, have a Payday loan.
You need a house, have a sub-prime mortgage.
You need a car, have a sub-prime auto loan.
You need a good education, have a student loan.
Still not getting by? Load up on credit cards. "When the credit ran out, the game stopped" Mariner Eccles, FED chair 1934 – 48
Oh yes, I remember now, it was Keynesian capitalism that won the battle against Russian communism. The Americans could clearly
demonstrate the average American was much better off than their Russian counterparts.
Today's opioid addicted specimens might have struggled.
The arc of progress isn't supposed to look like a U-turn. You are supposed to keep moving forwards. After the Keynesian era
we went back to what had preceded it.
After a few decades of Keynesian, demand side economics, the system became supply side constrained. Too much demand and not
enough supply causes inflation. Neoclassical, supply side economics should be just the ticket to get things moving again. It does,
but it's got the same problems it's always had.
I found this article massively interesting and relevant, especially at the same time that I'm trying to process Martin Gurri's
Revolt of the Public and Adam Curtis' new documentary Can't Get You Outta My Head . My take is that all of them
are professing a sort of political realism that is opposed to what they identify as magical thinking on the left, and that's how
I take Standing's critique of left populism.
But more importantly, I want to share a few other related resources that I found as I was digging into this more. First, Standing
has a few TED talks, and this one from 2016 helped me to understand
this article better.
Also, Standing's Charter for the Precariat (linked differently in the article) is currently available on Bloomsbury
open access, so you can actually
download chapter
pdfs of it for free with no login.
Mankind first started to produce a surplus with early agriculture. It wasn't long before the elites learnt how to read the
skies, the sun and the stars, to predict the coming seasons to the amazed masses and collect tribute.
They soon made the most of the opportunity and removed themselves from any hard work to concentrate on "spiritual matters",
i.e. any hocus-pocus they could come up with to elevate them from the masses, e.g. rituals, fertility rights, offering to the
gods . etc and to turn the initially small tributes, into extracting all the surplus created by the hard work of the rest.
The elites became the representatives of the gods and they were responsible for the bounty of the earth and the harvests. As
long as all the surplus was handed over, all would be well.
The class structure emerges.
Upper class – Do as little as they can get away with and get most of the rewards
Middle class – Administrative/managerial class who have enough to live a comfortable life
Working class – Do the work, and live a basic subsistence existence where they get enough to stay alive and breed
Their techniques have got more sophisticated over time, but this is the underlying idea. They have achieved an inversion, and
got most of the rewards going to those that don't really do anything.
Everything had worked well for 5,000 years as no one knew what was really going on. The last thing they needed was "The Enlightenment"
as people would work out what was really going on. They did work out what was going on and this had to be hidden again.
The Classical Economists had a quick look around and noticed the aristocracy were maintained in luxury and leisure by the hard
work of everyone else. They haven't done anything economically productive for centuries, they couldn't miss it. The Classical
economist, Adam Smith:
"The labour and time of the poor is in civilised countries sacrificed to the maintaining of the rich in ease and luxury.
The Landlord is maintained in idleness and luxury by the labour of his tenants. The moneyed man is supported by his extractions
from the industrious merchant and the needy who are obliged to support him in ease by a return for the use of his money. But
every savage has the full fruits of his own labours; there are no landlords, no usurers and no tax gatherers."
There was no benefits system in those days, and if those at the bottom didn't work they died. They had to earn money to live.
The classical economists could never imagine those at the bottom rising out of a bare subsistence existence as that was the way
it had always been.
The classical economists identified the constructive "earned" income and the parasitic "unearned" income. Most of the people
at the top lived off the parasitic "unearned" income and they now had a big problem. (Upper class – Do as little as they can get
away with and get most of the rewards)
This problem was solved with neoclassical economics, which hides this distinction. It confuses making money and creating wealth
so all rich people look good. If you know what real wealth creation is, you will realise many at the top don't create any wealth.
Can you believe Adam Smith said this?
"All for ourselves, and nothing for other people seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the
masters of mankind."
The classical economists, Adam Smith and Ricardo, are not what you might expect.
We got some stuff from Ricardo, like the law of comparative advantage. What's gone missing? Ricardo was part of the new
capitalist class, and the old landowning class were a huge problem with their rents that had to be paid both directly and through
wages.
"The interest of the landlords is always opposed to the interest of every other class in the community" Ricardo
1815 / Classical Economist
What does our man on free trade, Ricardo, mean?
Disposable income = wages – (taxes + the cost of living)
Employees get their money from wages and the employers pay the cost of living through wages, reducing profit.
Employees get less disposable income after the landlords rent has gone.
Employers have to cover the landlord's rents in wages reducing profit.
Ricardo is just talking about housing costs, employees all rented in those days.
Low housing costs work best for employers and employees.
In Ricardo's world there were three classes. He was in the capitalist class. The more he paid in labour costs (wages) the lower
his profits would be. He was paying the cost of living for his workers through wages, and the higher that was, the higher labour
costs would be. There was no benefits system in those days and those at the bottom needed to earn money to cover the cost of living
otherwise they would die. They had to earn their money through wages. The more he paid in rents to the old landowning class, the
less there would be for him to keep for himself.
From Ricardo: The labourers had before 25
The landlords 25
And the capitalists 50
.. 100
He looked at how the pie got divided between the three groups.
There were three groups in the capitalist system in Ricardo's world (and there still are).
Workers / Employees
Capitalists / Employers
Rentiers / Landowners / Landlords / other skimmers, who are just skimming out of the system, not contributing to its success
The unproductive group exists at the top of society, not the bottom. Later on we did bolt on a benefit system to help others
that were struggling lower down the scale. Classical economics, it's not what you think.
William White (BIS, OECD) talks about how economics really changed over one hundred years ago as classical economics was replaced
by neoclassical economics.
He thinks we have been on the wrong path for one hundred years. Small state, unregulated capitalism was where it all started
and it's rather different to today's expectations.
Framing Corbyn's election defeat as a failure to understand the needs of the "Labour" electorate, and hence supporting
Standing's premise, whilst totally ignoring the fact that Corbyn was hammered by the powers of the right, BBC, MSM, Israel etc
etc is totally disingenuous and seems to me to be a case of very sour grapes.
The fact that the basic income was not implemented doesn't mean much given that there are many on all sides of the debate who
do not agree with the idea. I think Standing is just pissed off because no one listened to him.
What the proponents of the neo-liberal dispensation have not advertised, if indeed they
even know, is what replaces the 'nation?'
What replaces a nation is often referred to as a "colony", where most of the inhabitants are
no longer "citizens" but "natives" who can be exploited at will.
American unions pathetic, absolutely pathetic! We have been hearing this very same winging
from them for 50 years. Then they, universally, go out and support the glad handing
politicians who do a few rounds of golf with the their bosses and a few more jobs are lost.
Mention to them that maybe they would have a bit more job security if owned their factories
and work places, and watch the smoke start to rise from their collective heads. A hundred
years ago you could have sat in a bar, discussed workers owning the means of production and
the beers would have kept magically appearing in front of you. We are a long, long way from
Flint.
The limited successes of the old trade unions in the US have been their undoing. If only
because they always had, and continue to have, limited vision. They all think that they have
scored major victories if they squeeze another dime out of the bosses. According to this
union VP "We're at the mercy of whoever is supplying us." The guy is an idiot. He and
his cohort are at the mercy of their bosses, and they will always be at the mercy of their
bosses until they become their own bosses. Pathetic!
I thought Mr. Conway's connection of domestic manufacturing with war and imperialism,
a.k.a. 'national security', was pretty obvious. 'War is the health of the state.' However, I
suppose one might say that the American state now includes Japan. God, yes, we need more and
more 'airplanes, munitions, satellites, civilian jetliners' and so on, and more reasons to
keep armies in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and also so on, till the end of the world.
Well yes, but the opposite also applies. If you have a self sufficient economy you don't
have to get involved in wars on the other side of the planet because that's where "your"
energy, raw materials, finance, food, key manufactured goods etc come from. The US did not
have to get involved in either WW1 or WW2 for economic reasons, it was nearly self sufficient
at that time. That is not the case today, hence the fore-ever wars in the middle east, and
military bases scattered as confetti around the globe. Did America have to globalise its
economy? No, but the wind fall profits (initially) that could be reaped from doing so could
not be resisted by America's elites. The problem now is that America's economy has now been
so gutted that it cannot function without globalisation, which will bankrupt it further.
However look on the bright side, America's elites have never been so despised and hate in
their history. And nobody expects them to change, because they have not changed for 50 years.
People are now figuring out that they have to change things themselves. Expect fireworks.
Michael Hudson (of course!) has the first and last word on this. The general principle at
work here is that U.S. industry and jobs must be off-shored so Wall Street and Washington
politicians can create more debt – IOW keep Super (monetary) Imperialism going.
The US is the world's leader in manufacturing DEBT not the wealth that really matters in
today's world.
Yes. Regrettably, the article above is whistling past the graveyard, and I too thought of
Hudson's analysis and shook my head as I read it.
If money is created as credit -- and it is -- and every notional dollar of credit has an
obverse side of debt -- and it does -- then for the U.S. to be the Richest Country In The
World™ and have an elite with so many multibillionaires, there must be debt on the the
other side of all those notional dollars the elite have created for themselves.
You might familiarize yourself with how the national government funds its spending. It
creates new dollars every time it pays a bill. No debt required. So why do we have all this
public debt if it was unnecessary to begin with? It lines the pockets of the One Percent who
buy the safest bonds in the world to insure their immense fortunes. It's a subsidy. The rich
have the best socialism in the world. Right here in the USA.
This issue has very little if any relationship to "how the national government funds its
spending" or any of the other nominally 'conservative' debt bugbears. Those "safest bonds in
the world" would not insure squat if US debt wasn't backed by the US military and threats to
bomb any country that refuses to accept more of it back into the stone age. As Minsky wrote
"Any (economic) unit can create money. The problem is getting it accepted."
The world is being destroyed environmentally as well as militarily because the world's one
percent can think of no better alternative than allowing the US to continue creating debt,
destruction and death so they can – as Trump put it – "keep score" with each
other in the game to see who can accumulate the most unpayable debt.
To paraphrase Woody Allen (or somebody) the US is allowed to continue creating debt
because the world's One Percent needs the money to continue playing their game.
The jobs picture overall has been improving with
379,000 workers added in February , although the U.S. economy still has almost 10 million
fewer jobs than it did before the coronavirus pandemic took hold. Economists have been revising
their employment and GDP forecasts are higher.
Goldman Sachs Chief Economist Jan Hatzius, for example, wrote in a report this week that
the jobless
rate would fall to 4.1% by the end of 2021, from 6.2% last month.
Hyams has been seeing similar encouraging signs on Indeed, with postings on the site already
lapping where they were pre-pandemic. "On Indeed, when we look at new job postings and our
benchmark pre-pandemic of February 1, 2020, at the end of this February we were up 5%
year-over-year. That's still with entire sectors completely shut down," he said.
As for where the hottest demand lies for new jobs, Hyams pointed to e-commerce-related
occupations including logistics, warehousing and delivery, as well as jobs in health care and
pharmacy.
While some of those openings may require showing up regularly in-person, many will not,
which again feeds into Hyams' thesis that interviews will remain virtual.
"If you're going to be a remote worker, interviewing over video actually makes a whole lot
more sense. It's more convenient. It will cut down on travel," he said.
That means many interviewees can continue to pull their blazers and ties out of the closet
-- along with their sweatpants.
Remember job interviews pre-pandemic? The jitters, the choosing of just the right suit, the
race to get there early, maybe even the drive across town or flight across the country for a
shot at a new opportunity?
Like most everything else, the pandemic changed that dynamic. The jitters may remain, but
in-person meetings are largely off the table, interviews among them. The CEO of one of the
most-trafficked jobs websites says it's likely to stay that way even after people get back to
the office.
"People being able to conduct an interview from the safety and convenience of their own
home is going to change hiring forever," said Chris Hyams, Indeed CEO, in an interview with
Yahoo Finance Live. "We believe this is the beginning of a massive secular shift."
"In April, we saw the number of requests for interviews to happen over video shoot up by
1,000%. Even as things have started to stabilize and the economy has opened up over the last 11
months, we've seen that continue to grow," Hyams said.
The jobs picture overall has been improving with
379,000 workers added in February , although the U.S. economy still has almost 10 million
fewer jobs than it did before the coronavirus pandemic took hold. Economists have been
revising their employment and GDP forecasts are higher. Goldman Sachs Chief Economist Jan
Hatzius, for example, wrote in a report this week that the
jobless rate would fall to 4.1% by the end of 2021, from 6.2% last month.
Hyams has been seeing similar encouraging signs on Indeed, with postings on the site
already lapping where they were pre-pandemic. "On Indeed, when we look at new job postings
and our benchmark pre-pandemic of February 1, 2020, at the end of this February we were up 5%
year-over-year. That's still with entire sectors completely shut down," he said.
As for where the hottest demand lies for new jobs, Hyams pointed to e-commerce-related
occupations including logistics, warehousing and delivery, as well as jobs in health care and
pharmacy.
While some of those openings may require showing up regularly in-person, many will not,
which again feeds into Hyams' thesis that interviews will remain virtual.
"If you're going to be a remote worker, interviewing over video actually makes a whole lot
more sense. It's more convenient. It will cut down on travel," he said.
That means many interviewees can continue to pull their blazers and ties out of the closet
-- along with their sweatpants.
Don't you know that whining about race, from the racist or the anti-racist side, doesn't
matter, is more important than billionaires fucking us over. It's more important than
anything. It doesn't matter if we die of freezer burn sleeping on cardboard after we've been
laid-off, evicted, and starved. It doesn't matter if we die in a nuclear war that the
billionaires started because they think it would be a good idea.
Nope. All that matters is whining about race. That's the most important thing. All else is
trivial.
Didn't American people suffer from the disease? Yes, the US government is "grotesquely
and manifestly incompetent" and they were likely to expect "a massive coronavirus outbreak
in China would never spread back to America".
The crucial factor here is that the US is not a nation per the most basic definition of
the word, "a group of people born of a common ancestry". Consequently, as illustrated by
job-killing "trade deals" and in countless other ways, there are plenty of "Americans" who
don't care a whit about the fate of Americans. That makes it entirely plausible that the Deep
State and/or one or more billionaires would release a virus in China in the full expectation
that it would hit the US and that once here it would disrupt, impoverish, and kill millions
of Americans. This was a win-win for them. The Deep State and the billionaires don't like
China, which is a non-liberal country and curtails their power by restricting the use of US
tech products. So if somehow the virus were contained in China it would be okay with them, as
it just would be a smaller win. However, what they really wanted was for the virus circle
back to the US. They knew that once here the disruption it would cause would further enrich
and empower them while giving them a pretext to dump it all on Donald Trump, whom they would
accuse of being incompetent and uncaring.
While full of good insights, the problem with this article as far as COVID is concerned is
that it misleads on the main point. COVID is not biowarfare, it is not a pandemic, it's just
the flu. The US recorded the same death rate in 2020 as in previous years and, as Dr. Colleen
Huber has documented, medical oxygen and supply sales were no different from previous
years.
All those COVID-19 deaths were simply deaths of a different name. Of course, we knew from
last March's Diamond Princess cruise–still by far the best controlled COVID
"experiment"–that the case-fatality rate of COVID-19 for the general public is in the
flu range.
But, it never was about COVID-19, which is just a glorified coronavirus of the type seen
even before the dawn of humans. Long before the virus even hit the streets, the media and
governments and medical establishments had secretly planned to to create a "panic-demic" to
scare people into a whole lot of strange and dangerous behaviors–like giving up their
liberties and economic futures. COVID-19 is just a medical nothing-burger that convinced a
lot of otherwise sane people to scare themselves into oblivion. Or did it? If the
post-election analyses are correct, Trump won in a major landslide and even those who voted
against him were already suffering from Trump derangement syndrome. So, maybe the people
weren't fooled by COVID so much as electorally raped by the vast elite cabal.
Whatever we say is a fact-based result of diligent research; whatever you say is a
conspiracy theory – both the US and China representatives subscribe to this
mantra.
Maye both Washington and Beijing are guilty -- of a perpetrating a hoax.
Putin surprised me. He flatly refused the offer of Schwab and his ilk. He condemned the
manner of recent pre-Covid growth, for all the growth went into a few deep pockets.
Moreover, he noted that digital tycoons are dangerous for the world.
The next strong man we elect must be an actual STRONG man. I salute Trump for his genius
in identifying the real majority in this country and for forcing the techno-oligarchs into
overdoing their election steal. Now we need someone who is willing to establish real
authority on behalf of the un-queer.
"The Federal Trade Commission said Tuesday that for more than two years, Amazon didn't pass
on tips to drivers, even though it promised shoppers and drivers it would do so.
The FTC said Amazon didn't stop taking the money until 2019, when the company found out
about the FTC's investigation . The drivers were part of Amazon's Flex business, which started
in 2015 and allows people to pick up and deliver Amazon packages with their own cars. The
drivers are independent workers, and are not Amazon employees.
The FTC said Amazon at first promised workers that they would be paid $18 to $25 per hour,
and also said they would receive 100% of tips left to them by customers on the app
.
But in 2016, the FTC said Amazon started paying drivers a lower hourly rate and used the
tips to make up the difference. Amazon didn't disclose the change to drivers, the FTC said, and
the tips it took from drivers amounted to $61.7 billion."
And a "team" at Amazon reprogrammed the app to steal tips. Managers, programmers,
testers, documentation specialists, accountants, database wizards, etc. Nobody said a word. All
corrupt to the bone. "Learn to code!"
he Great American Middle Class has stood meekly by while the New Nobility stripmined $50
trillion from the middle and working classes. As this RAND report documents, $50 trillion has
been siphoned from labor and the lower 90% of the workforce to the New Nobility and their
technocrat lackeys who own the vast majority of the capital: Trends in Income From 1975 to 2018
.
Why has the Great American Middle Class meekly accepted their new role as debt-serfs and
powerless peasants in a Neofeudal Economy ruled by the New Nobility of Big Tech / monopolies /
cartels / financiers? The basic answer is the New Nobility's PR has been so persuasive and
ubiquitous: soaring inequality and Neofeudalism has nothing to do with us, it's just the
natural result of technology and globalization--forces nobody can resist. Sorry about your
debt-serfdom, but hey, your student loan payment is overdue, so it's the rack for you.
The recent Foreign Affairs article referenced here last week Monopoly
Versus Democracy (paywalled) describes the net result of the economic propaganda that the
stripmining of the working and middle classes was ordained and irresistible: Today, Americans
tend to see grotesque accumulations of wealth and power as normal. That's how far we've
fallen:
"As the journalist Barry Lynn points out in his book
Liberty from All Masters: The New American Autocracy vs. the Will of the People , the
robber barons shared with today's high-tech monopolists a strategy of encouraging people to
see immense inequality as a tragic but unavoidable consequence of capitalism and
technological change. But as Lynn shows, one of the main differences between then and now is
that, compared to today, fewer Americans accepted such rationalizations during the Gilded
Age. Today, Americans tend to see grotesque accumulations of wealth and power as normal. Back
then, a critical mass of Americans refused to do so, and they waged a decades-long fight for
a fair and democratic society." (emphasis added)
The bottom 90% of the U.S. economy has been decapitalized : debt has been substituted for
capital . Capital only flows into the increasingly centralized top tier, which owns and profits
from the rising tide of debt that's been keeping the bottom 90% afloat for the past 20
years.
As I've often observed here, globalization and financialization have richly rewarded the top
0.1% and the top 5% technocrat class that serves the New Nobility's interests. Everyone else
has been been reduced to debt-serfs and peasants who now rely on lotteries and luck to get
ahead: playing the stock market casino or hoping their mortgaged house in an urban sprawl on
the Left or Right coasts doubles in value, even as the entire value proposition for living in a
congested urban sprawl vanishes.
America has no plan to reverse this destructive tide of Neofeudal Pillage. Our leadership's
"plan" is benign neglect : just send a monthly stipend of bread and circuses (the technocrat
term is Universal Basic Income UBI) to all the disempowered, decapitalized households, urban
and rural, so they can stay out of trouble and not bother the New Nobility's pillaging of
America and the planet.
There's a lot of bright and shiny PR about rebuilding infrastructure and the Green New Deal,
but our first question must always be: cui bono , to whose benefit? How much of the spending
will actually be devoted to changing the rising imbalances between the haves and the have-nots,
the ever-richer who profit from rising debt and the ever more decapitalized debt-serfs who are
further impoverished by rising debt?
As I explain in my book
A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet , people don't want to
just get by on UBI , they want an opportunity to acquire capital in all its forms, an
opportunity to contribute to their communities, to make a difference, to earn respect and
pride.
That our "leadership" reckons bread and circuses is what the stripmined bottom 90% want is
beyond pathetic. The middle class has meekly accepted the self-serving claim of the New
Nobility that the $50 trillion transfer of wealth was inevitable and beyond human intervention.
But once the stock market and housing casinos collapse, the last bridge to getting
ahead--high-risk gambling-- will fall into the abyss, and the middle class will have to face
their servitude and powerlessness.
That's how Neofeudal systems collapse: the tax donkeys and debt-serfs finally revolt and
start demanding the $50 trillion river of capital take a new course.
In the last month or so, they have stopped even trying to hide that:
1) the internet is rigged (free speech only for those who say what is approved
narrative),
2) elections are rigged (they openly admit that "all elections have fraud," and the
defending point is that there isn't enough fraud to change the result, or so they say without
investigation);
3) the government is rigged (lots of debate about whether to send a few bucks to people
forced out of work by COVID restrictions, no debate needed on how much to give banks and
defense contractors); and now
4) the markets are rigged (if you figure out a way to beat Wall Street, we simply change
the rules).
Most Americans already knew these things, but felt vaguely conspiratorial in thinking so.
TPTB no longer care what we think or what we know. They are taking down the curtains. They
own this place and if we don't like it and even talk about doing something about it, then
they will label you a terrorist and it's off to Gitmo with you.
Dear Old Hedge 2 hours ago
"That's how Neofeudal systems collapse: the tax donkeys and debt-serfs finally rebel and
start demanding the $50 trillion river of capital take a new course."
Most of the middle class is now run by .Gov employees who are members of big unions. They
will never revolt - they got it to good. Most are Feminazi's who vote Demshevik. &
DFL.
The image above is really their cross and angry husbands who are now powerless.
LetThemEatRand 4 hours ago (Edited)
By design, and the classic model of feudalism. It's why places like present day China or
North Korea have such a huge military and government sector. It's why the Kingdom of Saudi
Arabia gives just enough to its citizens that they are comfortable. It's why Rome held
together for as long as it did. Many other examples. Feudalism is the natural order of things
according to history. We have been living through an anomaly that TPTB intend to fix.
NoDebt 3 hours ago
globalization and financialization have richly rewarded the top 0.1% and the top 5%
technocrat class that serves the New Nobility's interests
Like I've said before, "Small number of rich, large number of poor and just enough middle
class to service the rich. As most societies have been throughout most of human history. The
20th century in the US was the anomaly, not the norm."
sgt_doom 1 hour ago remove link
ROFL --- pressure "elected officials" from rigged elections!
You funny . . . .
Whenwas the last time an electsd official responded to me?
Oh yeah, Sen. Canteell about 14 years ago say that she would continue to support the
offshoring of the American medica industry along with the Gates Foundation.
SDShack 13 minutes ago
I've been saying it for YEARS here. New Feudal World Order has been the design all along.
People are finally starting to understand. The solution was always Drone Davos.
chunga 4 hours ago
The battle between capital and labor has been a complete wipeout, made possible by
mountains of pure, solid fraud.
daveO 4 hours ago
It was benign neglect 30 years ago! It's been active destruction since China's admittance
into the WTO with the help of the Clintons.
Mamachief 3 hours ago
David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger.
When Henry Kissinger and David Rockefeller met with Zhou Enlai in China in 1973 -- just
after President Richard Nixon had visited China establishing official relations -- an
understanding was reached whereby the U.S. would supply industrial capital and know-how to
China.
BEMUSED-CONFUSED 1 hour ago
And Nixon never realized that he sold out the US.
George Bayou 4 hours ago
Why has the Great American Middle Class meekly accepted their new role as debt-serfs and
powerless peasants in a Neofeudal Economy ruled by the New Nobility of Big Tech /
monopolies / cartels / financiers?
I'll tell you why, people don't realize what goes on behind the scenes because they are so
far removed from it and the big corps and politicians keep it that way.
If you don't know you're getting screwed, then you can't fight it.
austinmilbarge 4 hours ago
Most US citizens are debt slaves. Miss one paycheck and it's lights out. They don't have
time to keep up with how Wall Street cheats.
My Days Are Getting Fewer 2 hours ago
I used to subscribe to the author. No longer do so. Charles, stop writing and get a job or
invest in a business.
The headline is false. The Middle Class will not revolt. And, as a group, it no longer
exists.
I am baffled by the understanding that there are no super-rich people, who give a damn
about the destruction of their Country. My grandchildren and their kids will never enjoy the
fundamental freedoms that I knew growing up in high school in the 1950s and maturing in the
1960s through 2000.
In the last 20 years, everything, that was held sacred in this Country, has been uprooted.
Fraud rules, with decency be damned.
I got more than enough money and 30 more years at best.
Money is not a substitute for freedom.
Only hopeless persons will undertake corrective action.
Cloud9.5 3 hours ago
The middle class works for government. They are cops, teachers, code enforcement officers,
judges. The list goes on and on. The entrepreneur middle class has been put out of
business.
Wayne 2 hours ago
Dear Charles,
I am in the smallest room in the house. Your clickbait book promo is in front of me. Soon,
it shall be behind me.
A few words of advice, if I may (and even if I may not, I'm going to anyhow):
Do not use words you found in a thesaurus in book titles.
teleology
[ˌtelēˈäləjē,
ˌtēlēˈäləjē]
NOUN
philosophy
the explanation of phenomena by the purpose they serve rather than by postulated
causes.
theology
the doctrine of design and purpose in the material world.
Just makes you look like a pompous, officious, condescending ***.
Oh, that's right, you are.
Like Klaus Schwaub's little treatise, COVID-19 The Great Reset , your book is probably not
wroth reading and should not have been written. There is such a thing in this world as
masturbating, but you and Klaus should stroke your little peenees to **** instead of stroking
your egos with the English language.
Nobody actually needs to know what you think about anything. You could make the world a
better place by driving an Uber, growing guavas, or praying.
Thanks for playing, but the pleas for you to stop are growing louder.
"... By Casey Mulligan, Professor of Economics, University of Chicago and former Chief Economist of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. Originally published at VoxEU ..."
"... The spread of COVID-19 in the US has prompted extraordinary steps by individuals and institutions to limit infections. Some worry that 'the cure is worse than the disease' and these measures may lead to an increase in deaths of despair. Using data from the US, this column estimates how many non-COVID-19 excess deaths have occurred during the pandemic. Mortality in 2020 significantly exceeds the total of official COVID-19 deaths and a normal number of deaths from other causes. Certain characteristics suggest the excess are deaths of despair. Social isolation may be part of the mechanism that turns a pandemic into a wave of deaths of despair; further studies are needed to show if that is the case and how. ..."
