Tag Archives: income gap

And empires die

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Source: Intrepid Report

Nothing ever seems to last, everybody changes oh so fast,
promises made promises lost and pride is kept at any cost,
And flowers die, and children cry, and lonely people carry on.
—Palermo & Farruggio 1970

That was from the song And Flowers Die, by prolific composer Michael Palermo and this writer as lyricist. How appropriate to compare this song with the ‘death song’ of our Military-Industrial Amerikan Empire, now in only its 72nd year of prominence. How great and powerful our empire was for so long. We controlled the economies and governments of so many countries, even continents. Now it is the autumn of our status as Number One. The Asian rim, as many refer to it, being led by China and all those other nations in that region, will become the future economic powerhouse of this planet.

This writer will leave it to the many progressive scholars out there for the explanation of the how and why of this equation. Let me just say that we all, from grade school on, have been fed the pabulum of America as a democracy, benevolent to the entire world. Many sadly still believe that lie, and that strengthens the reason why this empire is in freefall.

Since we became the preeminent world empire at the end of WW2, two things held the greedy ones who run things in we’ll say half check: The progressive federal tax rate and the union movement. The top tax rate from 1953 to 1963 was 91%. Now, we know that the super rich did not pay at that rate, but even after their accountants sharpened a few pencils, many still had to pay at least 50%, for argument sake. Today’s top rate is 39.6%, meaning that folks like mega millionaire Mitt Romney pay at around 15%-20%. Do the math and see how much more went into the treasury then as opposed to now. The second factor that held this empire in half check was the stronger union movement in the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s. In the 1950s, about 35% of American workers belonged to unions. In 1983, it went down to around 20%. Now, the percentage is around 12%. So, that means that three times more working stiffs in the recent past had the protection of a union, however weak or compliant that union may have been. Today, this empire can breathe easily as fewer and fewer working stiffs even have a union!

To this writer, with all the many factors that have contributed to the demise of our nation via this Military-Industrial Empire, the number one factor is our foreign policy. When over half of your spending goes for military reasons, how can a nation sustain itself at home? When you have over 1,000 military bases in over 100 countries, and you consistently are involved in these phony wars, the home front must feel the strain. Our myriad of domestic bleeding is so obvious . . . yet so few here will acknowledge it. Our infrastructure is crumbling, our health care is a mess, too many mediocre paying jobs (with too many being part time with NO benefits), our political system is controlled by Big Money, our media is controlled by the same Big Money . . . and the fools still fight amongst each other over the Two Party/One Party con job.

Let’s face it: All the major industrialized nations are controlled by their super rich. There are really few exceptions. Sadly, with over 99+ % of the populace in all these countries being just simple working stiffs, it is time for a change of mindset. The mindset must be simple: The super rich need to go back to paying their fair share, and government needs to become what Mark Twain prescribed: ‘To protect us from the crooks and scoundrels.’

The Value of Everything

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By James Howard Kunstler

Source: Kunstler.com

We are looking more and more like France on the eve of its revolution in 1789. Our classes are distributed differently, but the inequity is just as sharp. America’s “aristocracy,” once based strictly on bank accounts, acts increasingly hereditary as the vapid offspring and relations of “stars” (in politics, showbiz, business, and the arts) assert their prerogatives to fame, power, and riches — think the voters didn’t grok the sinister import of Hillary’s “it’s my turn” message?

What’s especially striking in similarity to the court of the Bourbons is the utter cluelessness of America’s entitled power elite to the agony of the moiling masses below them and mainly away from the coastal cities. Just about everything meaningful has been taken away from them, even though many of the material trappings of existence remain: a roof, stuff that resembles food, cars, and screens of various sizes.

But the places they are supposed to call home are either wrecked — the original small towns and cities of America — or replaced by new “developments” so devoid of artistry, history, thought, care, and charm that they don’t add up to communities, and are so obviously unworthy of affection, that the very idea of “home” becomes a cruel joke.

