Economy

It’s the Free Market, Stupid…

by MyBaconPress

Capitalist: 1) An investor of capital in business, especially one having a major financial interest in an important enterprise. 2) A person of great wealth. Then, thrown in to try to keep the rest of us on board, 3) A supporter of capitalism. (Uh-huh…)

It’s one of the greatest deceptions of all time. Capitalists have their victims (that’s you and me) declaring themselves capitalists and defending capitalism. And we do, too. If you ask anybody in America, odds are they’ll tell you they’re a capitalist and they believe in capitalism. You can see that one of the definitions is ‘A supporter of capitalism.’ That makes us feel like we’re ‘on the team,’ as it were – but we really, really are not.

Those first two definitions – rich people who have major financial interests in important enterprises – are FAR more accurate descriptions of capitalists, but do you know what THAT means? That means that, far and away, most Americans are NOT capitalists. (We’re the victims of capitalism.) We’re not rich and we don’t own enough to have “major financial interests in important enterprises.” We just get up and go to work, creating the wealth the capitalists keep – and then use against us…

Suddenly, I feel a need to make this point. There are NOT only two systems, Capitalism or Communism. I don’t support communism, either. It clearly doesn’t work – based on the idea that it has never worked anywhere in the world, any time in history. But this so-called ‘Free Market Capitalism’ ain’t working so hot, either, wouldn’t you say?

I support the middle road, once known as New Deal Capitalism. I call it ‘Social Capitalism.’ The rest of the world calls it ‘Democratic Socialism.’ That’s too bad, too. Americans have been fully conditioned, brainwashed really, to believe that the word socialism describes one thing and one thing only: communism, so the instant they hear that word, many Americans crap their panties and dive for the covers to hide their heads. But despite the stupid name, it’s really just managed capitalism, the kind that fights back against capitalistic abuse. It’s better for everyone – even rich people.

Right now, the poster child for the failure of ‘Free Market Capitalism’ is Luigi Mangione, the guy who gunned down the current poster child for capitalistic abuse, Brian Thompson. Mangione shot Thompson in the back, just gunned him down in the street. As of this writing, it appears Mangione shot Thompson as a symbol. That is, he had no personal beef with Thompson. Thompson became the poster child of capitalistic abuse because he was the CEO of the health insurance company that denied more claims than any other company.

Nobody seems to care. I see memes out there of Luigi superimposed by Photoshop into various work environments with comments about how he was there on Dec 4, on-site all day and right next to other workers. Never out of their sight, even for a moment. Why, the memes insist, Luigi couldn’t have done it. Alibi established. Obviously, it isn’t. It turns out, the police have a few photos of their own – and theirs aren’t Photoshopped.

Truthfully, when the shooting occurred, my first thought was “Someone who got denied.” I wasn’t alone. I felt badly that I didn’t feel worse about the shooting. I felt guilty that I was kind of happy to see a little guy get even for a change. As it happens, I’m not alone in THAT, either. I expected the party to end a few days later, as people got past their bubbling anger and re-connected with their humanity. So far, that hasn’t happened. Instead, there’s a “Free Luigi” movement starting.

Do you know who IS showing signs of concern, though? Corporate media. The media owned and operated by the capitalists. The message coming from both sides of the dial is the same – it’s poor form to shoot capitalists. Don’t do it. That’s not working, either. I suspect we’ve all noticed that NONE of them are promising to change their ways. They just don’t want people shooting them for the abuses. But people are really angry and most of us seem quite happy that a rich guy got his, for a change. And that’s the key.

Thompson’s program of denial likely killed thousands. THAT was just “good business.” HE was getting bonuses for increasing the bottom line so nicely. Families were planning funerals that didn’t have to happen. We ALL know this. We ALL know we COULD have decent health care in this country. But the capitalists don’t WANT us to have decent health care. They can’t profit if they can’t insert themselves into the process and all they care about is profit.

So, after forty years of living the ‘Free Market Capitalism’ life, one guy has reached the point of shooting someone and the rest of us are cheering the act. There’s even a new movement out there called ‘Board rooms, not classrooms.’ It takes the position that, if you’re going to be a random shooter that goes out and kills someone for fame – at least kill someone whose death benefits society. Don’t kill six-year olds. Don’t shoot up classrooms. Kill CEO’s. Shoot up board rooms. Go out a hero, like Luigi. (I’m only describing, and not endorsing, the movement, here.)

I think Luigi was trying to start something and I think he has. Somehow, this single act of defiance has loosed a torrent of anger at the way our economy works (or doesn’t, in so many cases). I suspect Luigi wanted other people to start shooting right away. That part didn’t happen but the anger is now at the top, not being hidden anymore, perhaps bubbling over. In fact, it’s being celebrated. There WILL BE other shooters.

And now, just to put the icing on the cake, we’re getting the richest political Cabinet in history. We’re already hearing messages from billionaires like, “You Poors are going to have to suffer,” and comments about how Joe Six-pack has it way too easy. Trump has admitted, now, that he isn’t going to bring the price of groceries down and he can’t guarantee his tariffs won’t raise prices. “Yeah, I lied. Whaddaya gonna do about it?” Hey, ask Luigi.