Yves here. While this paper does a good job of compiling and analyzing data about Covid
deaths and excess mortality, and speculating about deaths of despair, I find one of its
assumptions to be odd. It sees Covid-related deaths of despair as mainly the result of
isolation. In the US, I would hazard that economic desperation is likely a significant factor.
Think of the people who had successful or at least viable service businesses: hair stylists,
personal trainers, caterers, conference organizers. One friend had a very successful business
training and rehabbing pro and Olympic athletes. They've gone from pretty to very well situated
to frantic about how they will get by.
While Mulligan does mention loss of income in passing in the end, it seems the more
devastating but harder to measure damage is loss of livelihood, thinking that your way of
earning a living might never come back to anything dimly approaching the old normal. Another
catastrophic loss would be the possibility of winding up homeless, particularly for those who'd
never faced that risk before.
By Casey Mulligan, Professor of Economics, University of Chicago and former Chief
Economist of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. Originally published at VoxEU
The spread of COVID-19 in the US has prompted extraordinary steps by individuals and
institutions to limit infections. Some worry that 'the cure is worse than the disease' and
these measures may lead to an increase in deaths of despair. Using data from the US, this
column estimates how many non-COVID-19 excess deaths have occurred during the pandemic.
Mortality in 2020 significantly exceeds the total of official COVID-19 deaths and a normal
number of deaths from other causes. Certain characteristics suggest the excess are deaths of
despair. Social isolation may be part of the mechanism that turns a pandemic into a wave of
deaths of despair; further studies are needed to show if that is the case and how.
The spread of COVID-19 in the US has prompted extraordinary, although often untested, steps
by individuals and institutions to limit infections. Some have worried that 'the cure is worse
than the disease'. Economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton mocked such worries as a "pet theory
about the fatal dangers of quarantine". They concluded in the summer of 2020 that "a wave of
deaths of despair is highly unlikely" because, they said, the duration of a pandemic is
measured in months whereas the underlying causes of drug abuse and suicide take many years to
accumulate (Case and Deaton 2020). With the extraordinary social distancing continuing and
mortality data accumulating, now is a good time to estimate the number of deaths of despair and
their incidence.
As a theoretical matter, I am not confident that demand and supply conditions were even
approximately constant as the country went into a pandemic recession. Take the demand and
supply for non-medical opioid use, which before 2020 accounted for the majority of deaths of
despair. 1 I acknowledge that the correlation between opioid fatalities and the
unemployment rate has been only weakly positive (Council of Economic Advisers February 2020,
Ruhm 2019). However, in previous recessions, the income of the unemployed and the nation
generally fell.
In this recession, personal income increased record amounts while the majority of the
unemployed received more income than they did when they were working (Congressional Budget
Office 2020). 2 Whereas alcohol and drug abuse can occur in isolation, many normal,
non-lethal consumption opportunities disappeared as the population socially distanced. Patients
suffering pain may have less access to physical therapy during a pandemic.
On the supply side, social distancing may affect the production of safety. 3 A
person who overdoses on opioids has a better chance of survival if the overdose event is
observed contemporaneously by a person nearby who can administer treatment or call paramedics.
4 Socially distanced physicians may be more willing to grant opioid prescriptions
over the phone rather than insist on an office visit. Although supply interruptions on the
southern border may raise the price of heroin and fentanyl, the market may respond by mixing
heroin with more fentanyl and other additives that make each consumption episode more dangerous
(Mulligan 2020a, Wan and Long 2020).
Mortality is part of the full price of opioid consumption and therefore a breakdown in
safety production may by itself reduce the quantity consumed but nonetheless increase mortality
per capita as long as the demand for opioids is price inelastic. I emphasise that these
theoretical hypotheses about opioid markets in 2020 are not yet tested empirically. My point is
that mortality measurement is needed because the potential for extraordinary changes is
real.
The Multiple Cause of Death Files (National Center for Health Statistics 1999–2018)
contain information from all death certificates in the US and would be especially valuable for
measuring causes of mortality in 2020. However, the public 2020 edition of those files is not
expected until early 2022. For the time being, my recent study (Mulligan 2020b) used the
2015–2018 files to project the normal number of 2020 deaths, absent a pandemic.
'Excess deaths' are defined to be actual deaths minus projected deaths. Included in the
projections, and therefore excluded from excess deaths, are some year-over-year increases in
drug overdoses because they had been trending up in recent years, especially among working-age
men, as illicit fentanyl diffused across the country.
I measure actual COVID-19 deaths and deaths from all causes from a Centres for Disease
Control and Prevention (CDC) file for 2020 that begins in week five (the week beginning 26
January 2020) and aggregates to week, sex, and eleven age groups. To minimise underreporting, I
only use the data in this file through week 40 (the week ending 3 October). In separate
analyses, I also use medical examiner data from Cook County, Illinois, and San Diego County,
California, which indicate deaths handled by those offices through September (Cook) or June
2020 (San Diego) and whether opioids were involved, and 12-month moving sums of drug overdoses
reported by CDC (2020) through May 2020.
Mortality in 2020 significantly exceeds what would have occurred if official COVID-19 deaths
were combined with a normal number of deaths from other causes. The demographic and time
patterns of the non-COVID-19 excess deaths (NCEDs) point to deaths of despair rather than an
undercount of COVID-19 deaths. The flow of NCEDs increased steadily from March to June and then
plateaued. They were disproportionately experienced by working-age men, including men as young
as 15 to 24. The chart below, reproduced from Mulligan (2020b), shows these results for men
aged 15–54. To compare the weekly timing of their excess deaths to a weekly measure of
economic conditions, Figure 1 also includes continued state unemployment claims scaled by a
factor of 25,000, shown together with deaths.
Figure 1 2020 weekly excess deaths by cause (men aged 15–54)
NCEDs are negative for elderly people before March 2020, as they were during the same time
of 2019, due to mild flu seasons. Offsetting these negative NCEDs are about 30,000 positive
NCEDs for the rest of the year, after accounting for an estimated 17,000 undercount of COVID-19
deaths in March and April.
If deaths of despair were the only causes of death with significant net contributions to
NCEDs after February, 30,000 NCEDs would represent at least a 45% increase in deaths of despair
from 2018, which itself was high by historical standards. At the same time, I cannot rule out
the possibility that other non-COVID-19 causes of death or even a bit of COVID-19 undercounting
(beyond my estimates) are contributing to the NCED totals.
One federal and various local measures of mortality from opioid overdose also point to
mortality rates during the pandemic that exceed those of late 2019 and early 2020, which
themselves exceed the rates for 2017 and 2018. These sources are not precise enough to indicate
whether rates of fatal opioid overdose during the pandemic were 10% above the rates from
before, 60% above, or somewhere in between.
Presumably, social isolation is part of the mechanism that turns a pandemic into a wave of
deaths of despair. However, the results so far do not say how many, if any, come from
government stay-at-home orders versus various actions individual households and private
businesses have taken to encourage social distancing. The data in this paper do not reveal how
many deaths of despair are due to changes in 'demand' – such as changes in a person's
income, outlook, or employment situation – versus changes in 'supply' – such as the
production of safety and a changing composition of dangerous recreational substances.
I agree with Yves's counter-argument though I must declare an interest, having done work
on quality of life for 20 years and hope I'm not breaking site rules (given recent reminders
about what is and isn't ok).
The excess deaths (particularly among men) certainly to me seems more consistent with a
collapse in one's ability to do the "valued things in life" and prioritise (to SOME extent)
economic outcomes over relationships. After all, the old trope that men cope less well than
women with retirement is found in happiness, quality of life and other such data.
Whether or not one agrees with me, surely a test as to whether the authors or Yves has the
better explanation for the excess deaths would involve looking at well-being and mortality of
men who retire earlier than they'd like vs that of those whose spouse died earlier than
expected (including the proper control groups).
It would be interesting to find out the following:
1. Did the states with the most generous unemployment benefits (like MA or NJ) have fewer
deaths of despair that the states with much stingier benefits?
2. Did the states which imposed various shutdowns (mainly blue states) have more deaths of
despair than the states which stayed open, like SD or Florida?
My guess is that deaths of despair are too idiosyncratic to blame on Covid lockdowns, but
I am not an expert at all about this.
They could also look for the link with 0% interest on people's saved money and seeing no
f..ing end in sight as the beatings continue. Going down to zero does not make the people
jolly.
It used to be only men who would upon meeting another man, where the first question is
likely 'What do you do for a living?', but with the advent of as many women working, probably
appropriate there too.
Nobody ever asks firstly what your hobby is or what sports team you follow, as the job
query tells you everything about the person in one fell swoop.
There's a lot of people whose jobs were kind of everything in their lives, who had never
gone without work ever, that are now chronically unemployed.
Anybody who has studied suicide readily appreciates that the act is impulsive. Case &
Deaton are probably correct in the limited sense of economic despair derived from
transitioning away from fossil fuels and industrial production to jobs requiring education
unreachable to middle-aged coal miners. However, those deaths were likely derived from easy
access to opioids. Most of those job losses led workers to make disability claims (achy
backs) to extend income. The treatment for achy back is pain killers – oxy-something or
other back then. Those same pills killed the pain of failure. Over time, addiction set in
and, according to Koob & LeMoal's 2008 addiction model, increased consumption becomes
necessary to stay pain-free. Physicians would surely not up dosages indefinitely and that put
addicts on the street literally. All that took time to evolve. But times have changed. Using
your family doc to get you high is no longer an option. So, Mulligan makes sense.
As an internist with boots on the ground – I cannot express enough gratitude that
these kinds of reports are getting out.
As busy as I have been this past year with COVID, the actual patients struggling with
anxiety and depression have just dwarved the actual COVID numbers.
I cannot even begin to tell you the heartbreak of being a provider and having 20-40 year
old young men in your office crying their eyes out. Lots of job loss, lots of income issues,
lots of not being able to pay for things for your kids. All the while being completely unable
to find other work or extra work. It is truly a nightmare for these people. And the attitude
by so many of the lockdown Karens who seem to have no conception of how this is all going
down for these young people has been deeply worrisome to me.
It is really not getting better – if anything slowly getting worse.
I would agree with the article above that loneliness is a problem – this is for the
minority – mainly older people and should not be dismissed.
Loneliness is not the big problem however, in my experience. The big problem is the
economic despair for our young people and the complete loss of socialization for our
teenagers and kids.
Yves here. Sundaram discusses how the obsession with metrics, a long standing favorite topic
of ours (see Management's Great Addiction )
produces policies that give short shrift to the poor and poor countries. One of the big
fallacies is treating money as the measure of the value and quality of life. For instance,
reducing the instance of cancer is worth more in rich countries because their lives are valued
more highly in these models. Similarly, they often fall back on unitary measures like lifespan,
and so don't capture outcomes like diets heavy in low nutrient foods (think simple sugars)
producing higher rates of non-communicable diseases and hence less healthy citizens
By Jomo Kwame Sundaram, a former economics professor, who was United Nations Assistant
Secretary-General for Economic Development, and received the Wassily Leontief Prize for
Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought. Originally published at his website
Current development fads fetishize data, ostensibly for 'evidence-based policy-making': if
not measured, it will not matter. So, forget about getting financial resources for your work,
programmes and projects, no matter how beneficial, significant or desperately needed.
Measure for Measure
Agencies, funds, programmes and others lobby and fight for attention by showcasing their own
policy agendas, ostensible achievements and potential. Many believe that the more indicators
they get endorsed by the 'international community', the more financial support they can expect
to secure.
Collecting enough national data to properly monitor progress on the Sustainable Development
Goals
is expensive. Data collection costs, typically borne by the countries themselves, have been
estimated at minimally over three times total official development assistance (ODA).
Remember aid declined after the US-Soviet Cold War, and again following the 2008-9 global
financial crisis. More recently, much more ODA is
earmarked to 'support' private investments from donor countries.
With data demands growing, more pressure to measure has led to either over- or under-stating
both problems and progress, sometimes with no dishonest intent. 'Errors' can easily be
explained away as statistics from poor countries are notoriously unreliable.
Political, bureaucratic and funding considerations limit the willingness to admit that
reported data are suspect for fear this may reflect poorly on those responsible. And once
baseline statistics have been established, similar considerations compel subsequent
'consistency' or 'conformity' in reporting.
And when problems have to be acknowledged, 'double-speak' may be the result. Organisations
may then start reporting some statistics to the public, with other data used, typically
confidentially, for 'in-house' operational purposes.
Money, Money, Money
Economists generally prefer and even demand the use of money-metric measures. The rationale
often is that no other meaningful measure is available. Many believe that showing ostensible
costs and benefits is more likely to raise needed funding. Using either exchange rates or
purchasing power parity (PPP) has been much debated. Some advocate even more convenient
measures such as the prices of a standard McDonald's hamburger in different countries.
Money-metrics imply that estimated economic losses due to, say, smoking or non-communicable
diseases ( NCD s), including
obesity, tend to be far greater in richer countries, owing to the much higher incomes lost or
foregone as well as costs incurred.
Development Discourse Changes
The four UN Development Decades after 1960 sought to accelerate economic progress and
improve social wellbeing. Unsurprisingly, for decades, there have been various debates in the
development discourse on measuring progress.
The rise of neoliberal economic thinking, claiming to free markets, has instead mainly
strengthened and extended private property rights. Rejecting Keynesian and development
economics, both associated with state intervention, neoliberalism's influence peaked around the
turn of the century.
The so-called 'Washington Consensus ' of
US federal institutions from the 1980s also involved the Bretton Woods institutions, the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, both headquartered in the American
capital.
In 2000, the UN Secretariat drafted the Millennium Declaration. This, in turn, became the
basis for the Millennium Development Goals which gave primacy to halving the number of poor.
After all, who would object to reducing poverty. The poor were defined with reference to a
poverty line, somewhat arbitrarily defined by the Bank.
Poverty Fetish
Presuming money income to be a universal yardstick of wellbeing, this poverty
measure has been challenged on various grounds. Most in poorer developing countries sense
that much nuance and variation are lost in such measures, not only for poverty, but also for,
say,
hunger .
Anyone familiar with the varying significance, over time, of cash incomes and prices in most
countries will be uncomfortable with such singular measures. But they are nonetheless much
publicised and have implied continued progress until the Covid-19 pandemic.
Rejection of such singular poverty measures
has led to multi-dimensional poverty indicators, typically to meet 'basic needs'. While such
'dashboard' statistics offer more nuance, the continued desire for a single metric has led to
the development, promotion and popularisation of composite indicators.
Worse, this has been typically accompanied by problematic ranking exercises using such
composite indicators. Many have become obsessed with such ranking, instead of the underlying
socio-economic processes and actual progress.
Blind Neglect
Improving such metrics has thus become an end in itself, with little debate over such
one-dimensional means of measuring progress. The consequent 'tunnel vision' has meant ignoring
other measures and indicators of wellbeing.
In recent decades, instead of subsistence agriculture, cash crops have been promoted. Yet,
all too many children of cash-poor subsistence farmers are nutritionally better fed and
healthier than the offspring of monetarily better off cash crop or 'commercial' farmers.
Meanwhile, as cash incomes rise, those with diet-related NCDs have been growing. While life
expectancy has risen in much of the world, healthy life expectancy has progressed less as ill
health increasingly haunts the sunset years of longer lives.
Be Careful What You Wish For
Meanwhile, as poor countries get limited help in their efforts to adjust to global warming,
rich countries' focus on supporting mitigation efforts has included, inter alia, promoting
'no-till agriculture'. Thus attributing greenhouse gas emissions implies corresponding
mitigation efforts via greater herbicide
use .
Maximising carbon sequestration in unploughed farm topsoil requires more reliance on
typically toxic, if not carcinogenic pesticides, especially herbicides. But addressing global
warming should not be at the expense of sustainable agriculture.
Similarly, imposing global carbon taxation will raise the price of, and reduce access to
electricity for the 'energy-poor', who comprise a fifth of the world's population. Rich
countries subsidising affordable renewable energy for poor countries and people would resolve
this dilemma.
Following the 2008-2009 global financial crisis, the UN proposed a Global Green New Deal
(GGND) which included such cross-subsidisation by rich countries of sustainable development
progress elsewhere.
The 2009 London G20 summit succeeded in raising more than the trillion dollars targeted. But
the resources mainly went to strengthening the IMF, rather than for the GGND proposal. Thus,
the finance fetish blocked a chance to revive world economic growth, with sustainable
development gains for all.
The globalists found just the economics they were looking for.
The USP of neoclassical economics – It concentrates wealth.
Let's use it for globalisation.
Mariner Eccles, FED chair 1934 – 48, observed what the capital accumulation of
neoclassical economics did to the US economy in the 1920s. "a giant suction pump had by 1929 to 1930 drawn into a few hands an increasing proportion
of currently produced wealth. This served then as capital accumulations. But by taking
purchasing power out of the hands of mass consumers, the savers denied themselves the kind of
effective demand for their products which would justify reinvestment of the capital
accumulation in new plants. In consequence as in a poker game where the chips were
concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, the other fellows could stay in the game only by
borrowing. When the credit ran out, the game stopped"
This is what it's supposed to be like.
A few people have all the money and everyone else gets by on debt.
"... No examination of Neoliberalism's utter failure to deliver benefits to the masses while expropriating the wealth they produced for delivery to the class of Financial Parasites. At least the writers at Global Times get it right: ..."
Global
Times reports on an essay published by the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung (Check it out b or other German barflies) deeming " China's system, although
'authoritarian,' is 'very successful .'" [My Emphasis]
"It explained that as long as a society can reach the following goals - improving social
welfare, increasing consumption choices, safeguarding domestic security, promoting education,
and providing good healthcare - people will support and trust the system even if their
influence in the decision-making process is limited. Such can 'in part ensure the legitimacy'
of the social system....
"But the authors' introspection stopped from digging problems as they tried to shift blame
to the rise of populism in the US."
No examination of Neoliberalism's utter failure to deliver benefits to the masses
while expropriating the wealth they produced for delivery to the class of Financial
Parasites. At least the writers at Global Times get it right:
"Populism, which helped crown Donald Trump, is being blamed today. Yet it all started
from the widening gap between rich and poor. When German scholars use the US populist
government as a scapegoat, they overlooked the real question - without addressing the
growing inequality in a Western system, will there be a second Trump in the future?" [My
Emphasis]
The fatal thrust is delivered in the two closing paragraphs but still omit naming the
actual culprit, which is the ideology of Neoliberalism:
"The article raised the support and trust of people when it comes to judgment over the
legitimacy of a society. In this regard, data speak louder than words. According to a poll
conducted in 2020 by US-based global public relations and marketing consultancy firm Edelman,
95 percent of Chinese trust their government while the US government only saw an approval of
48 percent .
"What other excuses will the Western world have to question the legitimacy of the Chinese
system? If the West, especially the US, the beacon of democracy, actually senses the crisis
and does not wish to lose the competition, it should stop burying its head in the sand." [My
Emphasis]
The problem isn't heads being buried in sand; rather, it's the design of the ideology to
exploit and degrade a nation's masses so they're left with relatively nothing compared to the
nation's Financial Parasites, all so the latter will always have their Free Unearned
Lunch.
"... The last scene in the video shows that the violent protest and takeover was about more than just the election. After trashing media equipment, one man says, "We gotta change it. They fucking abuse us. They laugh at us. They steal our money." ..."
T he U.S. Justice Department has reversed an earlier assertion in court by prosecutors that
protestors who broke into the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 had plans to "capture and assassinate
elected officials."
Instead, the head of the DOJ investigation into the Capitol siege
admitted that federal prosecutors filed a misleading statement before a federal judge in
Arizona that was intended to prevent Jacob Chansley, aka Jake Angeli, from being released on
bail.
The DOJ said that though there were calls to kill officials during the two-hour takeover of
the Capitol, no evidence has been discovered yet to prove any serious effort to carry out such
a plan.
"There is no direct evidence at this point of kill-capture teams and assassination," Michael
Sherwin, the Washington DC federal district attorney running the investigation of the attack,
told reporters, Agence France-Presse reported. Sherwin said it may be "appropriate" to raise it
at trial, but at this point it could "mislead the court."
The original story of intentions to kill officials has entered the media discourse and is
likely to remain a Democratic talking point despite the DOJ reversal. The only major media
outlets that
reported the new story is NBC News and The
Washington Post . It has not appeared in The New York Times or on CNN's
website, for instance.
Having saturated the public with days of lurid tales of intentions to hang Vice President
Mike Pence and abduct House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, it will be hard to shake such beliefs without
reporting the DOJ's reversal with the same intensity.
The original statement filed in court said: "Strong evidence, including Chansley's own words
and actions at the Capitol, supports that the intent of the Capitol rioters was to capture and
assassinate elected officials of the United States government."
There has been no suggestion that the prosecutors in Arizona who made the false claim are
being investigated for misleading the court.
The 'Coup'
Riot police at Capitol, Jan. 21, 2017 for Trump's inauguration. (Lorie Shaull/Wikimedia
Commons)
The admission dramatically changes the story, repeated as Democratic Party talking points,
and undermines the unquestioned certainty that what took place was an attempted coup against
the United States government. The new DOJ stance might also weaken efforts to charge Capitol
rioters and intruders with "seditious conspiracy" charges for allegedly attempting to overthrow
the government.
Consortium News has been among the few media outlets to
question the coup narrative from the start.
Even if there were such murderous intentions it would not have amounted to a coup attempt
without the backing of the military or paramilitaries, and without taking over the airport and
radio and TV stations. These days it would probably mean taking over social media companies
too. The U.S. government and media structures are vaster and more powerful than just the
legislature.
Even if the protestors had intended and succeeded in hanging Vice President Mike Pence
(presuming the gallows erected outside the Capitol was sturdy enough), and even if they had
taken Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and others hostage would Donald Trump have
said, "Okay, they didn't certify Biden, I'm still president!"?
No branch of government would have supported Trump in that case and the surviving members of
Congress would have met elsewhere to certify Joe Biden as president.
New Video Inside Capitol
Chansley, the far-right, bare-chested activist with fur headdress and Viking horns, became
the symbol of the brief takeover of the Capitol by Trump supporters. He was arrested and faces
a six-count federal indictment,
charged with:
Civil disorder Obstruction of an official proceeding Entering and
remaining in a restricted building Disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building
Violent entry and disorderly conduct in a Capitol building Parading, demonstrating, or
picketing in a Capitol Building
He is not charged with insurrection or sedition to overthrow the government.
Jacob Chandsley/ Qananon Shaman. (TheUnseen011101/Wikimedia Commons)
In a new video released on Sunday by The New Yorker, Chansley is seen grunting
primordial chants while playing to a photographer a few feet in front of him in a Senate
balcony. Later he seats himself in Pence's Senate chair.
After a single Capitol police officer pleads with the intruders to leave, Chansley leads the
group in prayer and then files out with the others, but not before scrawling on a piece of
paper on Pence's desk: "It's only a matter of time, justice is coming."
Before Chansley sat in it, the video
shows one of the protest leaders, dressed in military gear, demanding that the others not
occupy the vice president's chair. He says: "It's not our chair. I love you brothers, but we
cannot be disrespectful. It's a PR war, okay? You have to understand it's an IO war. We can't
lose the IO war. We're better than that. It's an Information Operation."
The video shows a couple of dozen protestors rifling through senators' desks looking for, in
the words of one, "something we can fucking use against these scumbags" and taking photos of
documents. At one point they thought they found evidence in Senator Ted Cruz's desk that he was
going to betray them on certification, but read further and realized he would not.
The film is interspersed with very violent scenes of police in riot gear trying to prevent
protestors from entering the Capitol.
The last scene in the video shows that the violent protest and takeover was about more
than just the election. After trashing media equipment, one man says, "We gotta change it. They
fucking abuse us. They laugh at us. They steal our money."
As journalist Chris Hedges said last Thursday, one can decry their
politics, the racism among many, and their tactics, but their pain is real in a system that has
shrunk the middle class and debased workers.
What happened at the Capitol cannot be condoned. But unless Congress defies its oligarchic
backers and serves the interests of average Americans, who also fund them, a real insurrection
may be inevitable. Instead of the reforms to defuse that and bring more economic justice, we
are witnessing a crackdown that will only further inflame the country.
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief ofConsortium Newsand a former UN
correspondent forThe Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe,
and numerous other newspapers. He was an investigative reporter for theSunday
Timesof London and began his professional career as a stringer forThe
New York Times.He can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter
@unjoe .
rosemerry , January 18, 2021 at 13:15
It is interesting that both sides of the House and Senate manage almost all the time to
arrange that other countries they have decided are enemies or rivals have real "coups" and
takeovers helped by the mighty US . Iraq, Syria,Libya,Venezuela are just a few of the recent
examples, but they are not "USA USA" so they do not count.
rosemerry , January 18, 2021 at 13:07
No surprise that the "paper of record" NYT did not bother to mention this legal angle. The
descriptions I have seen in European papers and in the Sycophant aka the Guardian hardly vary
at all and scream the alleged danger to the poor Congress members.
Anne , January 18, 2021 at 14:25
Nor NPR .Indeed they didn't bother to mention the 1954 shootings in the US Capitol (House)
until AFTER the BBC World Service had and then a week later
Tim S. , January 18, 2021 at 12:54
Anyone who has watched the video filmed by the arch-instigator's would-be-journalist
sidekick can see for themselves that these were not even serious rioters, much less coup
plotters, who were surprised as everybody else about being allowed into the Capitol
building.
And despite some toy guns and one man with the slogan on the back of his jacket "God, guns,
and Trump), it is obvious from their panicky reactions when a woman was killed that they felt
deep down that this was all fun and games. She was trying to break down an interior door,
starting with the window, but when an agent inside pointed a pistol at her, she ignored it.
When he finally shot her, they all start yelling "She's been shot!" and react rather like a
bunch of bystanders.
Does that sound like a gang planning to kill some Congressmen and taken others
hostage?
Jonny James , January 18, 2021 at 11:48
Yes, once again the mainstream narrative stinks, and the fresh air is here on CN. That's
why we don't breathe the miasma of the corporate media.
The Divide and Rule strategies of the ruling classes are working nicely. We can't have the
"99%" get together to work against "the interests of Goldman Sachs" (Hedges). That is not
allowed. The rub is that both the so-called right and so-called left work for the interests
of Goldman Sachs.
I remember very clearly how brutally the peaceful Occupy protests were smashed. The
violent cops used armored vehicles and other military equipment, massive amounts of tear gas,
flash-bang grenades, drones, surveillance etc. etc. , Scott Horton was nearly killed by a
tear-gas canister fired directly at his head. You are not allowed to work against the
interests of the real owners of this country. As George Carlin once said, "they own the f-in
place".