These places were bad enough in the 1960s and 70s, when the people who lived in them at least were able to report to paying jobs assembling products and managing their distribution. Now those people don’t have that to give a little meaning to their existence, or cover the costs of it. Public space was never designed into the automobile suburbs, and the sad remnants of it were replaced by ersatz substitutes, like the now-dying malls. Everything else of a public and human associational nature has been shoved into some kind of computerized box with a screen on it.

The floundering non-elite masses have not learned the harsh lesson of our time that the virtual is not an adequate substitute for the authentic, while the elites who create all this vicious crap spend millions to consort face-to-face in the Hamptons and Martha’s Vineyard telling each other how wonderful they are for providing all the artificial social programming and glitzy hardware for their paying customers.

The effect of this dynamic relationship so far has been powerfully soporific. You can deprive people of a true home for a while, and give them virtual friends on TV to project their emotions onto, and arrange to give them cars via some financing scam or other to keep them moving mindlessly around an utterly desecrated landscape under the false impression that they’re going somewhere — but we’re now at the point where ordinary people can’t even carry the costs of keeping themselves hostage to these degrading conditions.

The next big entertainment for them will be the financial implosion of the elites themselves as the governing forces of physics finally overcome all the ruses and stratagems of the elites who have been playing games with money. Professional observers never tires of saying that the government can’t run out of money (because they can always print more of it) but they can certainly destroy the value of that money and shred the consensual confidence that allows it to operate as money.

That’s exactly what is about to commence at the end of the summer when the government runs out of cash-on-hand and congress finds itself utterly paralyzed by party animus to patch the debt ceiling problem that disables new borrowing. The elites may be home from the Hamptons and the Vineyard by then, but summers may never be the same for them again.

The Deep State may win its war against the pathetic President Trump, but it won’t win any war against the imperatives of the universe and the way that expresses itself in the true valuation of things. And when the moment of clarification arrives — the instant of cosmic price discovery — the clueless elites will have to really and truly worry about the value of their heads.

 

America’s Rich Are Completely Losing Touch With Reality — and That’s a Really Bad Sign

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By Shaun Bradley

Source: AntiMedia

The divide between wealthy and working class has grown wider each year since the last financial crisis, but this disconnect is about much more than just money or politics. The super-rich, in particular, have become completely detached from the everyday problems facing millions of their fellow citizens. Instead of recognizing the urgency of the current situation and contributing to solutions that help empower all members of society, the focus for many has shifted toward simply indulging in the present moment and increasing luxury. This kind of self-centered worldview has emerged throughout history and typically thrives most when decadent empires start to crumble.

Right now, the average person is forced to worry about central banks devaluing their currencies, corrupt bureaucrats eroding their civil liberties, and an economy on life support. Meanwhile, a faction of affluent individuals has committed themselves to avoiding the turmoil around them, instead choosing to obsess over life extension, genetic manipulation, and creating luxurious doomsday plans. Those people who have the crucial intellect, resources, and influence needed to implement real change are consumed with self-interest to the point of total apathy towards the future.

One of the more disturbing trends has been a rise in interest regarding something called parabiosis. This practice involves blood transfusions between the young and old in an attempt to slow the aging process. The procedure has been studied in the past but has always been met with moral and scientific criticism. Recently, however, a California start-up called Ambrosia began offering clients the opportunity to purchase the blood of someone under the age of 25 for a mere $8,000.

The process gained attention after Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel came out in support of further research during an interview:

“I’m looking into parabiosis stuff, which I think is really interesting. This is where they did the young blood into older mice and they found that had a massive rejuvenating effect. And so that’s … that is one that … again, it’s one of these very odd things where people had done these studies in the 1950s and then it got dropped altogether. I think there are a lot of these things that have been strangely underexplored.”

The blood used for these transfusions is often purchased from blood banks without informing the original donors. Popular high-school blood drives could soon have a whole new incentive to encourage students to participate. Any possible medical advancements that can help improve the lives of sick people should be explored, but for a private business to benefit directly from the generosity of others without their consent is a bit unnerving.