Consider this: So-called “Free Market Capitalism” has created a world in which people cheer when a capitalist is gunned down in the street – and all the while, there have been entities in place pushing back against the abuses of the Free Market. Now, the One Percent (and Putin) have managed to install the richest group of people in history, none of whom have even the slightest idea of what life is like for a working person. Corruption has mostly eliminated the restraints the held them back in the past – even the recent past.

Now? The brakes are off. The capitalists – the true capitalists, not the “supporters of capitalism” – are about to have their way with the economy without restraint. Do you think that’s going to be better or worse for the Small Folk? If we’re already at, “Yes, kill them!” and the capitalists are about to turn the screws even harder – and I guarantee they are – I expect blood.

To be clear, I don’t WANT blood. I wish every self-absorbed, self-serving, self-described “important” blowhard would get visits from three ghosts and see the error of their ways. But John Kennedy’s words are about to explode in front of us. The capitalists are making violent revolution inevitable…

When You Make Peaceful Revolution Impossible…

by MyBaconPress

I wouldn’t live a life that caused people to want to celebrate if I got murdered in the streets. Early Wednesday morning, in the middle of Manhattan, a man named Brian Thompson was shot and killed by a gunman. Mr. Thompson was the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, a health insurance company. The shooter is still at large, so nobody can speak to his motivations with certainty. But the truth is, when I heard the person who got shot was the CEO of a health insurance company, my first thought was, “Someone who got a claim denied.” Wasn’t that your first thought? (Tell the truth.)

I don’t mind saying: I felt pretty badly about the fact that I didn’t feel more badly. There was even an element of “Well, that’s no surprise. The real surprise is why it doesn’t happen more often.” But I wasn’t proud of myself for a) dismissing other possible motivations so easily and b) maybe even feeling like one was struck for the little guy there, like it was a kind of justice. Who died – or is going to – because some bureaucrat sitting behind some desk someplace looked an some actuarial table and pressed the “Denied” button? (UnitedHealthcare is said to deny around one-third of all claims.)

Then we found out the shooter took the time to write “Deny,” “Defend,” and “Depose” on the bullets. That’s close to the name of an insurance industry book that teaches insurance companies how to deny claims, ‘Delay, Deny, Defend.’ Now I’m more certain that this is related to insurance denials – and I feel better about a Small-Folk “evening the score” than I feel badly about a human being getting gunned down in the streets. Oh, also? I feel a little more ashamed of myself for nurturing the schadenfreude.

Then, I saw a meme. It said, “I have seen at least 30 different news stories about one billionaire insurance company CEO’s death today. Wouldn’t it be great if every person who died today because an insurance company denied coverage got the same attention?” Okay, then. At least I’m not alone.

In fact, I’d say this is indicative of the failing nature of our health care system and, really, free market capitalism, in general. We all know that insurance companies like this exist only to add cost and extract money from people unfortunate enough to end up needing medical care. Just think about THAT for a second. One of the slogans of the United States of America is that we live in the richest, greatest country on the planet. And yet, we fear illness and think of the process as ‘unfortunate enough to end up needing medical care.’

The vast majority of Americans live one serious illness from ruin. Now, from all indicators, we’re all moving into a fascist free-for-all that promises to pit Joe Six-pack against corporate interests at every turn. That is, economically, things are about to get MUCH worse, not better. So I suspect we’re going to see more of this kind of thing going forward. In fact, I’ve been struck by how many people are rallying…around the shooter.

There are online sleuths, people who take pride in helping law enforcement find bad guys. As a group, they seem to have collectively decided to stand down. Only one stood up and offered some information – and that person was attacked by other online sleuths. To me, it looks, largely, like the rank and file people – those of us who have been victimized by some insurance company somewhere so, you know, most Americans – stand on the side of the shooter.

John F. Kennedy (the good one, not the jerk currently in Congress) said, “When you make peaceful revolution impossible, you make violent revolution inevitable.” I think the vast majority of the country rooting for the shooter in this case is shades of that coming to pass. Now that our government has been handed over to the One Percent (the collective net worth of Trump’s cabinet nominees is estimated at around $340 billion dollars) and Project 2025 is a blueprint of how to attack the poor and defenseless, we can expect these out-of-touch rich prigs to inflict damage after damage.

Worse, they’ll do it blindly, because they really ARE out-of-touch. Because they really DON’T understand how decisions which don’t have any serious effect on them, nonetheless have devastating consequences to the largest numbers of Americans. Elon Musk, the wealthy, silver-spoon opportunist who has never invented anything in his life, has already warned the Small-Folk that they’re just going to have to suffer some “temporary hardship.” Not him, mind you. He’s going to get tax cuts and deregulation that makes HIS life oh-so-much easier. But you? Oh, yeah, YOU have to suffer. Suck it up, buttercup.

I can’t say when things explode. That part is always elusive in history. People put up with a lot of crap, just trying to get by. But everybody has a limit. Everybody has a moment. The One Percent have succeeded in rolling back FDR’s New Deal, which means all glory to the wealthy and the Small-Folk need to just do as they’re told and be grateful for the crumbs they get.

It’s a good thing we live in a bloodthirsty, brutal, and vicious society that’s already struggling mightily to survive on a day-to-day basis, pissed off about the inequities of America, and armed to the teeth. I mean, what could go wrong? I don’t think, long term, this shooting will prove to be an isolated event.