Anne , January 18, 2021 at 14:35
I have yet to hear NPR mention anything about the woman who was shot dead (no weapon on
her) let alone who shot and killed her that she was ex-mil (thus trained to invade, destroy,
devastate, slaughter peoples, cultures, societies far, far, from these shores what you train
for and then deploy will eventually come back home and bite
John Drake , January 18, 2021 at 13:37
Agreed, I find the minimizing of this event truly putrid. What is it about an enraged
crowd, chanting "stop the steal" breaking into a building full of legislators , assaulting,
injuring police and scaring the ..t out of said elected legislators that is not an attempt to
overthrow, interfere, interrupt, prevent a key governmental process? This a governmental
process whose outcome they wanted to alter keeping the Orange Menace in power. A flight of
ridiculous fancy, no doubt, but still attitude, behavior and intent count.
Just because it doesn't rise to the level of well known coups orchestrated by
professionals (CIA): Honduras, Guatemala, Chile, Iran and hundreds more; doesn't mean it
doesn't belong in the same family of nasty socio/political events. Can we compromise and call
it a mini attempted coup or maybe mini coup-lite? Anyway the perpetrators and their enablers
need to major consequences; especially those officials that violated their oath of
office.
By 2016 the concept of "liberal democracy," once bright with promise, had dulled into a
neoliberal politics that was neither liberal nor democratic. The Democratic Party's turn toward
market-driven policies, the bipartisan dismantling of the public sphere, the inflight marriage
of Wall Street and Silicon Valley in the cockpit of globalization -- these interventions
constituted the long con of neoliberal governance, which enriched a small minority of Americans
while ravaging most of the rest.
Jackson Lears is Board of Governors Distinguished Professor of History at Rutgers,
Editor in Chief of Raritan, and the author of Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of Modern
America, 1877–1920, among other books. (January 2021)
Democracy is in trouble, and everyone is casting about for someone to blame. Donald Trump's
grotesque incapacity to govern has made him an easy target, but the difficulties with democracy
are subtler, wider, and deeper. One clue to their complexity is a blog post that appeared on
the liberal website Daily Kos a month after Trump's election in 2016. "Be Happy for Coal
Miners Losing Their Health Insurance," the headline blared. "They're Getting Exactly What They
Voted For."
The dismissal is curt and callous: clearly, Trump's victory provoked some of his opponents
to double down on their hostility toward his supporters. But the blog post also shows -- more
broadly -- that being a liberal Democrat no longer means what it once meant. Sympathy for the
working class has, for many, curdled into contempt. By 2016 the concept of "liberal democracy,"
once bright with promise, had dulled into a neoliberal politics that was neither liberal nor
democratic. The Democratic Party's turn toward market-driven policies, the bipartisan
dismantling of the public sphere, the inflight marriage of Wall Street and Silicon Valley in
the cockpit of globalization -- these interventions constituted the long con of neoliberal
governance, which enriched a small minority of Americans while ravaging most of the rest.
In 2020 the Democrats made little attempt to distance themselves from that calamitous
inheritance. As early as 2019, Joe Biden himself made clear to the donor class that "nothing
would fundamentally change" if he were elected and reassured the medical-industrial complex by
dismissing any discussion of single-payer health care. But he has made no substantial attempt
to reassure the millions of Americans who have lost jobs or homes or health care in recent
months. One might never have known, by following his campaign, that the US was facing the most
serious and protracted economic depression since the 1930s. So it should come as no surprise
that Trump maintained his support among rural and less educated voters and even improved it
among African-Americans and Latinos. Despite Trump's bungling, many ordinary Americans may have
sensed indifference if not outright hostility emanating toward them from his Democratic
opponents. And they would not have been mistaken. The Democratic Party leadership has become
estranged from its historic base.
The spectacle of liberals jeering at coal miners reveals seismic changes in our larger
public discourse. The miners were "getting exactly what they voted for" -- exactly what they
deserved, in other words. The belief that people get what they deserve is rooted in the secular
individualist outlook that has legitimated inequality in the United States for centuries, ever
since the Protestant ethic began turning into the spirit of capitalism. Yet visions of a nation
of autonomous strivers always coexisted with older ideals of community and solidarity -- and
those ideals resurfaced in the Great Depression to become the basis, however limited and
imperfect, of midcentury social democracy. During the last four decades, the autonomous
striving self has returned to the center of the success ethic, but featured in a new narrative
that has focused less on plodding diligence and more on talent, brains, and credentialed
expertise.
Biden, Ds, reneging on $2K stimulus promise . Contortionist language is already being
employed by Biden even before he becomes POTUS, which should surprise nobody, and provides
plenty of I told ya so for Red America.
As I previously calculated, much more than $2K is needed to stave off very dire economic
hardship and further deepening of Great Depression 2.0. But for any stimulus to be effective
for small and medium businesses, operating restrictions related to the pandemic need to be
greatly eased; and even then, it's projected that 1/3 of businesses already closed will
remain closed regardless. That reality constitutes a huge blow for small businesses were seen
by many as a way out of the never ending downsizing and offshoring of decent paying jobs.
The current term "globalization" was originated by Ted Levitt in an article in the Harvard
Business Review in the 80s and taken up by the Reaganites to push for offshoring of factories
to countries with fewer workers rights and environmental concerns. He edited the magazine and
was a professor at Harvard Business School. Those "weirdos" who championed the term were the
corporate and financial behemoths that preferred it as a euphemism for "economic
imperialism"
Posted by: NemesisCalling | Jan 4 2021 1:07 utc | 56
Our nation, right now, is on the cusp of a great earthquake which will change its
arrangement so that the interior will not be beholden to the coastal elites much longer,
who have themselves thrown off the mantle of nationhood in favor of the globalist paradigm
which values nihilistic individualism over all.
So, in short, you're describing capitalism. A capitalist economy favors individualism,
profits over morality, and is mostly centered around the idea of private property as
described by John Locke. This worked wonders in the vast uncharted territories of America in
the 18th and 19th century, when the population of the United States was below 20 million and
they needed to compete, FAST, against agressive european civilizations who looked at them
with envy.
Now that they are 332 millions and counting, that their natural resources are slowly
depleting and that other civilizations have adapted to the previously unknown phenomenon of
the American empire, USans are faced with a crisis in all sectors, including faith. How come
a system that worked so well for you these past 300 years suddenly fails? well, not suddenly,
but realizing that took a while.
Oh, I know!! It must be because of all those treacherous businessmen who traded their
souls and their country for a quick buck! but we need to condemn them without condemning the
whole system, and saying "capitalism sucks" makes us sound like Ivan the Red Commie. What a
pickle. Let's call them "globalists"! so we can rally the nationalists as a bonus and say
it's all because of evil foreigners.
On certain sites, it goes as far as calling "globalists" ... communists. Or Chinese. Or
Russian. Sure, why not, everyone needs their Emmanuel Goldstein.
"Globalism" is a funny name some weirdos invented since the first Wall Street crashes
happened to justify the worst excesses of the current capitalist economic system without
pointing the finger at the real culprits. I say it's funny because it looks like nationalist
clickbait for the 2 minutes of hate everyone in the West is prescribed each day in this
hyper-social Internet.
Sad fact is, "globalists" are run-of-the-mill bosses who decided it was better for their
end-of-year bonuses if they outsourced some or all of their production to cheap chinese
companies, and not have to pay US salaries anymore. That's not globalist, that's called
looking to make a profit in the short term.
Tell me a better term than "globalist" for nationals who are titans of industry who
betray their fellow nationals in the labor force by looking outside their own nation?
A term of rather recent vintage is Labour arbitrage that is substituting less
costly labour for higher costing labour. The driving motive for all offshoring or
externalising labour resources from the home marketplace. Walmart made billions doing this as
does Amazon.
I agree with Lemming's position on this. And I think Nemesis Calling is wrong about what
the term "Globalist" implies. If a "nationalist" is someone who's loyal to a nation, then
isn't a "globalist" someone who is loyal to the whole globe? Humanity today has many massive
problems that are extremely difficult and perhaps impossible to deal with on a purely
national basis. Nuclear weapons, global climate change, pandemic diseases, the potential
threats and benefits of real artificial intelligence, the extinction of so many species,
controlling multinational corporations, the threat of mass starvation, global inequality...
these are all problems which seem to many people to need the whole human species, or the
whole globe, working together to address them.
I think the major reason why many capitalists started calling themselves "globalists" back
in the 1980's was because they saw this was an idea which was becoming increasingly popular,
and they wanted to try and coopt it for their own benefit.
The trouble was that the CEO's who decided it would be personally profitable for them to
ship their companies jobs to low wage countries were not "real" globalists. If they had
really understood what the decisions they were making would do to their countries, or even to
the corporations they were responsible to their shareholders for managing, they might be
accused of being frauds or even traitors. But they probably didn't understand, so it's
probably more accurate to just call them parts of a greedy and shortsighted elite, which was
far too arrogant to realize how countries like China would be able to exploit their
shortsighted folly. They thought they were being so clever about their plans to exploit the
Chinese. But the irony is that a major reason why they underestimated the Chinese is that
they didn't understand that the fact that the Chinese were Marxists meant that the Chinese
had a different and in some ways better understanding of how Capitalism worked than they did.
They never dreamed that the Chinese would be able to make Lenin's prediction that capitalists
would sell them the rope they needed to hang capitalism come true.
..The only upshot of the Larry Summers interview is likely to be that maybe a few people
will think that Joe Biden has bad people advising him, and the vast majority will either
dislike Joe because he sucks or because they're Trumpies in their little faux rebellion or they
will believe everything MSNBC et al. tell them about Joe Biden (and thus by extension they'll
believe every word of Summers).
Here's the important lesson, the one that SHOULD be learned: Summers is a NEOLIBERAL. By
this is meant that he is one of that group that believes that the proper role of government is
to create and enforce markets and that ideally all functions of everyone's lives would be
market functions.
The ultimate principle of neoliberalism, as pointed out in Chapter 2 of Kees van der Pijl's
A Survey of
Global Political Economy, is investor "freedom." This principle comes up on page 46 in the
author's discussion of "microeconomics and rational choice theory." After having gone over the
history of mainstream ("marginalist") economics as an "axiomatic" (which really means
faith-based -- if you agree with its principles you might find it interesting) discipline, van
der Pijl gets to neoliberalism. Here's what he says:
Importantly, the neoliberals no longer confine their prescriptions to the economy. They
want economic rationality to be applied to all aspects of society; no organ of the social
body may be allowed to function according to other principles than that of free choice by
rational, self-interested individuals.
Ultimately, as van der Pijl notes in his discussion of Friedrich von Hayek (1899-1992), the
standard-bearer of neoliberalism, neoliberalism is committed to investor freedom in all spheres
of life. This is on page 48:
The core concept of neoliberalism is the notion of 'competitively determined freedom'.
This concept of freedom is defined from the principle of privately disposable property of the
means of production, secured by political institutions ensuring 'law and order'. Hayek later
specified law and order as the foundations of private property as such, as freedom of
contract and the coercive upholding of contracts (quoted in Walpen, 2004: 114-5).
Thus, if Larry Summers believes in this insane pile of twaddle, why would he want the
government to send out $2000 checks? That wouldn't promote investor freedom.
(The further catch, of course, is that EVERYONE in DC, in Wall Street, and throughout the
ruling elites of the world, believes in this insane pile of twaddle, and they've believed it
for forty years now. So, in the same way in which Donald Trump was not an exceptional case
responsible for the general insanity of last year's politics, Larry Summers is also not an
exceptional case responsible for why you aren't getting $2,000 checks.)
The day after Christmas, the New York Times online ran a piece on the effects of climate
change(
"The Darkest Timeline," by Jonah Engel Bromwich ). It was basically about another paper,
called "Deep Adaptation," which supposedly changed the course of a lot of people's lives.
Bromwich says about the paper that:
The paper's central thought is that we must accept that nothing can reverse humanity's
fate and we must adapt accordingly. And the paper's bleak, vivid details -- emphasizing that
the end is truly nigh, and that it will be gruesome -- clearly resonated.
"When I say starvation, destruction, migration, disease and war, I mean in your own life,"
wrote the author, Jem Bendell. "With the power down, soon you wouldn't have water coming out
of your tap. You will depend on your neighbors for food and some warmth. You will become
malnourished. You won't know whether to stay or go. You will fear being violently killed
before starving to death."
But you don't really adapt to climate change doom. You commit suicide in advance of the
event. And it's hard to tell why a scientific paper, and not, say, the
story of Paradise, California , would motivate people to say, geez, there isn't much point
in living in a doomed society, so let's plan in advance. Or here's an alternative path: when
confronted with the doom of the human race and of you, personally, you choose to believe in a
pile of insane twaddle, and you say:
billions for the rich , $600 for a few of the rest. Isn't that what Congress is doing now?
To be sure, this is a sort of side-adventure, meant to contextualize neoliberals as the sort of
people who say "oh boy! Profit!" when confronted with disastrous reality.
At any rate, neoliberalism. There are a bunch of books about neoliberalism. Probably the
best place to start is with Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine , published in 2007.
Klein makes clear what the enormous human costs are of neoliberal policy. The neoliberal
method, Klein describes, is simple:
That is how the shock doctrine works: the original disaster – the coup, the
terrorist attack, the market meltdown, the war, the tsunami, the hurricane – puts the
entire population into a state of collective shock. The falling bombs, the bursts of terror,
the pounding winds serve to soften up whole societies much as the blaring music and blows in
the torture cells soften up prisoners. Like the terrorized prisoner who gives up the names of
comrades and renounces his faith, shocked societies often give up things they would otherwise
fiercely protect. (17)
It's your basic imperialism. David Harvey calls it "accumulation by dispossession"; his
book, A
Brief History of Neoliberalism , offers a good summary. I love the understatement at the
beginning of the Google Books synopsis (linked):
Neoliberalism - the doctrine that market exchange is an ethic in itself, capable of acting
as a guide for all human action - has become dominant in both thought and practice throughout
much of the world since 1970 or so. Its spread has depended upon a reconstitution of state
powers such that privatization, finance, and market processes are emphasized. State
interventions in the economy are minimized, while the obligations of the state to provide for
the welfare of its citizens are diminished.
"... has become dominant in both thought and practice throughout much of the world..." Yeah.
That's like saying that European countries conquered much of Africa between 1870 and
1914. Uh-huh. It's good to appear innocuous when writing for publication!
Also meaningful are the writings of the French team of Gerard Dumenil and Dominique Levy.
They've written a lot on the topic; the place to start would be Capital Resurgent . I haven't
read this book in awhile. If I recall correctly, Dumenil and Levy argue that neoliberalism was
a conscious choice of the elites, and that they could have chosen otherwise. But they didn't,
and so here we are.
Those with an appetite for biting prose might enjoy Philip Mirowski's
Never Let a Serious Crisis Go To Waste . Mirowski wants to chastise everyone -- the
neoliberals for their "logic" (beautifully dissected), everyone else for misrecognizing the
neoliberals and for pronouncing neoliberalism to be "dead" when in fact it's more dominant than
ever.
There's an interesting foreign-policy take on neoliberalism in Kees van der Pijl's
Global Rivalries
from the Cold War to Iraq . Ostensibly a history of foreign relations, van der Pijl found
himself obliged to discuss the history of neoliberalism because the history of foreign
relations in the period after 1980 IS the history of neoliberalism.
Richard Cockett's
Thinking the Unthinkable is a good early history of neoliberalism, from before the first
meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society
to its global triumph with Reagan and Thatcher.
All that having been said, it's amazing to find so many people online who think that
"neoliberalism" is some esoteric phenomenon, or neoliberals who don't think they're
neoliberals, or people who think there's no such thing as neoliberalism. You bring up
neoliberalism and they say things like "I don't like labels." If you were to call a tree
"green," would the tree respond by saying "I don't like labels"? We choose names for things
because otherwise we wouldn't be able to talk about them in any serious sense.
Let's be clear. Today, "liberalism" might be this warm, fuzzy belief that government ought
to give ordinary people a thing or two in addition to its usual duties of "national defense"
(under the neoliberal regime this means wars for corporate profit) and "economic policy"
(another giveaway to the rich). That's what the term "liberalism" came to mean in the US in the
period after World War II. There's a longer and deeper meaning for the term "liberalism," and
in that meaning it means what Adam Smith advocated, laissez-faire capitalism. The "neo" in
"neoliberalism," to complete the definition, defines a form of liberalism in which it is
viewed, by the neoliberals, as the duty of government to simulate laissez-faire capitalism by
setting up markets and requiring people to participate in them. That's what neoliberalism is;
that explains its NAME.
The classic neoliberal policy was the original "marketplace" function of the Affordable Care
Act. The ACA was created to keep the insurance companies from pricing their product out of the
market; the ACA obliged people to purchase health insurance (which, significantly, they still
wouldn't be able to use in many ways) by setting up a "mandate penalty" in which non-purchasers
would have to pay more in income taxes.
War for profit is a neoliberal initiative. Since the average consumer cannot purchase a war,
the neoliberal government will step in to insure that there remains a market for war. Typically
the wars serve to create enemies, which then sustain the war. Ultimately, what you see with
neoliberal war is phenomena such as what was reported in Syria in 2016, in which militias
funded by the CIA fought those funded by the Pentagon. It's fine as long as it moves
product.
There shouldn't be any confusion, then, about neoliberalism as a ruling-class ideology. It
has a well-defined meaning and plenty of examples to back up the notion that neoliberalism is a
specific notion with specific beliefs, specific believers, specific policies, and a specific
history.
See if you can acquire some Victor Jara -- good listening. And keep up the struggle!
How is Keith McHenry doing these days? (at least we know he's not a neoliberal.) Have you
visited the encampment in San Lorenzo Park of recent?
Edit to add. Great article on Victor Jara. And song!
No human cost was too high to pay to usher in neoliberalism, to eviscerate the gains
that labor had made under Allende's Popular Unity Coalition, and to maintain a steady
flow of cheap copper, fruit and fish to the U.S. under the auspices of "trade
liberalization." The new constitution passed under Pinochet's dictatorship rolled back
the reforms instituted under Allende. It expanded the power of the presidency and
enshrined private property and corporate profits over social needs; Pinochet rolled
back taxes on corporations and the wealthy, and eliminated a host of government
services. State-owned companies, public housing, education, health care, and pensions
were all privatized, turned into profit centers for corporations and the wealthy. The
constitution written under Pinochet limited reforms, and the gap today between rich and
poor in Chile is one of the highest in Latin America.
Jara's version of the song "Venceremos" or "We Will Overcome," became the anthem of
Allende's Popular Unity Coalition, and also figured centrally in eyewitness accounts of
Jara's death.
Puts a lot into perspective.
One could note that "Trickle Down Theory" got neoliberalism's foot in the door. And now
it is fully inside emptying the fridge.
How you can overheat economy that is in permanent stagnation mode (secular stagnation)? This
is nonsense. What Larry is actually afraid of but can't say is the staut of the dollar the world
reserve currency.
You can almost physically sense the level of hate toward "neoliberal scum" in comments
below
Lawrence Summers, the former Treasury Secretary under Bill Clinton, director of the National
Economic Council under Barack Obama, president of Harvard, and Chief Economist at the World
Bank, wrote a post-Christmas editorial for Bloomberg entitled, "
Trump's $2000 Stimulus Checks are a Big Mistake ." It's a classic:
Some argue that while $2,000 checks may not be optimal support for the post-Covid economy,
taking stimulus from $600 to $2,000 is better than nothing. They need to ask themselves
whether they would favor $5,000, or $10,000 -- or more. There must be a limiting
principle.
The genesis of this Summers article is a perfect tale in microcosm about how America's
intellectual elite manages to lose elections to people like Donald Trump. It's a two-step
error. First, they put people like Summers in charge of economic policies. Then, they let them
talk in public.
Summers the day before Christmas
appeared on Bloomberg to offer his initial thoughts on why $2000 checks must be bad: he
looked at which politicians were supporting the plan, and worked backward. "When I see a
coalition of Josh Hawley, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump getting behind an idea, I think
that's time to run for cover," he said, adding: "When you see the two extremes agreeing, you
can almost be certain that something crazy is in the air."
Seeing that his comments "lit up the Twittersphere," Summers then sat down to compose an
article doubling down on his reasoning. Essentially, he argued that from an econometric point
of view, we're already overdoing it on the help front. If you were under the impression that
huge numbers of people are living off meals from food banks and/or are at risk in an
eviction
crisis , you were wrong.
Noting that "total employee compensation" is "only running about $30 billion per month
behind the Covid baseline," he insisted that $200 billion more in tax rebates per month over
the next quarter would "equal an additional seven times the loss of household wage and salary
income over the next quarter."
He then showed a graph explaining that "because of the legislation passed in 2020, total
household income has exceeded normal levels relative to the economy's potential more or less
since the pandemic began." The good news, as a result, is that "the existing stimulus bill is
sufficient to elevate household income relative to the economy's potential to abnormally high
levels -- unheard of during an economic downturn."
The whole piece reads like an extended New Yorker cartoon, in which an evictee with empty
pockets is about to dive after a rotten apple core in a dumpster, only to be blocked by a
cauldron-bellied Harvard economist in a $3000 Zegna suit. Caption: " Actually, total household
income relative to the economy's potential sits at abnormally high levels ."
There are of course different positions one could take on the question of stimulus checks,
but the issue with people like Summers is the utter predictability of their stances. Summers
belongs to a club of neoliberal thinkers who've dominated American policy for decades. From Bob
Rubin to Tim Geithner to Jason Furman to Michael Froman and beyond, the people one friend
jokingly refers to as the "Rubino Crime Family" are all basically the same person, affectless
technocrats who play up reputations as giant-brained intellectuals -- I always imagine them
with bulbous Alien Nation heads -- while reveling in cold, hard truths about the limits of
government assistance.
And this by an inbred group of gluttons who couldn't survive without the life they drain
from others...
yerfej 3 hours ago remove link
That is the key "the life they drain from others". I have no issue with those who work
their aysses off keeping their just rewards, but this kind of insider filth needs a
lamppost.
two hoots 1 hour ago
Summers and those of his Jabba class know that uncontrolled Congressional giving could
cause collateral damage to their lifestyles. So does every comfortable class below them. It
all depends where you are positioned. Here on ZH i find people playing all sides of the class
game to whatever suits their current mood of us/them others. The more an event can affect us
directly determines where we direct our dislikes...up or down...inconsistently.
Doom Porn Star 1 hour ago
ALL politicians and 'public servants' who advocateor demand lockdowns and restrictions
should cede ALL pay, benefits and accrual of all retirement or other benefits for the
duration of ANY lockdown or restriction of ANY kind.
Those who advocate or demand sacrificed should make first, fullest largest sacrifices.
The whole lot of fascist 'some animals are better than others' lot should be thrown in
gitmo or equivalent.
The_Dude 3 hours ago (Edited)
Study what Summer's and his (((ilk))) did to pillage post - Soviet Russia and you will
understand who is untouchable in this society... And why in more sophisticated societies,
they were always kept at the periphery where they couldn't harm others.
Larry 'Dinner with Epstein' Summers has put more than his foot in his mouth.
BlueLightning 3 hours ago
O boy he's scared now
sgt_doom 2 hours ago (Edited)
Isn't Larry Summers the chief poster boy of the Global Banking Cartel ever since he
inserted the credit derivatives clause in the WTO's Financial Services Agreement*** making it
acceptable legal tender?
Believe that was during the Clinton Administration.
Is Larry still a lobbyist for the cental bankers? Oh yes, his photo is still there:
***[Credit to Greg Palast for uncovering this item.]
Arising 2.0 2 hours ago (Edited)
Larry is a cabal member who has always been out of touch with the 'silly goy'.
iambrambles 3 hours ago
The real question is why trillions to foreign govs and corporations.
$2000/American is chump change and isnt what anyone should be focusing on.
America never had the right fiscal priorities, people tend to forget the brilliance of the
US was with the constitution that enabled more freedoms than before.
But fiscally, America was always doomed after the absolution of the gold standard and the
creation of the federal reserve which allowed for endless government largesse.
ElTerco 2 hours ago (Edited) remove link
"negative consequences of aid to the less fortunate..."
Yet, no mention from Larry of negative consequences of aid to the more fortunate, which,
so far this year, has been around 40x as much money.
ElTerco 2 hours ago (Edited)
The $10+ trillion that has been pumped into the US economy so far has been a firehose to
top earners, while people who lost their jobs got a trickle of runoff as it worked its way
down the street through a very long, crap filled gutter.
Funny how Summers never mentioned *that*.
Max21c 2 hours ago (Edited) remove link
"When I see a coalition of Josh Hawley, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump getting behind
an idea, I think that's time to run for cover," he said, adding: "When you see the two
extremes agreeing, you can almost be certain that something crazy is in the air."
Thus is just more elitist nonsense from the silly conventional wisdom of Washingtonians,
elites, and the Democratic Party establishment. Bernie Sanders was a solid and strong and
energetic candidate and he could have had a chance of beating Trump in a free & fair
election had the Party nomination not been fixed and stolen from him by elites and their
puppet press smear campaigns.
Democrats made a mistake in attacking and undermining Bernie Sanders. Since much of what
has transpired this past year has been massive increases in domestic spending and some social
spending. Bernie Sanders could have beat Trump--fair and square--whereas the Crats had to
cheat with Biden and steal the election. Had the Democratic Party not stolen the election
from Sanders it likely Sanders would have had a significant opportunity to beat Trump. Since
Sanders was positioned right/correctly to be competitive in contrast and have some edge with
a significant part of the public on peace, foreign policy, domestic policy, and social
spending agendas. Would have been a tight race with Sanders versus Trump instead of the fraud
and fraudulent election of 2020. Definitely would have been a tossup on balance. Would have
been even harder if Sanders had teamed with Tulsi Gabbard as they would have had a serious
edge in foreign policy. But both Sanders and Gabbard are official pariahs and lepers in the
Democratic Party and its establishment as well as in the Washington establishment. Sanders
had the issues and would have had the momentum to give Trump a serious run for the money had
he not be forced aside in favor of the establishment candidate in a series of rigged
primaries and media smear campaigns and other subterfuge & Machavellian intrigues.
Max21c 1 hour ago (Edited)
I don't have issue with the size of company but do not like state sponsored industry
whereby the state security apparatus heavily favors state industries and state sponsored
industries--and--the secret police community and intelligence community and political class
ensure that the statals/SEO and state backed companies are protected by the state security
apparatus... The government doesn't have any business being used by Washingtonians, JudeoWASP
elites, Ivy Leaguers and their secret police to using military warmaking powers in the secret
police and intelligence community to rob one and redistribute back to state industries and
state sponsored industries and favor elites and their firms using secret police powers...
That's what both the Bolsheviks and Nazis did... It's the banana republoc and police state
and tyranny...
The socialism Bernie was talking about seemed more his advocating for increases in social
spending. The socialism Washington currently practices both openly and secretively &
covertly and illegally through abuses of secret police powers and state secrecy is much more
dangerous than what Bernie was advocating. The current socialist system as practiced by
Washingtonians and their secret police does much more damage to the country. The police state
socialism is much worse than the social spending games.
Bay Area Guy 2 hours ago remove link
LOL. How do you overheat a dead economy? No real growth (inflation adjusted) in at least
20 years; real unemployment at least 12.5% and probably north of 20%; this DESPITE interest
rates at all time lows and likely to go negative. And this fool is talking about overheating
the economy.