The question of whether this treatment is effective or not is almost a secondary issue to the ethical one. What does it show about our society when the priority of so many is not building a better world for the next generation but, rather, appeasing their egos by desperately clinging to their youth? The similarity to vampirism can’t be overlooked and may be another sign that, in the end, the truth is stranger than fiction.

The super-wealthy who can see the dangers facing the world are also fine with hitting the eject button to their own private bunkers in a worst-case scenario. The prepping community that was once isolated to ‘conspiracy theorists’ and survivalist groups has now been adopted by the 1%. Several billionaires have even gone so far as to buy entire islands to guarantee they won’t be swept up in the panic of the masses.

Tim Chang, the managing director at a financial firm called the Mayfield Fund, spoke to a reporter at the New Yorker about some of the conversations going on in these circles:

“There’s a bunch of us in the Valley. We meet up and have these financial-hacking dinners and talk about backup plans people are doing. It runs the gamut from a lot of people stocking up on Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, to figuring out how to get second passports if they need it, to having vacation homes in other countries that could be escape havens…I’ll be candid: I’m stockpiling now on real estate to generate passive income but also to have havens to go to….I kind of have this terror scenario: ‘Oh, my God, if there is a civil war or a giant earthquake that cleaves off part of California, we want to be ready.’ ”

While the ideas of democratic socialism have spread throughout the country, it’s clear that extreme individualism has developed on the other side. The majority of those with the means to care for themselves and their families have abandoned any connection to the rest of society. As long as the impact of the coming upheaval doesn’t affect them directly, it appears the fate of the rest is irrelevant.

The mentality of the nation has transitioned from proactive to reactive, with a sense of inevitability about the ultimate outcome we’re all facing. There is almost no effort to openly discuss the growing prospect of a civil war or severe economic breakdown, even as it grows more plausible in the minds of those paying attention. This obsession on the part of the super-rich for god-like control over their destinies only shows the fear that overwhelmingly dictates their choices. Maybe the modern day peasants of society should simply heed the advice of Marie Antoinette and eat cake while the world burns.

Now Just Five Men Own Almost as Much Wealth as Half the World’s Population

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By Paul Buchheit

Source: CommonDreams

Last year it was 8 men, then down to 6, and now almost 5.

While Americans fixate on Trump, the super-rich are absconding with our wealth, and the plague of inequality continues to grow. An analysis of 2016 data found that the poorest five deciles of the world population own about $410 billion in total wealth. As of 06/08/17, the world’s richest five men owned over $400 billion in wealth. Thus, on average, each man owns nearly as much as 750 million people.

Why Do We Let a Few People Shift Great Portions of the World’s Wealth to Themselves? 

Most of the super-super-rich are Americans. We the American people created the Internet, developed and funded Artificial Intelligence, and built a massive transportation infrastructure, yet we let just a few individuals take almost all the credit, along with hundreds of billions of dollars.

Defenders of the out-of-control wealth gap insist that all is OK, because, after all, America is a ‘meritocracy’ in which the super-wealthy have ‘earned’ all they have. They heed the words of Warren Buffett: “The genius of the American economy, our emphasis on a meritocracy and a market system and a rule of law has enabled generation after generation to live better than their parents did.”

But it’s not a meritocracy. Children are no longer living better than their parents did. In the eight years since the recession the Wilshire Total Market valuation has more than TRIPLED, rising from a little over $8 trillion to nearly $25 trillion. The great majority of it has gone to the very richest Americans. In 2016 alone, the richest 1% effectively shifted nearly $4 trillion in wealth away from the rest of the nation to themselves, with nearly half of the wealth transfer ($1.94 trillion) coming from the nation’s poorest 90%—the middle and lower classes. That’s over $17,000 in housing and savings per lower-to-middle-class household lost to the super-rich.

A meritocracy? Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos have done little that wouldn’t have happened anyway. ALL modern U.S. technology started with—and to a great extent continues with—our tax dollars and our research institutes and our subsidies to corporations.

Why Do We Let Unqualified Rich People Tell Us How To Live? Especially Bill Gates! 