Right now, there are a large number of people who chose to support Trump, because they didn’t believe he’s actually going to do the things he promised he was going to do. As he DOES do those things – to them – and the work-a-day Joe’s lives are impacted, they’re going to wake up and get mad.

MAGA is a different story. MAGA was perfectly happy to kill their loved ones to keep Trump from looking bad about his horrific mishandling of Covid-19. They may well prove to be blindly loyal enough to kill themselves to protect their Precious, too. But one of the primary hallmarks of MAGA is selfishness. Killing their loved ones was one thing, a necessary sacrifice. Killing themselves?

I suspect when MAGA is asked to just forget about the Social Security they’ve paid into for so long, when they realize their gardener isn’t coming anymore because he got deported, when they lose their health care and can’t see a doctor anymore, when the price of eggs goes up, not down, when they lose their homes to some clever wall street type, when their granddaughters start dying in botched back-alley abortion attempts, they’ll start to wake up and get angry, too.

I’ll tell you this: I suspect the shooting of Brian Thompson and, more importantly, the ho-hum attitude people have displayed over the shooting (are we actually rooting for the shooter to get away with it?) represent an opening salvo in the impending culture wars. Trump isn’t even President, yet, and the shooting has already begun. This is going to be ugly…

Tales That Don’t Track…

by MyBaconPress

Is it true conservatives are ALREADY embracing the Biden economy as Trump’s own? The economic “glory days” they remember from Trump’s first term were the months at the beginning where America was still enjoying the benefits of Obama’s economy. The more Trump messed with it, the worse it got. No, MAGA won’t confess that. It’s just true. THEN, they just ignore the part where it crashed and burned because of his terrible handling of the pandemic. But that part is true, too.

So when Trump started running on how bad the economy is today, I thought enough people would know the difference to understand he was lying. They didn’t. It turns out, young people are still turning toward Trump and even though Trump hasn’t taken the oath of office he’ll ignore, I hear he’s already taking credit for the health of the economy, these days.

There’s a certain element that explains some of the young people’s support: dishonest media. For the last 40+ years, conservatives have been lying to people about what works and what doesn’t and why this and how come not that. Those of us who have completed a higher number of trips around the sun still remember Better America. No, it wasn’t perfect but it was FAR better than this bizarro crap.

So when I hear some talking head pretend there’s such a thing as “Supply Side Economics,” I just shake my head in disgust that people might do that to others. But young people? All they’ve ever heard is that supply side economics IS a thing. That same media works tirelessly to keep them from realizing the longer this supply side crap is in play, the harder their own life has become. There’s a direct relationship. But you have to understand the details to see the connection, and too many people are bored by the details.

I’ve never ONCE argued that the United States was in perfect, or even excellent shape. We’ve had problems since the start. (Largely because of small-minded people.) But we were addressing them, one by one. Maybe we would have made it, given enough time. I thought we were on a good track until Reagan.

But over the course of those 40+ years, young people have never heard correct information about how economies work and instead, have been treated to misinformation and disinformation of the far right. Now, we see the young people out there, supporting the destruction of the nation because they think it’s necessary. But it’s not their fault. They know not what they do…

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The right has been wrong, of course, on the economy. It’s in FAR better shape than they were willing to admit before the “election.” Yes, prices DID go up at an infuriating rate. But people who know understand; that wasn’t “inflation.” It was “greedflation.” Companies were raising prices because they could, and blaming inflation for doing it. But there hasn’t been any systemic inflation in quite some time. It’s all just greed.

Now Trump has offered them a new excuse to start raising prices again: his tariffs. He’s promising some BIG numbers – as high as 20% on things from most foreign countries. He’s threatening even HIGHER tariffs for stuff coming from China. ALL of this will raise prices and make it harder to make ends meet, not easier. AutoZone, Columbia Sportswear, and Stanley Black and Decker have all made clear that if the tariffs go into effect, their prices go up. It will be that way for most imports, which is most products in America, these days.

The excuse will be that the corporate costs went up due to the tariffs so they HAD to pass those costs along. But I’d bet a dollar the prices will go up FAR more than the tariffs will drive because corporate America will have a new excuse to gouge. And gouge they will…

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So, Musk and Neil DeGrasse-Tyson are in a bit of a dispute. Musk thinks he’s going to send humans to Mars. DeGrasse-Tyson thinks he’s not. DeGrasse-Tyson is speaking the truth. His observations are NOT political – they’re economic. Sooner or later, someone is going to have to pay for a project that takes humans to Mars. To do that just for the sake of doing it? When the hell have investors done that? If they don’t expect a financial return for their investment, they don’t invest. It’s pretty simple, really.

Musk says he knows it’s a bad investment so he’s not looking for investors. He’ll just cover the trip, himself. But you’ve STILL got to get people to buy in to the idea enough to actually go, knowing he doesn’t even plan to bring them home. You go. You shout “We MADE it!” You die. There’s probably no optics problem, there. There’s another, more important point, though.

The idea to go to Mars is at least partially driven by the damage we’re doing to Earth. Elon thinks he can just go to Mars and terraform that planet to better match THIS planet. Quick question; why not just fix THIS planet and skip all that other trouble? I mean, if he’s ready to turn Mars into Earth, couldn’t he turn Earth into Earth?