Max21c 2 hours ago remove link
If they can handout hundreds of billions to businesses under a questionable government to
business subsidy program that has been previously fraught with fraud, inefficiencies in
timeliness & appropriateness and geographical distribution. Also, such government to biz
programs which shall likely fail to serve both business and the economy effectively both by
practice and natural elements: such as some businesses being located in areas with a more
sophisticated biz culture; and set of skills; as well as access to better educated &
possibly more skillful entrepreneurs and cultures thereof; as well as some firms being simply
better positioned; as well as some firms being more program wise or welfare wise; and still
other firms being better tuned in or connected to the political system and or its
bureaucracy. Given the afore situation the money is better spent on a basis of widely
scattered and unpredictable et uncontrollable and thus not as apt to manipulation as well as
a direct to households holding the advantage of timeliness.
About 4k is about right for the floor/minimum on the basis of 2k in the form of a stimulus
and another matching 2k+ coming from forwarded tax rebates for future years which can be paid
back through payroll deductions or which can be paid back similar to installment loans
monthly or quarterly.
2k shall suffice in the near term as to stimulating consumer spending, consumer
confidence, business confidence, sales & revenues & profits or the improvement in the
outlook of a future return to profitability and the confidence & risks taking that comes
with firms seeking current and future profits and potentially making investments and pursuing
loans and the potential for an earlier uptick in the credit cycle as banks may change their
outlook on lending sooner than they might otherwise.
"... The bottom line is the true enemies of the American people are no foreign nation or adversary---the true enemy of the American people are the people who control America. ..."
"... This way of thinking points to a dilemma for the American ruling class. Contrary to a lot of the rhetoric you hear, much of the American ruling class, including the "deep state" is actually quite anti-China. To fully account for this would take longer than I have here. But the nutshell intuitive explanation is that the ruling class, particularly Wall Street, was happy for the past several decades to enrich both themselves and China by destroying the American working class with policies such as "free-trade" and outsourcing. But in many ways the milk from that teat is no more, and now you have an American ruling class much more concerned about protecting their loot from a serious geopolitical competitor (China) than squeezing out the last few drops of milk from the "free trade." ..."
This is awesome, he nails the dilemma which our owners are confronted with;
I'll put it this way: It is not as though the American ruling class is intelligent,
competent, and patriotic on most important matters and happens to have a glaring blind spot
when it comes to appreciating the threat of China. If this were the case, it would make
sense to emphasize the threat of China above all else.
But this is not the case. The American ruling class has failed on pretty much every
issue of significance for the past several decades. If China were to disappear, they would
simply be selling out the country to India, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, or some other country
(in fact they are doing this just to a lesser extent).
Our ruling class has failed us on China because they have failed us on everything. For
this reason I believe that there will be no serious, sound policy on China that benefits
Americans until there is a legitimate ruling class in the United States. For this reason
pointing fingers at the wickedness and danger of China is less useful than emphasizing the
failure of the American ruling class. The bottom line is the true enemies of the
American people are no foreign nation or adversary---the true enemy of the American people
are the people who control America.
This way of thinking points to a dilemma for the American ruling class. Contrary to
a lot of the rhetoric you hear, much of the American ruling class, including the "deep
state" is actually quite anti-China. To fully account for this would take longer than I
have here. But the nutshell intuitive explanation is that the ruling class, particularly
Wall Street, was happy for the past several decades to enrich both themselves and China by
destroying the American working class with policies such as "free-trade" and outsourcing.
But in many ways the milk from that teat is no more, and now you have an American ruling
class much more concerned about protecting their loot from a serious geopolitical
competitor (China) than squeezing out the last few drops of milk from the "free
trade."
@102 karlof1 - "By deliberately setting policy to inflate asset prices, the Fed has
priced US labor out of a job, while as you report employers sought labor costs that allowed
them to remain competitive."
I never heard it said so succinctly and truly as this before. That is what happened isn't
it? The worker can't afford life anymore, in this country.
And if the worker can't afford the cost of living - who bears the cause of this, how
follows the remedy of this, and what then comes next?
I really appreciate your point of view, which is the only point of view, which is that the
designers of the economy, the governors of the economy, have placed the workers of the
economy in a position that is simply just not tenable.
No wonder they strive to divide in order to rule - because they have over-reached through
greed and killed the worker, who holds up the society.
How long can the worker flounder around blaming others before the spotlight must turn on
the employer?
You have to remember these people really do think they are better. They do think in class
terms even if they avoid that rhetoric in public. The problem is they thought they could
control China like they did Japan. That was dumb then and it looks even dumber now. You can
see similar dumbness in their lack of grip on any realisitic view of Russia. Provincials
really. Rich peasants.
Thank you, they certainly DO think in class terms ALWAYS. + Rich peasants is perfect
:))
Thankfully they are blinded by hubris at the same time. The USA destroyed the Allende
government in Chile in 1973. After the Nixon Kissinger visit to China in 1979 they assumed
they could just pull a color revolution stunt when they deemed it to be the right time.
Perhaps in their hubris they thought every Chinese worker would be infatuated with capitalism
and growth.
They tested that out in the People Power colour (yellow) revolt in the Filipines in 1986
following a rigged election by Marcos. In 1989 only 16 years after China had been buoyed up
with growth and development following the opening to USA capitalism, they tried out the same
trick in Tienanmen square in China but those students were up against the ruling party of the
entire nation - not the ruling class. BIG MISTAKE. The ruling party of China was solidly
backed by the peasant and working class that was finally enjoying some meager prosperity and
reward a mere 40 years after the Chinese Communist Party and their parents and grandparents
had liberated China from 100 years of occupation, plunder, human and cultural rapine and
colonial insult. Then in 2020 it was tried on again in Hong Kong. FAIL.
The hubris of the ruling class and its running dogs is pathetic.
We see the same with Pelosi and the ruling class in the Dimoratss today. They push Biden
Harris to the fore, piss on the left and refuse to even hold a vote on Medicare for All in
the middle of a pandemic. Meanwhile the USAi ruling class has its running dogs and hangers on
bleating that "its wrong tactic, its premature, its whatever craven excuse to avoid exposing
the ruling class for what they are - thieves, bereft of compassion, absent any sense of
social justice, fakes lurking behind their class supposition.
They come here to the bar with their arrogant hubris, brimming with pointless information
some even with emoji glitter stuck on their noses. Not a marxist or even a leftie among them.
Still its class that matters and its the ruling class that we must break.
@102 karlof1 and Grieved | Dec 19 2020 3:12 utc | 129
I did not understand inflate-assets/suppress-workers and forgot to return to it to clear
it up. Grieved sent me back to Karlof1. I just got it.
That viewpoint indeed explains method of operation to accomplish the results I observed.
When Nixon was forced to default on Bretton Woods use of Gold Exchange Standard* [the USD is
as good as gold], then printing fiat solved the problem [threat to US inventory of
gold]....but printing fiat [no longer redeemable as a promise convert to gold] became the new
problem [no way to extinguish the promises to redeem/pay].
So how to proceed? Aha! Steal from the workers; squeeze 'em, entertain and dazzle 'em!..
Such an elegant solution...slow, certain and hardly noticeable...like slow-boiling frogs...an
on-going project as we blog.
"... Lockdowns as being inherently against the working class is a capitalist (liberal)
falsification: if you pay them while they're kept safe in their homes, you'll have the best
of the two worlds for the working class (being paid without working). This option is only
an anathema for the middle class and the capitalist class - who can't imagine a world
without the proletarians serving them ..."
We all live in an interconnected world and middle class, capitalist class (whatever that's
supposed to mean) and proletarians alike supply goods and services to one another. Money is
the medium that facilitates such exchanges. It follows then that proletarians also serve one
another and ditto for the other classes.
If working classes are paid to stay in their homes, who then supplies their needs? In
spite of Jeff Bozo's efforts and those of Elon Musk, not all transport is self-automating and
robots in Amazon warehouses still need some human inputs to operate quickly and without
hitches.
One could also argue that working fulfils other, non-monetary needs. Karl Marx actually
foresaw this when he wrote about anomie in capitalist systems of production, in which workers
are denied control over their lives and the work they do by being denied any say in what they
produce, how they produce it, the resources and environment needed to produce outputs, and
maybe even whether they can be allowed to work at all.
Lockdowns can be viewed as another method in which to deny people control over their work
and work environments. People socialise at work and lockdowns may be a way to deny workers a
place or a means to connect with others (and maybe to form unions). Is it any wonder then,
that during lockdowns people's mental health has become an issue and public health experts
became concerned at the possibility that such phenomena as suicide and domestic violence
could increase?
You can understand this from this quotation. It is the internal contradictions of the wesern
capitalist system that is driving the changes we observe, not "pressure applied by China",
which I would say is a myth.
"The fundamental cause of the development of a thing is not external but internal: it lies
in the contradictionariness within the thing. This internal contradiction exists in every
single thing, hence its motion and development. Contradictionariness within a thing is the
fundamental cause of its development, while its interrelations and interactions with other
things are secondary causes."
"It (Materialist dialectics) holds that external causes are the conditions of change and
internal causes are the basis of change, and that external causes become operative through
internal causes. In a suitable temperature an egg changes into a chicken, but no temperature
can change a stone into a chicken, because each has a different basis."
Mao Zedong. "On Contradiction" August 1937. Selected Works, Vol.1, p.315.
Lockdowns are a medical protection to eradicate a contagious virus.
The lock downs we have had are fake and we're designed to fail. For political reasons.
The very people who complained 10 months ago, were responsible for them not working,
10 months later those people are still complaining. They are the ones who have prolonged the
contagion.
They are to blame. That includes the polatians and duped public.
It's deliberate !
For those of you that worked hard and played by the rules your whole life to try to save
enough money to have a decent retirement you were robbed and played like a bunch of suckers
by Wall Street. The Fed is helping them steal any wealth the middle class has left. I'm not
sure why these people are still breathing. They should be swinging by their neck from a
rope.
Lost in translation 12 hours ago
"The status quo has been increasingly rigged to benefit insiders and elites as the powers
of central banks and governments have picked the winners (cronies, insiders, cartels and
monopolies) and shifted the losses and risks onto the losers (the rest of us)."
Charles displays a remarkable grasp of the obvious. I sometimes wonder if his target
audience isn't 11-year olds.
Sound of the Suburbs 7 hours ago
How can things possibly get any worse for young people?
Sky high housing costs
Student loans
Low wages and precarious part time jobs
A minimum wage specified at an hourly rate that won't pay a living wage in a part time
job
Most young people don't start off with any capital, and with student loans they will
actually start off with loads of debt.
It's all about investors, so people with money can make more money, and they haven't got
any.
Those young people are trying to earn their money and this just isn't the way we do things
anymore.
J J Pettigrew 6 hours ago
how about HB1 visas and the overstaying? Floods the labor market with outsiders.
Fundamentally transforming the nation.
Sound of the Suburbs 5 hours ago
Young people can't afford to start a family anymore.
You've got to sort out the demographic problem with immigration.
yerfej 5 hours ago
The tax system mimics society, both are run by elites and have so much complexity that
ONLY elites have the ability to circumvent them. Lawyers own society and it is of course to
their benefit to make it full of layer after layer of complex rules and regulations, which as
sold as "protecting the commoner", but in reality it protects the elites by stifling
competition. Start by cleaning up the tax code, have ONE flat rate for ANY AND ALL income
above the poverty allowance and be done with it. THEN the elites can't game the system with
layers and tax accountants to avoid paying. If the common people realized how screwed they're
getting by complexity they would force the change to one rate for all.
Bay Area Guy 3 hours ago
The problem in America today was caused by the Clinton/Bush/Obama administrations, along
with a complicit Congress, encouraging the off-shoring of US jobs, along with vastly
increasing the number of jobs given to people holding H1b's visas who, in turn, off shore a
large percentage of their salaries to their home countries, effectively off-shoring even more
money. The result can be seen in US GDP. Real GDP (after including the effects of inflation),
has consistently contracted since 2000 (see Shadowstats). Add in the fact that illegal
immigration (and, to a smaller extent, legal immigration) has increased the population, and
the result is you have a greater number of people trying to get their share of an economic
pie that's shrinking. When the economy was expanding, people generally felt good about their
situation. So if some sector got a bit of an increase that was more than their increase, it
wasn't as big a thing. But now, with a shrinking economy, when the homeless or illegals or
any other group gets more money, people are increasingly seeing that it's taken out of their
share and they see themselves falling further and further behind. So, they react and object
to that.
So, until or unless a way is found to expand the pie (the economy), you're going to see
greater and greater levels of frustration as anytime Group A gets more funding, every other
group is going to scream bloody murder.
Sound of the Suburbs 7 hours ago (Edited)
What is real wealth creation?
The last thing hedge funds, private equity firms and bankers need is anyone finding
out.
I thought those neoliberals were educated.
Well they like to think they are, but they have no idea about the most basic things like
wealth creation and the monetary system.
They have confused making money with creating wealth.
Sound of the Suburbs 7 hours ago
The US is going downhill fast.
What can we do?
Let them know what real wealth creation is, then they should be away.
Where does real wealth creation take place in the economy?
Economists do identify where real wealth creation in the economy occurs, but this is a
most inconvenient truth as it reveals many at the top don't actually create any wealth.
This is the problem.
Much of their money comes from wealth extraction rather than wealth creation, and they
need to get everyone thoroughly confused so we don't realise what they are really up to.
The Classical Economists had a quick look around and noticed the aristocracy were
maintained in luxury and leisure by the hard work of everyone else.
They haven't done anything economically productive for centuries, they couldn't miss
it.
The Classical economist, Adam Smith:
"The labour and time of the poor is in civilised countries sacrificed to the maintaining
of the rich in ease and luxury. The Landlord is maintained in idleness and luxury by the
labour of his tenants. The moneyed man is supported by his extractions from the industrious
merchant and the needy who are obliged to support him in ease by a return for the use of his
money."
There was no benefits system in those days, and if those at the bottom didn't work they
died.
They had to earn money to live.
Ricardo was an expert on the small state, unregulated capitalism he observed in the world
around him.
He was part of the new capitalist class, and the old landowning class were a huge problem
with their rents that had to be paid both directly and through wages.
"The interest of the landlords is always opposed to the interest of every other class in
the community" Ricardo 1815 / Classical Economist.
They soon identified the constructive "earned" income and the parasitic "unearned"
income.
This disappeared in neoclassical economics.
GDP was invented after they used neoclassical economics last time.
In the 1920s, the economy roared, the stock market soared and nearly everyone had been
making lots of money.
In the 1930s, they were wondering what the hell had just happened as everything had
appeared to be going so well in the 1920s and then it all just fell apart.
They needed a better measure to see what was really going on in the economy and came up
with GDP.
In the 1930s, they pondered over where all that wealth had gone to in 1929 and realised
inflating asset prices doesn't create real wealth, they came up with the GDP measure to track
real wealth creation in the economy.
The transfer of existing assets, like stocks and real estate, doesn't create real wealth
and therefore does not add to GDP. The real wealth creation in the economy is measured by
GDP.
Real wealth creation involves real work producing new goods and services in the
economy.
So all that transferring existing financial assets around doesn't create wealth?
No it doesn't, and now you are ready to start thinking about what is really going on
there.
Don't get confused between making money and creating wealth.
When you equate making money with creating wealth, people try and make money in the
easiest way possible, which doesn't actually create any wealth.
In 1984, for the first time in American history, "unearned" income exceeded "earned"
income.
The American have lost sight of what real wealth creation is, and are just focussed on
making money.
You might as well do that in the easiest way possible.
It looks like a parasitic rentier capitalism because that is what it is.
Bankers make the most money when they are driving your economy into a financial
crisis.
They will load your economy up with their debt products until you get a financial
crisis.
On a BBC documentary, comparing 1929 to 2008, it said the last time US bankers made as
much money as they did before 2008 was in the 1920s.
The financial crisis appears to come out of a clear blue sky when you use an economics
that doesn't consider debt, like neoclassical economics.
Banks – What is the idea?
The idea is that banks lend into business and industry to increase the productive capacity
of the economy.
Business and industry don't have to wait until they have the money to expand. They can
borrow the money and use it to expand today, and then pay that money back in the future.
The economy can then grow more rapidly than it would without banks.
Debt grows with GDP and there are no problems.
The banks create money and use it to create real wealth.
Winter Is Coming for the American working-class.
Even if you don't care about the working poor, their suffering is going to affect you. In some
ways it already has. Despite the CDC eviction moratorium,
evictions have continued during the pandemic. This is led to hundreds of thousands of
people being
infected with Covid .
Expiring state eviction bans have led to hundreds of thousands of additional coronavirus
cases, new research finds, raising alarm about what will happen when the national eviction
moratorium lapses next month.
...
The researchers, from the University of California, Los Angeles, University of California,
San Francisco, Johns Hopkins University, Boston University and Wake Forest University School
of Law, found that lifting state moratoriums and allowing eviction proceedings to continue
caused as many as 433,700 excess cases of Covid-19 and 10,700 additional deaths in the U.S.
between March and September.
If the CDC's eviction ban isn't extended until 2021, experts say, many new cases are
likely to emerge from people being forced out of their houses and apartments.
"This is a time where it's not an overstatement to say that for many people, eviction can
lead to death ," said Helen Matthews, communications manager at City Life Vita Urbana, a
nonprofit in Boston.
It should come as no surprise to anyone that making people homeless during the pandemic is a
public health nightmare. Yet the eviction moratorium did not mean free rent. All that unpaid
rent is build up to $36 billion.
So how many people are about to be evicted? How many people will be homeless on our streets in
the coming months?
It depends on who you ask, but it will be in the tens of millions. Let that sink in for a
moment. Tens of millions of Americans are about to lose their place of residence. The
government has no plans to do anything about it.
One study says 19
million Americans will be evicted in the next two months. That's the conservative
estimate.
Another study says
40 million Americans will lose their homes this winter. These are numbers that will
destabilize American society and the American political system.
The end of the moratorium comes at the same time as the
end of stimulus money .
UI, stimulus, and welfare combined, after spiking to an annual rate of $3.88 trillion in
April, fell to $1.04 trillion in October
39 million Americans
don't have enough to eat right now, and people are waiting in line for hours at food banks
all over the nation just for some Thanksgiving handouts.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, approximately 12 percent of all Americans did not have
enough food to eat between October 28th and November 9th.
Let's like clear about something. Politicians, the media, and of course the wealthy couldn't
care less about the suffering of the working class.
However, they do care about getting sick and dying. So what's going to happen is that working
class are going to be crushed, and only then, when the Covid cases spiked to unimaginable
levels, will the ruling elites have an epiphany. That epiphany is you really are your brother's
keeper.
Winter Is Coming for the American working-class.
Even if you don't care about the working poor, their suffering is going to affect you. In some
ways it already has. Despite the CDC eviction moratorium,
evictions have continued during the pandemic. This is led to hundreds of thousands of people
being
infected with Covid .
Expiring state eviction bans have led to hundreds of thousands of additional coronavirus cases,
new research finds, raising alarm about what will happen when the national eviction moratorium
lapses next month.
...
The researchers, from the University of California, Los Angeles, University of California, San
Francisco, Johns Hopkins University, Boston University and Wake Forest University School of
Law, found that lifting state moratoriums and allowing eviction proceedings to continue caused
as many as 433,700 excess cases of Covid-19 and 10,700 additional deaths in the U.S. between
March and September.
If the CDC's eviction ban isn't extended until 2021, experts say, many new cases are likely
to emerge from people being forced out of their houses and apartments.
"This is a time where it's not an overstatement to say that for many people, eviction can
lead to death ," said Helen Matthews, communications manager at City Life Vita Urbana, a
nonprofit in Boston.
It should come as no surprise to anyone that making people homeless during the pandemic is a
public health nightmare. Yet the eviction moratorium did not mean free rent. All that unpaid rent
is build up to $36 billion.
So how many people are about to be evicted? How many people will be homeless on our streets in
the coming months?
It depends on who you ask, but it will be in the tens of millions. Let that sink in for a moment.
Tens of millions of Americans are about to lose their place of residence. The government
has no plans to do anything about it.
One study says 19
million Americans will be evicted in the next two months. That's the conservative
estimate.
Another study says
40 million Americans will lose their homes this winter. These are numbers that will
destabilize American society and the American political system.
The end of the moratorium comes at the same time as the
end of stimulus money .
UI, stimulus, and welfare combined, after spiking to an annual rate of $3.88 trillion in April,
fell to $1.04 trillion in October
39 million Americans
don't have enough to eat right now, and people are waiting in line for hours at food banks
all over the nation just for some Thanksgiving handouts.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, approximately 12 percent of all Americans did not have
enough food to eat between October 28th and November 9th.
Let's like clear about something. Politicians, the media, and of course the wealthy couldn't
care less about the suffering of the working class.
However, they do care about getting sick and dying. So what's going to happen is that working
class are going to be crushed, and only then, when the Covid cases spiked to unimaginable levels,
will the ruling elites have an epiphany. That epiphany is you really are your brother's
keeper.
Plenty of money to wage war and create suffering abroad, but not enough to take care of the
peasants at home. I keep hearing the US is a neofeudalist country...in classic feudal times
they took care of the serfs...perhaps that the neo part.
Sure is a sad state you present gjohnsit. Thanks for informing us.
A research team I'm part of just published data looking at the 'diseases of despair' crisis
over the last decade (full article is free and available online).
A brief summary of our findings below, and some thoughts....
Trends in the diagnosis of diseases of despair in the United States...
Background and objective Increasing mortality and decreasing life expectancy in the USA are
largely attributable to accidental...
AUDIO:
FOR THE FIRST TIME IN NEARLY 100 YEARS, LIFE
EXPECTANCY IS DECREASING IN THE UNITED STATES. IN THIS EPISODE, DR. LARRY SINOWAY DISCUSSES THE DECLINE AND HOW IT RELATES
TO...
view
more
CREDIT: PENN STATE CLINICAL AND TRANSLATIONAL SCIENCE INSTITUTE
Medical diagnoses
involving alcohol-related disorders, substance-related disorders and suicidal thoughts and behaviors -- commonly referred to
as diseases of despair -- increased in Pennsylvania health insurance claims between the years 2007 and 2018, according to
researchers from Penn State Clinical and Translational Science Institute and Highmark Health Enterprise Analytics.
Princeton
economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton proposed the concept of deaths of despair in 2015. Case and Deaton's research observed a
decline in life expectancy of middle-aged white men and women between 1999 and 2015 -- the first such decline since the flu
pandemic of 1918. They theorized that this decline is associated with the social and economic downturn in rural communities
and small towns. These changes include loss of industry, falling wages, lower marriage rates, increasing barriers to higher
education, an increase in one-parent homes and a loss of social infrastructure.
"It is theorized
that these changes have fostered growing feelings of despair including disillusionment, precariousness and resignation in many
peoples' lives," Daniel George, associate professor of humanities and public health sciences, Penn State College of Medicine,
said. "Despair can trigger emotional, cognitive, behavioral and even biological changes, increasing the likelihood of diseases
that can progress and ultimately culminate in deaths of despair."
With the
commonwealth's considerable rural and small-town population, particularly around Penn State campuses, Penn State Clinical and
Translational Science Institute led a research study to understand the rate of diseases of despair in Pennsylvania. Institute
researchers collaborated with Highmark Health, one of the state's largest health insurance providers. Highmark provides
employer-sponsored, individual, Affordable Care Act and Medicare plans.
Highmark Health's
Enterprise Analytics team analyzed the claims of more than 12 million people on their plans from 2007 to 2018. Penn State did
not have access to Highmark member data or individual private health information. Although the insurance claims included
members from neighboring states, including West Virginia, Delaware, and Ohio, the majority of the claims were from
Pennsylvania residents. Researchers reported their results in
BMJ Open
.
The researchers
defined diseases of despair as diagnoses related to alcohol use, substance use and suicidal thoughts or behaviors. They
searched the claims data for the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) codes related to these diagnoses. ICD codes
form a standardized system maintained by the World Health Organization and are used in health records and for billing.
The researchers
found that the rate of diagnoses related to diseases of despair increased significantly in the Highmark claims in the past
decade. Nearly one in 20 people in the study sample was diagnosed with a disease of despair. Between 2009 and 2018, the rates
of alcohol-, substance-, and suicide-related diagnoses increased by 37%, 94% and 170%. Following Case and Deaton's findings,
the researchers saw the most substantial percentage increase in disease of despair diagnoses among men ages 35 to 74, followed
by women ages 55 to 74 and 18 to 34.
The rate of
alcohol-related diagnoses significantly increased among men and women ages 18 and over. The most dramatic increases were among
men and women ages 55 to 74. Rates increased for men in this age group by 50% and 80% for women.
The rate of
substance-related diagnoses roughly doubled for men and women ages 35 to 54 and increased by 170% in ages 55 to 74. In 2018,
the most recent year of claims included in the study, rates of substance-use diagnoses were highest in 18-to-34-year-olds.
The rate of
diagnoses related to suicidal thoughts and behaviors increased for all age groups. Among 18-to-34-year-olds, rates increased
by at least 200%. The rate for all other age groups increased by at least 60%.
The type of
insurance patients had also mattered. People with Medicare insurance had 1.5 times higher odds of having a disease of despair
diagnosis and those with Affordable Care Act insurance had 1.3 times higher odds.
One increase
stood out to researchers: among infants, substance-related diagnoses doubled.
"This increase
was entirely attributable to neonatal abstinence syndrome and corresponded closely with increases in substance-related
disorders among women of childbearing age," Emily Brignone, senior research scientist, Highmark Health Enterprise Analytics,
said.
Neonatal
abstinence syndrome occurs when a baby withdraws from substances, especially opioids, exposed to in the womb.
Future research
can concentrate on identifying "hot spots" of diseases of despair diagnoses in the commonwealth to then study the social and
economic conditions in these areas. With this data, researchers can potentially create predictive models to identify
communities at risk and develop interventions.
"We found a broad
view of who is impacted by increases in diseases of despair, which cross racial, ethnic and geographic groups," Jennifer
Kraschnewski, professor of medicine, public health sciences and pediatrics, said. "Although originally thought to mostly
affect rural communities, these increases in all middle-aged adults across the rural-urban continuum likely foreshadows future
premature deaths."
###
National Center
for Advancing Translational Science of the National Institutes of Health through Penn State Clinical and Translational Science
Institute funded this research.
A podcast about
this topic is available here.
Other researchers
on this project were Lawrence Sinoway, director, Penn State Clinical and Translational Science Institute; Curren Katz and
Robert Gladden, Highmark Health Enterprise Analytics; Charity Sauder, administrative director, Penn State Clinical and
Translational Science Institute; and Andrea Murray, project manager, Penn State College of Medicine.
Disclaimer:
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the
accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the
EurekAlert system.
Back in 2013 a group of Apple employees decided
to sue the global behemoth. Every day, after they were clocking out, they were required to
go through a corporate screening where their personal belongings were examined. It was a
process required and administered by Apple. But Apple did not want to pay its employees for the
time it had required them to spend. It could be anywhere from 40 to 80 hours a year that an
employee spent going through that process. What made Apple so confident in brazenly
nickel-and-diming its geniuses?