In 1975, at the age of 20, Bill Gates founded Microsoft with high school buddy Paul Allen. At the time Gary Kildall’s CP/M operating system was the industry standard. Even Gates’ company used it. But Kildall was an innovator, not a businessman, and when IBM came calling for an OS for the new IBM PC, his delays drove the big mainframe company to Gates. Even though the newly established Microsoft company couldn’t fill IBM’s needs, Gates and Allen saw an opportunity, and so they hurriedly bought the rights to another local company’s OS — which was based on Kildall’s CP/M system. Kildall wanted to sue, but intellectual property law for software had not yet been established. Kildall was a maker who got taken.

So Bill Gates took from others to become the richest man in the world. And now, because of his great wealth and the meritocracy myth, MANY PEOPLE LOOK TO HIM FOR SOLUTIONS IN VITAL AREAS OF HUMAN NEED, such as education and global food production.

—Gates on Education: He has promoted galvanic skin response monitors to measure the biological reactions of students, and the videotaping of teachers to evaluate their performances. About schools he said, “The best results have come in cities where the mayor is in charge of the school system. So you have one executive, and the school board isn’t as powerful.”

—Gates on Africa: With investments in or deals with Monsanto, Cargill, and Merck, Gates has demonstrated his preference for corporate control over poor countries deemed unable to help themselves. But no problem—according to Gates, “By 2035, there will be almost no poor countries left in the world.”

Warren Buffett: Demanding To Be Taxed at a Higher Rate (As Long As His Own Company Doesn’t Have To Pay) 

Warren Buffett has advocated for higher taxes on the rich and a reasonable estate tax. But his company Berkshire Hathaway has used “hypothetical amounts” to ‘pay’ its taxes while actually deferring $77 billion in real taxes.

Jeff Bezos: $50 Billion in Less Than Two Years, and Fighting Taxes All the Way 

Since the end of 2015 Jeff Bezos has accumulated enough wealth to cover the entire $50 billion U.S. housing budget, which serves five million Americans. Bezos, who has profited greatly from the Internet and the infrastructure built up over many years by many people with many of our tax dollars, has used tax havens and high-priced lobbyists to avoid the taxes owed by his company.

Mark Zuckerberg (6th Richest in World, 4th Richest in America) 

While Zuckerberg was developing his version of social networking at Harvard, Columbia University students Adam Goldberg and Wayne Ting built a system called Campus Network, which was much more sophisticated than the early versions of Facebook. But Zuckerberg had the Harvard name and better financial support. It was also alleged that Zuckerberg hacked into competitors’ computers to compromise user data.

Now with his billions he has created a ‘charitable’ foundation, which in reality is a tax-exempt limited liability company, leaving him free to make political donations or sell his holdings, all without paying taxes.

Everything has fallen into place for young Zuckerberg. Nothing left to do but run for president.

The False Promise of Philanthropy 

Many super-rich individuals have pledged the majority of their fortunes to philanthropic causes. That’s very generous, if they keep their promises. But that’s not really the point.

American billionaires all made their money because of the research and innovation and infrastructure that make up the foundation of our modern technologies. They have taken credit, along with their massive fortunes, for successes that derive from society rather than from a few individuals. It should not be any one person’s decision about the proper use of that wealth. Instead a significant portion of annual national wealth gains should be promised to education, housing, health research, and infrastructure. That is what Americans and their parents and grandparents have earned after a half-century of hard work and productivity.

Are We (Collectively) Depressed?

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By Charles Hugh Smith

Source: Of Two Minds

We need to encourage honesty above optimism. Once we can speak honestly, there is a foundation for optimism.

Psychoanalysis teaches that one cause of depression is repressed anger.

The rising tide of collective anger is visible in many places: road rage, violent street clashes between groups seething for a fight, the destruction of friendships for holding the “incorrect” ideological views, and so on. I Think We Can Safely Say The American Culture War Has Been Taken As Far As It Can Go.

A coarsening of the entire social order is increasingly visible: The Age of Rudeness.

This raises a larger question: are we as a society becoming depressed as we repress our righteous anger and our sense of powerlessness as economic and social inequality rises?