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Every time the gun argument heats up, sooner or later someone insists that guns don’t fire themselves. It can’t happen, we’re told. Apparently, it can. A man insists he had his Sig Sauer P320 holstered as he was coming down the stairs in his house when the gun just…fired. The gun shot the guy in the leg – all by itself. More than 100 other people have come forward to say the same thing; the gun goes off by itself.

Thoughts and prayers, right? Well, no. Not in this case. The guy has been awarded $11 million dollars. (Sig Sauer says they’ll appeal, of course.) His attorney said, and you can’t make this up, “This gun is a danger to gun owners and anyone within the vicinity of this gun.” Apparently, the guy should have bought one of those safe guns that represent no threat to anyone anywhere…

While I’m on the topic of guns? I have a personal theory. Dictators are, generally speaking, not too comfortable with an armed populace. There have already been a couple of less-than-credible-but-still-reported attempts to shoot our incoming dictator. How long do you suppose it’s going to be before a tiny little light goes on in his tiny little brain and he decides it’s too dangerous to him for the masses to have guns? I suspect that conservative sweetheart Donald J. Trump will, sooner or later, be the one who actually comes to “take people’s guns.”

At this point? It’s just a hunch…

Reality Can Be Very Confusing…

by MyBaconPress

I guess he just jumped right to the heart of the matter, eh? Trump was at a rally in Wisconsin. He said this – out loud, “Kamala is mentally impaired. If a Republican did what she did, that Republican would be impeached and removed from office, and rightfully so, for high crimes and misdemeanors.” That’s a bit heavy on the assertion with NO detail. There is NEVER any detail from Trump. It’s always just the big charge. But he kept talking, “Joe Biden became mentally impaired. Kamala was born that way. She was born that way. And if you think about it, only a mentally disabled person could have allowed this to happen to our country.”

Now, even Republicans are disavowing the comments. They (correctly) think he should stick to the issues. Then, they (insanely) pretend that “The issues are, Donald Trump fixed it once. They broke it. He’s going to fix it again. That – those are the issues.” I’ve got to give them one out of two, there. Yes, they SHOULD stick to the issues but, no, Donald Trump never fixed anything, anywhere, at any time.

Dear MAGA, you’re asking us to believe one of your fever dreams. The fact is, Trump enjoyed the benefits of Obama’s economic policy before allowing the whole thing to crumble under his delusional mismanagement of Covid-19. That’s what happened. You can tell another story all you want. But that’s what happened…

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Yesterday, I wrote about JD Vance going to a restaurant and being denied entry because they didn’t want a “campaign event” or cameras in the place. Cons knew he was coming. They had filled the place up, made orders for food, and they were waiting for Vance. When Vance was denied entry, they cancelled their orders and went out and held their little mini rally in the parking lot. It’s still a little confusing, though. If the cons knew Vance was planning to be there, why didn’t Primanti Bros, the restaurant in question?

They didn’t want a campaign event? That doesn’t square with when Kamala stopped in. It was a little over a month ago. Nobody blocked her. She met with supporters inside the restaurant and cameras recorded the whole thing. She worked the crowd and glad-handed for a little while, then moved on. That seems like a campaign event, to me. Apparently, Primanti Bros. didn’t want a conservative campaign event.

Listen, given the toxic environment that IS the GOP, these days, I don’t blame them…

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Yet another of the people Trump worked closely with has commented on who and how Trump is. The fact is, the people who work with him and know him best, think he sucks. They can’t put up an image and desperately cling to it, like most of MAGA does on a day to day basis. They know, from direct experience, who Trump really is. And yet? They still don’t seem to get it.

Ty Cobb, a one-time lawyer in the Trump White House, has said he thinks Trump is “a deeply wounded narcissist.” Someone asked him about the GOP scheme to simply steal the election should Trump not win. Cobb said he didn’t think the GOP could come up with the goods, legally speaking, necessary to make the case of election fraud. He said, “the one thing they need in court is evidence. They didn’t have any last time and they’re unlikely to have any this time.”

In one sense, of course, Cobb is right. Trump never had any evidence of any impropriety in the 2020 election. He just made it up. His team tried to take their fever dreams into court and present them as evidence but court after court just threw the cases out. Over and over and over again. Over 60 times, in fact. They brought material they tried to produce as “evidence” that was SO lacking in support to SO many courts, SO many times, most of those lawyers are now being (or have been) disbarred.

Quick question: have you noticed a silly little thing like “no evidence whatsoever” to stop the wagging jaws of Trump or the faithful? No, me neither. As I reflect on it, the ONLY cases of voter fraud I remember hearing about were cons trying to stuff the ballot box with extra votes in one way or another. I suspect Cobb is right in his “diagnosis” of Trump’s mental condition but I think he might be just a bit optimistic about loyalty to reality in the case of elections.

Trump and MAGA don’t CARE that they’re lying. I mean, they KNOW it, they just don’t care. They honestly believe they’re doing it for the greater good. They honestly believe they can sin their way to purity. Hey, good luck with that.

I’ll tell you this: For some people, reality can be very confusing…

Stock Shifts…

by MyBaconPress

Largely, because most of what MAGA says is pure, unadulterated bunk, made up by some talking head to attract viewers, I dismiss pretty much everything MAGA says, pretty much all the time. They have absolutely NO credibility with me, whatsoever. But you know the saying, ‘Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.’ Every once in awhile, the cons bitch about something that we should all pay attention to because they’re right. I mean, even then, they don’t quite get to the meat of the matter because they always always, always excuse behavior on the right they condemn on the left. But at least they’re close.