Jeff Rubin, author of The
Expendables: How the Middle Class got Screwed by Globalization , has an answer to the
above question that is easily deduced from the subtitle of his book. The socio-economic
arrangements produced by globalization have made labor the most flexible and plentiful resource
in the economic process. The pressure on the middle class, and all that falls below it, has
been so persistent and powerful, that now " only 37
percent of Americans believe their children will be better off financially than they
themselves are. Only 24 percent in Canada or Australia feel the same. And in France, that
figure dips to only 9 percent." And "[i]n the mid-1980s it would have taken a typical
middle-income family with two children less than seven years of income to save up to buy a
home; it now takes more than ten years. At the same time, housing expenditures that accounted
for a quarter of most middle-class household incomes in the 1990s now account
for a third ."
The story of globalization is engraved in the " shuttered
factories across North America, the boarded-up main streets, the empty union halls." Rubin
does admit that there are benefits accrued from globalization, billions have been lifted up out
of poverty in what was previously known as the third world, wealth has been created, certain
efficiencies have been achieved. The question for someone in the western world is how much more
of a price he's willing to pay to keep the whole thing going on, especially as we have entered
a phase of diminishing returns for almost all involved.
As Joel Kotkin has written, "[e]ven in Asia, there are signs of social collapse. According
to a recent survey by the
Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs, half of all Korean households have experienced
some form of family crisis, many involving debt, job loss, or issues relating to child or elder
care." And "[i]n "classless" China, a massive class of migrant workers -- over 280 million --
inhabit a netherworld of substandard housing, unsteady work, and miserable environmental
conditions, all after leaving their offspring behind in villages. These new serfs vastly
outnumber the Westernized, highly educated Chinese whom most
Westerners encounter. " "Rather than replicating the middle-class growth of
post–World War II America and Europe, notes researcher Nan Chen, 'China appears to have
skipped that stage altogether and headed straight for a model of extraordinary productivity but
disproportionately
distributed wealth like the contemporary United States.'"
Although Rubin concedes to the globalist side higher GDP growth, even that does not seem to
be so true for the western world in the last couple decades. Per Nicholas Eberstadt, in "Our
Miserable 21st Century," "[b]etween late 2000 and late 2007, per capita GDP growth averaged
less
than 1.5 percent per annum." "With postwar, pre-21st-century rates for the years
2000–2016, per capita GDP in America would be more than 20
percent higher than it is today."
Stagnation seems to be a more apt characterization of the situation we are in. Fredrik
Erixon in his superb The Innovation
Illusion , argues that "[p]roductivity growth is going south, and has been doing so
for several decades." "Between 1995 and 2009, Europe's labor productivity grew by just 1
percent annually." Noting that "[t]he four factors that have made Western capitalism dull and
hidebound are gray capital, corporate managerialism, globalization, and complex
regulation."
https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.426.0_en.html#goog_1789765618 Ad ends in
15s
Contrary to popular belief, globalization has functioned as a substitute for innovation and
growth. With globalization on the march, the western ruling class could continue to indulge in
its most preferred activities, regulation and taxation, in an environment where both of these
political addictions appeared sustainable. Non-western elites could perpetuate their
authoritarian regimes, garnering growth and legitimacy, from the access to the western markets.
Their copy-and-paste method of "innovation" from western firms would fit well with an
indigenous business class composed of mostly insiders and ex-regime apparatchiks.
There are plenty of criticisms that can be laid at the feet of globalization. The issue with
Rubin's book is that is does not advance very much beyond some timeworn condemnations of it.
One gets the sense that the value of this book is merely in its audacity to question the
conventional wisdom on the issue at hand. Rubin, who is somewhat sympathetic to Donald Trump,
seems to be much closer to someone like Bernie Sanders, especially an earlier version of
Sanders that dared to talk about the debilitating effects of immigration on the working
class.
Like Sanders, Rubin starts to get blurry as he goes from the condemnation phase to the
programmatic offers available. What exactly would be his tariffs policy, how far he would go?
What would be the tradeoffs of this policy? Where we could demarcate a reasonable fair
environment for the worker and industry and where we would start to create another type of a
stagnation trap for the whole economy? All these would be important questions for Rubin to
grapple with and would give to his criticisms more gravitas.
It would have also been of value if he had dealt more deeply with the policies of the Trump
administration. On the one hand, the Trump administration cracked down on illegal and legal
immigration. It also started to use tariffs and other trade measures as a way to boost industry
and employment. On the other hand, it reduced personal and corporate taxes and it deregulated
to the utmost degree possible. It was a kind of 'walled' laisser-faire that seemed to work
until Covid-19 hit. Real household income in the U.S.
increased $4,379 in 2019 over 2018. It was "more income growth in one year than in the 8
years of Obama-Biden." And during Trump's time, the lowest paid workers started not to just be
making gains, but making gains faster than the wealthy. "Low-wage workers are getting bigger
raises than bosses" ran a CBS News
headline .
Rubin seems to view tax cuts and deregulation as another giveaway to large corporations. But
these large corporations are just fine with high taxation, since they have a choice as to when
and where they get taxed. Regulation is also more of a tool than a burden for them. It's a very
expedient means for eliminating competitors and competition, a useful barrier to entry for any
upstart innovator that would upend the industry they are in. Besides, if high taxation and
regulation were a kind of antidote to globalization, then France would be in a much better
shape than it appears to be. But France seems to be doing worse than anybody else. In the
aforementioned poll about if their "children will be better off financially than they
themselves are" France was at the bottom in the group of countries that Rubin cited. The recent
events with the yellow-vests movement indicate a very deep dissatisfaction and pessimism of its
middle and working class.
Moreover, there does not seem to be much hostility or even much contention between
government bureaucracies and the upper echelons of the corporate world. Something that Rubin's
politics and economics would necessitate. And cultural and political like-mindedness between
government bureaucracies and the managerial class of large corporations is not just limited to
the mutual embrace of woke politics. It seems that there is a cross pollination of a much
broader set of ideas and habits between bureaucrats and the managerial class. For instance,
Erixon notes that "[c]orporate
managers shy away from uncertainty but turn companies into bureaucratic entities free from
entrepreneurial habits. They strive to make capitalism predictable." Striving for
predictability is a very bureaucratic state of mind.
In Rubin's book, missed trends like that make his perspective to feel a bit dated. There is
still valuable information in The Expendables . Rubin does know a lot about
international trade deals. For instance, a point that is often ignored in the press about
international trade agreements is that "[i]f you're designated a "developing" country, you get
to protect your own industries with tariffs that are a multiple of those that developed
economies are allowed to use to protect their workers." A rule that China exploits to the
utmost.
Meanwhile, Apple, after its apparent lawsuit loss on the case with its employees in
California, now seems committed to another fight with the expendables of another locale. The
Washington Post reported that "Apple
lobbyists are trying to weaken a bill aimed at preventing forced labor in China, according to
two congressional staffers familiar with the matter, highlighting the clash between its
business imperatives and its official stance on human rights." "The bill aims to end the use of
forced Uighur labor in the Xinjiang region of China ." The war against the expendables never
ends.
Napoleon Linarthatos is a writer based in New York.
Damn, Krystal dropping one of her classic heaters today: "Affirmative action is the type of program that poses little
threat and only benefits to affluent white liberals. It's the college admissions version of identity politics: more
about getting brown faces in high places to make WHITE people feel good than it is about actually addressing the very
real problems it seeks to ameliorate." - Krystal Ball
As a black person I hate to admit that I've bought into the BS all of this time but she is absolutely right. All of her
data is correct. AA is just a tool for bourgeoisie blacks to get into better schools. Period. Nothing else. Stop trying
to sell it as some saving grace that it is not. The point about student loans is exactly right. If you want to help a
ton of black people with college then do something about this BS student loan situation.
"White Saviors" is a way to say what we've been saying all along. Affirmative Action IS racist. You are saying that
someone needs help because of their skin color, as if that makes them inferior. Racist.
When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America, by Ira
Katznelson (W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 2005), preface, appendix, index, 238 pp.
By Jon Queally, staff writer, Common Dreams. Originally published at
Common Dreams
Pinpointing a reality denounced as "
morally obscene " by Sen. Bernie Sanders, a new government study shows how some of the
nation's largest and most profitable corporations -- including Walmart, McDonald's, Dollar
General, and Amazon -- feast upon taxpayer money by paying their employees such low wages that
huge numbers of those workers throughout the year are forced to rely on public assistance
programs such as Medicaid and food assistance just to keep themselves and their families
afloat.
According to a statement from Sanders' office, the study he commissioned the Government
Accountability Office to carry out -- titled " Millions of Full-time Workers Rely on Federal Health
Care and Food Assistance Programs " -- found that an estimated 5.7 million Medicaid
enrollees and 4.7 million SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) recipients who
worked full-time for 50 or more weeks in 2018 earned wages so low that they qualified for these
federal benefits. In addition, an estimated 12 million wage-earning adults enrolled in Medicaid
and 9 million wage-earning adults living in households receiving SNAP benefits worked at some
point in 2018.
Upon the study's release Wednesday, Warren Gunnels, staff director and policy adviser for
Sen. Sanders, tweeted: "The real looting in America is the Walton family becoming $63 billion
richer during a pandemic, while paying wages so low that 14,541 of their workers in 9 states
need food stamps -- all subsidized by U.S. taxpayers. Yes. The Walton family is the real
welfare queen in America."
According to the Washington Post :, based on the GAO report:
Walmart was one of the top four employers of SNAP and Medicaid beneficiaries in every
state. McDonald's was in the top five of employers with employees receiving federal benefits
in at least nine states.
In the nine states that responded about SNAP benefits -- Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana,
Maine, Massachusetts, Nebraska, North Carolina, Tennessee and Washington -- Walmart was found
to have employed about 14,500 workers receiving the benefit, followed by McDonald's with
8,780, according to Sanders's team. In six states that reported Medicaid enrollees, Walmart
again topped the list, with 10,350 employees, followed by McDonald's with 4,600.
In Georgia, for example, Walmart employed an estimated 3,959 workers on Medicaid -- an
estimated 2.1 percent of the total of non-elderly, non-disabled people in the state receiving
the benefit. McDonald's was next on the list, employing 1,480 who received Medicaid, or 0.8
percent of the total of non-elderly, non-disabled people on the program. "
"At a time when huge corporations like Walmart and McDonald's are making billions in profits
and giving their CEOs tens of millions of dollars a year, they're relying on corporate welfare
from the federal government by paying their workers starvation wages," said Sanders in a
statement. "That is morally obscene."
With the individual wealth of
high-ranking executives and members of billionaire families like the Walton's, who own
Walmart, soaring even as front-line, minimum wage employees and their families struggling to
stay afloat amid the devastating Covid-19 pandemic, Sanders argues that the stark contrast
should be a wakeup call for those who have refused to see how unjust and economically backward
it is for the federal government, meaning taxpayers, to subsidize the cruel wages that massive
profitable companies force their workers to accept.
"U.S. taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize some of the largest and most profitable
corporations in America," said Sanders. "It is time for the owners of Walmart, McDonald's and
other large corporations to get off of welfare and pay their workers a living wage."
No one in this country should live in poverty," Sanders added. "No one should go hungry. No
one should be unable to get the medical care they need. It is long past time to increase the
federal minimum wage from a starvation wage of $7.25 an hour to $15, and guarantee health care
to all Americans as a human right."
These looters at the top don't just rely on welfare for their workers: they also rely on
government assistance in other ways, such as favorable tax treatment and other goodies to
bring their boondoggles to town, and of course trillions in infusions/ giveaways like we saw
this year. Not to mention golden parachutes in corporate bankruptcies, facilitated by the
"way things are done."
""There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of
barbarism," wrote Walter Benjamin. In precisely this vein, Walton's new Crystal Bridges
museum offers American-made art to strategically cover up the ugly reality Walmart has
created. Spanning the colonial era to the present, the exhibition space's fulsome celebration
of the American spirit eulogizes the nation of shared confidence and abundance, sustainable
mortgages, and worker dignity that Walmart has brutally demolished. The notion that Walton's
supremely self-satisfied kunsthalle might serve as a balm, let alone a monument, to the
market-battered American spirit is analogous to, say, Genghis Khan inviting survivors of his
Mongol hordes to admire an installation of his plunder "
As Amazon uses a network of subcontractors and contractors for everything for logistics to
making toilet paper, all those employees will never show up on "official" stats re.
Amazon.
I called it a straw man because " but let us sweep Whole Foods and Amazon Prime under the
rug" suggested that the piece had done that, when they weren't mentioned.
An equally accurate storyline could be–"Workers in at least 9 states would be forced
to live off even more government handouts without Walmart's employment".
Its tough to give companies grief here simply for paying what the market dictates. I'm all
for going after the route of the problem–monopsony power–but noting the symptoms
without actually raising awareness of the underlying problem is a distraction that keeps the
plebs anger directed where it can't have much effect on the bigger picture. Being mad at
Walmart instead of the government policy that has destroyed unions and made it easier/cheaper
to move jobs overseas isn't serving middle America. Ironically, this distraction serves
Walmart quite well. They actually champion hire minimum wages as it stifles competition
Its an interesting thought experiment to imagine absolutely no minimum wages but a UBI and
universal healthcare so that no one needed a job just to survive. Then Walmart could pay its
employees any low amount and no one would bat an eye (although I suspect wages actually
wouldnt fall because walmart would lose its monopsony power)
Government policy doesn't write itself: lobbyists guide the pen, and donors/ owners like
Walmart pull the guides' puppet strings. "Personal responsibility" goes both ways.
To use yesterday's metaphor, I'd say that the PMC is like the human being co-driver in a
"self"-driving car programmed by capital.
Though if we can get people to admit they feel the symptoms by describing the symptoms,
some of those people might then be ready and willing to hear about the disease which is
giving them the symptoms.
Tempting as it might be to shape the narrative so that the Walmarts of the World appear
more like hapless innovators, shrewdly capitalizing on a crooked playing field, it only works
if you blinker yourself to the fact that the WotW have at least 8 of the ten fingers on the
hands architecting those same playing fields.
Don't get me wrong–I'm not trying to say Walmart is hapless. Maybe I'm too cynical,
but I actually think they're so shrewd they want you to focus on these press releases about
how they pay so little. If the only thing that stems from that is increasing the minimum
wage, they come out big time winners
Here's what the market dictates. " I can get 10 interns who will pay ME to LET them do
your job. Now shut up and get back to work." The way to stop the Market Dictatorship of what
wages will be is to impose a Legal Dictatorship on the market of what wages will be.
That's what the Wages and Hours Act was about to begin with. Make it a long-sentence
hard-time felony to pay less or to take less. Abolish Free Trade in goods , services or
people. That means Sealing the Borders to create zero immigration for as long as necessary to
use the labor shortage to torture the employER class into raising wages and conditions
upward. And to weld shut the "illegal immigration escape hatch" by which employERS (
including limousine liberals) pay less than the legally imposed minimum wage.
Ya, I agree. Providing health care and making sure kids have food and education are
subsidies that help businesses in a healthy way. And a UBI is a great idea as well! Toss in a
Carbon tax, and you have my ideal policy.
We've had this debate here for years so the above article is a bit of a recycled chestnut
rather than an original thought.
And perhaps the answer for the "outrage" of those Walmart heirs is to reestablishment a
meaningful inheritance tax since receiving billions through death is indeed an entitlement
and not just for the Walmart heirs but also for plenty of mansion owners dotting the
Northeast.
As for the company itself, yes it's a crappy and low paid place to work but they are
hardly unique in that and one reason they top those mentioned lists, along with McDonalds, is
that they are the number one and number two employers by number of employees in the country.
And the reason they are so large is that they give their custormers what they want and can
afford which cannot be said of so many competing looters that the author ignores.
There are lots of worse companies than Walmart but in the battle of the coastals versus
the deplorables they have always made a fat juicy target for those who probably pay their
hired help less than Walmart does its "associates."
Right!?
I keep thinking about how at 15/hour people will lose what small piece of our social safety
net that keeps them "making it". No family is purchasing health insurance on that increase.
And really the few dollars per hour might not even make up the food benefits for a medium
sized family. It's scary to get a raise where you end up worse off then before.
I mean I guess that's just the messed up reality when a whole bunch of household costs have
been introduced or increased since policies using means testing (income and asset thresholds)
to determine access. Actually I am sure ok not sure but it would make sense that these
companies know exactly how much pay will kick these employees off benefits. So the employee
community is less likely to make a fuss for small increases in pay which is the norm we have
come to accept as workers. I'm all for real talk minimum/ living wages for the communities
people actually live in.
"Corporate welfare queens" As others have noted, it isn't just Walmart and the Waltons.
Trying to think of an appropriate term to describe the outcome of the decision by a majority
of the US Supreme Court justices in the Citizens United case that not only enabled but
tacitly encouraged One Percent, corporate, Wall Street, executive branch, legislators' and
central bank behavior that, although still a cycle, has led to the opposite of a "virtuous
cycle". "Morally obscene", corrupt and corruptible, and dishonorable are some descriptions of
resultant behavior that come to mind. Too bad "The Swamp" wasn't drained, but has been
further expanded and left both legacy political parties tarnished. It is said that a fish
rots from the head down. That may be so, but that doesn't mean the rot cannot be allowed to
set in. Follow the Money.
It turns out that when the TrumpAdmin used the phrase " the Swamp", what they strictly
specifically and only meant were the impartial scientists at the various departments ,
bureaus and agencies. And they have done all they could to drain out the impartial scientists
and stop the science. Which is all they ever meant by "drain the Swamp".
Citizens United decision was a display of right wing insanity in all it's glory: I
suppose insanity was either baked into the Constitution – or in 1780 – was not
yet insanity?
Still can't get over that decision – ever since, my thought: term limits for friggen
federal judges – and certainly the SCOTUS crew and throw in Congress and the Senate as
well.
We have term limits for state officeholders in Michigan. All that mostly gets us is
cynical amateurs who view their limited term as a chance to make contacts and audition for
lobbying/law/etc. jobs after leaving office.
And the non-cynical amateurs who want to make things better are term-limited out of office
just when they are finally learning where all the hidden levers, ropes, pulleys, secret trap
doors are. Meanwhile, the lobbyists are not term limited.
Term limits for national office would make some things worse while making nothing
better.
Ah, those immortal lobbyists! Term limits for politicians – combined with limits on
lobbyists. One can dream. No? I'd like to try it. How can we actually drain the Swamp/
Oh. Crap. We have a Supreme Court. Freedom to Lobby infinitely. Freedom of bribery – I
mean freedom of speech.
OK, So nothing can be done. Perhaps state office holders are a different thing then National
politicians? (Yeah, maybe not) But Do you want to remove the term limits on our President
then? No? I'd keep that limit.
Should we just resign ourselves to be stuck with this stuff till the Sun expands and swallows
the USA? The future colony on Mars will have a better way? Not likely.
We have term limits. They're called elections. If/when there's something wrong with
Democracy, fix Democracy. If/when there's something wrong with the Constitution, fix the
Constitution
In most cases, artificial term limits don't do either. I would say there are two
exceptions: limiting the presidency to two terms, and limiting the tenure of federal judges.
In the latter case, 18-year term limits have been suggested, and that could be the right
number, I'm not sure.
Now, with respect to fixing Democracy and the Constitution, for a First Step, please see
HJR-48: Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States providing that the
rights extended by the Constitution are the rights of natural persons only -- oh, by the way,
stating that money does not equal speech.
Every looting is real looting. Little looters in the streets are real looters. Big looters
in the suites are real looters.
Since the big looting is currently legal in many cases, laws would have to be changed to
stop the big looters looting. Its worth trying to do. It won't happen with Joemala and
McConnell conspiring together to stop it from happening.
We need to elect a Red Gingrich minority of officeholders into the House and into the
Senate. The "squad" could be the nucleus of that if they decide to center economic justice
instead of critical race wokeness.
Congrease had/has the legal power to enact legislation with which to reign in what has
become the early 21st century gilded age .. but they refuse to .. Nearly ALL of them have
their dirty proboscii harpooning the lowly constituents who elected them ..too busy sucking
any and all of plebian bodilyeconomic liquidity whilst paying deference to the know-it-all,
BigTime-parasitic Oligarchic Brainbugs!
If Biden does that, then Trump himself could very well win again if he runs in 2024. If
that scenario plays out that way, I hope Trump picks Ivanka to be his VP running mate. That
way, Ivanka would be on track to be America's first woman president. I just hope Hillary
would live long enough to see that happen.
I used to dread the Friday news drops. The unemployment numbers, employed people in
minimum wage jobs, workers at home working away, and major inflation in the grocery stores
are hitting people extremely hard coming up to Holiday season. I really can't wait to see the
Friday news drops now. Not just the Trump temper tantrum stuff, but the economic quips they
make. Then what is totally mind blowing are the comments on social media. Some people that
are not hurting much, or at all seem to think that all things are fine as wine in the rest of
the country. I know this reply does not specifically comment on your article, but it is a
wide view of the current situation.
With the computers and big data, the simplest solution is to claw back the benefits paid
to the employees from the corporations, call it humanitarian tax.
But, it would be hard to find a lobbyist to write it, even harder to find a sponsor in the
congress.
That would destroy the ability of these people to get jobs and to receive benefits.
I think you might have the cause and effect mixed up. In my state, anyone who gets SNAP
benefits has to work at least 20 hours a week. These "bad" employers are the ones with
flexible schedules and because the jobs are so crappy, they are readily available. Maybe it's
not that WalMartb workers need benefits, it's that the benefits recipient needs WalMart and
McDonalds.
Every state is different. I just have to show proof of income (which I have, though I
don't have a job). But the amount of SNAP you get varies widely. I am 150% of poverty level
and the state of Pennsylvania just raised my monthly benefit to $16.50.
Another way to put it: Walmart, McDonald's, Dollar General, and Amazon are really
government stores with outsourced management and labor.
Socialism American-style.
Whenever I am in Walmart or any supermarket with automatic check out, I avoid automatic
check out completely and only go to regular check out, no matter how long the line is.
Automatic check out is a precursor to eventually firing all human cashiers. In my "larger"
town, where I often end up in Walmart for the cheaper pet food, an Aldi's was built precisely
opposite it, across the road. I heard an Aldi's employee saying they get paid better than
Walmart. And lots of their prices are the same or better. So I will be spending a lot more
time there.
Consider the structure of the term "common sense", which is just shared opinion. If there
is no common sense, there will be no common action.
The problem with coming together is that the ruling class divides and rules us as a normal
procedure of creating a class system. Nobody in the ruling class has a problem with this.
Their purpose in life is to reproduce the system of mass slavery and adapt it to present
conditions and they, being among the elect, are fine with this.
Cognitive dissonance is a daily occurrence for anyone paying attention. And our struggling
"leaders" are largely struggling over territory while ignoring the state of the nation.
True national emergencies are ignored as they are inconvenient, or more honestly buried
under the rug, because they might mean our sociopaths at the top of the food chain would have
to pony up some of their Ill gotten gains to the social good AND lose some of their leverage
over modern serfs. And unlike "war" and "military intervention" which have been monetized to
the nth degree, pandemic response has been bungled not only because the social systems have
been shredded but because factions are fighting over response in order to find a way to strip
as much public money from it as possible.
We make black jokes here about brunch, but the election of Biden is NOT about him, it is a
probably a vain attempt to put the genie back in the bottle. The sad thing is that instead of
pretending to be the adults in the room, the usual suspects kept up their four year long
tantrum, instead of letting the process play out and talking about how our system works, it
was all "he isn't giving up, he is being mean." All because it slightly delayed them
reestablishing their rice bowls. And so ends the "bring us together" meme with nary a
whimper.
I wish there was a chance our national leaders would get their heads out of the pockets of
their donors long enough to notice that the foundation THEY depend on for their corrupt
lifestyles had been destroyed. I wish our foundations had not been so corrupted that even one
part remains strong.
I am not entirely pessimistic. The kids are largely alright. I just hope we can hold it
together long enough to give them a chance.
Two slightly different things here, perhaps.
I think it's generally accepted that all societies need a common frame of reference against
which you can have discussions and arguments, make and critique policy and try to interpret
the world. This doesn't mean that everybody agrees, or still less that everybody is obliged
to, but rather that everybody agrees about what the issues are and about the ground over
which they may disagree. Back in the days of the Cold War, for example, there were furious
debates about politics, not to mention wars, atrocities and dictatorships, but pretty much
everybody agreed what the issues were, even if they were on different sides of them.
Historically, this was very much the norm: the religious wars of Europe, or the wars of the
French Revolution were between people with very different views, but who agreed on the
underlying context. What we have now, is what the philosopher Alasdair McIntyre called
"incommensurability": a jaw-breaking term which means, essentially, that people don't even
begin from the same assumptions, and so are condemned to talk past each other. This accounts
for a lot of the cognitive dissonance. In the case of Brexit, for example, much of the
bitterness and confusion arose from the fact that Leavers and Remainers were simply talking
about different things, and starting from different assumptions, but didn't realise it. The
same applies, obviously to the whole TDS story. As a result, Joe Public is now faced with the
need to choose between competing and mutually exclusive interpretations of events, or even
whether events have actually occurred. It's hardly surprising there's so much confusion and
stress.
It's made worse by the kind of thing Thuto mentions. One of the least helpful ideas to
emerge from the 1960s was that children should be "left to find their own way", rather than
being taught things. But children mature by testing their ideas against the norms and
structures of society, and indeed their parents, and coming to some sort of personal vision
of the world. A lot of modern politics (and practically all of IdiotPol) is the result of
middle-class educated people who were never contradicted as children, and are still looking
to shock and provoke twenty or thirty years later. Once you understand that much of the
political and media system is made of people who are basically adolescents ("why does it have
to make sense? Tell me why it has to make sense!) the chaos and stress become easier to
understand.
This is what we should expect.
Western liberalism's descent into chaos.
1920s/2000s – neoclassical economics, high inequality, high banker pay, low regulation,
low taxes for the wealthy, robber barons (CEOs), reckless bankers, globalisation phase
1929/2008 – Wall Street crash
1930s/2010s – Global recession, currency wars, trade wars, austerity, rising
nationalism and extremism
1940s – World war.
Right wing populist leaders are what we should expect at this stage in the descent into
chaos.
Why is Western liberalism always such a disaster?
They did try and learn from past mistakes to create a new liberalism (neoliberalism), but the
Mont Pelerin Society went round in a circle and got back to pretty much where they
started.
It equates making money with creating wealth and people try and make money in the easiest
way possible, which doesn't actually create any wealth.
In 1984, for the first time in American history, "unearned" income exceeded "earned"
income.
The American have lost sight of what real wealth creation is, and are just focussed on making
money.
You might as well do that in the easiest way possible.
It looks like a parasitic rentier capitalism because that is what it is.
Bankers make the most money when they are driving your economy into a financial
crisis.
What they are doing is really an illusion; they are just pulling future spending power into
today.