Depression is a complex phenomenon, but it typically includes a loss of hope and vitality, absence of goals, the reinforcement of negative internal dialogs, and anhedonia, the loss of the joy of living (joie de vivre).

Depressive thoughts (and the emotions they generate) tend to be self-reinforcing, and this is why it’s so difficult to break out of depression once in its grip.

One part of the healing process is to expose the sources of anger that we are repressing. As psychiatrist Karen Horney explained in her 1950 masterwork, Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle Towards Self-Realization, anger at ourselves sometimes arises from our failure to live up to the many “shoulds” we’ve internalized, and the idealized track we’ve laid out for ourselves and our lives.

The recent article, The American Dream Is Killing Us does a good job of explaining how our failure to obtain the expected rewards of “doing all the right things” (getting a college degree, working hard, etc.) breeds resentment and despair.

Since we did the “right things,” the system “should” deliver the financial rewards and security we expected. This systemic failure to deliver the promised rewards is eroding social mobility and the social contract while generating frustration, anger, etc.

We are increasingly angry at the system, but we reserve some anger for ourselves, because the mass-media trumpets how well the economy is doing and how some people are doing extremely well. Naturally, we wonder, why them and not us? The failure is thus internalized.

One response to this sense that the system no longer works as advertised is to seek the relative comfort of echo chambers–places we can go to hear confirmation that this systemic stagnation is the opposing political party’s fault.

We don’t just self-sort ourselves into political “tribes” online–we congregate in increasingly segregated communities and states: The Simple Reason Why A Second American Civil War May Be Inevitable.

Americans are moving to communities that align more with their politics. Liberals are moving to liberal areas, and conservatives are moving to conservative communities. It’s been going on for decades. When Jimmy Carter was elected in 1976, 26.8% of Americans lived in landslide counties; that is counties where the president won or lost by 20% of the vote.

By 2004, 48.3% of the population lived in these counties. This trend continues to worsen. As Americans move to their preferred geographic bubbles, they face less exposure to opposing viewpoints, and their own opinions become more extreme. This trend is at the heart of why politics have become so polarizing in America.

We’re self-sorting at every level. Because of this, Americans are only going to grow more extreme in their beliefs, and see people on the other side of the political spectrum as more alien.”

Part of the American Exceptionalism we hear so much about is a can-do optimism: set your mind to it and everything is possible.

The failure to prosper as anticipated is generating a range of negative emotions that are “un-American”: complaining that you didn’t get a high-paying secure job despite having a college degree (or advanced degree) sounds like sour-grapes: the message is you didn’t work hard enough, you didn’t get the right diploma, etc.

It can’t be the system that’s failed, right? I discuss this in my book Why Our Status Quo Failed and Is Beyond Reform: the top 10% who are benefiting mightily dominate politics and the media, and their assumption is: the system is working great for me, so it must be working for everyone. That’s the implicit narrative parroted by status quo mouthpieces.

The inability to express our despair and anger generates depression. Some people will redouble their efforts, others will seek to lay the blame on “the other” (some external group) and others will give up. What few people will do is look at the sources of systemic injustice.

Perhaps we need a national dialog about declining expectations, rising inequality and the failure of the status quo that avoids the blame-game and the internalization trap (i.e. it’s your own fault you’re not well-off).

We need ways to express our resentment, anger, despair, etc. that are directed at the source, the complex system we inhabit, not “the other.” We need to encourage honesty above optimism. Once we can speak honestly, there is a foundation for optimism.

 

America’s Oligarchs Will Control 70% Of National Wealth By 2021

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By Whitney Webb

Source: AntiMedia

America’s rich just won’t quit getting richer, according to a new study released in mid-June by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), a global management consulting firm. The study, which seeks to analyze the global wealth management industry, as well as the evolution of private wealth, uncovered some startling statistics that suggest that global financial inequality will grow significantly by the year 2021.