They’ve got a good one going now and they’re right. There’s just no other way to put it, they’re right. The part they get right? Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, sold $500,000 worth of Visa stock – literally months before a DOJ investigation was launched against Visa on antitrust charges. Coincidence? Maybe. I can’t prove otherwise. But tell the truth, when you see that the one-time speaker of the House made up to a million dollars on a stock sale just before the stock dropped because of legal woes the one time Speaker very likely knew about in advance, you DO say, “hmm,” right?

It got worse. When people asked about it, we were treated to weasel words by one of her spokespeople, “Speaker Pelosi does not own any stocks, and she has no prior knowledge or subsequent involvement in any transactions.” Right. It’s all Paul. They never talk about what goes on in Congress. He has no insider information and she doesn’t own stocks. That doesn’t pass the smell test and it really stinks.

The part MAGA misses, of course, is that insider trading is legal for Congress critters – unlike the rest of us – and they ALL do it, party notwithstanding. This isn’t a Pelosi problem, it’s a Congress problem.

Their story? Oh, we have to make laws and regulations about these companies and we have to manage our portfolios so how could we NOT use insider information? But trust us, we won’t – because we said so. And who can you trust more than a politician?

The true story? In my lifetime, it was common practice for Congress critters to put their portfolios into blind trusts, managed by people outside of their sphere who had no idea about pending legislation. Pols could work without regard to their portfolio position because they didn’t KNOW their portfolio position and the investments could happen cleanly because the people managing the funds were not privy to the insider news. See? It CAN be done. It just won’t be because who is going to walk away from all that beautiful, easy-to-get money?

But I’ll tell you this: it’s a practice that very definitely should be stopped, for Pelosi and everybody else…

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“Remember, there’s a hat that’s made that sells like crazy… Oh, there’s a fly, oh. I wonder where the fly came from? See, two years ago, I wouldn’t have had a fly up here. You’re changing rapidly. But we can’t take it any longer…” – Donald J. Trump

No word on who or what was “changing rapidly.” Apparently, he never finished the hat story. The fly distracted him and he was lost. A fly.

And MAGA just sees a genius who can do anything…

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Weird little JD Vance goes into a super market in a campaign event. He wanted to decry the cost of groceries like Harris and Biden are sitting in the Oval Office setting prices and not the corporate C teams in their various suites. He picked up some eggs and bitched about a dozen eggs costing $4.00. Yeah, that would suck.

It’s just my opinion, mind you, but I think he should have had his advance team take down the sign right behind him that showed a dozen eggs selling for $2.99. They ALSO might have pointed out to him that he was holding a flat of eggs (30), not a dozen (12). If the guy can’t tell the difference between twelve and thirty, the accounting of this once-great nation is in deep trouble. Then again, maybe THAT’S why these guys think everything is bad. They take any issue and randomly more than double the size.

So, his advance team sets up a speaking engagement in a restaurant in Pennsylvania. The place has plenty of patrons who came to hear JD speak. When JD showed up, one of the workers told them no cameras were allowed and they didn’t want a campaign event in their restaurant. So JD had to schmooze that crowd outside, in the parking lot. It has shades of Rudy setting up a presser at a landscaping company. You know, the one right next door to the porn shop. JD’s advance team needs a bit of a revamp, I’d say…

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Okay, before I go, big props to Bob Van Dillen this morning. I know, “Who?” Bob. Van Dillen. He’s a weather guy on a local Fox affiliate and he was doing a report, as they do for some reason, outside in the rain. He heard a woman calling for help. His team called 9-1-1 and tried to get back to their broadcast but she was scared, in danger, and still screaming. So? He cut off his report – and went and saved her. It was the right thing to do and he did it…

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Well, the Niners are off to a start. It’s a bad start, but it’s a start. They’re losing players to injury at a precipitous rate. It’s a rough time to be a Niner fan. I know, I know. Three games in is a little early to be raising the white flag, and I’m not. It’s just that this team has been together for awhile and consists of players who have been in the league for awhile and it’s starting to look like age is becoming a factor we fans had hoped wouldn’t start until next season.

At 1-2, the Niners are in dead last in their division. It sounds a bit worse than it is, since most teams in the NFC West are 1-2 as of this morning, but they really need a victory today…

On Economies…

by MyBaconPress

From time to time, I engage in mental exercises. They can be…involved. That’s the kind of thing that caused me to revise the US Constitution. I have the advantage of hindsight working for me so I can look at what happened and where it may have missed. Then one just “fixes” the errors. Pretty straightforward, but not as simple as it sounds.

I did the same thing, once with national economies. I looked around at what had come before. What worked? What didn’t? I started building from there. I rejected communism pretty quickly. It doesn’t work. It has never worked, anywhere on Earth, any time in history. Capitalism IS the better answer but so-called “free market” Capitalism is self-consuming. In the long term, it won’t work, either. So I started tinkering.

One of the immediate problems with our current system is that we allow corporations to own what are known as the commons, the things we all need to function on a day-to-day basis. So, obviously, that has to change. The commons belong to the people, not to a corporation. For clarity, corporations would NOT be barred from competing. There would just always be a not-for-profit option available.