The 1920s roared at the expense of an impoverished 1930s.
Japan roared on the money creation of real estate lending in the 1980s, they spent the next
30 years repaying the debt they had built up in the 1980s and the economy flat-lined. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YTyJzmiHGk
Bankers use bank credit to pump up asset prices, which doesn't actually create any
wealth.
The money creation of bank credit flows into the economy making it boom, but you are heading
towards a financial crisis and claims on future prosperity are building up in the financial
system.
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/quarterly-bulletin/2014/money-creation-in-the-modern-economy.pdf
Early success comes at the expense of an impoverished future.
Things haven't been the same since 2008.
Early success came at the expense of an impoverished future.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAStZJCKmbU&list=PLmtuEaMvhDZZQLxg24CAiFgZYldtoCR-R&index=6
At 18 mins.
The money creation of bank credit flowed into the economy before 2008 making it boom, but
they were heading towards a financial crisis and claims on future prosperity were building up
in the financial system.
It's repayment time.
Let's get the basics sorted.
When no one knows what real wealth creation is, you are in trouble.
We want economic success
Step one – Identify where wealth creation occurs in the economy.
Houston, we have a problem.
Economists do identify where real wealth creation in the economy occurs, but this is a
most inconvenient truth as it reveals many at the top don't actually create any wealth.
This is the problem.
Much of their money comes from wealth extraction rather than wealth creation, and they need
to get everyone thoroughly confused so we don't realise what they are really up to.
The Classical Economists had a quick look around and noticed the aristocracy were
maintained in luxury and leisure by the hard work of everyone else.
They haven't done anything economically productive for centuries, they couldn't miss it.
The Classical economist, Adam Smith: "The labour and time of the poor is in civilised countries sacrificed to the maintaining
of the rich in ease and luxury. The Landlord is maintained in idleness and luxury by the
labour of his tenants. The moneyed man is supported by his extractions from the industrious
merchant and the needy who are obliged to support him in ease by a return for the use of his
money."
There was no benefits system in those days, and if those at the bottom didn't work they
died.
They had to earn money to live.
Ricardo was an expert on the small state, unregulated capitalism he observed in the world
around him. He was part of the new capitalist class, and the old landowning class were a huge
problem with their rents that had to be paid both directly and through wages. "The interest of the landlords is always opposed to the interest of every other class in
the community" Ricardo 1815 / Classical Economist.
They soon identified the constructive "earned" income and the parasitic "unearned"
income.
This disappeared in neoclassical economics.
GDP was invented after they used neoclassical economics last time.
In the 1920s, the economy roared, the stock market soared and nearly everyone had been making
lots of money.
In the 1930s, they were wondering what the hell had just happened as everything had appeared
to be going so well in the 1920s and then it all just fell apart.
They needed a better measure to see what was really going on in the economy and came up with
GDP.
In the 1930s, they pondered over where all that wealth had gone to in 1929 and realised
inflating asset prices doesn't create real wealth, they came up with the GDP measure to track
real wealth creation in the economy.
The transfer of existing assets, like stocks and real estate, doesn't create real wealth and
therefore does not add to GDP. The real wealth creation in the economy is measured by
GDP.
Real wealth creation involves real work producing new goods and services in the economy.
So all that transferring existing financial assets around doesn't create wealth?
No it doesn't, and now you are ready to start thinking about what is really going on
there.
"Much of their money comes from wealth extraction rather than wealth creation, and they
need to get everyone thoroughly confused so we don't realise what they are really up to."
And this is why the quintessential business model in the U.S (at least since the 1970s)
has been the multi-level marketing scheme.
'There's a war on organizing, collective bargaining, unions and workers': Biden wants to
undo Trump executive orders on federal workers Andrew Keshner 6 hrs ago
President Donald Trump used executive orders to put up roadblocks for unions representing
federal employees, and now President-elect Joe Biden seems poised to reverse those moves.
In May 2018, President Donald Trump signed executive orders mandating stricter deadlines and
procedures when federal workers collectively negotiated new contracts, curbing on-the-clock
time for union duties as well as giving some under-performing workers tight time frames to
boost their performance.
In January 2021, newly-inaugurated President Joe Biden is likely to pull back those same
orders, according to union members, who say the orders have weakened their ability to ensure
rank and file staffers are treated fairly.
The Biden transition team didn't respond to a request for comment, but Biden's campaign
website has signaled that the president-elect will address these issues: "There's a war on
organizing, collective bargaining, unions, and workers. It's been raging for decades, and it's
getting worse with Donald Trump in the White House."
The President-Elect, among other things, supports laws that would penalize companies trying
to interfere with worker organizing efforts, according to his website.
"This is not just about employees," said Tony Reardon, national president of the National
Treasury Employees Union. "Ultimately, this is good for American taxpayers to have federal
employees and agency leaders communicating and taking action together to solve problems before
there's a grievance and a lawsuit."
Reardon, who heads a union with 150,000 members, said he and his staff had heard from Biden
and his campaign in the months leading up to the Nov. 3 election. "The President-Elect, he was
clear with me that he is extremely supportive of labor unions and of workers' rights," Reardon
said.
There's a different point of view from management. "In some ways, you look at [the executive
orders] and go 'Why weren't these there before?'" said Scott Witlin, who represents
private-sector employers as a partner at Barnes & Thornburg.
There's nothing that's unreasonable on its face in the Trump administration orders, he said,
such as a
six-month limit on negotiations. "Six months would be an exceedingly long private-sector
negotiation," he said.
Video: City leaders warn of possible new restrictions as COVID spikes statewide (WWL-TV New
Orleans)
Play Video City leaders warn of possible new restrictions as COVID spikes statewide
Click to expand
In certain ways, the potential executive orders on federal workers are a narrow matter.
The federal government employed almost 3.8 million people in 2019, according to the
Bureau of Labor
Statistics . Of that sum, 1.15 million were represented by unions, the agency said, noting
that the category groups together union members and workers without union affiliation who have
jobs covered by union or employee association contracts.
But it's also a peek at the president-elect's larger views on organized labor.
Declining
union membership
Last year, there were 14.6 million salary and wage workers who were members of a union,
according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That's just over 10% of the workforce, and a
10-percentage-point drop from 1983, the first year comparable statistics became available, the
agency said.
There's a range of reasons why union ranks keep thinning,
observers say . That ranges from the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act allowing "union shops" only when
a majority of workers voted for the idea, to globalization -- which sent off factory jobs -- to
state-level "right to work" laws that bar unions from collecting dues from non-union workers
covered in their contracts.
Though right-to-work opponents say those kinds of laws eat into a union's to support itself,
proponents say it's not fair to force workers
into unions that they don't feel are acting in their best interest.
Celine McNicholas, director of government affairs at the left-leaning think tank the
Economic Policy Institute, said Trump's orders focused on federal workers not because he had it
out for them especially, but because "he could accomplish those attacks through the stroke of a
pen."
The Trump administration orders "were designed in order to make it impossible for unions to
fulfill their representation obligations under the law," said Jacqueline Simon, public policy
director at the American Federation of Government Employees, a union comprised of 700,000
federal and District of Columbia government workers.
Reardon said the orders weren't necessary. "There is absolutely nothing about labor and
management sitting down together and collaborating in work that suggests they can't create
efficiencies." And there were already procedures to remove under-performing employees, he
added.
Various unions, including the AFGE and NTEU, sued over the orders. Ultimately,
the D.C Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the unions' challenges last year.
Reardon said he's seen the consequences of the new orders, which result in "sham"
bargaining. Some NTEU members work at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, he
noted. In the aftermath of the orders, Reardon said agency negotiators cut the talks short
because they were bound by the orders' rules on what could and couldn't be the focus of
talks.
The sides still haven't come to an agreement, said Reardon.
"HHS is working with employees and their union representation to improve the operations of
the department with the aim of making the federal government a better place to work and better
able to deliver the services to the American people," an HHS spokeswoman said in a
statement.
@Beckow
ow quality Indian workers far less interesting to the profiteers that then get the same low
quality code and have to pay white/east Asian male wages.
It's funny how the tech companies are all about diversity until it means higher costs.
It will also be funny when the token blacks people hiring programs by the tech companies
mean that peak-diversity signaling, token hire Jamal realizes he'll be working with nothing
but Indians that hate anyone would who is not brainwashed by Jewish propaganda and speak
nothing but Hindi to each other and whom you can't understand when they actually try to speak
English,
Excellent analysis, entirely plausible. Lacking any survey of broad opinion, I'm apt to
project my own view as Trump's Waterloo: that while the political damage of poorly managing
the pandemic was mostly washed out by the emerging view that the economic damage (including
the rioting) of the severe course favored by the left has been more harmful than the virus, a
decisive fraction of his core demographic nevertheless arrived at the view – despite
the ceaseless scolding insistence of this by much of mainstream media – that their
president is indeed glaringly ill-suited for public office.
Perhaps it is due to living near Philly, but there is always fraud. Democrats are good at
it, and Republican Inc. loves it. Can't have any honest, straight shooter interrupt the long
standing political graft. Of course the Donald isn't really an honest man. Had he kept that
5% of the 2016 white male vote, any cheating would have been impossible. But hey we have
still have Israel first with President Kamala. Whew on that. However I don't look forward to
being uncomfortable in my house due to the Paris Accords mandates.
In defense of Maga, there are so many professional agitators in their ranks besides Qanon.
Call them dumb, but they really desperate for something called hope. Maybe that is the reason
I tend to think Trump was the bait to reel them in for the sporting catch and kill.
@prime
noticer Trump's a business man, not a career politician like Biden or Hillary. The system
wants the latter. Soros funds BLM, antifa, ect. It's safe to say the system was against
Trump. Much of his own party of sellout politicians weren't with him. Trump got through the
cracks once, the deep state wasn't going to let that happen again. To get 8 years in office
you have to be a total puppet. The Bush's, Clinton, and Obama were all hand-picked puppets.
Trump wasn't in the club. Trump as President was an accident they had clean up, even if he
was more than willing to betray the White men that voted him in and submit to the beast.
It is obvious why (((they))) wanted Trumpstein out, Trumpstein, despite being a cuckold to
the Zionist was threatening to bring our brave young men and women home, protect our borders,
and his base was about 98% White at the lowest. And many of those were common everyday
working class Whites, you know, the people who really made America great, the people who
actually grow food, build buildings, work and produce automobiles in factories, drive trucks,
you know jobs that are REAL JOBS, JOBS THAT ACTUALLY PRODUCE SOMETHING.
(((They))) didn't really hate Trump, they hated the typical Trump voter. Actually it has
already been pointed out, Trump did very little for the average White other than give them
hope, he really didn't deliver that much. Trump became uber popular by just giving the people
crumbs, now can you imagine how popular a man or woman will be when they come out of nowhere
and give the people the hundred per cent truth. It will take a fearless man or woman, someone
with nothing left to lose, because that is the way it has always been. I NEVER expected Trump
to do much, after all, this guy is the typical NYC businessman, think of who this guy has had
dealings with in his lifetime, hell, look at his in-laws. For all his, "I am not a
politician" rantings, Trump spent his life around politicians and pictures are all over the
place with Trump & Bill Clinton golfing together, Trump and Ghislane, Trump &
Epstein, Trump with his friend Baby Nut&Yahoo, etc. Sounds like the typical politician to
me. Trump was NEVER a man of the people and it will take a real man of the people to set
things right in America.
@Ano4
emonized, censored, attacked, and even murdered. I am glad to have sat this one out, between
who knows how many men like me and those 5% we brought this supposed contest to a standstill
and caused a nation of cope.
Wignats gave him 2016 and we turned 2020 into a shitshow in answer to his betrayal. Trump
only has himself to blame for doing almost nothing to stop censorship, clean up the FBI/DOJ,
prosecute Antifa, end birthright citizenship, end H1B, so many other opportunities
squandered. Trump supporters should start working toward something productive for their
interests.
Harris/Biden like Trump/Pence are Israel Firsters, so really all this hoopla over a
transition is not really called for when you think about it. Matter of fact, the 1st and 2nd
Amendment will continue to be under attacked just like it was with Trumpstein, now more than
ever. Anti-White racism will continue until Whites start standing up for their rights the
same way as everyone else. Trumpstein was never the savior for America, face it. Maybe things
will become so bad IF Harris/Biden take over that this country and Whites will gain a spine
again. Until then, new boss, same as the old boss, more or less. Still as bad as the Orange
Man was, IF you are "White" and voted for Harris/Biden, you have to be legally retarded.
Thanks to all the WINOs and white traitor trash out there. Brilliant you bunch of
retards.
A nice splash of cold water on the sadly losing side in the 2020 election. What you say is
mostly true. There are some significant points you don't acknowledge, such as the idea that
massive numbers of mailed ballots will certainly result in unauthorized votes being counted.
It's hard to say how many that is, but I suspect, like you, that it can't have made a
difference of hundreds of thousands across all the states necessary for a Trump victory.
Blame the phony virus for most of these results and I insist that shutdown policies have
been a gross overreaction designed to make Trump powerless to campaign.
Finally, one simply has to admit that Trump was unprepared to be an effective President
and never learned how. Saying things that sound populist over and over isn't governing.
We have a nice wall that's 400 miles long down on the Mexican border and that's about it.
At some point in the fast approaching future, it will have a plaque on it saying, "I am
Ozymandias Trump. Look on all that I survey."
Well?
What kind of pathetic miserable 17 intelligence agencies, with support of democratic party
and Judenpresse would be , if they would not be able to fix the election such way that their
mischief cannot be found. And on top of it Covid with mail in voting was a surefire help.
.
But than you sleep in the bed you make.
Very misleading and dis-informative post. It ignores the Democrats' history of fraudulent
elections and manipulation of Americans. From the beginning and before the elections, the
Democrats said that they will do everything to remove Trump from the White House, by violence
if necessary.
In reality, the only times the Democrats won fair elections were by JFK and Obama recently.
The reasons were because of the efficient and highly successful advertising campaigns
(propaganda) to manipulate Americans. In fact, Obama won a prize for his efficient
advertising campaign to con Americans and "win" the elections. He was far more criminal than
his predecessors.
The amount of cerebral activity wasted here is, well, wasted...It's a class-war people,
recognize it for such. The U.S. needs to fall down among the weeds, and fertilize what's
coming...The libertarian impulse must be squashed until it is unrecognizable!!
Equality, Fraternity, and Liberty in that order, my friends. All else is sickness in the
mind.
I am seeing quite a few references to a $15/hr minimum wage as a target for a "living
wage". I feel this is merely misdirection from the real problems with our money system.
First, let me say that I fully support the idea of a "living wage". After all, I grew up
in the 50's, when a single wage earner was able to buy a modest house, own a car, and provide
for the average family, including medical costs, college plans, etc. Those days have long
gone due to the ongoing debasement of the currency. Thus, it doesn't matter what you
establish as the minimum wage this year, by next year it will have to be raised again (and
again, and again, . . . ). So, why pick a $15 number when $20, $25, etc. are in the future of
an inflating currency.
To suggest a way to break this cycle, please abide with me as I relate a personal
anecdote.
In the late 60's I was negotiating a job with a particularly cantankerous cheapskate. I
told him that I would work for him for $1/ hour. He got really elated and was ready to
formalize the position when I continued ". . . but that dollar has to be a silver dollar." He
broke off negotiations immediately. I didn't care. I really didn't want to work for him.
Silver was still cheap in those days.
Anyway, look at the price of a silver dollar now, and ask yourself if that would be a
"living wage" today. (The melt value of a silver dollar (about .77 oz) is around $20
excluding any premiums or numismatic value.)
I contend that debasement of the currency (the US dollar) by removing all silver (and
copper) from coins and gold backing from the paper dollar has caused more of the economic
problems (IMHO) of the average person we see today.
@vk #110
You do realize that H1B is literal indentured servitude, right?
And that its purpose is nothing more than cheap(er) labor for the tech companies?
I know many people on H1B, as well as several people who specialize in H1B "hiring".
The good news: many of these people are smart and capable.
The bad news: they're stuck at the companies they start at for 7 years or more - and are paid
significantly (20% to 50%) under "market". If they leave, their green card process starts
anew even assuming they find another H1B sponsor.
More bad news: there are also a significant number of "body shops" who do nothing but enter
the lottery for H1B visas, then auction off the "wins" to the tech companies. The H1B people
in these situations are far worse off because they work for the "body shop", not the tech
company.
Most importantly: H1B, even at its peak, brought in less than 200K people (188K by law).
In comparison: in 2017 - legal immigration was
Family and Immediate Relatives: 748,746
Employment: 137,855
Refugees and Asylees: 146,003
Diversity and Other: 94,563
Total Visas Issued: 1,127,167
Over 1.1 million people came in legally without the H1B.
In Greek mythology, men used to fear the stony gaze of the snake-haired Gorgon. Today, men
once again feel such fear – but, ironically, no campaign has done more to impair women's
opportunities either.
A seven-foot statue of Medusa holding a man's severed head was
unveiled in New York this week. For six months, this sculpture, made by the
Argentinian-Italian artist Luciano Garbati, will be situated facing the Manhattan Supreme
Court, where Harvey Weinstein was prosecuted and
convicted of sex crimes against actresses and female film-production staff.
The statue is being used in this position as a symbol of justice enacted against male
rapists. However, it more accurately – and unintentionally – symbolises the
difference between the public triumphalism of the #MeToo movement and its negative
repercussions for women in the United States.
The most famous painting of Medusa – a female character from Greek mythology who had a
hair of snakes and could turn men to stone if they met her gaze directly – was painted by
Caravaggio in
1596. He was inspired by Vasari's account of a lost painting by Leonardo da Vinci. It has been
a common subject for artists since. Garbati's statue was made in 2008 and adopted by the #MeToo
movement subsequently. From moral outrage to financial advantage
The #MeToo movement hit prominence in 2017 and was initially primarily concerned with
incidents, and allegations, of sexual abuse in Hollywood. It quickly grew to include cases of
sexual impropriety in many fields, mainly in the US. However, as it expanded, it encompassed
rape, sexual abuse, inappropriate sexual contact, unwanted advances, and transactional sex.
By refusing to draw distinctions between actual crimes, ethical/professional infractions,
and consensual (but regretted) sex, the movement became diffusely broad. Allegations of sexual
abuse led to the accused losing contracts, jobs, and marriages; in some cases, it contributed
to suicide. In the ensuing storm of moral panic, actual rape was conflated with Ben Affleck's
groping of an actress
in a video interview , a woman complaining
about a date with Aziz Ansari and Louis CK
exposing himself to colleagues (with their consent).
By failing to distinguish between levels of seriousness, the movement lost what moral
credibility it had and became a means of gaining revenge and exacting extortion. If crimes have
been committed, then they should be reported to the police, not aired in a public forum. The
accused need anonymity just as the victims do, until justice can be served.
Sexual accusations have long been weaponized in American pop culture. It has already
been proven that a whisper network of female comic-book professionals has targeted male
colleagues with – alongside actual crimes – unfounded accusations, in order to
provide more opportunities for female creators. This is not a male/female problem; using deceit
and exaggeration to advance oneself is as old as language itself.
In American television and film production, #MeToo gained control of productions via Time's
Up, enforcing quotas of women and extracting payments. It became a grab to secure lucrative
work for women, relying on goodwill from the public and the fear of executives. The Time's Up
movement is co-led by Katie McGrath, who runs production company Bad Robot Productions with her
husband J.J. Abrams. Bad Robot has a history of presenting itself as a pro-social-justice
company. This summer, at a time when rioters were burning shops and destroying historic
monuments, Bad Robot made an
infamous announcement that there had been " Enough polite conversation. Enough white
comfort. "
By presenting a company as an ethical, socially conscious body, that company is an ideal
position to benefit from major firms being pressured into making decisions not based on
competence but politics. Individuals and companies have seen how they can manipulate public
sympathy about sexual abuse to their own advantage. But firms are now realizing this
danger.
No event has done more to impair women's opportunities in the workplace than the
#MeToo/Time's Up movement. Production companies – even those led by women – now see
female colleagues as a source of potential extortion and compensation claims. As a result, they
now
avoid hiring women in order to avert the possibility of costly legal claims and
reputation-impairing social-media campaigns. Following decades-long attempts to persuade
male-dominated industries that hiring women brought advantages and an expansion of the talent
pool, the moral panic of #MeToo has served only to reveal the disadvantages of employing
women.
When male executives see women today, they fear them, just as heroes in Greek mythology
feared the gaze of Medusa. Ironically, rather than celebrating female power, Garbati's statue
is instead a fitting symbol of the way a campaign that began well has, once again, made men
mistrust women.
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Alexander Adams
is an artist, art critic and author. His book 'Iconoclasm, Identity Politics
and the Erasure of History' is published by Societas. Follow him on Twitter @AdamsArtist
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author
and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
Britain is riddled by a class system. This is largely down to the exaggeration of those who
self-identify as "working class".
A snapshot is the cliché thrown around that to be Prime Minister, you have to attend
either Oxford or Cambridge. For those outside of the UK, the insinuation is that you come from
an affluent background, can afford private education which enabled you to enter one of the two
famous universities. Boris Johnson is the poster child for this privileged group of blue
bloods.
But James Callaghan was Prime Minster before Margaret Thatcher took over in 1979, and
couldn't afford to go to university so never went. Neither did her successor, John Major.
Gordon Brown who followed Tony Blair, attended the University of Edinburgh and is well-regarded
as the most intellectual of recent PMs.
There's no denying the political system has a bias towards Oxbridge alumni, but people have
smashed the glass ceiling and, in fact, even of the PMs who did attend Oxford or Cambridge
between 1964 and 1997, Wilson, Heath and Thatcher, none were privately educated.
Why this is pertinent now, is because of the hysteria sweeping Britain's North complaining
of playing with a loaded deck. The gripe is that London and the wealthier pockets of society
are being allowed more attention and flexibility during Covid.
The South of England is the spiritual home of The Conservatives, the land of the millionaire
stockbroker and art history scholar. The North, Wales and Scotland have traditionally been
enemy territory, due to their cities being built on manufacturing, coal mining and industry. In
our current scenario, this Northern population are being driven by a chip on their
shoulders.
London dominates commerce and business, it's a global financial centre. Even so, some of the
capital city's inhabitants are under the misapprehension that Northerners dream of a "London
life". They don't.
The two pillars of British culture; football and music are defined far more successfully
outside of London, than they ever have been inside.
The same discombobulation happens in the other direction and because the Northern towns are
more parochial, they impact on a bigger scale.
Over the last few days, the British government has tightened restrictions particularly in
the North, across the three tiers - they are the only region in the most severe tranche. But
chancellor Rishi Sunak has announced a new scheme to pay two-thirds of any employees' wages, if
their place of work is forced to shut.
Large firms who close can claim
grants up to £3,000 per month and smaller businesses are entitled to £1,300.
That's on top of the Job Support Scheme, which kicks-in for anyone working at least a third of
their normal hours. The government will subsidise the remaining two-thirds (up to
£2,100).
This follows furlough, which has been paying 80 percent of salaries (up to £2,500 per
month) of 12 percent of Britain's workforce. Sunak said : "The primary goal of our
economic policy remains unchanged - to support people's jobs...I cannot save every business, I
cannot save every job."
Northern politicians have been quick to dog whistle.
Mayor of Greater
Manchester , Andy Burnham complained: "They're trying to pressurise people into tier three,
even though it will do certain harm to those economies, often quite fragile economies in the
north."
Liverpool's mayor
Steve Rotheram felt he wasn't consulted enough and said: "it was made clear to us that
government would be doing this regardless of if we engaged with them or not."
Whipping up a frenzy ahead of the new rules, Frank McKenna, chief executive of lobby group
Downtown in Business , ranted: "I cannot overstate the devastation that this will cause to
Liverpool and other parts on northern England if these plans are adopted."
Covid is slitting the wrists of our economy. Unemployment has risen to 4.5 percent .
But the pain is everywhere.
National debt stands at £2 trillion and will remain at over 100 percent of GDP, until
2025 at least. New research shows Aberdeen
has the highest remaining income (£1,487.82), after monthly costs are deducted from
average salaries.
Liverpool, Sheffield, Hull, Leeds, Glasgow, Manchester and Newcastle all rate above London
on the same scale. The residents of the capital are left with £260.97.
London has a glut of millionaires and average figures are distorting. But that's the crux -
statistics and points of view can be massaged.
This antipathy from the North is driven by rose-tinted spectacles. Those in the world of
financial services earn more than their blue-collar counterparts.
That's because fewer people are capable of these jobs and they generate significantly more
wealth than a manual or semi-skilled worker. This is not a criticism of manual workers, just a
fact of life. Parity would be neither fair nor achievable. Living standards are determined by
income, those working in commerce are also able to continue unabated, due to technology and
video conferencing.
The arrival of Covid wasn't Britain's doing and Boris Johnson has handled it appallingly,
for everyone. But even so there has been a herculean level of financial assistance, with The
Treasury opening the cheque book like never before. Along with the other schemes, they've just
handed £257 million to arts organisations across England.
Some elements of the Westminster machine are working for us all, the complaining masses in
the North need to respect that. Moaning about being left dangling by the upper classes is just
jealously at not having what others do.
Life isn't fair but the government's Covid assistance has been, so stop the self-pity.
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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author
and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
Two-thirds of the newly laid-off workers are part-time employees: they will be happy to know
that Disney loaded up on massive debt so it could fund stock buybacks.
"... You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end -- which you can never afford to lose -- with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be. ..."
James C.
Collins related a conversation he had with Stockdale regarding his coping strategy during
his period in the Vietnamese POW camp. [21] [
non-primary source needed ] When Collins asked which prisoners didn't make it out
of Vietnam, Stockdale replied:
Oh, that's easy, the optimists. Oh, they were the ones who said, 'We're going to be out
by Christmas.' And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they'd say, 'We're
going to be out by Easter.' And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then
Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart. This
is a very important lesson.
You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end
-- which you can never afford to lose -- with the discipline to confront the most brutal
facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.[22]
For example Microsoft success was by the large part determined its alliance with IBM
in the creation of PC and then exploiting IBM ineptness to ride this via shred marketing
and alliances and "natural monopoly" tendencies in IT. MS DOS was a clone of CP/M that
was bought, extended and skillfully marketed. Zero innovation here.
Both Microsoft and Apple rely of research labs in other companies to produce
innovation which they then then produced and marketed. Even Steve Jobs smartphone was not
an innovation per se: it was just a slick form factor that was the most successful in the
market. All functionality existed in other products.
Facebook was prelude to, has given the world a glimpse into, the future.
From pure technical POV Facebook is mostly junk. It is a tremendous database of user
information which users supply themselves due to cultivated exhibitionism. Kind of private
intelligence company. The mere fact that software was written in PHP tells you something
about real Zuckerberg level.
Amazon created a usable interface for shopping via internet (creating comments
infrastructure and a usable user account database ) but this is not innovation in any
sense of the word. It prospered by stealing large part of Wall Mart logistic software
(and people) and using Wall Mart tricks with suppliers. So Bezos model was Wall Mart
clone on the Internet.
Unless something is done, Bezos will soon be the most powerful man in the world.