The firm found that the already massive gap between the world’s wealthy elite – the approximately 18 million households that hold at least more than $1 million in assets – and everyone else is continuing to widen at a remarkable rate. The estimated 70 million people who make up these households were found to control 45 percent of the world’s $166.5 trillion in wealth. And in just four more years, it is estimated that they will control more than half of the world’s wealth, despite representing less than 1 percent of the world’s current population.

However, while rising inequality is a global phenomenon, it is especially pronounced in the United States. While wealth inequality in the U.S. is by no means an unknown phenomenon, the U.S. is significantly more unequal than most other countries, with the nation’s elite currently holding 63 percent of the private wealth. The U.S. elite’s share of national wealth is also growing much faster than the global average, with millionaires and billionaires expected to control an estimated 70 percent of the nation’s wealth by 2021.

The U.S.’ high wealth inequality largely owes to post-World War II government policies that have seen almost a quarter of all national income go to its wealthiest residents. Meanwhile, wages for the majority of Americans have remained stagnant for decades – in contrast to the richest Americans, their future economic outlook is incredibly bleak by comparison.

The U.S. is also home to more billionaires and millionaires than anywhere else in the world, which partly explains how U.S. policy has come to favor them over the years. According to Bloomberg, two out of five millionaires and billionaires live in the United States – and their ranks are growing.

While the world’s richest citizens may be pleased by the results of BCG’s recent study, there is plenty for them to be worried about if history is any indicator. Indeed, history shows that societies with drastic wealth inequality are much more unstable and more likely to experience drastic economic failure or outright societal collapse.

For instance, a 2014 study conducted by the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center noted that over-consumption and wealth inequality have occurred in the collapse of every civilization over the last 5,000 years. That same study also warned that rising inequality could easily lead to an unsustainable use of resources and the “irreversible collapse” of global industrial civilization.

This warning seems particularly prescient, given that wealth inequality in the U.S. is well above that of past civilizations that eventually collapsed as a result of these factors. For example, at the time of the collapse of the Roman Empire, the top 1 percent of the Roman elite controlled just 16 percent of the society’s wealth, a measly figure compared to the percentage commanded by the 1-percenters of the U.S.

While the BCG study paints a rosy picture for the world’s millionaires and billionaires, particularly in the United States, they should be gravely concerned that their growing accumulation of wealth could have drastic consequences – not just for those poorer than them, but for everyone.

Deep State, shallow politics, dumb economics

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By Frank Scott

Source: Intrepid Report

In 1965, the USA had 780,000 people in prison, jail, on parole or on probation.

By 2010, that population had grown by more than nine times, to 7 million and the prison business was booming as never before, creating profits, jobs and unparalleled human misery.

In 1954, the integration of public schools was seen as a great victory for civil rights and Americans now designated as “people of color”*. Today more than 50% of the prison population is designated as “people of color” and the disintegration of the entire public school system continues for all Americans designated as people.

In 2015, there were 536 billionaires in the U.S.A. In a nation of more than 325 million people, that represents less than 2 millionths of one percent of the population. For the textually challenged, that looks like this:.000002%

Wow.

How hard those truly brilliant people must have worked to achieve those riches. And one of them was Donald Trump!

Imagine how many cases they had to plead in court, classes to teach in school, buses to drive, meals to prepare, floors to wash, crops to pick, mail to deliver and deals to make? Well, actually, they mostly made deals using their great wisdom and brilliance at investing wisely. You and I could do as well if we worked as hard and were as smart and industrious as they are, including Donald Trump!

And if we were paid a thousand dollars an hour for our hard work, and we worked twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, fifty two weeks a year, maybe if we stashed all that cash and didn’t spend any of it we might have a billion dollars.

Nope.

In fact, if you worked twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, fifty two weeks a year and did that for ten years, at one thousand dollars an hour, never stopped, never took any time off and never spent any of the money and just stashed it, you still wouldn’t have a billion dollars.

Is this a great democracy or what?

In that same year of 2015, America’s GDP for pets, which was $38.5 billion in 2006, had grown to $60.3 billion. Twelve companies insured 1.4 million pets owned by 79.6 million American families (65% of households) with premiums amounting to 660.5 million dollars.