I realized during my little exercise that the idea that government has no role in the economy is simply wrong. As it happens there are (or should be) three parties to every transaction, not two. One is the producer/seller, two is the consumer, and three is the referee. That’s the government’s role, the referee.

The referee makes and enforces the rules. That happens in the form of regulation and enforcement. We should expect business to use every legal means at their disposal to make profits. That’s why companies exist, profits. But they really will do ANY legal thing they can. Some will do worse. That makes it the responsibility of the society in which the companies function to set the parameters of what a company can and cannot do. “The people” speak through their government, or they should. After that, it’s between the seller and consumer but one MUST have a referee, free to make impartial rulings. (That’s why Citizens United has to go.)

Virtually every legitimate piece of evidence on the topic makes clear that high taxes on high incomes benefits the entire society – even the person paying the high rates. High tax rates on high incomes causes a person (or company) to do that which they always promise low taxes might someday encourage them to do.

Oh, yeah. My system also included a strong social safety net. We live in a world that should be able to help people when they’re down. We have the resources. People fall into hard times for all kinds of reasons. When they can’t get help, they often turn to crime, so a strong social safety net creates an overall safer society. There are other benefits, of course, but this is just an overview.

And – voila! – I had it. A well-regulated, Capitalist economy in which the commons are provided by the state, paid for by high taxes on high incomes. Now all I needed was a name for my new economic system. That’s when I realized it wasn’t “new” at all. I had, basically, invented FDR’s New Deal. But I didn’t want to use that name. My ideas went further than the New Deal. So, I came up with something I liked: Social Capitalism.

THAT was when I learned that, again, I hadn’t come up with something new. I had independently arrived at the system currently known as Democratic Socialism. That system is currently being practiced in several countries around the world. EVERY SINGLE NATION that uses Democratic Socialism rates the general population happier and more successful, when surveyed, than the people of the United States. Every single one.

Even the United States did better while using the elements of Democratic Socialism that FDR could slip past Congress. The so-called “golden era” of the US is the years between 1945 and 1980. I grew up during that time. I remember the country that was – and it was better. No, this isn’t “you kids get off my lawn.” People did better. One person could provide for their family with one job. People could go to the doctor. Doors weren’t falling off of planes mid-flight. Really, it was better.

Conservatives in Congress have been working to dismantle the New Deal since FDR implemented it. In 1980, they managed to install a President sensitive to their desires, Ronald Reagan. It’s been a steady, downhill decline ever since. Rich people and corporations are doing GREAT! Everyone else? Not so much. And the struggle gets harder and harder every day.

Besides, just TRY to get a con to understand Democratic Socialism. Their brains freeze up the instant they hear the name. They think it’s some kind of paean to the Democratic party because it has the word in the name and the other word? My gods, the cons are SO conditioned to fear even the word ‘Socialism,’ it causes paroxysms. (They freak out.)

It’s important to remind people, from time to time, that there ARE economic models out there that work FAR better than the crap we’re being handed here in the United States of America. I really DO think so-called “free market” Capitalism cannot succeed. It will consume itself. We can see it happening all around us today. I suspect that, in the future, we’re going to need better ideas. So, there you go…

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I just want to remind everyone that Donald Trump has confessed that he lost the 2020 election and he knows it. THREE times in August he admitted it. Trump is lying about the “Stolen election.” He’ll be lying about THIS stolen election, too.

I HAVE noticed that, since writing that, not ONE of my MAGA friends has made any effort to pretend he really believed. That causes me to suspect that THEY know they’re lying, too. They’re just willing to destroy the country to get “their guy” into power. “Americans” in name only…

The Irony of the MAGA Mind…

by MyBaconPress

Sometimes, when I write about someone passing away, it’s with sadness because the person was good and did good things in the world. Willie Mays was like that. But sometimes, when I write about someone passing away, it’s with happiness because the person was an evil blight on humanity and did damage for money. People like Jim Inhofe.

Inhofe was definitely in the second camp. He was a Senator, a Republican (of course), and a staunch defender of the oil companies’ battle to boost climate change. Inhofe helped win that fight. Now the world will suffer increasingly hotter winters, more violent tropical storms and hurricanes, more floods, droughts, crop failures, and all the other horrible things science has been trying to warn us about since the 1950’s – only to be ignored. Or, more accurately, shouted down by people who refused to understand.

Inhofe was the moron who brought a snowball, a weather event, into the Senate chambers to show that climate change, a climate event, wasn’t real – because snow still happened. 89 years the planet suffered under the weight of this man’s stupidity. Thanks, in part, to him, we STILL get to suffer but HE shuffled off and avoided the worst of his actions. Classic con move.

Oh, well, at least I can take comfort that where he went is (reportedly) much hotter than where we are…

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Do you know what I find ironic? With the help of compliant conservatives, the one percent is right on the precipice of winning their class war. I know, it’s been presented (by the one percent, remember) as a “culture war” but it’s been a class war since the start. They want to be an official aristocracy and FDR made that difficult. Sure, FDR also made the country the financial envy of the world and created the largest and strongest middle class the world had ever known but rich people couldn’t get AS rich AS fast under his rules so those rules had to go.

But they couldn’t have done it alone. They needed a mob. They found one in conservatives and they led the cons around by the nose through fraudulent (and very scary) broadcasts that looked real enough to fool people not paying too much attention. The one percent seduced the cons with easy answers. Trump’s main gift is his constant promises of easy answers to complex problems. That’s why they love him. Easy answers.