People like Bezos, Google founders, Zuckerberg to a certain extent are part of
intelligence agencies infrastructure. Remember Prism. So implicitly we can assume that
they all report to the head of CIA.
Artificial Intelligence, AI, is another consequence of this era of innovation that
demands our immediate attention.
There is very little intelligence in artificial intelligence :-). Intelligent behavior
of robots in mostly an illusion created by First Clark law:
"... "Another chasm opened between middle-class Westerners and their wealthy compatriots. Here, too, the middle class lost ground. It seemed that the wealthiest people in rich countries and almost everybody in Asia benefited from globalization, while only the middle class of the rich world lost out in relative terms. These facts supported the notion that the rise of "populist" political parties and leaders in the West stemmed from middle-class disenchantment. ..."
The world is becoming more equal but largely at the expense of middle-class Westerners,
according to a recent paper by Branko Milanovic , a Stone Center Senior Scholar
and a Centennial Professor at the London School of Economics. Milanovic's paper was published
in Foreign Affairs, the publication of the think tank, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR),
and was titled: The World
Is Becoming More Equal, Even as Globalization Hurts Middle-Class Westerners . Broadly
speaking, globalization is the process of increased " worldwide
integration of the economic, cultural, political, religious, and social systems" of the
globe,
producing an increased flow of goods, capital, labour, and information, across national
borders. It was a process that gained steam particularly in the mid-1980s, with globalization
having the greatest transformative impact on life
since the Industrial Revolution .
Milanovic's paper starts by arguing that the world became more
equal between the end of the Cold War and 2007/08 financial crisis, a period of high
globalization. During this period however, globalization weakened the middle class in the West.
As Milanovic writes
:
"The results highlighted two important cleavages [or divisions]: one between middle-class
Asians and middle-class Westerners and one between middle-class Westerners and their richer
compatriots. In both comparisons, the Western middle class was on the losing end. Middle-class
Westerners saw less income growth than (comparatively poorer) Asians, providing further
evidence of one of the defining dynamics of globalization: in the last 40 years, many jobs in
Europe and North America were either outsourced to Asia or eliminated as a result of
competition with Chinese industries. This was the first tension of globalization: Asian growth
seems to take place on the backs of the Western middle class."
"Another chasm opened between middle-class Westerners and their wealthy compatriots.
Here, too, the middle class lost ground. It seemed that the wealthiest people in rich countries
and almost everybody in Asia benefited from globalization, while only the middle class of the
rich world lost out in relative terms. These facts supported the notion that the rise of
"populist" political parties and leaders in the West stemmed from middle-class
disenchantment. "
Milanovic goes on to note
that in an updated paper that looks at incomes in 130 countries from 2008 to 2013-14, the first
tension of globalization holds true: in that, the incomes of the non-Western middle class grew
more than the incomes of the middle class in the West. The impact of globalization on the
Western middle class is imperative to understand. Globalization is a process that has produced
winners and losers , and
the Western middle class has been the greatest loser.
In my opinion, any system that weakens the middle class in any country should be seen as
counterproductive. Having a strong middle class is one of the most important tenets in building
a strong, prosperous, and stable society. The middle class serves as the bedrock of any
country: those who comprise the middle-class work hard, pay taxes, and buy goods. A true
solution to poverty in underdeveloped countries would create more prosperity for everyone, not
take prosperity from one region and redirect it into another. This so-called solution creates
at least as many problems as it supposedly solves.
Globalization has produced, and will seemingly continue to produce, a global standardization
of wealth in many ways. For those special interests who are in the process of creating a global
system, an economic uniformity across the globe is advantageous for the creation of this
one-world system.
Just how far has the working class been left behind by the winner-take-all economy? A new analysis by the RAND
Corporation examines what rising inequality has cost Americans in lost income -- and the results are stunning.
A full-time worker whose taxable income is at the median -- with half the population making more and half making
less -- now pulls in about $50,000 a year. Yet had the fruits of the nation's economic output been shared over the
past 45 years as broadly as they were from the end of World War II until the early 1970s, that worker would
instead be making $92,000 to $102,000. (The exact figures vary slightly depending on how inflation is calculated.)
The findings, which land amid a global pandemic, help to illuminate the paradoxes of an economy in which so-called
essential workers
are
struggling
to make ends meet while the rich
keep
getting richer
.
"We were shocked by the numbers," says
Nick
Hanauer
, a venture capitalist who came up with the idea for the research along with David Rolf, founder
of Local 775 of the Service Employees International Union and president of the
Fair
Work Center
in Seattle. "It explains almost everything. It explains why people are so pissed off. It explains
why they are so economically precarious."
Trends
in Income From 1975 to 2018 [Chart: Carter C. Price and Kathryn Edwards, RAND Corporation]
"THE $2.5 TRILLION THEFT"
Notably, it isn't just those in the middle who've been hit. RAND found that full-time, prime-age workers in the
25th percentile of the U.S. income distribution would be making $61,000 instead of $33,000 had everyone's earnings
from 1975 to 2018 expanded roughly in line with gross domestic product, as they did during the 1950s and '60s.
Workers in the 75th percentile would be at $126,000 instead of $81,000. Remarkably, even those in the 90th
percentile would be better off than they are now if economic growth had been shared as it was in the post-war era.
They'd be making $168,000 rather than $133,000.
Tally it all up, according to RAND, and the bottom 90% of American workers would be bringing home an additional
$2.5 trillion in total annual income if economic gains were as equitably divided as they'd been in the
past -- leading Rolf to dub the phenomenon "the $2.5 trillion theft."
"From the standpoint of people who have worked hard and played by the rules and yet are participating far less in
economic growth than Americans did a generation ago," he says, "whether you call it 'reverse distribution' or
'theft,' it demands to be called something."
The RAND data also makes clear who the winners from inequality are: those in the top 1%.
Of course, they'd be in a less advantageous position if the economic pie had been divvied up since the mid-1970s
like it was previously. If that were the case, RAND says, yearly income for the average one-percenter would fall
from about $1.2 million to $549,000.
Think you can take a sneaky break or have a lie-in because you're 'working' remotely? Forget
it. Employers are increasingly deploying surveillance software to check how productive staff
are at home.
Lockdown and its aftermath has led more and more employees to work from home. Many big firms
have already said they won't even attempt to get back staff back to the office until next year,
at the earliest, amid discussions about how working from home could become the new normal for
at least part of the week.
Working from home has a lot of advantages for many people. It can make childcare easier, for
example. Employees can avoid having to deal with annoying colleagues, or coughing up for long,
expensive and often uncomfortable commutes.
They can also avoid having their bosses constantly looking over their shoulder – or
can they?
Employers are using ever more sophisticated measures to keep tabs on their home-working
staff, anxious that they might be shirking, and introducing new rules governing how their
workers appear and act.
One large London employer, Hammersmith & Fulham Council, has even gone as far as banning
its employees from smoking at their desks at home, demanding
that " any part of a private dwelling used solely for work purposes will be required to be
smoke-free " and that " family members should not be allowed to smoke in the home
worker's office ". The council claims the policy has since been dropped, presumably because
it is unenforceable. (Though, with webcams now ubiquitous, maybe not.) It's also irrational,
since smoking at home can hardly affect your colleagues or the public image of your
employer.
Smokers have long been in the vanguard of interference in our private lives. But having
precedent for interference in our private lives having been established, the rules applied to
smokers have inspired other kinds of meddling.
Most obvious in the current situation is the use of technological measures to monitor staff.
Such surveillance is not new, but it's taken on a new importance and is much more widespread in
the Covid era. A recent feature in
Wired notes the rise of this surveillance culture. As author Alex Christian notes:
" As coronavirus lays waste to workplaces around the world, surveillance software has
flourished: programs such as ActivTrak, Time Doctor, Teramind and Hubstaff have all reported a
post-lockdown sales surge. Once installed, they offer an array of covert monitoring tools, with
managers able to view screenshots, login times and keystrokes at will to ensure employees
remain on track working remotely. Although marketed as productivity software, the technology
– dubbed as 'bossware' for its secrecy and invasiveness – has led to many workers
finding creative ways of evading its omniscient gaze ."
Employees working within these strictures face a reprimand or even the sack for low
productivity or taking too long on their break. One app, Sneek, covertly takes photos of
employees to see if they are at their desks. Project management programs such as Jira and
Basecamp, meanwhile, can allow bosses to spot when workers are not maintaining a high level of
output. Frequent online team meetings on Zoom or Microsoft Teams can ensure staff are at least
thinking about work – and woe betide anyone who's still in their pyjamas or doesn't show
up at all.
Of course, there are workarounds if you're smart enough. One way is to move your mouse
regularly – or to instal software to give the illusion it's being moved. But the whole
thing has the potential to create a sense that Big Brother Bossman is watching you
constantly.
It's bad enough that working from home leads many people into the trap of blurring work and
home life. That time on the commute, when you might at least be reading or listening to music
or a podcast, becomes work time. It's easy to see how all of this leads to the intensification
of work.
Moreover, working from home deprives us of the solidarity and consolation of colleagues.
It's harder to band together to push back against the imposition of new rules and regulations
if you don't see your peers face to face. Many jobs are intense and stressful, but working in
an office allows staff to sound off to each other informally in the pub on a Friday night
– or maybe hear about better opportunities elsewhere.
Working from home can also be a disaster for younger employees, who need to learn the ropes
from their experienced colleagues. It's harder to learn, and to make a good impression with
those that count, over video calls.
While a middle-class employee with a comfortable and spacious home may wax lyrical about the
benefits of working from home, for many people, it's becoming an ever more intensive and
stressful experience. Knowing that your boss could be spying on you just adds paranoia and fear
to the mix.
We may well be heading backwards in the world of work. In pre-industrial times and beyond,
garment-makers would work themselves to death during long hours to service the demands of
buyers, paid as they were by the piece and not by the hour, and isolated in their home from
other such workers. We need to be very careful that the modern, connected, domesticated
workplace doesn't take us down the same route.
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and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
White House counselor Stephen Miller and CNN's Jim Acosta clash at the Wednesday press
briefing focused on the administration's new immigration proposal:
In short black people are used as pawns in the political struggle between two neoliberal
clans fighting for power, using students without perspectives of gaining meaningful employment as
a ram. We saw this picture before in a different country. And riots do reverse gains achieved in
civil right struggle since 1960th, so they are also net losers. Racial tensions in the USA
definitely increased dramatically.
Notable quotes:
"... Bottom line: "Critical Race Theory", "The 1619 Project", and Homeland Security's "White Supremacist" warning represent the ideological foundation upon which the war on America is based. The "anti-white" dogma is the counterpart to the massive riots that have rocked the country. These phenomena are two spokes on the same wheel. They are designed to work together to achieve the same purpose. The goal is create a "racial" smokescreen that conceals the vast and willful destruction of the US economy, the $5 trillion dollar wealth-transfer that was provided to Wall Street, and the ferocious attack on the emerging, mainly-white working class "populist" movement that elected Trump and which rejects the globalist plan to transform the world into a borderless free trade zone ruled by cutthroat monopolists and their NWO allies. ..."
"... This is a class war dolled-up to look like a race war. Americans will have to look beyond the smoke and mirrors to spot the elites lurking in the shadows. There lies the cancer that must be eradicated. ..."
"... The current situation cannot exist without the complicity of the secret services and the police. The heads of the secret services are either part of the cabal or close their eyes in fear ..."
"... There can be no single oligarch. It must be a larger group but very united by fear and a common goal. This can only be achieved if they are all Jews or Masons. Or both under a larger umbrella like some kind of pedo-ritual killing-satan worshiper. Soros can't do it alone. ..."
"... Of course politicians are corrupt and complicit but usually they are not the leaders ..."
Here's your BLM Pop Quiz for the day: What do "Critical Race Theory", "The 1619 Project",
and Homeland Security's "White Supremacist" warning tell us about what's going on in America
today?
They point to deeply-embedded racism that shapes the behavior of white people They
suggest that systemic racism cannot be overcome by merely changing attitudes and laws They
alert us to the fact that unresolved issues are pushing the country towards a destructive race
war They indicate that powerful agents -- operating from within the state– are inciting
racial violence to crush the emerging "populist" majority that elected Trump to office in 2016
and which now represents an existential threat to the globalist plan to transform America into
a tyrannical third-world "shithole".
Which of these four statements best explains what's going on in America today?
If you chose Number 4, you are right. We are not experiencing a sudden and explosive
outbreak of racial violence and mayhem. We are experiencing a thoroughly-planned,
insurgency-type operation that involves myriad logistical components including vast, nationwide
riots, looting and arson, as well as an extremely impressive ideological campaign. "Critical
Race Theory", "The 1619 Project", and Homeland Security's "White Supremacist" warning are as
much a part of the Oligarchic war on America as are the burning of our cities and the toppling
of our statues. All three, fall under the heading of "ideology", and all three are being used
to shape public attitudes on matters related to our collective identity as "Americans".
The plan is to overwhelm the population with a deluge of disinformation about their history,
their founders, and the threats they face, so they will submissively accept a New Order imposed
by technocrats and their political lackeys. This psychological war is perhaps more important
than Operation BLM which merely provides the muscle for implementing the transformative "Reset"
that elites want to impose on the country. The real challenge is to change the hearts and minds
of a population that is unwaveringly patriotic and violently resistant to any subversive
element that threatens to do harm to their country. So, while we can expect this propaganda
saturation campaign to continue for the foreseeable future, we don't expect the strategy will
ultimately succeed. At the end of the day, America will still be America, unbroken, unflagging
and unapologetic.
Let's look more carefully at what is going on.
On September 4, the Department of Homeland Security issued a draft report stating that
"White supremacists present the gravest terror threat to the United States". According to an
article in Politico:
" all three draft (versions of the document) describe the threat from white
supremacists as the deadliest domestic terror threat facing the U.S. , listed above the
immediate danger from foreign terrorist groups . John Cohen, who oversaw DHS's
counterterrorism portfolio from 2011 to 2014, said the drafts' conclusion isn't
surprising.
"This draft document seems to be consistent with earlier intelligence reports from DHS,
the FBI, and other law enforcement sources: that the most significant terror-related
threat facing the US today comes from violent extremists who are motivated by white
supremac y and other far-right ideological causes," he said .
"Lone offenders and small cells of individuals motivated by a diverse array of social,
ideological, and personal factors will pose the primary terrorist threat to the United
States," the draft reads. "Among these groups, we assess that white supremacist extremists
will pose the most persistent and lethal threat."..(" DHS
draft document: White supremacists are greatest terror threat " Politico)
This is nonsense. White supremacists do not pose the greatest danger to the country, that
designation goes to the left-wing groups that have rampaged through more than 2,000 US cities
for the last 100 days. Black Lives Matter and Antifa-generated riots have decimated hundreds of
small businesses, destroyed the lives and livelihoods of thousands of merchants and their
employees, and left entire cities in a shambles. The destruction in Kenosha alone far exceeds
the damage attributable to the activities of all the white supremacist groups combined.
So why has Homeland Security made this ridiculous and unsupportable claim? Why have they
chosen to prioritize white supremacists as "the most persistent and lethal threat" when it is
clearly not true?
There's only one answer: Politics.
The officials who concocted this scam are advancing the agenda of their real bosses, the
oligarch puppet-masters who have their tentacles extended throughout the deep-state and use
them to coerce their lackey bureaucrats to do their bidding. In this case, the honchos are
invoking the race card ("white supremacists") to divert attention from their sinister
destabilization program, their looting of the US Treasury (for their crooked Wall Street
friends), their demonizing of the mostly-white working class "America First" nationalists who
handed Trump the 2016 election, and their scurrilous scheme to establish one-party rule by
installing their addlepated meat-puppet candidate (Biden) as president so he can carry out
their directives from the comfort of the Oval Office. That's what's really going on.
DHS's announcement makes it possible for state agents to target legally-armed Americans who
gather with other gun owners in groups that are protected under the second amendment. Now the
white supremacist label will be applied more haphazardly to these same conservatives who pose
no danger to public safety. The draft document should be seen as a warning to anyone whose
beliefs do not jibe with the New Liberal Orthodoxy that white people are inherently racists who
must ask forgiveness for a system they had no hand in creating (slavery) and which was
abolished more than 150 years ago.
The 1619 Project" is another part of the ideological war that is being waged against the
American people. The objective of the "Project" is to convince readers that America was founded
by heinous white men who subjugated blacks to increase their wealth and power. According to the
World Socialist Web Site:
"The essays featured in the magazine are organized around the central premise that all of
American history is rooted in race hatred -- specifically, the uncontrollable hatred of
"black people" by "white people." Hannah-Jones writes in the series' introduction:
"Anti-black racism runs in the very DNA of this country. "
This is a false and dangerous conception. DNA is a chemical molecule that contains the
genetic code of living organisms and determines their physical characteristics and
development . Hannah-Jones's reference to DNA is part of a growing tendency to derive
racial antagonisms from innate biological processes .where does this racism come from? It
is embedded, claims Hannah-Jones, in the historical DNA of American "white people." Thus, it
must persist independently of any change in political or economic conditions .
. No doubt, the authors of The Project 1619 essays would deny that they are predicting
race war, let alone justifying fascism. But ideas have a logic; and authors bear
responsibility for the political conclusions and consequences of their false and misguided
arguments." ("The New York Times's 1619
Project: A racialist falsification of American and world history", World Socialist Web
Site)
Clearly, Hannah-Jones was enlisted by big money patrons who needed an ideological foundation
to justify the massive BLM riots they had already planned as part of their US color revolution.
The author –perhaps unwittingly– provided the required text for vindicating
widespread destruction and chaos carried out in the name of "social justice."
As Hannah-Jones says, "Anti-black racism runs in the very DNA of this country", which is to
say that it cannot be mitigated or reformed, only eradicated by destroying the symbols of white
patriarchy (Our icons, our customs, our traditions and our history.), toppling the existing
government, and imposing a new system that better reflects the values of the burgeoning
non-Caucasian majority. Simply put, The Project 1619 creates the rationale for sustained civil
unrest, deepening political polarization and violent revolution.
All of these goals conveniently coincide with the aims of the NWO Oligarchs who seek to
replace America's Constitutional government with a corporate Superstate ruled by voracious
Monopolists and their globalist allies. So, while Hannah-Jones treatise does nothing to improve
conditions for black people in America, it does move the country closer to the dystopian dream
of the parasite class; Corporate Valhalla.
Then there is "Critical Race Theory" which provides the ideological icing on the cake. The
theory is part of the broader canon of anti-white dogma which is being used to indoctrinate
workers. White employees are being subjected to "reeducation" programs that require their
participation as a precondition for further employment . The first rebellion against critical
race theory, took place at Sandia Labs which is a federally-funded research agency that designs
America's nuclear weapons. According to journalist Christopher F. Rufo:
"Senator @HawleyMO and
@SecBrouillette have
launched an inspector general investigation, but Sandia executives have only accelerated
their purge against conservatives."
Sandia executives have made it clear: they want to force critical race theory,
race-segregated trainings, and white male reeducation camps on their employees -- and all
dissent will be severely punished. Progressive employees will be rewarded; conservative
employees will be purged." (" There is a civil war erupting
at @SandiaLabs ." Christopher F Rufo)
It all sounds so Bolshevik. Here's more info on how this toxic indoctrination program
works:
"Treasury Department
The Treasury Department held a training session telling employees that "virtually all
White people contribute to racism" and demanding that white staff members "struggle to own
their racism" and accept their "unconscious bias, White privilege, and White
fragility."
The National Credit Union Administration
The NCUA held a session for 8,900 employees arguing that America was "founded on
racism" and "built on the blacks of people who were enslaved. " Twitter thread here and
original source documents
here .
Sandia National Laboratories
Last year, Sandia National Labs -- which produces our nuclear arsenal -- held a
three-day reeducation camp for white males, teaching them how to deconstruct their
"white male culture" and forcing them to write letters of apology to women and people of
color . Whistleblowers from inside the labs tell me that critical race theory is now
endangering our national security. Twitter thread here and original source
documents
here .
Argonne National Laboratories
Argonne National Labs hosts trainings calling on white lab employees to admit that they
"benefit from racism" and atone for the "pain and anguish inflicted upon Black people. "
Twitter thread here .
Department of Homeland Security
The Department of Homeland Security hosted a Training on "microaggressions,
microinequities, and microassaults" where white employees were told that they had been
"socialized into oppressor roles. " Twitter thread here and original source
documents here
." (" Summary of
Critical Race Theory Investigations" , Christopher F Rufo)
On September 4, Donald Trump announced his administration "would prohibit federal
agencies from subjecting government employees to "critical race theory" or "white privilege"
seminar. ..
"It has come to the President's attention that Executive Branch agencies have spent
millions of taxpayer dollars to date 'training' government workers to believe divisive,
anti-American propaganda ," read a Friday memo
from the Office of Budget and Management Director Russ Vought. "These types of 'trainings'
not only run counter to the fundamental beliefs for which our Nation has stood since its
inception, but they also engender division and resentment within the Federal workforce The
President has directed me to ensure that Federal agencies cease and desist from using
taxpayer dollars to fund these divisive, un-American propaganda training sessions."
The next day, September 5, Trump announced that the Department of Education was going to see
whether the New York Times Magazine's 1619 Project was being used in school curricula
and– if it was– then those schools would be ineligible for federal funding.
Conservative pundits applauded Trump's action as a step forward in the "culture wars", but it's
really much more than that. Trump is actually foiling an effort by the domestic saboteurs who
continue look for ways to undermine democracy, reduce the masses of working-class people to
grinding poverty and hopelessness, and turn the country into a despotic military outpost ruled
by bloodsucking tycoons, mercenary autocrats and duplicitous elites. Alot of thought and effort
went into this malign ideological project. Trump derailed it with a wave of the hand. That's no
small achievement.
Bottom line: "Critical Race Theory", "The 1619 Project", and Homeland Security's "White
Supremacist" warning represent the ideological foundation upon which the war on America is
based. The "anti-white" dogma is the counterpart to the massive riots that have rocked the
country. These phenomena are two spokes on the same wheel. They are designed to work
together to achieve the same purpose. The goal is create a "racial" smokescreen that conceals
the vast and willful destruction of the US economy, the $5 trillion dollar wealth-transfer that
was provided to Wall Street, and the ferocious attack on the emerging, mainly-white working
class "populist" movement that elected Trump and which rejects the globalist plan to transform
the world into a borderless free trade zone ruled by cutthroat monopolists and their NWO
allies.
This is a class war dolled-up to look like a race war. Americans will have to look
beyond the smoke and mirrors to spot the elites lurking in the shadows. There lies the cancer
that must be eradicated.
A good article, but no mention of who exactly these oligarchs are. Or why so many of them
are Jewish.
Or why so many Zionist organisations support BLM and other such groups.
Mike, not mentioning these things will not save you. You will still be cancelled by
Progressive Inc.
This seems like a good explanation of what is happening. I wonder whether too many people
will fall for the propaganda, though. It is the classic effort to get the turkeys to support
thanksgiving.
The deserved progress and concessions achieved by the civil rights struggles for the Black
community is in danger of deteriorating because Black leadership will not stand up and
vehemently condemn the rioting and destruction and killing, and declare that the BLM movement
does not represent the majority of the Black American culture and that the overexaggerated
accusations of "racism" do not necessitate the eradication and revision of history, nor does
it require European Americans to feel guilt or shame. There is no need for a cultural
revolution. The ideology and actions of BLM are offensive and inconsistent with American
values, and Black leaders should be saying this every day, and should be admonishing about
the consequences. They should also use foresight to see how this is going to end, because the
BLM and their supporters are being used to fight a war that they can never win. And when it's
over, what perception will the rest of America have of Black people?
@sonofman g to TPTB. Better to have an amorphous slogan to donate money to than an actual
organization with humans, goals and ideas which can be held up to the light and critically
examined.
The whole sudden race thing is a fraud to eliminate the electoral support Trump had
amassed among blacks before Corona and Fentanyl Floyd. In line with what Whitney says, the
globalists need to take down Trump. And the race card has always been the first tool in the
DNC's toolkit. When all else fails, go nuclear with undefined claims of racism.
Almost every big magazine has a black person on the cover this month. Probably will in
October too. Coincidence? Sure it is.
They indicate that powerful agents -- operating from within the state– are
inciting racial violence to crush the emerging "populist" majority that elected Trump to
office in 2016 and which now represents an existential threat to the globalist plan to
transform America into a tyrannical third-world "shithole".
I'm shocked that they're trying to sell this Q-tier bullshit about Trump fighting the deep
state.
The reality about Trump is that he is the release valve, the red herring designed to keep
whitey pacified while massive repossessions and foreclosures take place, permanently
impoverishing a large part of the white population, and shutting down the Talmudic
service-based economy, which is all that is really left. It is Trump's DHS that declared a
large part of his white trashionalist base to be terrorists.
The populist majority never had anyone to vote for. This system will never give them one.
They aren't bright enough to make it happen.
Agree. Barack Obama in particular will go down in history a real disgrace to the legacy of
the US presidency. He is violating the sacred trust that the people of the United States
invested in him. What a fraud!
Good post Mr. Whitney especially about "white supremacy" garbage .which has only been
going on since the 90s! You know, Waco, Ruby Ridge, Elohim City and Okie City, militias,
"patriot groups," etc. This really is nothing new. And, since so many remember the "white
supremacy" crapola was crapola back in the 90s, I'd say everyone pretty much regardless of
race over the age of 40 knows there is, as it says in Ecclesiastes in the Bible, "there is
nothing new under the sun." And, if you home schooled your kids back then, then you kids know
it as well. Fact is this: the DHS as with every other govt. agency is forced to blame "white
supremacy" for every problem in this country because who the heck else can they blame? Jews?
Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahh when pigs fly After all, Noahide just might be around the
corner ..
Sheriffs have a lot of legal power. Ultimately, the battle is privatized money power
vs Joe Citizen/Sheriffs.
This sheriff is working a Constitutional angle that says: Local Posse (meaning you.. Joe
citizen) working with the Sheriff department to protect your local community. Richard Mack is
teaching other Sheriffs and (some Police) what their Constitutional power is, and that power
doesn't include doing bidding of Oligarchs.
Sheriffs are elected, and their revenue stream is outside of Oligarchy:
So Donald Trump suddenly discovers that racial Bolshevism is the official policy of
his own executive branch – a mere 3 years and 8 months after assuming the
position
... Looks like the same old flim-flam they pull every four years. No matter who wins, the
Davos folks continue to run the circus and fleece the suckers dry.
Because it is. Substitute "the ethnic Russian middle class are class enemies" for
"Anglo-American are all racists" and there you have it. Permission for a small organized
minority to eliminate a whole class on ideological grounds...
I live in a former communist country in Eastern Europe with corrupt politicians, oligarchs
and organized crime.
America was a country with a minor corruption and in which the oligarchs, although
influential, were not united in a small group with decisive force. Now America is slowly
slipping into the situation of a second-hand shit-hole country.
Is that I can see the situation more clearly than an American citizen who still has the
American perception of his contry the way it was 30 years ago.