163.8 million dogs and cats are comfortably housed in a political economy that has half a million of its people homeless and more than 20% of its children living in poverty. This is certainly reason enough for us to demand that Russia, North Korea, Syria and other nations adopt our democratically civilized way of living or suffer the consequences of our superior wrath. Right?

As of March1, 2017, our national debt was close to $20 trillion, which is more than our GDP, which is truly a gross domestic product. We the people of this great democracy pay more than $440 billion a year in interest on that debt.

Who do we pay it to?

Where’d they get the money to loan us?

Who prints and backs this money supply?

If you have any money among your plastic, look at one of the bills of any denomination and note that the power behind the cash is not the dead presidents or Rockefeller, Carnegie, Zuckerburg, Soros, Bezos, Visa or MasterCard but something called “The United States of America.”

That is not a private bank or a billionaire. That’s you. That’s us.

Remember, we, the public, print the money, in our name, and somehow it gets to a private source which loans it to us and charges us interest for the privilege. Would you like to buy a bridge?

Our personal debt, incurred to keep the economy going with our consuming and owed to the same market gods, was over $18 trillion. Almost as high as our public debt. Somehow, we owe it to the same people who loaned us our own money for public expenses. Wow.

Are they really smart?

Or are we really stupid?

Many Americans are treated as lower than scum for being working class and “uneducated.” Why are so many Americans so “uneducated”? Could it have anything to do with the fact that at some point they went through grammar and high schools taught by (drum roll) college-educated people**? And winding up with presidents like a truly brilliant rich guy with degrees from Yale and Harvard (wow!) who starts wars in the Middle East that have gone on longer than any in our history, with the consent of 534 out of 535 democratically (?) elected college graduates in congress?

Whether the organized crime lobby (Wall Street, banks, billionaires) supports guns for individuals, Israelis or the Military Industrial Complex, it remains in control of the political economics of American government. NRAIPAC and its ilk own, rent and control the White House, Congress and Corporate media. That was the case before Trump and still is the case now.

We need resistance to that system of minority control itself, and not simply the servants it hires, leases, rents or outright owns. As long as we allow a gallon of milk to cost more than a gallon of gasoline, as long as we tolerate an economics that will sustain a disease as long as profits for its treatment are greater than profits for its cure***, we not only face long range climate disaster but a much shorter range political economic calamity.

Global capitalism threatens immediate and growing poverty, war, human misery and planetary destruction no matter which political pinhead, pimp or ho lives in the subsidized residency we call the white house. As long as we allow the richest and smallest minority in our history to put only their servants up for our votes, calling this a democracy reduces us to the best-dressed peasants on the Titanic. We need to end the fundamentalist religion of private profit marketing that is becoming a greater menace by the minute and begin democratic action in a social revolution that expresses majority public interest, desire and need. Fast.

 

Notes

*All members of the human race are “of color” save for a small group called albinos. Some of us have darker or lighter skin but skin tone is of no more racial significance than brown hair, green eyes or long legs. Innocents, the ignorant and morons who still believe otherwise are science deniers at best, and anti-human at worst, no matter their skin tone.

**Those with a stake in maintaining their incomes & consumption are unlikely to participate in efforts to bring about radical change”—Michael D. Yates

***Check cancer, for starters; a multi-multi billion-dollar industry

Our Hopelessly Dysfunctional Democracy

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By Charles Hugh Smith

Source: Of Two Minds

When the system is rigged, “democracy” is just another public-relations screen to mask the unsavory reality of Oligarchy.

Democracy in America has become a hollow shell. The conventional markers of democracy–elections and elected representatives–exist, but they are mere facades; the mechanisms of setting the course of the nation are corrupt, and the power lies outside the public’s reach.

History has shown that democratic elections don’t guarantee an uncorrupt, functional government. Rather, democracy has become the public-relations stamp of approval for corrupt governance that runs roughshod over individual liberty while centralizing the power to enforce consent, silence critics and maintain the status quo.