No, none of that is the ironic part. That’s just background. One of Trump’s easy answers is yet another tax cut or worse. He has actually floated the idea of eliminating income taxes altogether and replacing them with tariffs on goods. Every competent economist has blasted the proposal but “smart” and “MAGA” simply do not go together.

All of these tax cuts are a one percent wet dream as well. They just get richer and richer but, have you noticed? The country keeps having to cut services and opportunities because we can’t afford them. “Cut more!” is all we ever hear. They don’t talk about it like they used to. These days, they pretend it’s all about stimulating investment but there was a time they said the quiet part out loud.

There was this conservative Bozo known as Grover Norquist. He once held the Republican Party in his grip with nearly perfect control. He had them sign a pledge that they would never, ever raise taxes nor allow them to be raised. If they didn’t sign, they didn’t get any support from the GOP. If they DID sign, he could wave that promise around at them any time one of them seemed about to act for the good of the country instead of rich people.

Old Grover said a lot of things over the course of his career but, to me, his most famous quote is “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” The “reduce it to the size” part is the tax cuts. They seem designed to bankrupt the nation.
“Hey, it feels like we might be getting to the ironic part, here, pretty soon.”
“Yeah, it does.”
And so we are…

I became curious about how all of these tax cuts would affect people when the government is, finally, bankrupt. Do you know who it looks like is going to suffer the most as a result of conservative mantras? Why, mostly, that would be conservative states! Isn’t THAT ironic?

The cons only think about welfare recipients (the easy answer) and except for themselves, think ALL welfare recipients should be cut off immediately since the other ones are “only committing fraud.” But the government does a LOT more than just welfare. When one bundles all the money the Federal government gives to states that need help, the most Federally dependent states are mostly red.

Okay, there ARE a couple of blue states in there but it seems likely that, as blue states, they’ll vote against red for the good of the nation and, frankly, themselves. There’s nothing ironic about that. But if we look at the top fifteen states that are Federally dependent, we find Alaska (1), Louisiana (2), Montana (3), Arizona (5), Wyoming (6), Kentucky (8), Mississippi (9), Texas (10), West Virginia (12), and Tennessee (14).

That’s ten of the top fifteen Federally dependent states that can be counted on to do serious damage to themselves in support of the richest people in this once-great nation. Even more ironic? They’ll do that financial harm to themselves, chanting their mantra about voting their own interest – all while voting against their own interest and in rich people’s interest, instead…

Hold on to your hats, folks. It’s going to be quite a (terrifying) ride…

The Truth of Automation…

by MyBaconPress

A few years ago, back when the $15/hour movement started, a photo started floating around the web.  It wasn’t necessarily THIS photo but it looked something like this:

mcdonaldsautomated-2005

That’s an automated McDonald’s ordering system.  The photo was intended as a threat: “Demand an honest wage,” the message went, “and we’ll just automate your job away entirely.”  As with all things rich vs. poor, it’s a lie.  Here’s why:

The $15/hour movement got started around 2015 (and even at that would have left countless people below the poverty line).  That photo is dated 2005.  This is the web; maybe it was a typo but the caption noted that it was a prototype, the wave of the future.

I don’t mean to put too fine a point on this but the concept of a for-profit business is, well, to make profit.  Consider that an axiom.  It means that a business should, by rights, do any and every legal thing it can do to create profit.  The wealth hoarders at the top usually view the workers who generate the revenues as leeches and ALWAYS view the ‘Employee Compensation’ line on the P&L as a “problem.”  (Curiously, not the ‘Executive Compensation’ part, just the ‘Worker’ part…)

That means that automation is coming whether or not the corporation pays an honest wage.  There are two – and only two – considerations on the topic: dependability and public acceptance.  The corporation is already chipping away at the ‘acceptance’ part by offering these kiosks as “conveniences.” (As we know, today’s “convenience” is tomorrow’s “Screw you, YOU do it!”)  The very moment the ‘dependability’ part catches up, you’ll see fully automated McDonald’s everywhere you look – without regard to the pay rate of the workers.

Paying the workers an honest wage – or not – never enters into the equation.  Sooner or later, those workers are going to be out of a job as a result of automation.  The ONLY thing that will result from the lack of honest pay is that the workers’ plight will be worsened when they’re finally cut loose.  If they were paid an honest living wage while the transition to automation occurred, they’d be better positioned to absorb the loss of that job while they find another one.

I’ll tell you this: I don’t know about you but I’m kind of tired of all of the fraudulent excuses and stories being peddled in an attempt to justify theft from the workers…

Inequality…

by MyBaconPress

I, of course, knew that I was going to write about income inequality this morning.  I’m tired of it and I’m tired of seeing (and living) the consequences of unbridled greed by the thieves at the top of the money pile.  I’m tired of pretending that the greatest fortunes of our society (or any society, for that matter) were created by the person who amassed them through pluck, determination, and hard work.  Those stories are fictions presented by the people who want you to believe.

One part is true, of course.  The “hard work” part.  Someone did the “hard work.”  My issue is, it’s almost NEVER the person who keeps the vast majority of the proceeds for themselves.  In short, those fortunes are – more often than not – the result of outright theft.