Essential thing:
1) The current situation cannot exist without the complicity of the secret services and
the police. The heads of the secret services are either part of the cabal or close their eyes
in fear .
2) There can be no single oligarch. It must be a larger group but very united by fear and
a common goal. This can only be achieved if they are all Jews or Masons. Or both under a
larger umbrella like some kind of pedo-ritual killing-satan worshiper. Soros can't do it
alone.
3) Of course politicians are corrupt and complicit but usually they are not the
leaders
4) BLM are exactly the brown shirts of the new Hitler.
Soon we will se the new Hitler/Stalin/ in plain light.
Thirty black children murdered recently; zero by police / BLM & 'the media' say
nothing: https://www.outkick.com/blm-101-volume-7-the-lives-of-innocent-black-kids-do-not-matter/
BTW:
– Last year, the nationwide total for all US police forces was 47 killings of unarmed
criminals by police during arrest procedures.
– 8 were black, 19 were white.
Though blacks, relative to their numbers, committed a vastly higher number of crimes, hence
their immensely greater arrest rate.
@Justvisiting urally, it is nonsense -- nasty, power-hungry, censorious nonsense.
It is the opposite of scientific or empirical thought -- science can not accept theories
which are not capable of falsification. (Take astrology -- actually, don't ! -- what ever
conclusion it comes to can never be wrong : Dick or Jane didn't find love ? Well, one
of Saturn's moons was retrograde & Mercury declensed Venus (I don't know what it means
either) . or Dick went on a bender & Jane had a whole bad hair week.
Frankly, to play these pre-modern tricks on us is just grotesquely insulting. That some are
falling for it is grotesquely depressing.
Another ringer from Mike Whitney! Keep 'em comin', brother.
We are not experiencing a sudden and explosive outbreak of racial violence and mayhem.
We are experiencing a thoroughly-planned, insurgency-type operation that involves myriad
logistical components including vast, nationwide riots, looting and arson, as well as an
extremely impressive ideological campaign.
Yup. TPTB have been grooming BLM/Antifa for this moment for at least 3-4 years now, if not
longer. Here's a former BLMer who quit speaking out three years ago about the organization's
role in the present 'race war':
It is very clever politics and (war) propaganda. You break down and demoralise your
enemies at the same time as assuring your own side of it's own righteous use of violence.
This is a class war dolled-up to look like a race war. Americans will have to look
beyond the smoke and mirrors to spot the elites lurking in the shadows.
Nailing it.
4. They indicate that powerful agents -- operating from within the state– are
inciting racial violence to crush the emerging "populist" majority that elected Trump to
office in 2016 and which now represents an existential threat to the globalist plan to
transform America into a tyrannical third-world "shithole".
Which of these four statements best explains what's going on in America today?
If you chose Number 4, you are right.
If we believe this – we need to act like it. These are "enemies, foreign and
domestic ". This isn't ordinary politics, it arguably transcends politics.
What hope is there without organization?
And whatever is done – don't give them ammunition. The resistance must not be an
ethno-resistance.
But he is either naive or a bad manager, as his hires are deadly to his aims. And the
management criticism is big, because as a leader that is mostly what he does.
That he gets information to affect US policy for good, from outside of his circle of
trusted personnel, is a sad state of affairs.
@Robert Dolan ds that it would have ended on day one were it not officially sanctioned
and the rioters protected from prosecution. Why hasn't the Janet Rosenberg/Thousand
Currents/Tides Foundation connection with the BLM/DNC/MSM cabal, as well as with Antifa and
social media, been the major investigation on Fox News? Why haven't Zuckerberg, Zucker, et al
been arrested for incitement to commit federal crimes, including capital treason to overthrow
the duly elected president? (Just a few rhetorical questions for the hell of it.) What's so
galling is that the cops and federal agents are being used as just so many patsies who are
deployed, not to protect, but deployed to look like fools and be held up for mockery as
pathetic exemplars of white disempowerment.
The officials who concocted this scam are advancing the agenda of their real bosses, the
oligarch puppet-masters who have their tentacles extended throughout the deep-state and use
them to coerce their lackey bureaucrats to do their bidding.
Agree, but where is President Trump? He was supposed to appoint undersecretaries and
assistant secretaries and deputy undersecretaries and Schedule C whippersnappers on whose
desks such outrages are supposed to die.
I've thought from the beginning that this lack of attention to "personnel as policy" --
with Trump overestimating the ability of the ostensible CEO to overcome such intransigence --
was one of his major failures. I am sympathetic, as there are not many people he could trust
to be loyal to his agenda, much less to him, but this is a disaster in every agency
Few years ago I watch a clip secretly recorded in Ukrainian synagogue where Rabi said
"first we have to fight Catholics and with Muslims it will be an easy job" ...
Thanks to Mr Whitney for being able to cut through the fog and see what's going on behind
it. The term "white supremacist" wasn't much in public use at all until the day Trump was
elected then suddenly it was all over the place. It's like one of those massive ad campaigns
whose jingle is everywhere as if some group decided on it as a theme to be pushed. They're
really afraid that the white working class population will wake up and see how the country is
being sold out from underneath their feet hence the need to keep it divided and intimidated.
Like all the other color revolutions everywhere else they strike at the weak links within the
country to create conflict, in the US case it's so-called diversity. There's billions
available to be spent in this project so plenty of traitors can be found, unwitting or
otherwise, to carry out their assignments. The billionaire class own most of the media and
much else and see the US as their farm. They have no loyalty whatsoever and outsource
everything to China or anywhere else they can squeeze everything out of the workers. They
want a global dictatorship and admire the Chinese government for the way it can order its
citizens around.
You are exactly right. Trump is doing his part (knowingly or unknowingly, but probably
knowingly) to accomplish the NWO objectives. He was not elected in 2016 in spite of NWO
desires, as most Trump supporters think, but rather precisely BECAUSE of NWO desires.
The NWO probably also wants him to win again this year, and if so then he will win. The
reason the NWO wanted him in 2016 (and probably wants him to win again) was primarily to
neutralize the (armed) Right in this country so they wouldn't effectively resist the COVID-19
scamdemic lockdown tyranny and BLM/Antifa riots.
@Trinity While I tend to agree with you that it looks like a race war, the question is
why is it happening now? If it were just a race war promoted by radicals in BLM and Antifa,
it does not explain the nationwide coordination (let's face it the faces of BLM and Antifa
are not that smart or connected), the support and censorship of the violence by the MSM and
the support of Marxist BLM by corporations to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.
This is a color revolution in the making and may come to a peak after Nov. 3rd. Whitney is on
to something, there is much more going on behind the "smoke and mirrors" and AG Barr (if he's
not part of it) should be investigating it.
They indicate that powerful agents -- operating from within the state– are
inciting racial violence to crush the emerging "populist" majority that elected Trump to
office in 2016 and which now represents an existential threat to the globalist plan to
transform America into a tyrannical third-world "shithole".
I keep reading such nonsense in the comments above. the so-called populist majority does
not get it, Trump is not placed here to stop the Globalist agenda, that is an electioneering
stunt. Look at what he has actually and really done.
How has he stopped the Globalist move forward?? By the Covid plandemic being
allowed to circle the globe and shut down the US economy and social norm? By moving our high
tech companies to Israel? Giving Israel and their Wall Street allies what is left of US
credit wealth? Draining the swamp with even more Zio-Neocon Swamp creatures in the govt than
ever? Moving the embassy to Jerusalem and all requests per Netanyahu's wish list? A real
anti-Globalist stand? Looting the Federal Reserve for the Wall Street high fliers, who
garnered more wealth during the crash test run of March-April and are sure to make out with
even more for the coming big crash?
Phoney stunts of stopping immigration or bashing China. Really? China is still rising
propelled by Wall Street and Banker funds. I have not seen any jobs coming home, lost more
than ever in US history this year. Only lost homes for the working and middle classes.
How is Populist America standing up for their constitutional rights which is being
shredded a little more each day? Standing up for their Real Interests, which are eroded and
stolen on an almost daily basis by Trump's NY Mafia and Wall Street Oligarchs. Jobs gone for
good and government assistance to the needy disappearing, as that is against the phoney
Republic individualism, that you must make it on your own. Right just like the big goverment
assistance always going to the big money players and banks, remember as they are too big
to let fail!
Dreaming that Trump is going to save White America from the Gobalists is just
bull corn . From whom BLM? Proven street theatre that will disappear on command. I
actually have come to learn that some Black leaders are speaking out intelligently for street
calm and distancing themselves from BLM.
Problem with the USA is the general population is so very dumbed down by 60 years of MSM
– TV s and Hollywood mind control programming that the public prefers professional
actors like Reagan and Trump over real politicians, and surely never chose a Statesman or
real Patriotic leader. the public political narrative is still set by Fox , CNN and
MSNBC .
The deep state is so infiltrated and overwhelmed with Zio and Globalist agents, that it is
now almost hopeless to fix. Sorry to point out but Trump is best described as the Dummy
sitting on his Ventriloquist's lap (Jared Kushner).
Situation is near hopeless as even here on Ron Unz Review the comments are so
disappointing, almost 80% are focused on the Race as the prime issue and supportive of Trump
fakery (not that I support Biden and Zio slut Kamil Harris either).
In sum, beyond putting their MAGA hats on, White America is more focused more on
playing Cowboy with their toy guns, AR's and all than really getting involved politically to
sort things out to get American onto a better track. Of course, this is not taken seriously
as it might call for reaching out to other American communities that are even more
disenfranchised: African- Americans and Latinos.
@David Erickson nted him in 2016 (and probably wants him to win again) was primarily to
neutralize the (armed) Right in this country so they wouldn't effectively resist the COVID-19
scamdemic lockdown tyranny and BLM/Antifa riots.
Covid and BLM/ANTIFA are just window dressing for the financial turmoil. "Look over here
whitey, there's a pandemic" and "look over here whitey, there's a riot" is much preferred to
whitey shooting the sheriff who comes to take his stuff.
Wave the flag and bible while spreading love for the cops, and the repossessions and
evictions should go off without a hitch. Yes, Trump is a knowing participant.
"My impression is that BLM, Antifa and other protestors are well aware of this"
Like all good Maoists the cult white kids of antifa rigidly adhere to the mission statement
and stick the inconvenient truth in the back of their mushy minds. BLM ... is a mercenary.
Can you imagine any other groups rioting and destroying American cities for over 3 months?
Imagine if the Hells Angels or some other White biker gang was doing what Antifa and BLM are
doing? Hell, imagine if it were a bunch of Hare Krishnas pulling this shit off? Hell, I think
the local mayors, police, and other law enforcement employees wouldn't even take this much shit
even if the rioters were Girl Scouts. We are talking 3-4 months of lawlessness, assaults,
rapes, murders ( cold blooded premeditated murders at that) and still the people in charge let
this shit go on night and day. IF the POTUS doesn't have the authority or the power to stop
shit like this from going on then what the hell do we even vote for anyhow? Granted, I see the
reason for not being ruled by a dictatorship, but who in the hell can justify letting these
riots go on? One can only assume that both the republicants and the demsheviks are fine with
these riots because no one seems in a hurry to shut them down or arrest the hombres funding
these riots. Who is housing and feeding the rioters? Who is paying their travel expenses? I'm
sure most everyone in Washington knows who the people are behind these riots but don't expect
any action anytime soon.
This is a class war dolled-up to look like a race war. Americans will have to look beyond
the smoke and mirrors to spot the elites lurking in the shadows. There lies the cancer that
must be eradicated.
That's true to a large degree, but
It is indeed an attempt to liquidate the working and lower middle class. Most of the
American working and lower middle class, obviously not all, is White. So predictably we have
these calls for White Genocide. Agreed and good to see the tie-in with the Coronavirus Hoax
lock downs, too, which also spread the devastation into minority communities under the guise of
public safety.
The one question that remains unanswered is why the major cities were targeted for
destruction. Obviously these are the playgrounds of the oligarchs and have been decimated. We
will learn soon enough.
The Reverend William Barber is the only genuine black leader I am aware of.
And he makes a pointn of not speaking only for blacks, but for all disadvantaged communities,
including poor whites. IMO he is the real deal, and I very much hope he takes the lead in
articulating genuine community values of respect and equality for all, including basics such as
decent health care and food access.
The pressure exerted on someone like Barber by the BLM forces in the media and other
institutions is enormous.
I wish Ron Unz would invite him to write something for the UR.
"... workers are dehumanizingly treated by Amazon as if they are robots – persistently asked to accomplish task after task at an unforgiving rate." ..."
Amazon is famous for its extreme efficiency yet behind the curtain is a crippling culture of
surveillance and stress, according to a study by the Open Markets Institute.
The think tank and advocacy group that repeatedly takes companies like Google and Facebook
to task warned in the
report [PDF] that Amazon's retail side has gone far beyond promoting efficient working and
has adopted an almost dystopian level of control over its warehouse workers,
firing them if they fail to meet targets that are often kept a secret.
Among the practices it highlighted, the report said that workers are told to hit a target
rate of packages to process per hour, though they are not told what exactly that target is. "We
don't know what the rate is," one pseudonymous worker told the authors. "They change it behind
the scenes. You'll know when you get a warning. They don't tell you what rate you have to hit
at the beginning."
If they grow close to not meeting a target rate, or miss it, the worker receives an
automated message warning them, the report said. Workers who fail to meet hidden targets can
also receive a different type of electronic message; one that fires them.
"Amazon's electronic system analyzes an employee's electronic record and, after falling
below productivity measures, 'automatically generates any warnings or terminations regarding
quality or productivity without input from supervisors'," it stated. The data is also generated
automatically: for example, those picking and packing are required to use a scanner that
records every detail, including the time between scans, and feed it into a system that pushes
out automated warnings.
Always watching
As with other companies, Amazon installs surveillance cameras in its workspaces to reduce
theft. But the report claims Amazon has taken that approach to new lengths "with an extensive
network of security cameras that tracks and monitors a worker's every move".
Bezos' bunch combines that level of surveillance with strict limits on behavior. "Upon
entering the warehouse, Amazon requires workers to dispose of all of their personal belongings
except a water bottle and a clear plastic bag of cash," the report noted.
For Amazon drivers, their location is constantly recorded and monitored and they are
required to follow the exact route Amazon has mapped. They are required to deliver 999 out of
every 1,000 packages on time or face the sack; something that the report argues has led to
widespread speeding and a related increase in crashes.
The same tracking software ensures that workers only take 30 minutes for lunch and two
separate 15-minute breaks during the day. The report also noted that the web goliath has
patented a wristband that "can precisely track where warehouse employees are placing their
hands and use vibrations to nudge them in a different direction".
Amazon also attempts to prevent efforts to unionize by actively tracking workers and
breaking up any meetings of too many people, including identifying possible union organizers
and moving them around the workplace to prevent them talking to the same group for too long,
the report claimed.
It quoted a source named Mohamed as saying: "They spread the workers out you cannot talk to
your colleagues The managers come to you and say they'll send you to a different station."
The combined effort of constant surveillance with the risk of being fired at any point has
created, according to workers, a " Lord Of The Flies -esque environment where the
perceived weakest links are culled every year".
Stress and quotas
The report said Amazon's workers "are under constant stress to make their quotas for
collecting and organizing hundreds of packages per hour" resulting in "constant 'low-grade
panic' to work. In this sense, workers are dehumanizingly treated by Amazon as if they are
robots – persistently asked to accomplish task after task at an unforgiving
rate."
At the end of the day, warehouse employees are required to go through mandatory screening to
check they haven't stolen anything, which "requires waiting times that can range from 25
minutes to an hour" and is not compensated, the report said.
Amazon also allegedly fails to account for any injuries, the report said, to the extent that
"Amazon employees feel forced to work through the pain and injuries they incur on the job, as
Amazon routinely fires employees who fall behind their quotas, without taking such injuries
into account."
It quoted another piece of reporting that found Amazon's rate of severe injuries in its
warehouses is, in some cases, more than five times the industry average. It also noted that the
National Council for Occupational Safety and Health listed Amazon as one of the "dirty dozen"
on its list of the most dangerous places to work in the United States in 2018.
The report concluded that "Amazon's practices exacerbate the inequality between employees
and management by keeping employees in a constant state of precariousness, with the threat of
being fired for even the slightest deviation, which ensures full compliance with
employer-demanded standards and limits worker freedom."
Being a think tank, the Open Markets Institute listed a series of policy and legal changes
that would help alleviate the work issues. It proposed a complete ban on "invasive forms of
worker surveillance" and a rule against any forms of surveillance that "preemptively interfere
with unionization efforts".
It also wants a law that allows independent contractors to unionize and the legalization of
secondary boycotts, as well as better enforcement of the rules against companies by government
departments including America's trade watchdog the FTC and Department of Justice, as well as a
ban on non-compete agreements and class action waivers.
In response to the allegations in the report, a spokesperson for Amazon told us: "Like most
companies, we have performance expectations for every Amazonian – be it corporate
employee or fulfillment center associate and we measure actual performance against those
expectations.
"Associate performance is measured and evaluated over a long period of time as we know that
a variety of things could impact the ability to meet expectations in any given day or hour. We
support people who are not performing to the levels expected with dedicated coaching to help
them improve." ®
The harrowing tale of British explorer Ernest Shackleton's 1914 attempt to reach the South Pole, one of the greatest adventure
stories of the modern age.
In August 1914, polar explorer Ernest Shackleton boarded the
Endurance
and
set sail for Antarctica, where he planned to cross the last uncharted continent on foot. In January 1915, after battling its way
through a thousand miles of pack ice and only a day's sail short of its destination, the
Endurance
became
locked in an island of ice. Thus began the legendary ordeal of Shackleton and his crew of twenty-seven men. When their ship was
finally crushed between two ice floes, they attempted a near-impossible journey over 850 miles of the South Atlantic's heaviest
seas to the closest outpost of civilization.
In
Endurance
,
the definitive account of Ernest Shackleton's fateful trip, Alfred Lansing brilliantly narrates the harrowing and miraculous
voyage that has defined heroism for the modern age.
The
book gave me several adrenaline rushes...it's that well written.
5.0 out of 5 stars
The
book gave me several adrenaline rushes...it's that well written.
Reviewed in the United States on December 27, 2018
Verified Purchase
This is an amazing account of Shackleton's journey that went into
intricate details about the twists and turns every step of the way for this small group of brave explorers. It
reads like a thrilling fiction novel, but the fact that it is non-fiction makes it even more astounding. The
description really paints a true picture of the hellacious conditions that they continued to face time and time
again. This book really put into perspective what a challenge truly is. A simple headache that we might get now
is nowhere near getting your sleeping bag drenched and still having to sleep in it in temperatures near 0 when
you don't know how the weather or current is going to change while you try to sleep. Great read and really hard
to put down because even though you think you know what's going to happen, you still have to find out how.
Would highly recommend if you're looking for a good book that you will have trouble putting down.
38 people found this helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Cold
Reviewed in the United States on November 17, 2018
Verified Purchase
Very cold. Always cold. This is a very detailed (true) story about men
trying to survive in a very hostile environment in c. 1915. Stark and full of detail, the reader almost gets to
feel the cold, hunger and pain the crew experienced while trying to survive Antarctica and return to
civilization. it's amazing that anyone survived this ordeal let alone all of them. Sadly, many creatures and
peaceful animals paid the price for mans survival. The details often are so descriptive and redundant due to
the scope of the story, that it sometimes becomes repetitive and familiar. This is because of the constant
distress and horrible conditions the crew experienced for such a long time. It's a well documented and exciting
story with a bit of a history lesson that really held my interest. It's a popular book that is deserving of its
high ratings.
21 people found this helpful
There is no doubt in my mind that I would not be able to endure even one, the best, day of the unimaginable
hardships that the men of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Exposition (1914-17) -- under the leadership of Sir Ernest
Shackleton -- struggled with for more than 400 days. They endured and survived some of the most incredible,
unbelievable, conditions ever experienced; and Alfred Lansing captures the urgency, the deprivation, and the
desperation, with spellbinding storytelling.
Recommendation: Best adventure story, ever. Should be read by all, especially those of high school age.
"In all the world there is no desolation more complete than the polar night. It is a return to the Ice Age -- no
warmth, no life, no movement." (p. 46).
Basic Books. Kindle Edition, 268 pages.
16 people found this helpful
A
Riveting True Story of Adventure, Survival and Hope
5.0 out of 5 stars
A
Riveting True Story of Adventure, Survival and Hope
Reviewed in the United States on September 25, 2014
Verified Purchase
In 1914 Sir Ernest Shackleton set out on an expedition to make the first
land crossing of the barren Antarctic continent from the east to the west coast. The expedition failed to
accomplish its objective, but became recognized instead as an amazing feat of endurance. Shackleton and a crew
of 27 (plus one stowaway) first headed to the Weddell Sea on the ship Endurance. Their ship was trapped by pack
ice short of their destination and eventually crushed. Forced to abandon ship, the men were trapped on ice
floes for months while they drifted north. Once they were far enough north that the ice thinned somewhat, they
were forced to journey in lifeboats they'd dragged off the ship. After six terrible days, they made it to
uninhabited Elephant Island; from there Shackleton and five other men set off in an open 22-foot boat on an
incredible 800-mile voyage across the notoriously tempestuous Drake Passage to South Georgia Island, where they
hiked across the island's mountain range to reach a whaling camp. From there, they returned in a ship to rescue
the men left behind on Elephant Island.
That these men were able to survive in the harsh, barren conditions of Antarctica, where temperatures
frequently fell below zero is amazing. It's nearly unimaginable that these men could survive for almost two
years, their lives marked by a seemingly endless stretch of misery, suffering, and boredom, not to mention the
threat of starvation. At every turn, their situation seems to go from bad to worse. If this were a work of
fiction, one would be inclined to claim the story was simply too far-fetched. But Endurance isn't just a tale
of misery, it is a vivid description of their journey, the dangers they faced, and the obstacles they overcame.
Through all of this, Shackleton has never lost a man.
Alfred Lansing's book, written in 1958 from interviews and journals of the survivors, is now back in print.
It's a riveting tale of adventure, survival and hope. It is also a rare historical, non-fiction book that is as
exciting as any novel. I've read a number of stories of survival and would rate this as the best of all I have
read. This is one of the great adventure stories of our time. Don't miss it.
Read more
45 people found this helpful
I
recommend this book to add to the collection of those ...
5.0 out of 5 stars
I
recommend this book to add to the collection of those ...
Reviewed in the United States on August 7, 2015
Verified Purchase
What a page turner. Lansing is a master for the description of those
explorers hardships, desire to follow Shacketon' orders. I kept saying to myself that there are few humans
today that are as tough as those men. I recommend this book to add to the collection of those books that give
us the knowledge of what it takes to conquer a goal.
51 people found this helpful
By
far one of the best books I've ever read, & I've read many!
5.0 out of 5 stars
By
far one of the best books I've ever read, & I've read many!
Reviewed in the United States on January 30, 2019
Verified Purchase
I just finished reading 2 of Grann's books - Lost City of Z & The White
Darkness. The latter is the story of Henry Worsley, the grandson of Frank Worsley one of the "extraordinary"
men in Lansing's Endurance. Grann suggested Endurance as a worthy read. Sir Earnest Shackleton & Frank Worsley
were two of some 20 men who incredibly survived a journey to Antarctica that went awry from almost its onset.
Two years later all hands were rescued through the extraordinary will of the men who found themselves at the
mercy of the elements. Lansing's research & grasp of the situation in which these men found themselves in
conjunction with his writing style has put this book at the top of my all time favorites! Fabulous! Fabulous!
Anyone 12 or older will be blown away by this true story & this writer!
4 people found this helpful
But really, it's all about the cheap labor. And not just Europe.
The Ivory Coast used to be pretty prosperous. That meant that workers had high wages,
because that's what prosperity is, but that limited the profits of the rich, and we can't
have that. So the black elite imported massive numbers of muslim refugees as a source of
cheap labor, and by the time they had doubled the population the poverty resulting from this
tore the country apart in a bloody civil war. But that's OK, the right people made a lot of
money.
Brazil had slavery for much longer than the United States, and unlike the United States,
Brazil only got rid of slavery after massive immigration had boosted the population so much
that 'free' labor was cheaper than slave labor. Crushed to the limits, Brazil was stuck in a
capital-starved condition that it never pulled out of.
It's an old story. Look through history, whenever you hear about some place that imported
workers to do whatever, no that's not what happened, they imported workers to cut labor costs
– and the results for the average person have always been a reduction in living
standards and social disruption.
When southern American plantation owners imported back African slaves, it wasn't because
they thought the country needed more black people – they wanted cheap labor. And
centuries later, the damage that that policy has done to American society continues. And it
wasn't necessary – the free white north, without slaves and before mass immigration,
was the place that produced the greatest technological and industrial power the world had
ever seen – but there just wasn't enough cheap labor for a plantation owner to live the
life they wanted, so sad.
So what's happening in Europe is perhaps a bit extreme, but it's an old story. It's not
really about diversity or anti-white or any of that, that's just window dressing and
rationalization. It's about jamming in more and more people so wages will go down and rents
and profits will go up.
Here are a few takeaways from the Democratic Convention:
The Democrats are running on the
same platform they ran on in 2016. The Democrats put style above substance, flashy optics above
ideas or issues. The Democrats th
3:39
8:24
Oilman2 says: April 10, 2021 at 11:14 am
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Grandfather sentenced to more than 500 years in jail ordered to be released
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Supporters of President Donald Trump rally in Washington DC to protest 
![a man standing in front of a brick building: Are executive orders on labor rules in store for government workers in a Biden administration?]({"default":{"load":"default","w":"27","h":"19","src":"//img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BB1aZBsb.img?h=189&w=270&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f"}})
© Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Are executive orders on labor rules in store for
government workers in a Biden administration?
![Joe Biden wearing a suit and tie smiling at the camera]({"default":{"load":"defer","src":"//img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BB1b0TZl.img?h=70&w=94&m=6&q=60&o=t&l=f&x=550&y=321"}} "Calls growing for Joe Biden to get intelligence briefings - Provided by FOX News")
![FOX News Logo]({"default":{"load":"defer","src":"//img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/AAywOab.img?h=16&w=16&m=6&q=60&o=t&l=f"}})
![a group of people holding a sign: Supporters of Donald Trump walk through BLM Plaza, where opponents of the president are gathered, on their way to Freedom Plaza to participate in the "Million MAGA March." IMAGES]({"default":{"load":"defer","src":"//img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BB1b0XJd.img?h=70&w=94&m=6&q=60&o=t&l=f&x=1454&y=948"}} "Supporters and opponents of President Trump gather ahead of rally - BASTIEN INZAURRALDE")
![AFP Logo]({"default":{"load":"defer","src":"//img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BB18qTPD.img?h=16&w=16&m=6&q=60&o=t&l=f"}})
![a group of people standing in a room]({"default":{"load":"defer","src":"//img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BB1b10gW.img?h=70&w=94&m=6&q=60&o=t&l=f"}} "Courts reject Trump campaign lawsuits to block Pennsylvania mail-in ballots - Provided by FOX News")
© Getty Images/Peter Byrne/PA Images 26 Follow RT on 
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