Consider Smith’s Neofeudalism Principle #1: If the citizenry cannot replace a dysfunctional government and/or limit the power of the financial Aristocracy at the ballot box, the nation is a democracy in name only.

In other words, if the citizenry changes the elected representation but the financial Aristocracy and the Deep State remain in charge, then the democracy is nothing but a PR facade for an oppressive oligarchy.

If the erosion of civil liberties and rising inequality characterize the state of the nation, democracy is both dysfunctional and illiberal. A state that strips away the civil liberties of its citizens via civil forfeiture, a war-on-drugs Gulag and unlimited surveillance may be a democracy in name, but it is at heart an oppressive oligarchy.

If the super-wealthy continue to become ever wealthier while the bottom 95% of the citizenry struggle in various stages of debt-serfdom, the state may be a democracy in name, but it is at heart an oppressive oligarchy.

Author/commentator Fareed Zakaria recently addressed the illiberal aspects of America’s faded democracy in an article America’s democracy has become illiberal.

Zakar’s prettified critique avoided the real worm at the heart of our democracy:the state exists to enforce cartels. Some might be private, some might be state-run, and others might be hybrids, such as our failed Sickcare system and our military industrial complex.

The ultimate role of democracy isn’t to “give the people a voice;” the only meaningful role of democracy is to protect the liberties of individuals from state encroachment, break up cartels and monopolies and limit the corruption of private/public money.

America’s democracy has failed on all counts. Civil liberties in a nation of ubiquitous central-state surveillance, a quasi-political Gulag (that nickel bag will earn you a tenner in America’s drug-war Gulag) and civil forfeiture (we suspect you’re up to no good, so we have the right to steal your car and cash) are eroding fast.

In America, the central government’s primary job is enforcing and funding cartels. As many of us have pointed out for years, a mere $10 million in lobbying, revolving-door graft (getting paid $250,000 for a speech or for a couple of board meetings) and bribes (cough-cough, I mean campaign contributions) can secure $100 million in profits–either by erecting regulatory/legal barriers or by direct federal funding of the cartel’s racket (healthcare, defense, “National Security,” etc.).

I explain why this is so in my books Resistance, Revolution, Liberation, Inequality and the Collapse of Privilege and Why Our Status Quo Failed and Is Beyond Reform.

The fact that the corruption is veiled does not mean it isn’t corruption. In the sort of nations Americans mock as fake democracies, the wealthy protect their wealth and incomes with bags of cash delivered at night to politicians.

Nothing so crass or obvious here, of course. Here, the government of Algiers gives $25 million to the Clinton Foundation for “favors,” the Russian government gives hundreds of thousands to John Podesta’s firm for “advice” (heh), the Koch Brothers fund an array of front-organizations that work on behalf of their agenda, K Street lobbying firms rake in tens of millions of dollars every year, and the first thing tech companies do when they realize some interest group might crimp their profits courtesy of lobbying the central state’s politicos is set up their own lavish lobbying and “contribution” schemes.

In theory, democracy enables advocacy by a variety of groups in order to reach a consensual solution to problems shared by everyone. In practice, the advocacy is limited to a select group of insiders, donors and the various fronts of the wealthy: foundations, think-tanks, lobbyists, etc.

Does anyone think America’s democracy is still capable of solving the truly major long-term problems threatening the nation? Based on what evidence? What we see is a corrupt machine of governance that kicks every can down the road rather than suffer the blowback of honestly facing problems that will require deep sacrifices and changes in the status quo.

We see a dysfunctional machine of governance that changes the name of legislation and proposes policy tweaks, while leaving the rapacious cartels untouched. (See the current sickcare “debate” for examples.)

We see an Imperial Project setting the state’s agenda to suit its own desires, and a corporate media that is quivering with rage now that the public no longer believes its tainted swill of “news” and “reporting.”

The divide between the haves and the have-nots is not limited to money–it’s also widening between the few with political power and the teeming serfs with effectively zero political power. When the system is rigged, “democracy” is just another public-relations screen to mask the unsavory reality of oligarchy.