So I got up this morning and discovered that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC from here on in…) has discussed a top tax rate of 73%.  Awesome.  I see an opinion piece from leading economist Paul Krugman defending AOC’s suggestion.  I’m heartened.  There ARE people out there who understand that allowing the richest to keep all the wealth produced by other people’s labor benefits nobody but the richest, doing incredible harm to everyone else.

I ALSO saw a hit piece written by the insanely crazy CATO Institute suggesting – against every available piece of verifiable information – that FDR’s New Deal actually harmed most Americans.  (I  really couldn’t believe it.  The New Deal was the economic model that made America into the greatest economy the world had ever seen…)  Conservatives will believe it, though, because conservatives have been fed a steady stream of falsehood and lies for so long, the stories seem, to conservatives, like they must be true.  But the CATO position is NOT true.  It doesn’t even take much research to discover the fact but, being honest, here, conservatives aren’t exactly known for their willingness to do their own research.

The information in those preceeding two paragraphs gives me hope.  Americans are starting to wise up and dropping their fear of saying – out loud – Supply Side Economics is bullshit and we want a NEW New Deal.  The thieving ‘Have-mores’ must also be detecting the whiffs of inequality fatigue so they’re sending out marching orders to their think tanks to undermine…well…facts and rational thought.

I expect to be writing about income inequality quite a bit, now, with more detail and specific focus on specific issues.  For now, I think I just want to enjoy feeling hopeful for a change…

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Presidumb Trump seems to really believe he can stop paying Federal workers for months and possibly years without consequence.  (Don’t lose sight of the fact that while the Federal workers will eventually be reimbursed, the privatized contract workers will not.  There WILL be economic consequences to his stubborn wrongheadedness…)  He says he thinks those workers are perfectly willing to lose everything they have in life in support of his stupid, misguided wall.  He might be right.  His base is not fact-based.  They’re faith-based and faith-based believers are often…unpredictable.

For me, I’ll be interested to see how long his base holds.  It’s one thing to support philosophical positions when they’re abstract.  It’s an entirely different ball of wax when it’s your own livelihood and well-being.  When they get evicted because they can’t pay the rent, they’re going to KNOW they’ve been evicted because they didn’t get paid.  Will they REALLY continue to support him in his quest to squander billions of dollars on a vanity project that won’t change anything with regards to immigration?  Sections of his barrier already exist.  People are already going over, under, and even through the fences.  Yeah, let’s throw more money at that…

I’ll tell you this: I suspect the Trump Shutdown is going to end with little or no wall money so the only real questions are: how much personal damage is the base going to accept and how much damage is the GOP going to allow Trump to do to the brand before they step up and reign him in?

Market Movements…

by MyBaconPress

Did you hear?  The stock market crashed…then recovered…then crashed again…then recovered some more.  Down, up, down, up – some fairly wild swings in some fairly short periods of time.  Profit taking?  An inevitable “correction?”  Did the stock market take such a rough ride because of the jobs reports that showed modest growth in real wages?  Maybe.  Real wage gains was one of the myriad suggestions out there.  I hope that one is wrong, though.  It’s not a good sign – the suggestion that the market might crash if workers start to get more fair wages.  It DOES, however, support my contention that the “Dow” reflects only the happiness of CEOs and has nothing to do with the state of the economy so…victory lap?

I can’t pretend I’ve heard each and every one of the possible explanations out there but the one I DIDN’T hear was this: 45’s policies are starting to take effect.  For reasons I can’t explain, FAR too many Americans don’t seem to realize that the first year of a President’s term – any President – plays out under the LAST year of the previous President’s budget.  So all of this “good” economic news that’s been playing out over the last year has REALLY been the “end” of the Obama administration.

It seems quite possible to me that one of the problems is that the GOP can’t seem to get it’s financial house in order.  They’ve been trying to come up with their own budget and, so far, we’ve measured not one but two “government shutdowns” as the GOP careens between “cruel” and “not cruel enough” for the various “Republican” factions.  When they DID finally come up with…something…it added over one TRILLION dollars to THIS YEAR’S deficit.  Talk about “fiscal responsibility…”

But, in addition to the jobs report on the Friday the crash “started”, another event took place on the subsequent Monday: Janet Yellen was replaced as Fed Chair by a Trump pick, Jerome Powell.  Okay, “Trump pick” isn’t exactly right.  Powell was already on the Board and he was put there by Obama.  But Yellen was doing a good job as the Chairperson and it is described as “highly unusual” for a competent Chair to NOT be recommended for a second term.  Replacing Yellen with Powell introduced uncertainty and one of the things the markets hate beyond any other is uncertainty.

So, why the change?  Acknowledging that Trump and I haven’t spoken on the subject, I’d have to submit that, perhaps, the driving factor was Powell’s known aversion to “regulatory burdens.”  He was once a partner in the Carlyle Group – a Washington based private equity firm.  OF COURSE he wants to reduce “regulatory burdens.”  How the hell can banks game the system and rip off their customers if regulations prevent them from doing so?  And, sure, that will help usher in new instabilities as the economy returns to the boom and bust days of old…

I’ll tell you this: “Uncertainty” and “instability” are words regularly associated with this maladministration.  Sadly, they’re also the very intangibles investment markets try to avoid at all costs.  Perhaps Mr. Trump’s Wild Ride has only just begun…